just played cell factor, is a good deathmatch game worth 100 dollars, especially with multicore cpu's taking over physics management, ask your self this question i know i will.  cool game, unplayable without physics card.

the semester is over and i've gotten/played some new games,

resident evil game cube

resident evil 0

POP two thrones game cube

stalker pc

so firstly, resident evil 4 was the only resident evil i had played till last week, the original is effectively scary, and thrilling and downright beautiful, that siad the iventory system is simply broken, thankfully they fixed that, the only major problem with the original games, in the prequel resident evil 0, while many people found the duel control gimicky i found it to be perfect and fantastic.  i truely prefer the prequel simply for the intentory fix and dual character simotaneous play.  POP two thrones, well i've played this on the pc and found it breathtaking but wanted better built in controller funtionality so i got the cube version since the 360 isn't compatible with two thrones(D@mn you microsoft) anyway, the cube version looks downright horrible, the animations and way clippier, and the game is excremely picilated even for a cube game.  i really hate the fact that i have this for game cube, time to go and get the trilogy for pc.  alright finally i can talk about stalker.  firstly i have many friends who played this game and simply couldn't stomach it, the lack of a formal tutorial had them missing out on the iron sigh functionality so they couldn't beet the first mission.  i fell in love with stalker when i realized i had ten rounds of pistol amo, a hunting knife and 11 shot gun shells, and there was a choke piont between me and my objective chock full of bandits.  the secret, sneak up behind the first bandit,  knife him, while you rummage through his clothes his buddies will see you so fall back while picking up his rifle ok you got 21 shots left in that gun, make em count take as many out as you can while they close in on you when they do you should be out of ammo for the rifle, pull out the sawed off and fall back to the vacant builings, when they pursue inside after you introduce them to your little friend.  those fantastic moments aside the game is effectively broken glitches and optimization problems abound and the AI for human and animal are questionable to say the least, but the last time i was this exsited about a game form a no one has heard of them developer it was farcry and look at that game.

 

i hope that the next stalker ditches the source engine(who besides valve has honestly made a not glitchy as crap game on source, think, not dark messiah, not vampire masqurades, honestly the source engine is the broken engine in anyones hands but valve, why do you think developement is so long for their games, becouse source is glitchy and they are always fixing it, the only excuse)  any way stalker on cry engine, yeah that rocks, or unreal 3, but preferably cry engine.

 

everyone should by stalker so this dev can make a even better sequel.

i was trying to put up a banner and stuff and it always says it's to big, how do you compress a image, it is the proper resolution, but i can't get the save file any smaller.  any ideas, i'm using cs2

so i finally played C&C3 what a pleasant supprise, the game features fast furious simple and relatively fun gameplay.  i'm going to talk about my time in skirmish playing the good guys.

first let me say what i like

the visuals, they are beautiful especially for the engine the game is running on, i love the speed of the gameplay, the tempo is quite up beat and i could see quick scirmishes in under 30mins being the standard for this game and a first for RTS's.  the unit types varieties and animations and implementations, the artillery seems well balanced fun feasable and beautifully rendered, as do the tanks and infantry.  i love the reasorce model, simple but different, closer to supreme commanders than you would think.  beautiful enviroments, good responsive controls.

things i didn't like

glitches, mianly animation and pathfinding, and clipping.  i'd say 90 percent of the time my artillery animations would cease, and 50 percent of the time this seemed to effect the functionality of my artillery, bassically it would glide around and not fire anything, quite dissapionting.  out of a group of 9 jugernauts only two remianed functional durring a base assualt the rest froze and glided doing nothing.  the clipping in this game is horendous and seems to attempt to compensate for bad pathfinding, kinda like in LOTR BFME when you cavalry could run though all of your units, yeah my squads would run through my tanks and my tanks would run through my buggy and my artillery shells would blow up my tanks(wiat a second, that isn't clipping, but alas it ended up killing two of my mamoths)    though animations are detialed and beautiful for most everything when they don't have animations things look really canned, like when units enter a building or when they are shot out, buildings don't seem to take damage the way you'd want them to, not like in company of heroes, and when they get shot out of a building the ensueing cheasy animation is rather horrible.  they bassically telleport your unit into the air and he falls to his death in a rather stupid looking way.  also some fasets of the interface are downright criptic and clumbsy, not to mention the camera and queing frustrations, yes you can que some stuff and throw around way pionts but not as well as sup com, also the camera is annoyingly close at the furthest zoom distance, not to mention the maps feel a little small, when camera is so close to the action you don't want to be forced to examine the visual short commings, so why not pollish the game uniformally like COH, i don't know, the campiagn does look to be interesting and intriqueing, the FMV sequences are instant classics and i might get the game just for the campiagn if only EA would polish the rough edges.  world in conflict looks to have equally furious combat and resolve camera issues and such,  i eagerly awiat my chance to try that one.  but i want EA to make a well rounded game for once, like sup com or COH then i can tell all my friends why they have to buy it rather than justifying to my self why i bought another D@MN EA RTS.

on another note i was reading the commentaries on how Sony is taking a dump on Euro consumers prides and then they wonder how they came in last place, more money for a technically inferior system, and not just a little more, 230 dollars more.  gosh, i'm not supprised but i'm not happy either, see sony is doing buisness the EA way and soon both will loose support and money then they'll change their ways.

sometimes i feel like game reviews every where are biast, i haven't seen a single review that really tells how great supreme commander is, it is both visually engrosing and tactically superior to every game on the market, the only one that comes close is company of heroes.  that still isn't the same stratigically, really sup com is the most fun i've had playing a strategy game since star craft, or war craft 3, every facet of the game is developed perfectly from the perfect implementation of air, to the perfect execution of naval, the the traditional yet superd land units, and everything inbetween.  i know that gamespot says"the different factions are to similar" and i feel that but they aren't identical, it's not just the super units that differentiate the sides but the tech two and three units, for example the mobile artillery for each side at tech 2 and 3 is fiarly if not totally different.  the actually effectiveness of different units of the same ilc agianst different units is totally different, the cybran tech 3 mech disses out damage but can take a hit to save it's life.  the differences are subtale, like what tech level gets subs for the different races, but they really effect the early game strategy, espcially on different maps, some mobile artillery is better than others, tech 1 and 2 cybran mobile artillery is useless, but their tech 3 is devistating though slow. and stationary.  every side favors different units and tactics but they aren't as different as say star or war craft.  this game blows my mind and ruins my studies.  heres to a painful midterm.  and  this game runs slow but funtions on my three year old pc how can modern pc's not manage.

i've been told numerous times how gorgeous world of warcraft really is, and yet i feel like it is running on the same graphics engine as warcraft 3.  the geometry is ridiculously simple, the texture work and lighting is also boring, the animations and clipping problems that are over abundant are far from impressive.  if not for the fantastic art design of the game it would have look out right horrible.  i find guild wars to be a much more beautiful game, especially considering it's many technical acheivements.  on that note, i don't doubt that it is a good game, i just don't believe in pay as you play, or in micro transactions or in playing agianst other players who bought leveled characters on ebay before it banned those kind of auctions.  though the mmo experience is potentially good-great the actions of a few can all to easily bring down that magnificent experience.  that is why the more tightly nit exclusive worlds of guild wars, and traditional online shooters appeal to me far more, because it is much easier to make the experience for you and your friends then for it to be about dealing with cheaters and fools.

ok so after like ten mech games(not all good) microsoft desides that it is done, WTF.  firstly mech 2 and 4 where great games, and though there were really great aspects to mech assualt 1 and 2 they had alot of room for improvements.  it's been along time, tech is hugely improved and you know what game i feel they need a sequel or a remake of, it's mech warrior/mech commander 1(2 kinda sucked i thought).  any way i really feel that with physics and graphics and AI being where they are there is no  time like the present to bring back one of the best mech franchises ever.  common microsoft and don't half @$$ it either.  the mech warrior/assault games never sold porely so the lack of developement interest is unwaranted.  common microsoft.  imagine playing online leading a squad of teammates through a city that is entirely destructable, but you can't waste precious Ammo or heat signatures to destroy for pure fun, your flee/raven leads the pack with sensor sweeps until he ID's a atlas, everyone circles the atlas as the flea pegs him with the narc beacon, the LRM's rip into the air and he is near finished before the barage is over, the flee circles him keeping in place by over heating him with two flame throwers while the madcat mak 2 moves into position to KO this sucker with a double blast of heavy gauss rifles.  that is why i want a new mech game.  because that and more is possible with todays tech.  and because i really really love the original mech games.

kaziechameleon
no one seems to think twice, i'm suprised and happy and dissapionted, for one i siad this is a great independent/start up dev forum, so i love that, on the other hand i don't want this to replace the AAA title, or hard copy game. i'm suprised that more games haven't gone this rought, the pc you can get entire games through download, but otherwise? console games don't offer that and they could with the consoles being harder to hack it would be even safer.

 11, 2006 8:24 pm PT
kaziechameleon
i might just feel this way because i'm a collector i love tangable things, like DVD's laser disks video games, pet fish(no one saw that coming), i'm just wierd like that i feel like getting a VC game or a XBL marketplace game is like leasing a car instead of buying one, you don't own anything. Posted Dec 11, 2006 8:21 pm PT
kaziechameleon
well i find the fact that anyone on the console market woud pay money for digital media is rediculous, i mean you aren't really buying anything, i love retro games, and collecting emulations without a promise from nintendo to make these purchases carry through to the next generation, i mean atleast the XBL games are assosiated with you Account so maybe they could carry over your onine purchases, but the fact that the nintendo system doesn't do that instead the games are tied to your Wii ID number, AKA your systems ID or pin, it would be a real legal/financial fiasco to transfer these games to the next system, not to mention the fact that this system desperately needs a harddrive to support this kind of media,i mean people will have filled up every memory card and all the onboard memmory in a few months, what then. now that i've got this out, i'm exstatic that nintendo is so dedicated to bringing out games every week, i remember when microssoft siad they'd keep on emulating original xbox games and here i am wiating for a UC2 POP 2 and 3, and a hand full of other games emulation, number one software devs in the world can't emulate, go figure. i think the XBL market place and the VC are totally steeling the market and revolutionizing how independent devs distribute their media on the pc we have steam, a very great system, with it's flaws. any way it seems like every download system has the inherit problem of not actually owning anything physical what if the 360 did a dreamcast, or what if nintendo did the same what would happen to your collection, what if valve went belly up. what would you do your games would all be invalidated. when your games rely on a corporations financial success then you are in a dangerous place. will nintendo release compilation discks like sega and mega man did last gen, if they do i'll grab those. until then i'll play downloaded content on anothers system i'm still a skeptic, the price for me is to steep considering you are paying for a movie ticket not buying the dvd, if you know what i mean.

look at the fantastic pc and 360 offering oblivion and behold the future of US rpg's, while japan is stuck in the past with a few up and comming titles promising reinvention the US side of rpg developement is actually pushing the envelope with entirely original RPG games and game settings following oblivion will be bioshock, the hellgate london.  these two unique and fantastic looking games promise to redifine rpg gameplay, the i'm a little reserved about hellgate londons visuals, they deffinately look last generation.  the games original setting and the wealth of gameplay options really help me hope, bioshock just looks plain amazing.  any wayze.  just thought i'd sound off on my rpg thoughts, i'm a former D&D fan who found the all to similar nature of US rpg's very frustrating, i own only two pc rpg's dungien seige(ich) and oblivion(timelesS) ok hears to hoping.

read the article, for those who think the ps3 just isn't popular with gamespot, maybe it's for a reason, maybe it just isn't worth 600 dollars.  all that hard ware and nothing to show for it.