Ill buy ep2 on steam whenever they decide to release 4 hours of content on already existing engine with already existing story. It's ridiculous they could have made a brand new half life 3 instead of making us wait years for episodic content.
I don't care how many games they throw in with in it, its becoming really annoying.captalchol
I think your calculations are bad. There were 6 years between Half-Life (1998 ) and Half-Life 2 (2004) for maybe 8 hours of game play. Half-Life 2: Espisode 1 (2006) was a 2 year wait for 4 hours of game play. If we get Episode 2 this year and it has 4 more hours of gameplay (they are claiming its actually longer) we still come out way ahead.
Full game 8/6 (hours of game/years of wait)
Episodes 8/3 (hours of game/years of wait)
Which doesn't even take into account Portal and Team Fortress 2.
Valve is adding more to the newer games which will allow them to take advantage of bleeding edge hardware. But Valve and the Source engine are great about scaling down to older hardware. In this Gamespot Video Interview Doug Lombardi from Valve talks about backward compatibility. They just dropped support for Windows 98, but the Orange Box games will still be very backward compatible.
I'd be really bummed if they don't do this for PC eventually, it looks really cool. I don't understand why they wouldn't, I thought the X-Box architecture and OS was very similar to Windows specifically to make porting games one way or the other smooth.
[cynical_mode]Almost makes me wonder if all their hype over this game (material physics & AI behaviors for example) is true. Seems like on console you can get a movie license and guarantee yourself sales no matter how bad the game is. PC gamers are generally more picky.[/cynical_mode]
it's only 80 bucks. And I want a gaming rig so it seems weird to get an old OS (which is the same price as Vista) to go with a new rig.Fyper
I recently rebuilt my machine to get up to spec and DX10 ready. When I did I bought Windows XP - OEM and it came with a free upgrade to Vista. I have the upgrade sitting on a shelf and will use it when I need it. I understand the compatibility and drivers issues are quickly being resolved. But why should I deal with even minor issues for (slightly) worse performance until I have to?
There are many games that implement a system like you describe. Far Cry, for example, has "from the hip" as default, and gives you the option to sight "down the barrel" sacrificing movement speed and peripheral vision for accuracy, and the option to sprint during which time you can't shoot at all.
Arguments about how games work based on "In real life..." need to be considered with caution. While soliders may not have weapons ready as frequently as a video game, any solider facing 20 to 1 odds (aka video games odds) and not running away is irretrievably stupid. Games are games. While game mechanics can be influenced by "real life" ultimately decisions have to be made based on whats fun, what works in a game.
I believe most of the driver issues and serious bugs have been ironed out by this time. However Vista just benchmarks lower than Windows XP on identical hardware. Until something happens to change that (maybe driver updates, or OS fixes, or DX10) or until a critical mass of software shows up that only runs on Vista, I'll be sticking with XP.
Biggest difference for me from the DOS gaming days is the web. Now days when I have trouble with a game I hit Google, couple searches, read a few forums and I've got (likely) solutions. When I first started gaming you had tech support (sometimes for fee, frequently M-F business hours) dial up to a BBS if you were lucky, or slog through it yourself.
I have some question for people who are using widescreen monitors. Is support for widescreen pretty standard now? Are there any current games that don't support widescreen? How are older games displayed on a widescreen?
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