"Unfair advantage"



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Wait until you get to the Thieve's Guild quest, that's some god-awful terrible, terrible writing right smack-dab in the middle of everybody's Game of the Year.

     

    Its not exactly BAD, its just that... well you can smell the plot twist coming from not one but a hundred miles away. Its almost as poor as writing a whole story around a prophecy or a chosen one which has been done so often it has become nothing more than epic laziness and a money grabbing tactic.

    Chosen one... like a DRAGONBORN. Up yours, Bethesda! Oh where are the days where you were sent to Daggerfall to lay to rest the ghost of an emperor, out for vengeance by terrorizing the city at night? A simple but highly encouraging plot device. Not "Hey, you're a dragonborn so you are supposed to do all this crap and care about it".

     



  • @Cassidy said:

    Different people with different requirements, again (old hourses for courses schtick).

    I enjoyed the original Unreal but some friends got bored of it being so overlong. I hated Sniper Arena in UT, preferred frantic run n gun levels, but a few mates liked the tense stealthy creeping around they had to do.

    I thought R2CW was a great game, a good mix of Nazis[1] and monsters - some levels requiring laying one off against another - but fundamentally it was CoD + Doom.

    I love Painkiller but found Doom3 boring after PK - yet have friends that love the creepiness of D3 and didn't like PK.

    Oh, and Rogue Trooper? Thought that was a brilliant game, marred sometimes by insufficient guidance as to level objective and the third-person view getting in the way at times, but still enjoyed it.

    [1] not Godwin. If you creep up close to them, you'll overhear some cracking dialogue.

    How you gonna list so many good first person shooters (and frantic run n gun levels specifically) and not mention Serious Sam?!



  • @erikal said:

    Its not exactly BAD, its just that... well you can smell the plot twist coming from not one but a hundred miles away.

    It's predictable but it's also bad. As you go through it, remind yourself that Gallus was killed 25 years before the current events. TWENTY FIVE YEARS. Also remind yourself: Mercer is not an elf.

    The reveal when the vault gets thrown open is so hilariously horrible that it's unbelievable. It makes so little sense on every level. It actually makes negative sense, it draws the sense out of things that used to make sense. God it was bad. Bethesda could only have saved that quest line with a total rewrite-- or a laugh track.

    @erikal said:

    Its almost as poor as writing a whole story around a prophecy or a chosen one which has been done so often it has become nothing more than epic laziness and a money grabbing tactic.

    Chosen one... like a DRAGONBORN. Up yours, Bethesda! Oh where are the days where you were sent to Daggerfall to lay to rest the ghost of an emperor, out for vengeance by terrorizing the city at night? A simple but highly encouraging plot device. Not "Hey, you're a dragonborn so you are supposed to do all this crap and care about it".

    Yeah I agree with this sentiment. Elder Scrolls was this new wildly-creative fantasy world with strict rules on how things worked, and it seems like in recent games they've just been turning it into Generic Fantasy Game World #1341. Dragons? Feh, Morrowind had giant flea-monsters crawling around. Dragons are boring, you can't toss a dead cat without hitting a dragon. Chosen One? Feh, before you were always just some schlub in a prison.

    Not to mention the Dragonborn stuff makes the game LESS EPIC. Oh sure you saved the world from Alduin, but that's because you have all these SUPER POWERS that even the characters in-game who have been practicing the same powers for their ENTIRE LIVES can't do. Feh. I'd much rather have been a normal schlub because then when it you save the world it fucking means something. If you're Superman, it's not a big deal if you save the world.

    The weird thing is that Skyrim is simultaneously the best Elder Scrolls game I've played and the one most in need of improvement. Hah. Figure that out.



  •   @blakeyrat said:

    ...

     Dragons? Feh, Morrowind had giant flea-monsters crawling around. Dragons are boring, you can't toss a dead cat without hitting a dragon. Chosen One? Feh, before you were always just some schlub in a prison.

    ...

    Giant Flea/Tick looking monsters that are actually taxis was pretty original for Morrowind.  In Morrowind they did not have to give you uber powers, the game had so many exploits and abuses that you could create a god character in a few easy steps.  My personal favorites included the soul trap exploit for permanent spell affects and the exponential alchemy/intellgience potion exploit.@blakeyrat said:
    ...

    The weird thing is that Skyrim is simultaneously the best Elder Scrolls game I've played and the one most in need of improvement. Hah. Figure that out.

    Somehow I fully agree with you on this. 



  •  Seeing as you guys are still talking about Skyrim I might as well chip in. I was pretty underwhelmed by the main quest. I took down the "epic" Alduin without even breaking a sweat and I have to say it was nothing like climbing the Red Mountain in Morrowind. I was actually surprised when it ended.

    The majority of the Shouts were pretty useless, but worst than that it was impossible to bind them to individual keys. Because if you can't do it on a console, lol, you shouldn't need to on a PC. Fuck you very much Bethesda.

    The game also felt quite unbalanced. Running into a bear early on was literally a death sentence. Here lies the Dragonborn, eaten by a fucking bear. Meanwhile the dragons were a nightmare. Sure you could hide behind the terrain and avoid the ranged attacks but then the damned thing would approach you, reach through the terrain (these dragons really are magical) and turn you into a chew toy. Later when I got to level 50-60 I was using dragons to sharpen my sword.

    What made Skyrim worth playing was that they had put some work in to address the cloned dungeon design of the previous games. Sure they were still similar, but now each one had something to set it apart: the notes of a lost expedition, some new form of nasty trap, a new kind of enemy, some poor soul's last words, etc. I did the major quests for completeness' sake; I really played for the dungeons.

     



  • @DOA said:

    Because if you can't do it on a console, lol, you shouldn't need to on a PC.

    You do realize you can use a game controller on a PC, right?

    @DOA said:

    The game also felt quite unbalanced. Running into a bear early on was literally a death sentence.

    Morrowind was like that as well. When they fixed it for Oblivion, people bitched. So they fixed it back. (Well, not entirely-- some enemies still auto-level, but most do not.)

    @DOA said:

    Later when I got to level 50-60 I was using dragons to sharpen my sword.

    The enemies that do auto-level max out at 50, FYI. The PC's max level is 81, but that's pretty hard to get without pointless grinding.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @DOA said:
    Because if you can't do it on a console, lol, you shouldn't need to on a PC.

    You do realize you can use a game controller on a PC, right?

    Point being?



  • @Zecc said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    @DOA said:
    Because if you can't do it on a console, lol, you shouldn't need to on a PC.

    You do realize you can use a game controller on a PC, right?

    Point being?

    I'm just repeating it over and over and over again in the hopes that eventually it'll get hammered into people's stupid-ass skulls.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @Zecc said:
    @blakeyrat said:
    @DOA said:
    Because if you can't do it on a console, lol, you shouldn't need to on a PC.

    You do realize you can use a game controller on a PC, right?

    Point being?

    I'm just repeating it over and over and over again in the hopes that eventually it'll get hammered into people's stupid-ass skulls.

     

    I don't care about controllers. PC Games should have as much customizable keys as possible.



  • @dhromed said:

    I don't care about controllers.

    You should, some games are better played with a controller

    @dhromed said:

    PC Games should have as much customizable keys as possible.

    I agree, one game that surprised me with this recently was Warhammer 4000: Space Marine, it saw the aditional mouse keys so any action was easy to bind to them

    @DOA said:

    I took down the "epic" Alduin without even breaking a sweat.

    Some of my friends complained about this, they are still looking for the "Omega Weapon".  Rage did worse than this, I was surprised when the credits rolled, there was no final boss, no epic battle... arghh.

    @Peraninth said:

    not mention Serious Sam?!

    What are your thoughs on the third installment?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Chosen One? Feh, before you were always just some schlub in a prison.
     

    Well, in Morrowind it turns out you're the Chosen One after all, since you're the Nerevarine you've been hearing about since the beginning of the game... But I see your point, especially since being the Nerevarine didn't actually give you any special power.

    Still, one of the things I didn't like in Oblivion was that it feels like Martin is the main character and you're there to support him. In Skyrim at least you have a motivation to fight dragons: you're the Dragonborn and it's your destiny. It may be weak, but it's better than "well, you were around when the old king died so I suppose you should be the one to save Martin and close 1000 fucking oblivion gates and save Bruma and whatever".  

    @blakeyrat said:

    The weird thing is that Skyrim is simultaneously the best Elder Scrolls game I've played and the one most in need of improvement. Hah. Figure that out.

    I totally agree with that sentiment. I guess that if Oblivion hadn't been so bad, I wouldn't have been impressed as much by Skyrim... It's a good game, but Morrowind is still better on many aspects.

     



  • @serguey123 said:

    @dhromed said:

    I don't care about controllers.

    You should, some games are better played with a controller

    I have one of these:

    But I don't like thumbstick controllers, can't get on with them.

    @Peraninth said:
    not mention Serious Sam?!

    I've never actually played it, although someone told me I ought to try it for some good run n gun action. I'll have to look it up. 



  • @dargor17 said:

    I totally agree with that sentiment. I guess that if Oblivion hadn't been so bad, I wouldn't have been impressed as much by Skyrim... It's a good game, but Morrowind is still better on many aspects.

    Why does everybody say Oblivion is a bad game? What the fuck. Is this like "Vista-bad" where a couple of reviewers called it bad and everybody's just joined in to the groupthink? Or do so many people genuinely think it's bad? Is it like, "now that it's 4 years later, I'm retroactively declaring it bad even though everybody loved it when it came out?" I KEEP SEEING THIS AND IT'S PERPLEXING ME!

    Because... you know, it didn't do too shabby in the awards department itself. And now you're calling it "so bad". WTF.

    Now that all said, I agree: I think Morrowind was a better game overall. But to say Oblivion was "so bad"? What the fuck alternate universe are we living in? Have you played any of its competitors, like say Two Worlds? What are you comparing it to when you say "so bad"? PERPLEXED!



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Wait until you get to the Thieve's Guild quest, that's some god-awful terrible, terrible writing right smack-dab in the middle of everybody's Game of the Year.

     

    I found the College of Winterhold's quests quite disappointing, too. The whole thing was too rushed and predictable.

    In Morrowind, the Mages Guild had 33 quests, and there were 10 ranks from Associate to Arch-Mage; you had to complete a number of quests before each advancement, till you were high enough level that you could challenge the current Archmage. In Skyrim, you get 16 quests, and it takes only 8 fucking quests to get to Archmage... It's ridiculous and somehow really breaks my suspension of disbelief: you can become the head of the only mage institution in Skyrim just by crawling some dungeons, in a few in-game days? It's even worse than in Oblivion, at least they made you work your way into the Arcane University.


     



  • @blakeyrat said:

    You do realize you can use a game controller on a PC, right?
    What I wanted to do is bind each shout to a different key. A game controller has nowhere near enough of those, but a keyboard is perfect. In fact on a PC I find game controllers a downgrade almost all of the time. Exceptions are gamepads for fighting games (by far the best way to squeeze out those combos), joysticks for flight/space combat sims (mouse sucks big time for these) and possibly wheels/pedals for driving sims although I don't speak from experience about that last one.

    Skyrim sould have come with a warning on the box: "We fucked up keyboard support. Sorry".



  • @DOA said:

    Skyrim sould have come with a warning on the box: "We fucked up keyboard support. Sorry".

    I agree with that. Then again, the PC version is so little of their income and so much of their support time, frankly you're lucky it exists at all. (Yes, you are. This is an economic fact. Stop fucking whining, PC gamers.)

    What bothers me is when people say "PC version" and what they mean is "mouse/keyboard controls". THOSE ARE NOT THE SAME THING. Say what you mean. Slam the pedantic dickweed tag on this post if you want. Don't say "the PC version is bad", say "the mouse/keyboard controls are bad". DO YOU SEE THE DIFFERENCE? Hint: the first statement is wrong (it's exactly as good as the Xbox version; actually better because better graphics), the second is correct.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Why does everybody say Oblivion is a bad game?
     

    I stated my main gripe with Oblivion in the previous post: the main quest didn't involve me at all. Also, the oblivion gates dungeons were really, really boring: they had like 4 templates that got repeated again and again. That in itself wouldn't have been so bad if the main quest didn't force you to go to a number of them in sequence, during the "Allies for Bruma quest": you had to go to all other major towns, and in each you would repeat the same fucking scenario 1) ask for help to defend Bruma 2) noble guy saying sure but first destroy the gate in front of my town because that's a bit annoying you know? 3) enter the gate, kill daedras, destroy gate 4) rinse and repeat

    I stopped after the third or fourth cycle because of sheer boredom. I could understand if the random gates around the world were just a repeat of the same template, but at least for the fucking main quest they could have made the effort to make it more interesting

    Also, I didn't like that there were so few factions to join. Morrowind had the 3 guilds, Morag Tong, 2 cults, the legion, 3 noble houses. In Oblivion you had the 3 guilds, the Dark Brotherhood, the Arena. And a bunch of unrelated quests for the various nobles. And the guild quests were much shorter and more rushed than in Morrowind. I was like "that's it?"

    @blakeyrat said:

    Is this like "Vista-bad"

    Ironically, I liked Vista and I couldn't understand why everybody was complaining

    @blakeyrat said:

    it didn't do too shabby in the awards department itself

    If anything, Oblivion taught me that reviews can be really misleading, I expected a better game.

    @blakeyrat said:

    What are you comparing it to when you say "so bad"?

    To Morrowind, mainly. I was expecting the same depth, the same variety, the same believable and at the same fantastic world I had loved so much in TES3, but with improved graphics and mechanics. I only got the improved graphics and gameplay.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    What bothers me is when people say "PC version" and what they mean is "mouse/keyboard controls". THOSE ARE NOT THE SAME THING. Say what you mean. Slam the pedantic dickweed tag on this post if you want. Don't say "the PC version is bad", say "the mouse/keyboard controls are bad". DO YOU SEE THE DIFFERENCE? Hint: the first statement is wrong (it's exactly as good as the Xbox version; actually better because better graphics), the second is correct.

    This is one of my favorite posts in the last week or so, as blakey demonstrates his self proclaimed hypocrisy. Yeah, there's a pedantic dickweedish point there, but the native input devices of a PC are a mouse (-like device) and a keyboard, not a game controller. This is at least as big of a foul as using non-native widgets. And also, that only his criteria are valid.

    An instant classic!



  • @dargor17 said:

    Also, the oblivion gates dungeons were really, really boring: they had like 4 templates that got repeated again and again. That in itself wouldn't have been so bad if the main quest didn't force you to go to a number of them in sequence, during the "Allies for Bruma quest": you had to go to all other major towns, and in each you would repeat the same fucking scenario 1) ask for help to defend Bruma 2) noble guy saying sure but first destroy the gate in front of my town because that's a bit annoying you know? 3) enter the gate, kill daedras, destroy gate 4) rinse and repeat

    So why were you just blindly doing them in order? If you're bored with those quests, do something else!

    I think you might misunderstand the point of the Elder Scrolls series of games...



  • @Cassidy said:

     I've never actually played it, although someone told me I ought to try it for some good run n gun action. I'll have to look it up. 

    Oh man it is a classic (Serious Sam 1 and 2).  It's got crazy action, good humor, over the top bosses, and awesome co-op.  The sound of "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh" still brings both a feeling of dread and warm tingle to my heart.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGkrsgiLgXM

    @serguey123 said:

    What are your thoughs on the third installment?

    I haven't played it yet, but it looks like they did it well.  Check out how they handle DRM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e91q5BtlxK0  I love those guys at Croteam :D



  • @blakeyrat said:

    So why were you just blindly doing them in order? If you're bored with those quests, do something else!
     

    I usually complete most side quests before going on with the main quest so... I had nothing else to do, especially since, as stated above, there were so few factions. But that's really beside the point. The problem is that Oblivion had a main quest that totally sucked compared to Morrowind's, and at the same time it had less interesting side quests. All in all, Oblivion was so much worse than Morrowind that it really disappointed me, and it's stuck in my mind as a bad game I wish I hadn't bought. Maybe in retrospect I wouldn't judge it so harshly, but I have no time to reinstall it now to try it again and maybe re-evaluate it. It's quite likely that it's still a much better game that other RPGs of that year, but as an Elder Scrolls game I found it... lacking.

     



  • @dargor17 said:

    I usually complete most side quests before going on with the main quest so...

    So you ONLY do things the game tells you to do. Feh. You are playing Elder Scrolls games wrong.

    It's an OPEN WORLD! You do whatever you want, to whomever you want, at all times! You do whatever you feel like you wanna do, GOSH! Everything is optional in Elder Scrolls games. Every quest is optional. Every dungeon is optional. Every skill is optional. The main quest? Optional! I played Morrowind for hundreds of hours and never completed the main quest.

    I am annoyed by your closed, linear, probably-JRPG-addled-mind. You make up your own gameplay. That is the point.



  • @Peraninth said:

    @Cassidy said:

     I've never actually played it, although someone told me I ought to try it for some good run n gun action. I'll have to look it up. 

    Oh man it is a classic (Serious Sam 1 and 2).  It's got crazy action, good humor, over the top bosses, and awesome co-op.  The sound of "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh" still brings both a feeling of dread and warm tingle to my heart.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGkrsgiLgXM

    @serguey123 said:

    What are your thoughs on the third installment?

    I haven't played it yet, but it looks like they did it well.  Check out how they handle DRM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e91q5BtlxK0  I love those guys at Croteam :D

    I used to have some DOS game from the 80s where you piloted your spaceship around and did quests, etc. and could buy upgrades and so-on. It used the "enter the code printed on the floppy disk sleeve" form of DRM but if you didn't enter the code it didn't immediately end. Instead, the "galactic police" came after your ship and you could fight back. If you beat them, they'd come back stronger at some later point in the game but you could continue play for quite some time if you were good at beating them.

    Serious Sam 3 looks a lot like the original and that was, like, a decade ago. The original was one of the last games I actually played.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Every quest is optional. Every dungeon is optional. Every skill is optional.

    If you care so little about quests, why were you complaining about bad writing in Skyrim before?

    Look, I know that you are free to choose anything you want in TES games, and that's awesome, but quests are important to create a more complete involvement. Is it better to enter a ruin because it's the 100th ruin you encounter but don't known what else to do, or because there's a story telling you your character is interested in going in there?

    I had done every side quest I was interested in, I had spent more hours I can count crawling through random dungeons (Ayleid ruins were probably the best part of the game), I had raised to 100 all skills I liked to use, then at some point I said: "let's go on with the main quest and see what happens". And I didn't like what I found. And I was disappointed, because when I did the same for Morrowind I was in awe.

     

    @blakeyrat said:

    I played Morrowind for hundreds of hours and never completed the main quest.

    It's your loss, Morrowind's main quest is awesome. And as I said, Morrowind gave you lots of factions to join and things to do with your character, while Oblivion was much more limited on that aspect, too.



  • @Peraninth said:

    @Cassidy said:

     I've never actually played it, although someone told me I ought to try it for some good run n gun action. I'll have to look it up. 

    Oh man it is a classic (Serious Sam 1 and 2).  It's got crazy action, good humor, over the top bosses, and awesome co-op.  The sound of "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh" still brings both a feeling of dread and warm tingle to my heart.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGkrsgiLgXM

    Lol @ training mode


  • @dargor17 said:

    If you care so little about quests,

    Wha? I never said that...

    @dargor17 said:

    why were you complaining about bad writing in Skyrim before?

    Wow! Sure is easy to paint me as a hypocrite right after putting words into my mouth!

    @dargor17 said:

    or because there's a story telling you your character is interested in going in there?

    The game has a story, but your character also has a unique story that you create as you play. This is called "role-playing".

    @dargor17 said:

    I had done every side quest I was interested in, I
    had spent more hours I can count crawling through random dungeons
    (Ayleid ruins were probably the best part of the game), I had raised to 100 all skills I liked to use, then at some point I
    said: "let's go on with the main quest and see what happens".

    So you hate the game because you enjoyed it for HUNDREDS OF HOURS then suddenly one single thing immediately erased all that enjoyment? Are you listening to yourself?

    @dargor17 said:

    It's your loss, Morrowind's main quest is awesome.

    I got to some point where I had to play matchmaker and herd sluts around so some noble or whatever could pick one to marry and lost interest in it.



  • @Peraninth said:

    Oh man it is a classic (Serious Sam 1 and 2).  It's got crazy action, good humor, over the top bosses, and awesome co-op.
    Ah, yes the co-op. I remember a point in the first one when you first lay hands on the minigun and suddenly there's a wall-to-wall horde bearing down on you. If you brought a friend along the resulting mayhem was truly glorious.

    I used to wonder why there weren't many co-op games at the time. Plenty of PvP multiplayer but you almost never had the opportunity to go through the single player campaign with a buddy. Thankfully co-op mode seems to be making a comeback lately.

     



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @Zecc said:
    @blakeyrat said:
    @DOA said:
    Because if you can't do it on a console, lol, you shouldn't need to on a PC.

    You do realize you can use a game controller on a PC, right?

    Point being?

    I'm just repeating it over and over and over again in the hopes that eventually it'll get hammered into people's stupid-ass skulls.

    That's commendable, but the point should be "give as many options as possible" really, not "cater to the least common denominator".

    @blakeyrat said:

    The weird
    thing is that Skyrim is simultaneously the best Elder Scrolls game I've
    played and the one most in need of improvement. Hah. Figure that out.
    Good writing, bad implementation?

    I'm just yanking your chain, but seriously I haven't played it so I don't know.



  • @dargor17 said:

    ...

    It's your loss, Morrowind's main quest is awesome. And as I said, Morrowind gave you lots of factions to join and things to do with your character, while Oblivion was much more limited on that aspect, too.

    Morrowind was the only game of its kind that let you kill main quest characters if you wanted to.  So you could have a file where it was impossible* to do the main quest line and thus you could not beat the game.

     

    * There was a backup optional plot line you could follow to beat the game (but again you could destroy that one too if you wanted).



  • @morbiuswilters said:


    Serious Sam 3 looks a lot like the original and that was, like, a decade ago. The original was one of the last games I actually played.

     

    Its similar, but still has its own thing. More cutscenes, but they are mostly Sam communicating with some annoying wench. Also nice kill moves, but they get boring after a few attempts. Unfortunately the world freedom is seriously hampered; in SS1/1.5/2 you could go also where you weren't supposed to go with some effort and were often the base of seriously fucked up secrets, SS3 has very noticable invisible walls which is a bummer. The secrets are still there, but they are far more obvious because there won't be an invisible wall blocking you :/

    What I find epic about SS3 is the music; the Serious Sam series has always done the "dynamic music to match the mood" very well but SS3 nearly perfects it, also throwing silence into the mix. Very atmospheric indeed. And yeah, you get an overload of "sam comments" this time around; also recycling some old ones which is a bit lame. What? They didn't think a dork like me would notice? I just happened to have memorized each and every quote that is in those games...(and all the insults of Monkey Island).

     



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @DOA said:
    Skyrim sould have come with a warning on the box: "We fucked up keyboard support. Sorry".
    I agree with that. Then again, the PC version is so little of their income and so much of their support time, frankly you're lucky it exists at all. (Yes, you are. This is an economic fact. Stop fucking whining, PC gamers.)

    What bothers me is when people say "PC version" and what they mean is "mouse/keyboard controls". THOSE ARE NOT THE SAME THING. Say what you mean. Slam the pedantic dickweed tag on this post if you want. Don't say "the PC version is bad", say "the mouse/keyboard controls are bad". DO YOU SEE THE DIFFERENCE? Hint: the first statement is wrong (it's exactly as good as the Xbox version; actually better because better graphics), the second is correct.

    The thing is that the pc has superior hardware and most games don't take advantage of it so you also end with lame graphics, low res textures and only up to dx9 support....



  • @blakeyrat said:

    What bothers me is when people say "PC version" and what they mean is "mouse/keyboard controls". THOSE ARE NOT THE SAME THING. Say what you mean.

    What bothers me is when games say "PC version" and what they mean is "Windows version". THOSE ARE NOT THE SAME THING!

    @Peraninth said:

    Oh man it is a classic (Serious Sam 1 and 2).  It's got crazy action, good humor, over the top bosses, and awesome co-op.  The sound of "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh" still brings both a feeling of dread and warm tingle to my heart.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGkrsgiLgXM

    @serguey123 said:

    What are your thoughs on the third installment?

    I haven't played it yet, but it looks like they did it well.  Check out how they handle DRM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e91q5BtlxK0  I love those guys at Croteam :D

    So.. SSam2 or 3? What should I try?

     

     



  • @serguey123 said:

    most games don't take advantage of it so you also end with lame graphics, low res textures and only up to dx9 support....
     

    The games that look crappy don't even take advantage of console hardware, so it's not a matter of willfully ignoring PC capabilities, it's a matter of graphically incompetent programmers.

    I'm going to drag out AssCreed again as a perfect example of a fucking beautiful game without taxing your system into a hot puddle.



  • @Cassidy said:

    So.. SSam2 or 3? What should I try? 

     

    If you haven't played SS1/1.5 yet, I'd start with the HD remakes of those games as they are really the best of the bunch IMO. Had many evenings of fun playing them in coop mode (the originals, using Hamachi as it was LAN only. Probably the HD remakes have direct internet play support).

    Otherwise its up to what you expect.

    SS2: cartoony graphics, but the worlds are really beautifully crafted. Poses a real challenge though; near the end the action is so insane at times my hands went numb from continuously shooting and strafing for 30 minutes on-end trying to beat the same wave of enemies; its almost not funny anymore. Better played cooperatively :)

    SS3: more realistic graphics and whatever I blabbed earlier. Good game, starts out easy but becomes progressively more difficult as you go along so also nicely balanced. Until the end, where I died a million times and I cursed the heavens. There is just so much bull I can take at once.

     



  • @dhromed said:

    taxing your system into a hot puddle.

    Those games are badly optimized then, escalability matters.

    @dhromed said:

    I'm going to drag out AssCreed again as a perfect example of a fucking beautiful game

    I'll take your word for it.  My example would have been Crysis 2, with all of the patches and improvevements even at Ultra and all settings maxed out the game is smooth and it is graphically appealing at every setting level.



  • @erikal said:

    @Cassidy said:

    So.. SSam2 or 3? What should I try? 

     

    If you haven't played SS1/1.5 yet, I'd start with the HD remakes of those games as they are really the best of the bunch IMO.

    Logged, ta!



  • @serguey123 said:

    My example would have been Crysis 2,
     

    And I will take your word for that.



  • @dhromed said:

    @serguey123 said:

    My example would have been Crysis 2,
     

    And I will take your word for that.

    I never played Crysis or Crysis 2. The main reason is that while people were spending months talking up how great the graphics in Crysis were, they were showing this screenshot to the public that featured a jeep with 10-sided wheels. I'm not even sure they had 10 sides, maybe it was only 8. It looked like shit.

    So on the one hand, people are spending tons of ink talking about how great this game's graphics are, and on the other hand the screenshot from the game actually looked like warmed-over shit. It was at this point that my brain exploded. No, actually what happened is I decided that all those articles must have been paid-for, and the game is entirely hype.



  • @serguey123 said:

    As previously said, ME1 was a great game, you might enjoy it, ME2 was meh

    Obligatory Mass Effect toon:




  • @blakeyrat said:

    I never played Crysis or Crysis 2

    Crysis I was boring as hell (at least to me), if only they would have tried to make a game instead of a demo of their engine (which was good non-round wheels notwithstanding).

    Crysis 2 is better (at least they tried to make it into a game this time) but with totally different gameplay. I think that the only reason they kept the name was the nanosuit.  I have not checked the wheels on this one, I'll let you know



  • @Cassidy said:

    @serguey123 said:

    As previously said, ME1 was a great game, you might enjoy it, ME2 was meh

    Obligatory Mass Effect toon:


    Where?



  • The first half of Crysis was pretty boring - after a while you get used to the shiny graphics and all that's left is a sort-of-good shooter. The second half kicks off with you going into an alien ship, which is the most beautifully rendered thing I've ever seen in a game - the spectacle definitely makes up for the first half of the game. Then you fight aliens in the snow and it's cool again. It just sucks that they they make you stick out the first half to get there.



  • @lettucemode said:

    It just sucks that they they make you stick out the first half to get there.

    It does, a game in my book has exactly up to 15 minutes to woo me, Crisys 1 failed at that.  Maybe, just maybe I'll try it later on 



  • @erikal said:

    If you haven't played SS1/1.5 yet, I'd start with the HD remakes of those games as they are really the best of the bunch IMO.

    Is that "First Encounter" and "Second Encounter"...? I've seen the HD for sale on Amazon and Play (gotta ensure I get the PC Windows version and not the Xbox disk)



  • @Cassidy said:

    @erikal said:
    If you haven't played SS1/1.5 yet, I'd start with the HD remakes of those games as they are really the best of the bunch IMO.
    Is that "First Encounter" and "Second Encounter"...? I've seen the HD for sale on Amazon and Play (gotta ensure I get the PC Windows version and not the Xbox disk)

    Yeah, Serious Sam 1 was episodic. Until they gave that up after two episodes, as all game companies that do episodic content do...



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Until they gave that up after two episodes, as all game companies that do episodic content do...
    I beg to differ.

    Ok, so do I tag this as "pedantic dickweed" or "nitpicking asshole" ?



  • @DOA said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    Until they gave that up after two episodes, as all game companies that do episodic content do...
    I beg to differ.

    Ok, so do I tag this as "pedantic dickweed" or "nitpicking asshole" ?

     

    Pedantic nitpicking dickweed asshole.

    All SS games are "episodes" really; SS2 is the odd one out because of its graphics style. SS3 is called "BFE" - Before First Encounter :)

     



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    @Gurth said:

    glass cutting board for use in the kitchen
     

    There's TRWTF. Glass is one of the worst materials to use as a cutting board.

    Seconded because, as glass is super-cooled liquid, the cutting board is actually getting thicker at the bottom.



  • @RTapeLoadingError said:

    @Lorne Kates said:

    @Gurth said:

    glass cutting board for use in the kitchen
     

    There's TRWTF. Glass is one of the worst materials to use as a cutting board.

    Seconded because, as glass is super-cooled liquid, the cutting board is actually getting thicker at the bottom.
    Do you want to give blakeyrat a heart attack?

    Oh wait, I know... The frosted glass gets its frosted coloring from frozen crystalization that occurs when its enters its super-cooled state much like ice *nods sagely*



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Yeah, Serious Sam 1 was episodic. Until they gave that up after two episodes, as all game companies that do episodic content do...
     

    Valve does not equal "all game companies".


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