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| News Comments > Mass Effect 3 Prerelease Demo Plans |
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| 13. |
Re: Mass Effect 3 Prerelease Demo Plans |
Jan 10, 2012, 19:16 |
banksie |
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Verno wrote on Jan 10, 2012, 12:30:
For example, why did Vigil the Prothean VI computer in ME1 fail to mention who the Reapers really? It would have had to know considering it was a failsafe meant for that kind of event and they were still people to create the facility. I mean, I get this kind of stuff happens with writing teams but you could drive a truck through that one.
Vigil wouldn't know the ultimate fate of the Protheans because it was set up by Protheans who were escaping the purge of the Reapers. Because the Reapers shut down the mass effect network, isolating each planet from rapid communication or reinforcement, then knowledge of what happened on each planet purged would be limited. So how would it know about the Reaper or Collector origins?
They did manage to glean that the Citadel is central to the mass effect network and also the Reaper schemes, which is why the backdoor was set up that you used in the first game and the tampering of the Citadel maintenance systems.
I don't think this is as much of a plot hole as you seem to suggest.
Verno wrote on Jan 10, 2012, 12:30:
Also I hope that the Citadel is back to being a place again instead of a series of 7 corridors.
I wouldn't hold my breath on that one - there might be some story set on the Citadel relating to keeping the mass effect relay network running but the central thrust of Mass Effect 3 has to be the mobilisation of the organised fleet response to the Reapers. Given that everything we have seen centers around coming to Earth's aid with the Reaper invasion starting there then chances are pretty good that the Citadel will be a minor location - maybe visit the council chambers. I'd expect the bulk to be set on the various homeworlds recruiting/organising the various races into a cohesive response. |
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| News Comments > RAGE PC Texture Fix Coming |
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| 113. |
Re: RAGE PC Texture Fix Coming |
Oct 16, 2011, 19:13 |
banksie |
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theyarecomingforyou wrote on Oct 16, 2011, 09:24:
Console optimised quick-menu for weapons - you cannot change secondary ammo types for a weapon outside your quick-four.
Actually, you can. Try hitting the weapon number more than once - eg for the pistol hit '2' to select it then keep hitting '2' to cycle the secondary ammo types. This works for any weapon.
I am currently, being just up to subway town, keeping sniper, crossbow, shotgun and assault rifle on the quick switch. But I use the pistol for the regular mobs as fatmammas just carve them up nicely.
They don't really tell you this anywhere and I discovered it by accident but it is in the game. |
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| News Comments > Deus Ex: Human Revolution Reviews |
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| 56. |
Re: Deus Ex: Human Revolution Reviews |
Aug 22, 2011, 22:32 |
banksie |
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Creston wrote on Aug 22, 2011, 22:13:
If you've never played Deus Ex, why the fuck are you even reviewing this game, which may possibly the most baggage-laden game ever made?
1) He wasn't lead reviewer on it, the person who did the primary review and set the review score had played Deus Ex.
2) Of the three reviewing it he was the only one who hadn't and pointed out that his comments were coming from someone who was fresh to the series.
3) He explicitly uses that unfamiliarity to speak to the buyers who haven't played the original and are debating whether this game might be for them.
This seems to be very much grumbling about little to nothing. |
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| News Comments > Portal Turrets in Bastion |
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| 2. |
Re: Portal Turrets in Bastion |
Aug 22, 2011, 16:29 |
banksie |
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| Yeah it is a fun game, been playing the PC version last night. They have done a nice job keeping the controls sane on the PC side and I am really digging the tidbits of story the narrator drops. Some of the one off comments he makes are really neat too - they obviously spent a lot of time giving him plenty of specific things to say and not repeating himself. |
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| News Comments > Quoteworthy - id's Tim Willits on Always-on Gaming |
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| 123. |
Re: Quoteworthy - id's Tim Willits on Always-on Gaming |
Aug 10, 2011, 17:42 |
banksie |
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^mortis^ wrote on Aug 10, 2011, 14:02:
In a world without bandwidth caps, this doesn't sound like a big deal.
No doubt you are fully aware that large chunks of the world do have caps...
This and the flakiness of internet connectivity make me dislike what Willits is proposing. Assassins Creed with it's always on requirement actively refuses to save progress if the connection is lost - I have an ADSL connection with a router that reasonably often has issues. Either the carrier itself is lost, the router gets saturated with pending connections making it unable to open another, the backend at the ISP goes away or, because of the timezone difference, the server I need to connect to goes down for nightly maintenance. Which means I have long delayed getting the sequels to Assassins Creed, despite quite enjoying the first game, because I don't want to deal with the extra hassle it's DRM demands.
The idea that making a game demand 100% reliable network connectivity for anything other than a multi-player game is just plain assinine and certainly not in my interests as a consumer. |
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| News Comments > Ships Ahoy - Duke Nukem Forever |
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| 39. |
Re: Ships Ahoy - Duke Nukem Forever |
Jun 14, 2011, 17:45 |
banksie |
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grahamslam wrote on Jun 14, 2011, 16:29:
I played it two hours last night when it unlocked and about another two hours today. I'm enjoying it. It's not great, it should have been released a few years ago, but it's pretty fun so far. I also watched the youtube reviews, but after playing it I can clearly see the reviewer set out to make it look as bad as possible.
TotalBiscuit, while making quite a few valid points, is intending to be unflattering to the game. Hardly surprising given he didn't like it all that much.
grahamslam wrote:
The graphics look good... maybe even really good on my comp.
This is one grizzle I don't get, sure the graphics aren't up to Crysis standards but chunks of the game look fairly good. The Alien Hive in particular has a good moody lighting atmosphere and looks going on.
grahamslam wrote:
I don't like that they don't let you explore. I really want to run around and find some secrets.
This I can't help but wonder if it is more a limitation of the memory constraints consoles impose - the levels are all bite size chunks whereas the original game would do, say for example, the entire Hoover Dam set in one map. It is a little frustrating because the levels have had places where a little secret or two would fit in naturally. Like on the Forklift level there were walkways across the main corridor that if you drive the forklift into the wall and tip it up on an angle you can get onto those walkways - sadly no secret rooms or bonus items for doing that.
There seems to be one secret, involving the companion barrel, in the entire game.
grahamslam wrote:
Yeah the people and some animations aren't top notch, but it doesn't bother me much.
Unfortunately, by putting strippers and NPCs prominently up front in the first half of the game, these weak animations are kinda glaring. The enemy animations such as pig cops, Octabrains, pregnators and the like are all fine and look pretty good. But humans - especially walking humans tend to look terrible.
The other big grizzle is the complaint that only three enemies at the most attack at any time. I have been playing it on 'Come Get Some' and regularly get jumped in rooms with six or more enemies having a go. Is this a PC versus console difference or is it purely that the reviewers have been playing it on normal difficulty? Dunno.
All in all this isn't a classic. But it is a fairly fun game that has occasional moments of being really good interspersed with a lot of slightly clunky average gameplay in between. (The shelf fighting in the Duke Burger in particular was a whole heap of fun, but I am a sucker for the small person in a large world schtick.) |
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| News Comments > Obsidian Not Making Alpha Protocol 2, But it Would Be Better |
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| 19. |
Re: Obsidian Not Making Alpha Protocol 2, But it Would Be Better |
May 22, 2011, 18:16 |
banksie |
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Dades wrote on May 21, 2011, 21:32:
Alpha Protocol was delayed multiple times so they could get more time to polish the game, it seems unfair to blame Sega when Obsidian spent years working on the game. Finally it was delayed a last time so that it could release outside of heavy competition but ultimately word of mouth and reviews took their toll on sales very quickly. The game has excellent writing but not much else going for it.
The game was delayed, yes. But unless the publisher ponies up the cash to do further refinement work (which SEGA didn't do) then no refinement gets done despite there being extra time. If you check the interviews this game was on a very tight schedule and it tried some very ambitious things - the degree of flexibility in mission structure (being able to jet between the three major mission hubs at any time) and the flexibility of choice/consequence was amazing. Entire characters and missions could appear/disappear depending on the choices you made. Heck how NPCs interacted with you was often influenced by the choices you made both in the missions you had to take before getting there but also by choices made in missions you *might* have taken at that point.
I can understand why people had issues with aspects of the game but it is a crying shame this didn't sell at least moderately well. It did a lot right and really tried to push RPG storytelling ahead.
I'd love to see Mass Effect 3 take a few lessions from how Alpha Protocol handled choice/consequence. |
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| News Comments > Why Duke Nukem is Like The Beatles |
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| 29. |
Re: Why Duke Nukem is Like The Beatles |
May 11, 2011, 18:02 |
banksie |
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Cutter wrote on May 11, 2011, 14:56:
That's it in a nutshell. Duke was nothing special. It was ridiculous even then.
Rubbish. Duke3D is well remembered because, when it came out, it was streets ahead of any other game in terms of world interactivity not just because of the charicature that was the main character. It came out post Doom with it's 2.5D world and just before Quake with its fully 3D polygon world.
As a result this list of features was remarkable for the time :-
-the ability in Duke3D to have rooms overlap vertically.
-mirrors that reflected the main character.
-highly interactive world (pool tables that you could knock the balls about on, urinals that worked, game machines, water fountains, water hydrants, strippers etc...)
-level design that often had multiple hidden ductways and alternate approaches.
-the need to aim vertically for shooting. (Doom could be played with a keyboard alone, Duke3D really demanded a mouse)
-a genuinely novel and unusual weapon set. Freeze ray guns that you could then use melee to shatter the frozen enemies? A shrink ray to let you stomp on people. Laser trip mines. The HoloDuke decoy.
-first attempt to mix in melee combat (the mighty foot) into an FPS.
And after the po-faced seriousness that was Doom and most of its clones Duke3D was a real breath of fresh air. It was irreverent, crass, frequently funny and always using various film quotes with a very deliberate mocking stance. It celebrated '80s pulp action cinema just as much as it pointed out how silly they were.
Saying Duke3D was nothing special simply doesn't do the game any historical justice. Duke3D, despite being a technical inferior to Quake which came out shortly after it, was by far the more fun game to play. Both have had a major impact on the game industry and both deserve their dues. |
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| News Comments > Crysis 2 Workarounds |
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| 55. |
Re: Crysis 2 Workarounds |
Mar 30, 2011, 17:07 |
banksie |
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Verno wrote on Mar 25, 2011, 09:22:
One thing I was really impressed with was the AI firing for effect at where it thinks the player is. It was done very convincingly and its something I haven't seen in an unscripted manner in other games.
This was something the original Vietcong did really well. If you were careful with your noise and sightlines the AI would fire on where they thought you were, allowing flanking maneuvers. In fact the whole game was quite good about noise control being important - so much so that in the multiplayer the voice comms volume between players was used in determining if the AI had heard you. Speak in whispers and you could sneak around but you had to stay close. Yell and generally a large part of the enemy knew precisely where you were and headed for that spot.
This meant you could create kill zones by the other players taking cover and a point main going out and yelling before retreating back to cover. Meant the first wave could be wiped out fairly safely but of course once you fire then the focus shifts...
Anyhoo just an FYI. |
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| News Comments > No Alpha Protocol Sequel |
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| 38. |
Re: Obsidian No Juice? |
Jul 6, 2010, 18:29 |
banksie |
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kimbambaman wrote on Jul 6, 2010, 14:29:
BTW, one the young mob boss, I have my guy speced out for stealth and pistol, and was a having a hard time with him too, until it occured to me to switch to steel core rounds. He then went down after 5 or 6 hits.
It has to be remembered he is wearing body armor, which is why steel core rounds help so much, and is coked up to the eyeballs. The news reports afterwards even comment as much and you see him snorting away after you damage him. Also Chainshot is your friend here.
It is a shame this won't get a sequel as it is a terribly fun game that does choice and consequence better than any RPG I've played in a long time. It just needed a couple more months of polish time to refine the edges a bit more. As it is I suspect it will become another entry in the flawed gem catagory that Vampire:Bloodlines is a poster child for. |
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| News Comments > Out of the Blue |
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| 16. |
Re: Out of the Blue |
Apr 8, 2010, 16:56 |
banksie |
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nin wrote on Apr 7, 2010, 16:55:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7d/BlurParklife.jpg ?
Yep, that is the sort of thing I am thinking of. Some of the muzzles have even deeper hollows than that. They are fairly easy to get for english whippet hounds, greyhounds and salukis but other breeds can be a bit more bothersome. You might even have to have one custom made. Well worth the effort though, we had one made for the Afghan hounds we had at the time. |
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| News Comments > Out of the Blue |
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| 9. |
Re: Out of the Blue |
Apr 7, 2010, 16:48 |
banksie |
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| You can get racing muzzles which have a deeper hollow that allows the mouth to open and the dog to pant but still keeps them from biting other animals. Normal vetinary supply stores often don't carry them - you should contact the local dog racing enthusiasts and they will probably be happy to point to a local supplier. Checking on something like the American Kennel Clubs web pages might be a good start. |
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| News Comments > Left 4 Dead 2 PC Demo Open to All |
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| 20. |
Re: L4D2 PC Demo Open |
Nov 3, 2009, 21:02 |
banksie |
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Because the bile bomb causes the common to mob a given target. Throw this on a tank and it has to deal with hordes of common infected, doesn't get the speed up that burning gives it and lets you get to tactically better ground to fight it.
I can see the bile bomb being *very* handy on Expert mode. |
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| News Comments > Vietcong 2 Fist Bravo Released |
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| 5. |
No subject |
Oct 16, 2006, 17:40 |
banksie |
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The game is pretty poor in the initial maps of the single player. Once you get away from the clumsy indoors and street fighting which is a little too scripted for it's own good it gets a lot better. The raid on the church and into the old imperial palace in Hue is a lot of fun as you return to what made the old game so good. Namely the intense but realistic firefights.
The AI still annoys by being excellent at seeing you through foiliage and shooting you. Mind you Men of Valor is a lot worse in this respect and obscenely over scripted.
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| News Comments > Ships Ahoy - Half-Life 2: Episode One |
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| 125. |
Re: played for about 30 minutes... |
Jun 3, 2006, 08:58 |
banksie |
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As you are playing, you can click on little bubbles, and it will explain something about the game in that area, BUT although you can't be hurt, YOU ALSO CAN'T HEAR WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON BECAUSE THE GAME DOESN'T PAUSE IT JUST KEEPS GOING. So as someone is telling you something along the plot line or a story, you have gabe or some other idiot explaining why alyx's tits shine.
Go to audio options, turn on captioning. Presto! While commentary nodes play, you get a subtitle caption detailing what they are saying.
Nice and easy.
This comment was edited on Jun 3, 08:59. |
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| News Comments > Ships Ahoy - Half-Life 2: Episode One |
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| 60. |
Re: ... |
Jun 2, 2006, 00:23 |
banksie |
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You have managed to take the wrong end of the stick very firmly here. The point isn't to say that EP1 has more plot than HL2 had, far from it. Rather the point is to show how EP1 has advanced and expanded the story.
Also for those who consider the opening sequence to be a cop-out, I'd suggest spending a little time chatting with a Vortigaunt in HL2. While you do have to wade through a bit of chaff a lot of what happens in that opening is directly hinted at by various responses.
If anything that is perhaps the biggest revealation in EP1, the Vortigaunts are shifting from being the slaves in Half Life into an unfettered force in their own right. Quite possibly the real long term salvation for humanity as the means to manage or close the portals the Combine use.
It is going to be fun to find out.
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| News Comments > Steamships Ahoy: SiN Episodes: Emergence |
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| 93. |
Actually, I quite enjoyed it... |
May 11, 2006, 20:08 |
banksie |
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...yes it is an older game design with flaws. But the levels and interactive items within it is quite slick. Play with the phone for instance, there are at least ten or twelve numbers to call which are often quite amusing. Posters and graffiti around the world list them. Various secrets to find and satisfying deaths for the enemies. Well bar the overly repetitive minigunner death. A lot of newspaper headlines on the consoles throughout the game to let you fill in the time gap between Sin and Sin Episodes 1,
Also for those who are burning through the game in three hours, what are your difficulty settings? I got about seven hours of gameplay out of it for the first pass through with the end Skill rating being 75.1 Challenge 45.1. That was just default settings and the game scaled the difficulty up nicely for the most part. The worst bit was the giant mutant boss fights where the collision box on the mutant preceeded the animation a little so I was getting thwacked before the animation started for the thwack move.
I loved the fight up the skyscraper - especially the hijinks with the rocket pack guys. Watching them flop around as their tanks vent and then explode is just such fun. Especially with the lovely skybox of Freeport behind it.
All in all given that I got the game which I will replay at least once on a secret hunt, the SiN original game working on newer hardware (I own the original and even patched it doesn't run well on my machine, the sound keeps getting screwed up.) as well as a properly patched SiN multiplayer then I can't complain about the pricing. Especially given that we should get the Arena challenge mode shortly as well.
Does it advance the genre and do something new? No. But it is a solid and fun game that I'll certainly be buying the next episode of.
This comment was edited on May 11, 20:11. |
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| News Comments > Far Cry Patch Plans |
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| 34. |
Re: OK, I'll say it... |
Apr 29, 2004, 19:18 |
banksie |
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"I never played Deus Ex, <shrug> it passed me by. I paid good money for Deus Ex 2 and can say without a shadow of a doubt that DX2 betrayed the legacy of DX (a game I never played). Why I can say this should be obvious."
I am sorry but if you haven't played the first game how can you even begin to say the second betrayed it? Deus Ex 2 offered the same conspiracy laden storyline with choices that the first game gave. Indeed in many ways it's storytelling improved over the original game with the ability to choose between factions if you wish and none of the forced failiures the first game had.
The issues people have had with the sequel have been over engine tech being demanding, the interface needing work and the alledged dumbing down of the gameplay to suit a console. Those who complain about the engine demands evidently forgot the first games release where anyone without a 3dFX card was very much out of luck for engine performance. It was a few patches later that this improved along with the ever increasing machine performance helping.
The interface in the first was flawed with a variety of awkward decisions. Remember the 'must have room in the inventory to carry a body' game? How about the we have a bio-modification for improved lung efficiency or we spend points on the swim skill choices? Often the skills overlapped the bio-mods and made 'all you can eat' choices easier. Deus Ex 1's interface needed work and the sequels also needed work. I do consider it poor that they didn't spend the time updating the interface for the PC more to let you use mouse controls but given their record with Deus Ex 1 it really didn't surprise me that the sequel had interface issues.
The dumbing down issue is very much one of perspective and smacks a lot of PC gamers being more than a little elitist when it comes to consoles. Gameplay is gameplay and Deus Ex 2 has plenty of good gameplay in it.
The whole impression I get is that gamers, especially the Deus Ex more extreme fan base, simply wanted the same game again with more levels and a slightly spiffier engine. They got a game sequel that dare to try a few things to alter the mix that generally are improvements. I at least can understand where those fans are coming from. But bashing from someone who hasn't even played the first game to declare it a betrayal? That is just plain nonsense.
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