aww that looks awesome.

I've been loving their in-game videos too - they really look to have made a lot of original decisions with the gameplay, and completely thought through every aspect of the game.

I was reading a feature on the sound design in Brink, and the lead audio dude was talking about the shotgun sound, and how he'd been tweaking it his whole career - 10 years or so. He was talking about using samples of lions roaring for the blast sound, because the animalistic quality gave an innate fear response. Just an example - I just love it when people take things that seriously. 

Speaking of R.U.S.E (or Ruse), open beta is available on Steam. World War II RTS game with... ruses, a focus on strategy instead of tactics, and plenty of factions. Even lets you play as Italians and French. 

(Trying to avoid spoilers as best as I can!)

I completed this late last week, but held off
posting about it until now to try and be a little more objective about the game. With that said though, I'm going to start off by saying that this is easily the best game I have played in the last 3 years or so!

Where to start... The most important part of any rpg game for me are the characters and the story, and ME2 nails both of these things perfectly. It is engaging from the very first moment you start the game, and only gets better the further in you progress. The game revolves around you being hired by some shady characters to stop a new threat to the galaxy that no-one else appears to be lifting a finger to stop. You spend most of the game searching the galaxy for a crack team of people to lead on a suicide mission to stop this new threat. Finding these people, persuading them to join you and then gaining their trust forms most of the game content.

The missions you undertake with these characters are the highlight of the game, every single one has a deep and rounded story surrounding them, and your actions can make or break them in very real ways.

Combat is handled much better than the original game also, it feels more like gears of war than elder scrolls, with an over the shoulder camera, cover system and gratuitous violence. Different enemies have different defences that require different tactics to take down, some enemies have shielding while others simply have heavy armour, some have both, and your squads abilities may not work against enemies who have a certain type of defence active.

Some things are a bit annoying though, for example the planet scanning minigame (scan planets to find minerals that you can use to research new tech) gets boring very fast, and must be done to fully upgrade your equipment.

I suppose I should mention that the game is gorgeous to look at =) I can't be sure but it feels like a heavily modified UE3. Special mention must go to the cinematic effects for conversations and cutscenes, things like depth of field and film grain are used excellently to give everything a cinematic quality. The character models and especially the animations are fantastic in every regard. Even the lens flares are the best I have ever seen in a game =)

I find myself thinking of battlestar galactica as a good analogy, in the trailers you see all the action and space combat and the show looks cool, but you end up appreciating the character stories and plot developments so much more. For me at least I really felt attached to the characters by the end of the game, and I actually gave a shit what happened to them, they weren't some dumb game characters any more.

There is so much more to this game, but I cant be arsed to write any more, suffice to say that I recommend it to everyone that reads this post. This is a fantastic galaxy to get lost in! 

I am playing Thief 2 now and love it. Halfway through the second mission at the moment. 

I see a few people on steam have this, how is it? Worth getting???

Also, how scalable in the engine? Can you turn stuff off to make it run smooth on an older pc? I have a 2ghz athlon X2 with a nvidia 9600gt and I'm doubting I will be able to get a decent framerate out of it! 

Finished through the third (or was it still the second) mission. So much fun to find secrets and loot. Next is the mission where I enter the city watch. Yikes! 

Jesus! Who's stupid idea was it that when you are hurt your screen is covered in blood so you cannot see to take cover and the freakin indicator of which way enemy fire is coming at you is red as well!?! grrrr >:( 

it looks awesome though. 

damage indicators that actually make it near-impossible to fight back along with "realistic headbobbing" are some of the stupidest things in games these days. I don't know about you folks, but when I run down the hall, my head isn't doing any owl-like movements. 

Mine does.

But then I am generally listening to tunes while walking... 

When you're done with Thief 2, be sure to check out the quality fan missions out there! 

Is motion blur. 'It's more realistic' they cry. 'It's a fucking game' the rest of us say.

Engine programmers drunk on how awesome they are. 

just buy a crappy LCD... instant motion blur at no cost to framerate! 

Depth of field. Or... let's entirely forget how the eye works. 

Guess who's custom map reviews made me install the game in the first place. 

That's nice to know they encouraged you to do that. If you do plan to play custom maps, you'll need something like DarkLoader/GarretLoader (no unzipping the FM files) if you don't already know. TTLG forums should have all the info you need to run FMs - I plan to type up simple guides on my site one day.

I've been neglecting my site lately though... plan to get back to it. Have more Thief/Quake reviews to do afterall. 

What a disappointment! I expected something like Stalker, but it's actually just another stupid and ugly console game.

Thematically, it feels like the Fallout 3 subway tunnels + DC ruins but without the freedom. Hardly any game I've played exhibits MSD better than this one, as nothing about it stands out in any way - it felt pointless and uninteresting with mostly unspectacular and confined levels, linear and boring scripted gameplay, average graphics, and few light quicktime events. I couldn't care less about the story - a nuclear apocalypse with four types of mutants vs. communists vs. Nazis vs. bandits, and in the end everything blows up... or something. Often there aren't even smooth level transitions.
Gameplay allows for brute or stealth approaches, but it doesn't really matter in the end. Did someone say it was to have RPG elements? Sure.. if the ability to buy weapons and ammo constitutes an RPG already.
A couple of nice gimmicks, like the watch (gasmask timer) showing the actual system time :P, or a section where you have to carry a child on your shoulders which slows down your view/movement.
Apparently it's based on a novel? Lots of wasted potential then.

Bottom line: a fairly bad game and a waste of time in my view. Not recommended. 

The SDK needs to come out.

Unless all the excuses we've been seeing so far are just that, excuses and the real reason for not releasing the SDK is that the publisher would likely no longer be capable to charge stupid amounts of money for DLC. 

"Is motion blur. 'It's more realistic' they cry. 'It's a fucking game' the rest of us say.

Engine programmers drunk on how awesome they are."

"Depth of field. Or... let's entirely forget how the eye works."


Seriously, why work on graphics technology at all? You guys are fucking retarded. :) If you don't want that stuff you have an option - keep playing Quake. 

I felt the motion blur in Crysis was awesome, its the best ive seen in a game to date.

Mass Effect 2 uses DoF to its advantage also, it really enhances the presentation of the story cutscenes and the dialogue camera angles.

Honestly, I think DoF in games is mimicking the DoF of camera lenses rather than the human eye.

Its quite exciting really, graphics technology is getting to the point where if you squint it does look real. Its things like animation and floating objects that give it away, rather than the graphics themselves being nowhere near realistic.

I remember watching a video of some game on youtube a few months ago, and as the video quality was 480 maximum, it hid some of the giveaway details and it really did look real, it was some racing game I forget which one. I think that was the first time I genuinely thought to myself "that looks totally real" when looking at game footage.

Err, this kind of meandered off topic :P 

And as an aid to those who want to go off on these ridiculous rants in the future ... it's the artists who ask for all of that stuff, not the engine programmers. Blame them. :) 

yeah, motion blur and DoF and other stuff of that nature is more about simulating a real camera as opposed to an eyeball which isn't a bad thing by any means. besides, motion blur goes a long way towards hiding lower framerates.

i really liked the DoF effects in crysis and farcry 2. 

It's the coders who introduce it. The artists work constantly to marginalise the effects since the coders don't want to remove them.

Spose it depends on the quality of the effect. Or maybe I'm just retarded. 

I like motion blur on tf2, don't know why. Sometimes I'll just zig the camera around as fast as I can to look at it. Seriously.

DoF is ... okay I guess because it's supposed to make the game feel more cinematic, but yeah doesn't really mimic the human eye.

I like a lot of graphical innovations in games, but it's really how the stuff is used. Some examples of just rampant over-use of features ... well, nm.