just finished this, pretty impressive really. Some of the setpieces are jawdropping. And for a WW2 shooter, I liked the feel.

Got some strange lag in some levels, no idea why as he rest of the game ran smoothly. 

I'm optimistic about a remade Quake1.

Not sure why though since the id of today seems to put little emphasis on design, or have the general chaos that existed in 1996 when Quake1 formed.

It'd be nice to be surprised, but I have bad memories of what was done with the rather nice Doom3 engine and initial concepts. 

Sounded like they're were just talking about it and nothing was firm, so it could be 10 years before they decide to do a remake. Or maybe they'll decide there's more money in Rage 2 instead.

Even if the gameplay isn't like Quake, I'd just love to see the gothic, medival lovecraftian worlds in a modern engine. It'd no doubt look fkn awesome.

And making Quake more story-driven I don't think would be a bad thing. Mindcrime's movie was great. 

Le Sigh.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/197/screenshot2li.jpg/ 

this: "Even if the gameplay isn't like Quake, I'd just love to see the gothic, medival lovecraftian worlds in a modern engine. It'd no doubt look fkn awesome."

If they could bring that bleak feel of the Lovecraftian universe as well as bringing to life some of the insane creatures Lovecraft imagined I don't think I would be too upset if the gameplay wasn't 100% authentic.

Having said that, I would like it if the game had a story that was coop compatible and didn't add too many contrivances that stop you having fun (speed running, rocket jumping etc.). It would be really great if the main game was coop compatible. Then again, Rage is doing separate coop missions based on the main game levels I think - maybe that would be fine, but I am longing to play Quake coop again. 

Just bought this and played it for about an hour and a half.

So far I'm loving the absolutely gorgeous artwork throughout the game. It might not have arse-mapping and parallax gonad tessellation, but the artwork is sumptuous - particularly the environments, which are incredibly alive with detail and colour.

The gameplay seems pretty much like the original game, but with more modern sensibilities such as enemy targeting and extremely forgiving platforming (triple jump with floating.) I quite like how easy it is so far.

POSSIBLE SPOILER
Currently I've managed to reach the first eye-pot enemy, but I don't know how I am meant to defeat him. I can dodge his attacks and hit him forever, but I don't know what I'm meant to do to beat him. Surely I don't have to just keep clicking left mouse and hitting shift for 30 minutes? 

good to hear, have been looking forward to it. 

You need to hit him in the eye with the pepper grinder. Just aim+shoot and circle strafe around him. When he goes into his pain animations hit him with the vorpal knife. Shouldn't take long. 

Yeh, shoot and then stab. Then fight 3 of them and a giant baby head monster and various smaller slimes at once (combat starts getting a bit trickier from that point on basically, you'll quickly develop a love/hate attitude to the targetting system).

And yes. It looks wonderful. Even the 'weaker' bits like the starter areas to each chapter are pretty. Oh, and without spoiling too much, the in between chapter bits are a very nice touch. Will discuss more, but waiting till I actually finish it and letting the Q1 remake chat die down a little first.

Also, special mention to Alice's hair. Just sit on a steam vent and watch it... 

It does look very nice, and the gameplay seems to be a nice evolution over the original. 

Don't forget about the bombs. Enemies are attracted to them. Then can be pretty useful. 

<@Sundaybler> so
<@Sundaybler> alice
<@Sundaybler> no shadows
<@Sundaybler> uber low-res textures
<@Sundaybler> wtf is that all about? 

There's shadows, and even on the 360 th textures aren't über low, though they can look like that for a second while they're being loaded. 

hehe, the descriptions of the monsters and weapons make me want to play. :D 

but I wasn't even using the pepper grinder up until Vondur told me how useful it is for taking out the eyepots. I'd basically forgotten about it. Also, the eyepot seemed to be taking damage so I assumed it was a boss or something.

I've now gotten up to the part where the Mad Hatter is back up and running again, but my PC has been playing up lately and I couldn't get it started today, so I haven't played any further. I'm guessing it's quite short.

There are some quite relentless combats in the factory levels. I quite enjoyed that. Lots of platforming and nice interesting paths around the levels instead of just A-B make it feel like a game from 10 years ago, gameplay-wise. That's no bad thing though :) 

worth getting? 

Humorous games. The first Overlord has a lot of variety concerning the locations you visit and offers a puzzle/strategy-like feel to the different scenarios. There's also several optional areas to visit and makes the world feel more open which is missing from Overlord 2. The second game mostly focuses more on the action side, which can get a bit tiresome when fighting against the Empire. Didn't have as much fun with it as the first but it's still a good game. 

sort of a mini review for cardo:

22:37 megmn: cardo imho fc2 is pretty shitty
cardo: how so?
22:39 megmn: cardo the generated missions are so generic
22:40 megmn: cardo and there's not much else there
megmn: even though there ARE a few mildly interesting locations on the map, they're just all the same regarding gameplay/setting
megmn: cardo like, you come to the cool location but there's nothing there but the same random buddies that you meet around every corner
megmn: and everything else on the map is boring
megmn: cardo it's totally NOT like stalker, where it's simply aawesome to discover new areas
22:44 cardo: i never played stalker either
megmn: cardo and everything in the gamedesign puts emphasis on the genericity of it
megmn: like the weapon decay
megmn: you cannot find a good weapon
megmn: you have to do generic missions for the weapons dealer and then buy them
cardo: and that's good or bad?
megmn: cars are totally generic
22:45 megmn: they are around everywhere, so you just don't really bother
megmn: i think there's a cool looking buggy in a few places, but ultimately it's not any different
megmn: etc
rebb: you also get attacked by at least one jeep-patrol on every mission
megmn: yep
megmn: all convoys are exactly the same all the time
22:46 megmn: there are outposts at every 2nd corner which repopulate after a while, and all are basically the same
megmn: then there are generic save houses that are also the same
22:47 megmn: sometimes they are in a cool location, but it doesn't matter, because once you cleaned up the three guys at a house, there never will be any other enemies there (so leveldesign really doesn't matter)
megmn: also, level design from a gameplay pov is meh
megmn: it basically feels like diablo at lvl 80
22:48 megmn: you've seen everything, you always do the same shit
megmn: but contrary to diablo, there are no rewards as far as i can see 

http://www.mycrysis.com/dx11#

Download links don't work yet, but shit son it looks pretty :) 

22:44 cardo: i never played stalker either

Cardo! WTF!

Don't know what else to say... :P
I grabbed fc2 when it was on sale on steam, played about 8 hours then got pretty bored. I basicly agree with Megaman, by far the most irritating thing for me was that whenever you got a mission, the objective always seemed to be on the other side of the fucking map. It's the most ham fisted and annoying way to get you to travel I have ever seen. 

Last year I played 2005's Area 51 by Midway Studios. It was a decent effort for 2005 which led to expectations for Blacksite that it could only be even better. Strangely, despite the title this isn't related to the first game at all. It's a complete standalone title and mostly a different setting. Not for the better and expectations were not met.

Firstly the game runs Unreal Engine 3, so it's going to be hard to make a game that doesn't look good. For sure it looks good - levels are occassionally well-detailed, although sometimes it can get bland. Textures and art is average and there aren't very many set-pieces. The layout is very linear. The main pro is that the settings are a little different to a lot of recent shooters - you spend a lot of time in the American desert where Area 51 is located. Large canyons and roads, deserted caravan parks and a massive Area 51 base. The highlight of the game for me was battling a giant octopus-like creature on top of a bridge while your helicopter circles around it with you firing furiously to take it out. Other helicopters are doing the same. I normally hate on-rails levels, but this was very epic, possibly the best on-rails battle to date. Of course once you get to control vehicles it's the normal bad-handling rubbish.

So overall the game is helped a lot by the Unreal Engine 3 and some of the different settings, but overall from a purely artistic viewpoint, it looks pretty average for 2007.

Gameplay is where Blacksite really struggles though. You only get two weapons at once, of which there's only really one weapon you'll use throughout the entire game because the rest are rubbish (apart from the mandatory rocket launcher battles); and that's your standard machine gun. You'll also spend most of your time zooming in and attempting headshots, because there's no quicksave and checkpoints don't appear very often. I only actually died in the game a few times on the middle difficulty (which they call hard). Even the final episode of three levels I didn't die at all. The final boss is possibly the easiest final boss in the history of shooters. What I'm getting at is that Blacksite is a fairly easy game. This isn't helped by enemies that just stand around getting shot at, which will be by you not your team-mates since their AI is just as bad.

Just one main weapon, checkpoints and only 4-5 different regular enemies (not including bosses) make this a game you won't be playing for it's gameplay. Nor will you play it for it's visuals unless you're running out of shooters.

Perhaps in this respect the very short length of around six hours is a good thing.

Rating: 6.5/10 

No mention of 'level design' this time :D

Turns out the constant freezing of Timeshift wasn't the game, because Blacksite did exactly the same thing. It's the old "display driver has stopped responding and has recovered" error message that happens every couple mins, something which 1000's of other have had issues with and it could be just about anything causing it. Any of you guys had this error before?

Spent a day trying to solve it then eventually took my GTX560 out (which is only a few months old) and put my old 8800GT in and the problem went away - no more crashing on those games. So I guess my card is faulty. Gonna take it back tomorrow and demand at worst, a new one, and at best something that ISN'T Nvidia. Probably the Radeon 6870 would be the equivalent. 

I've had a lot of luck with the Radeon cards lately, for once on the performance scale AMD and NVidia are totally evenly matched. 

45% through, really enjoying it. Megman is entirely correct about it's repetitiveness and Daz is entirely correct about tedious travelling across the map.

But it's still a good game...

The atmosphere is good and the graphics especially at sunrise and sunset are great. The setting is strong and quite different to other FPSs I've played. The combat is decent and well balanced. The way vehicles and stuff work is functional. I like little touches like being able to look at the map and look behind when you're driving and really fuck your driving up ;). Blowing things up is great fun too. 

The combat IS fun, I like the fires etc and the explosions feel really good, it's just there is way to much "filler" between them. There really is no reason to go and explore the world because there is really only 5 things you will find.

- Checkpoint guarded by dudes.
- Dude in a vehicle.
- Assassinate some dude mission.
- Unlock new weapons mission.
- Diamonds!

While that sounds reasonable, it feels very very predictable after a while. Every time I see another vehicle on the road, I KNOW it will attack me if I get to close, every time I approach a checkpoint I KNOW it will have a few angry dudes there. There is just no variation at all.

I think if there were friendly checkpoints or friendly vehicle drivers that would help a good deal, certainly break up the encounters better.

I do love the bolt action sniper rifle they have in there, it feels very satisfying to use!