Yeah, I definitely remember that about SS2. The ending isn't bad or anything, but it feels like more and more of the core of the game is being removed as it gets more and more linear and single minded in its purpose.
But even Deus Ex was like that. Less maybe, in that you could choose how you were going to end, but it was still very much on rails. 

But even Deus Ex was like that. Less maybe, in that you could choose how you were going to end, but it was still very much on rails.

I'm gonna waffle a lot about Deus Ex here. Obviously there can't be anything much better than a choice of a few endings in a game where you have NCPs, dialog to record and triggers that need to be set up. What I liked about the setup of the Deus Ex ending was how you had the characters from the earlier parts of the game acting as advocates for the choices.

For me, it meant that I went with Tracer Tong's advice because Tong's section of the game was the bit I enjoyed the most - I trusted his character. There were lots of things across the game that built up to subtly affect this section: if you didn't save Paul then his bit of dialog isn't there to affect your decision (but if you did then you probably valued what he had to say). If you did a lot of poking about in Morgan Everett's base, you found things that undermine his trustworthiness - and if you found Morpheus, his conversation largely advocated the Helios ending.

The important thing here was that all these things that influence a player's decisions come out of the way they played the rest of the game - which secrets they found, which bits they enjoyed, what judgements they drew of the characters etc. It made the ending, in a Role Playing sense, a proper culmination of what came before, rather than just the point events stop.

Ok, in practice it didn't work that well in Deus Ex, there was the flavour there, but not strongly enough that every player and every playthrough felt like that. But if you could take the concept of a free choice of endings, yet where the narrative you wove through the game makes one of them clearly compelling, and turn the implementation up to 10, that would be awesome. 

I was really just responding about that feeling you get in any RPG or RPG-like game as you near the end. Bits of pieces of the game that made it feel special disappear as things wind down to the finale and it tends to give these games a downer feel. 

The actual choice of endings in DX wasn't very meaningful, because it's not like everyone didn't just quicksave before they chose, check out all three, and then decide in retrospect which one was their favorite.

The "boss" in DX was a big super-room full of crazy tests and mech spiders and James Woods suspended in a big hamster ball preparing to ascend. That's cool. Even if you didn't just spec totally into pistols and healing you could still finish the game, all three ways. Your choices were never ever invalidated. (I recall a particular level in a cemetery that ended with an MJ12 ambush being particularly impossible if you were going for a no-violence playthrough, and there were other moments in the game like that too, but it's much better than the way SS2 just turned into a pure hallway shooter at the end.) 

Even if you decided to test the bounds of the experience by doing something like going rogue and murdering a fellow agent at an opportune time (and the game gives you several) JC always has some explanation for it. The game never apologized for any option it left open to the player. 

Necros I didn't play the first one BUT I played both the second and third ones. The controls are bolloxed and counter-intuitive but I believe they are better in 2 and 3 than in 1. At any rate, although they frustrated me, the style / immersion / sci-fi+horror of 2 and 3 was definitely enough for me to keep playing despite the controls, so I would recommend those two. 

Oh cool, thanks. I wasn't sure if it would be more of the same or not. 

and I think 2 is the best, with the original coming 2nd. The third has the best opening area but gets pretty boring once you go the planet imo. 

the first deadspace has the best atmoshere. 

Has a lot of variety and some spectacular scenes, tho. 

Reflex Kickstarter is up: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/191095869/reflex

Hard to read text-as-images, ffs, why?
Particle, bloom and colored lighting overload, ffs, why?

Sorry but the text is so shitty to read that I did not actually bother to read it. I love the project and wish you guys all the luck, but uuuuuhhgh?!? 

Is everything TOXIKK wants to be, but fails. 

It looks very Q3 

$400k is a lot of money for a game that doesn't look that different to q3 

Scampie: Yep!

Kona: It's about 6 man months. Seems not too much at all to me. 

Those minimal graphics are a brilliant marketing move though. 

Just finished playing Duke Nukem Forever. Damn, this really isn't that bad. 54% on metacritic, wtf. It was as low as 48% a couple years ago. Gosh gamers, in general, are tossers.

I actually think most of the people complaining about the game probably quit about 2 hours in, because all the complaints seem to be from the beginning.

Fantastic weapons and enemies, albeit no much different to d3d but certainly more creative than any other game I've played in quite some time.

Once post-processing was turned off (which looked fucking terrible) the graphics were okay. Better than Fallout New Vegas. Some levels were a bit shit and linear, but most of the time it was decent.

There was some interesting gimmicky stuff, I can't remember the last time I played as a tiny person. Ever? At least that was pretty original.

Everyone went on and fucking on about the really bad humour. By the end of the game I was actually starting to miss it - it felt more like a generic action game with little character. Most of the one liners and jokes were in the first hour of the game. The twins getting alien raped really wasn't that big of a deal.

I also think everyones expectations were just too high, so they ripped on it. If the game was named something completely different and not associated with Duke, it would be a cult favourite. I've played most of the games with a lower rating than Dnf in 2011, and they just don't compare.

I did find the inconsistent gameplay annoying though - spawns of enemies followed by 10 mins of nothing, rinse and repeat. It needed more combat. Also the 2 weapon thing was completely fucked. Ended up just sticking with the ripper for most of the game because of fear of running out of ammo if I used other weapons.

7.5/10 

by the way did anyone play the dnf dlc? was it worth getting? The Doctor Who Cloned Me. 

Wow, DNF had DLC? 

It raised the number of max weapons from 2 to 4. 

and it included a 4 hour long single player campaign that is apparently better than the original game. 

Reflex looks good actually. Definitely gonna be an interesting time for arena shooters. 

Exactly. I'd pay $400k to see that banned from ever being made. 

pledging $400,000 just to piss shambler off 

also, it does totally look just like Quake3, but with actual development and new features which are not cockamamie. Sounds a-okay to me.

I was never into UT so Toxikk (awful name) and the new UT don't interest me, but if this came out I'd be tempted to map for it. (or pitch some LD contract work to electro harf harf)