Halo 3 ZOMG! Awesome, awesome game!

zomgomgomg aaron gets the heart attack!!!111

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Why snark works.

ZOMG! HALO 3, AM LUUUV HAYLO 3. AM LUV TEH Story LINZ

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Aaron's Stuff

SPOILER: s**t blows up, dudes die

Got a 360 last week. Bought NHL '08, Viva Pinata and just picked up Dead Rising and Tomb Raider Legend. I'll grab Halo 3 in a week when I visit Washington for a weekend vacation, save myself $10 or so.

NHL '08 is just plain amazing, but the PC version blows ass, don't ever pay money for it.

i've started playing secret of mana again, snes rocks my socks
oh and i can't stop playing oblivion

Halo 3 is great. Really. Not god's gift to gaming as the hype would have you believe, but it is still a really excellent game. It isn't gonna change your opinion of Halo if you don't like the earlier games as it is just more of the same with minor tweaks and improvements, but anybody who isn't put off by that will have a great time. Finished the campaign in 2 sittings; think that shows I was having a good time :wink:

A mate brought over his 360 and we did 4 player coop in system link last night, which was predictably awesome. We then did some 3v3 team deathmatch, and we had a great time and some seriously closely fought battles. I'm thinking it won't be long before we've tried to recruit an extra 2 players to maximise our screen usage :biggrin:

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

I have yet to try 4 player co-op reno. Did you expect that ending in campaign?

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Aaron's Stuff

Sort of, though not in the way that they did it. I don't really wanna say anything that might ruin things for people who haven't seen it through yet :smile:

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

Nice, what difficulty did you do it on?

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Aaron's Stuff

I played through on Heroic. I'll no doubt play it through again on Legendary in coop - thats the way I did it with the first 2 games. My mate and I did a 2 player coop using the system link with 3 of the unlockable difficulty booster things on as well - no radar, double enemy health, and shield recharging only through melee attacks. Wow, that was awesome fun, makes it far more tactical when you've gotta take out the strong guys using your weapons and leave enough of the little grunts alone so you can melee attack them for health :smile:

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

Kind of wish i had a 360. Do you have to pay to play on xbox live? Other than your net connection of course.

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Reality has become a commodity.

Yes, very yes!

I'm thinking about getting Halo 3 as well, it does look like a pretty good game, I don't think I could stand all those fanboys, though.

It's $50 USD a year in addition to your net connection.
The only upside is if you want to use Live on Vista, you can use the same subscription.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

It's $50 USD a year in addition to your net connection.

Wow, that's pretty sucky.

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Why snark works.

Just completed all missions in Dark Forces on medium for the first time. Which is strange since I got the game like 10 years ago. Probably one of the best so-called "Doom clones".

I actually own that game! Someone gave it to me ages ago for reasons I don't remember. I might check it out.

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Why snark works.

I recommend you use this DOS emulator, reaper. I use XP and got full sound and music. In setup, select Sound Blaster 2.0, Port = 220, IRQ = 5, DMA Channel = 1. That's what worked for me anyway. You may also want to change the sensitivity value in DOSBoxs config file.

I'll give it a try... well, maybe :smile:

I had my gripes with DOSBox, trying to run Xcom:Apocalypse on it. In short: it didn't work.

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Why snark works.

hl, do you know any good windows emulators, like 98 2000 or xp, i got heroes four for $10 but it won't run on my 64bit vista machine

Yeah its $100 here in Australia (our currency is different) but its worth it for all those fun hours of gaming. Theres also a market place and other stuff.

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Aaron's Stuff

aaron_da_killa said:
our currency is different

No way... :rolleyes:

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SourDough2.0 - With Strawberry Jam

Just completed all missions in Dark Forces on medium for the first time. Which is strange since I got the game like 10 years ago. Probably one of the best so-called "Doom clones".

Wow, I was honestly begining to think I was the only person on Earth who owned that game :biggrin: Never beat it I'm afraid, so I'm going to have to sit down and play through it some time :smile:

As far as my gaming experience has been going, I've been playing a s**t load of MegaRace, Descent, and Full Throttle (which I personally think might very well be the most cinematic game of all time.)

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Breaking the laws of mapping since 2003 and doing a damn fine job at it

G.Ballblue said:
Wow, I was honestly begining to think I was the only person on Earth who owned that game :biggrin: Never beat it I'm afraid, so I'm going to have to sit down and play through it some time :smile:

I recommend it. Watch out though, I found it a lot harder than it's sequels; you can't quicksave in the middle of the level and although you start the game with 6 lives and can find more you have to be careful and not let them deplete so sometimes when you die, you have to decide whether to keep your progress minus 1 life or just restart the level with your original amount.

AND BEWARE LEVEL 6!!!!

I have to say I prefer older games to new. They don't seem to make anything that interests me anymore. Before long people will buy games for ?50 standard, install them from holographic cubes on to their 60 Terabyte drives run them and find there is a photorealistic world but because there is no gameplay anymore, you can't even move.

Oh man, I remember playing Dark Forces when I was just a wee little noob, good times, good times.

Recently played:
TF2 - Whole hell of a lot of fun, I figured out if I run it in a window it won't crash near as much.
HL2:Ep1 - beat it on hard again.
HL:S - in the process of beating it on hard, again.
HL2 - specifically the airboat levels and dicking around with airboat.txt
Peggle Extreme - surprisingly fun and addictive... really!
America's Army - This game is still lame, in my humblest of opinions.
CS: Condition Zero - Still the best version of CounterStrike, even if it's the least popular, some of the best CS maps are CZ exclusives, and the _cz retouches of classic maps bring a higher and more consistent level of polish to the game. It's also relatively easy to find a decent pub that isn't running 4 different gameplay-altering server mods, unlike CS:S.

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o

Playin' Skate. for xbox 360... great skateboarding game...

Played a bit of Halo 3, found the gameplay extremely irritating. I was playing it co-op with a friend, and it was tedious... run to a spot, kill things for 2 mintes, run somewhere else, camp out and kill waves for another couple minutes, over and over and over and over again.

Multiplayer is still a riot. In the end though, just halo 1 with flashier graphics. I still don't like the series much.

I just finished the (new) TimeShift demo. Talk about an improvement.

You may remember a demo for TimeShift came out over a year ago ... and it was terrible ... and the developers decided they wanted another year to spiffy up the game.

While the game is now, obviously, improved, it's still lacking in some areas. One area of which is the general design.

The game feels sort of ... slow. It's like, forcing someone to play at Unreal Tournament type speeds with Resident Evil controls. Of course, that's an exaggeration. I'm just not sure what the exact element is that does this. It just might be the whole package.

It might be the fov ... but the game actually lets you change that, which is nice.

Anyway, the game doesn't look bad or play worse than a lot of other FPS games, but it's repetitive nature shines through. Get to a new area, defeat all the red dots on your compass (which is the only way you'll know there are enemies besides them shooting at you, since everyone looks the same) or defeat some master puzzle with your time abilities (which are pathetically short) move onto the next linear triggered event.

Linear game play and triggered events are not bad. In fact, some of the best FPS' have them (Call of Duty and Half-Life come to mind), but when you design the actual levels as a more open ended affair with forced linearity, it does not work ... at all. The way that looks like the obvious route ... is a dead end, or unreachable. The flow of the levels themselves is very poorly done. You'll turn a lot of corners just to find that you walk into a room and the direction you need to go is a door way behind you. Very unintuitive. They also like to ambush the player like that and put you in very un-defendable situations. For instance, the first time you get a weapon ... the moment you pick up the weapon, which is moments after you start the demo ... two guys with machine guns rush you. You have to, pretty much, instantly use the time controls just to beat these couple of enemies. In fact, you'll notice that you, pretty much, can't get out of any firefight without using the time controls. To top things off, there's always very limited cover .. and most of it is destroyable.

They've also put outdated handicaps on the weapons. You'll notice several times that launching a grenade at an enemy will do nothing but make a cloud of smoke that they rush you out of. The "sniper" weapon, which is akin to the cross bow in Half-Life is very ... very slow ... like Halo sniper rifle slow. It's absolutely useless, the enemies, literally, just step to the side. You have to pause time when you use the weapon, otherwise the enemies just move out of the way.

There's many many more gripes I have about this and to sum them up, I can put it this way: this game feels like a more bogged down version of KillZone.

However, it's not irritable and I do suggest people give it a try just to check it out for themselves. It certainly isn't the worse FPS to come out this year.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

I sort of enjoyed the new demo as well, only I played the 360 version. Graphically it was ok, with the time stopping effect being very nicely done (the stationary raindrops is a rather awesome effect!), but nothing jaw dropping. As for gameplay, it seemed like a pretty by the books shooter, certainly nothing to write home about but enjoyable enough. I'd consider picking it up once it drops in price and there's a bit of a gaming drought on the go, but until then my money is going elsewhere.

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

Hmm... I'm not too excited about downloading the demo. How well does TimeShift use the time stopping/reversing(?) feature? From what I saw in gameplay vids it's not really integrated into the game very well. It feels scripted like Crono said rather than interactive.

I mean compared to how Portal uses portals... how well does TimeShift use time shifts?

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Why snark works.

The time shifting isn't scripted at all. The player controls them and there's a meter that drains while using the ability (at different speeds depending on what shift you're doing, slow, pause, reverse). It recharges when you're not using it.

The point I was making was that, the game forces you to use it at times where in, other shooters, you wouldn't need anything at all. It would have made more sense to make the game handle as well as better shooters, but had even more difficult encounters that required the time shifting ability, rather than facing two or three enemies and requiring the ability. (Pretty much any time you encounter enemies, you'll want to use it, then duck for cover, reload and let it recharge. Repeat).

The scripted stuff is everything else. It'll either toss you scripted events, or waves of enemies.

You'd expect more crazy amazing things to happen to ensure using the time shifting ability went to good use ... like in the trailer, but nothing of the sort happens. At least not in the demo.

The ability to alter time in a FPS could become as fundamental as 3D or Physics has, but no one has really done it right. At least even in games like FEAR you don't HAVE to use the slow down to kill guys. Here you will pretty much get annihilated (since you're guns are so useless in real time ... but super deadly when time shifting ... yeah, it doesn't make sense)

I just thought there might be people who enjoy the demo more than myself. But, personally, if you were choosing demos, I'd go with the awesome UT3 demo. I have trouble with stopping playing that thing. You, at the least, need to check out the tripod in HeatRay, it's pretty badass.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

I did check out the UT3 demo... exciting technology-wise, very, very generic when it comes to gameplay.

About timeshift: What you say sounds like the geomod engine from Red Faction. You can shoot holes in walls (!) which is as awesome as it sounds. Then again it's hardly used in singleplayer (although rather awesome in MP, for a reason, never thought they would be able to make it work on a 16 player server!)

Portal and, from previews, Mario Galaxy are probably the games that go in the direction I'd really like to see games go. A lot of developers try but it's hardly as elegant as it must be to fully transform gameplay into something new.

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Why snark works.

Unreal Tournament has a DM style all its own. The advantage of each iteration is a new mode or better graphics (or both). In any case, if you didn't like the other four or so versions, then you wont like this one. They were smart not to alter the core gameplay too much. Good deathmatch style games are actually pretty hard to come by now days, so much so, that I'd argue UT3's game play is rather unique now. Even if it is "old" or "generic", that doesn't mean it isn't fun. It's so much fun it's retarded.

You can't just destroy up material in TimeShift, but places you look for cover (concrete road blockers, cement poles, etc) are semi destructible. The environments are destructible in scripted sequences, but not really in an way that is immersive. Go through this corridor that is collapsing ... learn that the only way to get past it is to reverse time, replay, reverse time. Silly ridiculous "puzzles" like that which are learned only through repetition.

Red Faction was ... okay. I bought the game and sold it a week later. Paint me unimpressed.

Destructible environments really wouldn't be THAT difficult. If you get everything running REALLY well with displacement maps, right there, you have every object with a displacement (or parallax, bump map, depending on the distance of the player) map has a deformable property. You would have to actually model the texture map on the CPU, since it's needed for collision data (unless you're doing collision detection on the GPU), then you just send the new maps with the next batch of GPU information. Hello, deformable geometry.

As far as molding the FPS into a new genre. That'd be pretty difficult, since it's a very shallow genre, changing core mechanics would most likely destroy what is actually nice about FPS games. A few have done it, but, as you've most likely noticed, they haven't exactly skyrocketed success with gamers.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Crono said:
The ability to alter time in a FPS could become as fundamental as 3D or Physics has.

uh what? Matrix-like slow motion is pretty much the definition of pointless flashy gimmick. And before you say 3d or physics are just gimmicks, at least they serve to make an fps more realistic and believable, which, you know, has been the main driving factor of almost every graphical and gameplay advancement since Doom...

I dunno, the time control in Timeshift doesn't really work in the same way as the matrix type control seen in other games. While in other games you slow down in the same way as the enemies do, in Timeshift you retain your movement. I know that doesn't sound like much, but things like rewind time are used as fundemental gameplay features, considering you exist outside the time frame of the rest of the world. So if you get caught in a collapsing bridge, for example, you can rewind time so that the bridge returns to its fully intact self while you're already half way along it. Granted, it is only something that proves useful in obviously staged scenarios, but it isn't a "pointless flashy gimmick" as much as THE focus of the game.

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

Crono said:
The ability to alter time in a FPS could become as fundamental as 3D or Physics has.

uh what? Matrix-like slow motion is pretty much the definition of pointless flashy gimmick. And before you say 3d or physics are just gimmicks, at least they serve to make an fps more realistic and believable, which, you know, has been the main driving factor of almost every graphical and gameplay advancement since Doom...

I don't think either of those things are a gimmick, they mold themselves into the gameplay very well.

My point was, the time shifting is put to some interesting use, but it's all very specialized scenarios. It's not something built in as intuitive as, say, jumping. In fact, the only game I've ever seen with time manipulation that implemented it so well that it felt like it belonged was the Prince of Persia reboot.

I think if the game were designed in a more open fashion where, as a skill, time shifting could be used, rather than a forced game play mechanic, situations that would use the time shift, in particular, would feel more natural and not forced.

I think, in general, my biggest gripe with the way they hand it in this game is that it is completely unadaptable to different play styles. You HAVE to play the game a certain way.

The gameplay, basically, works out like this. Duck for cover and wait for an opening, come out from cover, slow time down or stop it, then fire as much as possible until enemies are dead or the meter is empty, duck for cover again, reload, wait for the meter to refill, repeat. That is the entire play mechanic of the game besides completely scripted sequences and "puzzles" that have only one way to go about solving them.

I think a FPS game with time shifting abilities could really bring some new ground into the genre, but it needs to be in the plans from the get go and the game needs to feed off of the ability and become more robust, instead of constraining the player.

This makes the game nearly as annoying as FPS games where headshots do nothing. (To note, it also has that trait)

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

ReNo said:
it isn't a "pointless flashy gimmick" as much as THE focus of the game.

I agree, if the game is designed around it then yes, it's not a gimmick but the whole meat of the game that differentiates itself from other games. However my objection was about time control becoming a fundamental aspect of all fps games, where unless you design your game around it (which is a rather narrow design that doesn't lend itself to a wide variety of fps themes and styles) it will be a pointless gimmick.

Maybe I just read to much into the earlier statement, cause I was looking at it in a general sense, whereas you both are talking about in the context of this game, as in time control should be a fundamental aspect of the design instead of feeling tacked on or forced.

Oh, my earlier comment was that time shifting could be a fundamental aspect of FPS gaming in general ... however, that isn't to imply that time shifting should be in every game. It certainly doesn't belong in most games.

It would be a fundamental addition to the genre in the same sense that going to a prone stance is. That most certainly is an un-needed ability in many FPS games, but it is a very nice addition to the genre, as a whole.

If that makes sense.

As for TimeShift, it looks like the main focus of the game has always been time shifting, but, for the life of the developers they just didn't get it to play off that way. It really feels like the time shifting is slapped on and there's a very different shooter underneath that's a bit more average.

It just wasn't designed well. It's sort of like, they gave you all the tools you'll need to get things done outside of the time shifting, but they made them all very weak to force you to use the new feature. It feels tacked on AND forced. Sort of like the recently released Donkey Kong Barrel Blast for the Wii. The game was suppose to come out on the GCN and use the bongo controllers, in which case it would have been a decent game, but they axed that, moved it to the Wii and put on Wii motion controls to simulate ... bongos and it doesn't work ... at all.

Anyway, I really don't like TimeShift, in general. The thing that's even more sad than all of these complaints though, is that, comparing this demo to the last one ... this version of the game is far superior. So, very, sad.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

I just discovered this AWESOMELY weird game called Dwarf Fortress. Imagine the most complex ASCII game you ever played and multiply that by 1000.

It looks like something from the early eighties but in fact it swallows your processor power just like a state of the art FPS, taking 10+ minutes just to generate the world to play in.

Without the manual you don't survive much longer than 10 minutes either. And it's been a while that I played a new game that actually requires reading a manual.

Check out the screens to get a feel for this, especially this pic of an average game world.

It's so crazy, I love it.

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Why snark works.

I just discovered this AWESOMELY weird game called Dwarf Fortress.

Two of my friends from SvenCoop have been playing that game for as long as I can remember. One of them has even gone to such extents to do a few Dwarf Fortress doodles.

I've been playing the white chamber, by Studio Trophis. It's a classic style point and click adventure game, featuring a fabulous anime art style and enough gore to give the Silent Hill series a run for its money. As far as 2D point and click games go, I highly recomend it. It's the first game in four years to successfully scare the crap out of me.

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Breaking the laws of mapping since 2003 and doing a damn fine job at it

I'm playing through Quake 4 on hardest again, this game has a pretty unique style and gameplay aesthetic, not to mention some REALLY hardcore enemies. Gotta love it when you have to unload guns into the badguys when they can turn you into mush with just a few hits. I'm at the first encounter with the tactical strogg, only made one attempt at it yet, killed all the tacticals but got wasted by the railgun-toting tank that shows up in the middle of the battle shortly thereafter. The area I just came from had me use up all my ammo save for 3 grenades and 12 rockets, then fight two berserkers at once and a handful of grunts... That splash damage hurts.

Also playing Diablo 2 LoD in single-player mode, using a sorceress and focusing almost solely on fire skills + ice armors, something I've never tried before.

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o

My son recently bought some new games. Not having net access, this seemed the best way to fill in the time till we get the net again.

I advised him to check the boxes to make sure that there was no net necessity.

Sadly, one or two of the games required you to have the net in spite of the fact that the box didn't stress it for activation purposes.

I think this trend of forcing net access is a requirement above and beyond attempting to thwart pirating.

These games were definitely bought, but were unavailable due to the activation sequence.

The only reason I could determine that they didn't have "MUST HAVE THE NET" on the box, was the fact that you could activate it via the telephone.. Unfortunately, the only numbers given were for other countries, and that most definitely was not an option. How the hell does someone dial a number with so many digits. :sad:

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The best things in life, aren't things.

I think this trend of forcing net access is a requirement above and beyond attempting to thwart pirating.

The sad thing is, crackers are usually faster than consumer support, making it less of a hassle to get a cracked, "pirate protected" copy of a game work, than it is for people who bought the official, legal version.

I understand it for multiplayer games, but SP titles?

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Why snark works.

The funny thing is, at least I, feel like pirate releases of music, games etc are more "standard" or the ultimate format to have a product. I've never bought music of movies online, so I've no idea if they're all in the same format following the same standards etc, but I know the scene does.

I think the movie, music and game industry will have to adapt. I think Valve's done a great job on this front with relatively cheap games that can be bought and downloaded and added to your account without any hassle.

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What the Snarkpitters listen to!

Games bought this Christmas:

[*] Crysis
[*] Prey
[*] Two Worlds
[*] Unreal Tournament III
[*] Civ 4 expansion "Warlords"
Lot'sa good play here. :smile:

</LI>

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The best things in life, aren't things.

D'oh, Orpheus - can you not swap the Warlords expansion for Beyond the Sword? It's the most recent expansion and contains all the addons Warlords added.

Really?

Dangit, no. Once opened its yours. Sadly, we had to order Warlords cause it was older and no longer on the shelves.

BtS was still available too.

Tis my own luck. I have been offline so long I cannot tell whats up anylonger.

s**t, since I went offline, they even started different numbers for the new processors. I can no longer tell which is which since the numbers no longer reflect the ghz speeds. :sad:

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The best things in life, aren't things.

<DIV>
<DIV>

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Baron von Snickers</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>I'm playing through Quake 4 on hardest again, this game has a pretty unique style and gameplay aesthetic, not to mention some REALLY hardcore enemies. Gotta love it when you have to unload guns into the badguys when they can turn you into mush with just a few hits. I'm at the first encounter with the tactical strogg, only made one attempt at it yet, killed all the tacticals but got wasted by the railgun-toting tank that shows up in the middle of the battle shortly thereafter. The area I just came from had me use up all my ammo save for 3 grenades and 12 rockets, then fight two berserkers at once and a handful of grunts... That splash damage hurts.</DIV></DIV>

I played Quake 4 2 Christmases ago. I found it to be a bit generic but I loved the outdoor levels with the tank and the armoured walker. It still isn't as good as Q2. You actually got to gib the stroggos in Quake 2 which made the grenade launcher my favourite weapon to use in a room full of light guard.

</DIV></DIV>

I thought I'd mention Hell of Sand here since my Arcade Zone thread is fading into obscurity. It you like it, I recommend downloading Burning Sand (1.77 Mb).

To those who prefer Physics to Chemistry, Have you tried Crayon Physics?

I got Mass effect and Skate for christmas, Mass effect is without a doubt the best game I've played in a long time, only downside to it is that you have to save quite frequently, since the autosave function doesn't save that often, I've found myself getting pissed at this a couple of times.

But apart from that, definately a great game, graphics are even better than I thought, the gameplay has more action to it than expected, and the story is just pure awesome, I almost created a new character the second I finished the storyline, just so I could try out new weapons and abalities, do new quests and such.

Skate is a really great game too, once you learn the controls, and gotten used to the camera, not much to say about it, it's a skating game, you skate.
It's somewhat realistic, unlike the tony hawk series where you can easily do a tripple backflipping flamingo 900 and then proceed to grind a 200 meter long rail onto the red square in Moscow.

The flickit system is pretty damn cool, takes some time to learn and get used to, it's much more fun than just mashing buttons, more challenging too.
Only thing I wish they'd done better is the gravity, especially when you bail, sometimes it feels like you've been inflated with a rather large ammount of helium.

Nope I haven't been outside since the 24th.

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Boo f**king Hoo

I picked up Gears of War (PC) and The Ship (I totally forgot about this game until I saw it) yesterday.

The Ship didn't have a cover inside the cardboard slip ... what's the deal there?

Tomorrow I take the trek to Wilsonville to go to a very neglected gamestop to get very cheap games before that buy two get one free sale ends.

Wish me luck for finding: Ikaruga, R-Type Final, Rygar: The Legendary Adventure, or We Love Katamari.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Yesterday, I managed to:

1) Connect my xbox to my pc and fileshare.
2) Burn xbox games that are actrully playable using the my pc-xbox connection.
3) Network my xbox and xbox 360 and play a system link game of Halo 2 using the original Halo 2 on the 360 and burned one on the Xbox.
4) Kick serious ass!

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Aaron's Stuff

I also got Gears of War for pc this x mass. Not to bad so far. AI does something annoying every once in a while. Setting up the required live account was a hassle. I say more once i beat it.

I all so got Call of Duty 4, but i won't even be opening it until i get a new computer. :sad:

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Reality has become a commodity.