I don't get COD action figures. I mean, don't we have GI Joes already? Starcraft action figures made sense.... they were super cool lookin.

anyway, I want a Gorge toy from NS, a Manta toy from UT2004, and ummm...... a peon Orc from WC3 i guess. heheheh

i was just thinkin... since flight sims are so unpopular amongst American programmers cuz they don't sell that well, maybe it's easier for programmers from poorer countries to develop games that have smaller markets here. Afterall, when I checked 3 years ago, Russia's average life expectancy was 60 years. That should mean it's cheaper to live there. Meanwhile, a Russian game like IL-2 can sell at the same price as any American produced flight sim. So maybe we'll start seeing all sorts of unprofitable game genres being revived thanks to poorer countries. And don't forget that since many genres are so bone dry, players are more willing to accept lower standards as far as graphics go...

I hope Pacific Fighters has the plane jump feature, an old feature of flight sims that lets players instantly hop into the cockpit of any other allied plane flying around. I hate time boosting on autopilot for 1 minute, just to get shot down in a couple minutes..... and have to start all over again ;-P The lack of a jump feature is the only reason I didn't play IL-2 for long.

I'm not an RPG fan, but I picked up NWN (no expansions) for $20 a couple weeks ago and haven't stopped playing yet. It's the only RPG I've ever liked for long. The multiplayer community is really great, the huge supply of modules means the game never stops. NWN can be just like an MMORPG, but without the monthly fees.

That being said, I'm glad the D&D rules are being dropped. I dunno, I don't think rules made for pen-and-paper and 20 sided dices are suitable for a computer game. It feels needlessly complicated, clumsy in some ways. From a pen-and-paper viewpoint, i can see how the mechanics would actually be seen as simplistic and efficient.... but not a PC's viewpoint. Eh.

Bioware has said that NWN's tileset approach is just not something they want to repeat, as it made things look too generic after a while. Hopefully they will figure out a way to let people easily make custom worlds, but with a less generic look in their next game.

A NWN-like toolset for KOTOR2 would be amazing. I believe KOTOR's maps were custom designed, like how you would make a FPS map. But still, I think Bioware should have included the ability to make quests and encounters within those maps. The game was quite large, I would not mind repeating the same environments over and over so long as the content within those environments were always changing. Plus KOTOR could use NWN's Dungeon Master ability.

I've never entered one of these, this one seems really nice. For $20, free soda, pizza, and a couple t-shirts. Great prizes. If anyone is putting together a Vietnam team and needs a 5th member, lemme know! (I live in SF) AIM JerryKu7

This comment was edited on Mar 20, 19:17.

FPS developers should definately consider bringing in RPG-style co-op play to the FPS genre. Currently, co-op play is understandably not that profitable a feature to put into your game because there are no real rewards for the players to co-operate. It's kinda fun to re-explore the single player game with a friend, but you have infinite respawns, and you're generally killing stuff without any direction. Meanwhile, RPGs have a party system so that people share experience points, gold, and treasure. They can swap items (most FPSs don't have inventories at all nowadays), weapons, amulets. I think games like Deus Ex or System Shock 2 are great for co-op play (ss2 did have co-op), but most FPS co-op isn't worth the trouble. Another thing about RPGs is that death usually does punish you in some way. You lose experience points, gold, etc. RPGs also allow players to cooperate by using town portal features, so people can join the surviving member in play.... buff each other with various spells/aura/enhancements. FPS games just have two guns instead of one. You can never directly enhance the other guy.

Battlezone 2, in my opinion, is the greatest co-op game to date. Just 2 players can engage in a co-op game that requires A LOT of coordination, and victory is truly at stake for the entire team. You do NOT have infinite respawns, as the game is an FPS/RTS hybrid, forcing you to worry about resources, strategy and so forth. Whereas most FPS co-op games, there is no reason to coordinate or call out locations of enemy forces or where they are amassing for an assault...... BZ2 forced players to constantly communicate, so that attacks could be met and stopped before damage was done. In short, it was truly cooperative play against a relentless AI. Due to its strategy gameplay nature, there were MANY roles each player could fill. Player one would be the commander, building units. Players 2-5 could all fill various scouting, defense, offense roles, in a number of different unit types. There was a sense of heirarchy, which is very important for meaningful co-operative play. There needs to be direction, purpose, roles to fill..... something that naturally occurs in team-vs-team multiplay, but is never seen in FPS co-op games to date. (Since monsters just sit around waiting for YOU to come get them, the gameplay is nothing more than run-and-gun)

Even co-op games such as RPGs and System Shock 2 tend to have little reason to truly communicate with each other to succeed. In RPGs, the gameplay is so simplistic that you can usually just walk into a battle room and start whacking monsters with the other party members..... and that's all. No real cooperation.

Co-op play's real allure is that the AI *is* weak. That is the point. It's inferior, and destroying huge numbers of them gives people a sense of great accomplishment. This explains the huge success of console gaming... the AI is often simple and easy to kill. It's why people like seeing Legolas and Gimli count up the hundreds of Orcs they slay, and so forth. But mass killing without a purpose gets old...

Market research indicates that if you put too many black people in a movie, especially in major roles, white viewership will drop dramatically (at least 25%), regardless of the content of the movie itself. So for example, Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr was denied the role of Daredevil specifically because he was black, and was replaced by shitty dumbass actor Ben Affleck. Plus it was determined that an interracial relationship between Cuba Gooding and Jennifer Garner (Elektra) was yet another risky endeavor market-wise. So they played the safest route, all the major characters are white, and the only racially changed person is the arch enemy: Kingpin.

So we have to remember that in the world of business, individuals don't matter as much as "market trends" do. Thus many of us can say "what does it matter", while market research really does show that it does matter to enough people out there, which is why 2015 is making a risky gamble with this idea of politicizing a game with a few cultural issues. I think 2015 is trying to bring games alongside movies as far as expression goes. Movies often have political and cultural opinions to express, 99.9% of all Vietnam war movies certainly did. As such it makes sense that a Vietnam war game will be politically activated. The film Platoon (considered the best vietnam war movie), for example, touched on racial and economic issues. I doubt 2015 is going to take it very far, but at least they are doing something.

Another thing to consider is that when the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, the official race of the US was white, and that Japanese and other non-whites were not allowed to become naturalised citizens of the US. This was official law and a serious source of frustration from the POV of the Japanese, as it was done primarily to say that non-whites were inferior to whites genetically. Non-whites were also heavily discriminated against in the armed forces during WW2. So the era of WW2 America was very white politically and culturally, and maybe 2015 is trying to rectify things by showing other sections of American society.

Finally, and probably the largest reason 2015 went with a black character, the Vietnam war still has a huge stigma attached to it of being a horrible, horrible mistake. Republican John McCain and now Democrat John Kerry, both Vietnam vets, have both come out saying that the Vietnam war should've never involved the US, that the Domino Theory was crap, and that the Vietnamese should've been allowed to go ahead with their Geneva Elections (which the North was supposed to win). So making money off of violent entertainment from this war can be seen as tasteless, kinda like marketing war soldiers through the form of GI Joe cartoons (GI Joe was pressured into including the "knowing is half the battle!" segments because parents saw no social value in watching soldiers blow stuff up). 2015 probably thought by throwing in a black guy, with a little social commentary, they can try to downplay the fact that they're profiting off of the corpses of 3 million people.... and emphasize the game as a "virtual history lesson" instead.

I only read the top part of article. 1.8 tons! Sheesh. Anyway, I don't think the first poster is correct in stating that most companies and individuals sell /give away their old computers. I believe there is a great deal of data that shows that the vast majority of outdated computers are, in fact, discarded as trash. I've never met anyone who keeps their old Tandy's or RGB monitors around. Even if they are given away, eventually they are thrown away, as such outdated computers are truly and utterly useless. And no one ever bothers to recycle anything besides paper, let alone a computer.

Thankfully, today's computers are powerful enough that the vast majority of household users have zero reason to get a top of the line computer. There's no reason to stay on top of computer technology right now, no reason to upgrade. So long as you have a 800 mhz system with some RAM, 99% of tasks people use computers for can be easily handled and at very adequate speeds.

I keep hearing Heat of Battle being compared to DOD. Are the designers of Heat of Battle big DOD fans or something? I love DOD, but didn't like COD's multiplayer.

Didn't know Pandemic was making this game. Will keep an eye on it. I loved Battlezone 2

Demand is not the problem. I think the main problem is that game companies are essentially FORCING you to choose only ONE MMO to play. The subscription rates of 15/month are far too expensive to allow MMO fans to play several MMO games at once. So if you look at it this way, the MMO industry is damaging itself by asking people to stick to just one game.

MMOs usually say their rates are expensive to pay for server costs and what not. I'm highly suspicious of this claim, but if true, I think the MMO companies need to figure out a way to have player-run servers instead. Half-Life and other FPS games have thousands of servers that are entirely payed for by fans themselves. I forget the calculations I made, but millions of dollars every year are forked out voluntarily by generous server admins who simply love the game. Maybe MMO companies could make a deal where the game is run on many player-owned servers, but they still get some sort of money from the subscription rate.

I'm not an MMO fan myself, but primarily because I simply can't stand playing just one game of any genre for very long, and paying a sizeable chunk to do so.

I like how they didn't try to make the Onslaught weapons effective at long range open-field combat. In XMP, the huge area-effect weapons make close-range combat very lame. Heck open-field combat was lame too. With 2004's approach, players will be able to run into large base buildings and have cool close-range combat. I kinda wish the demo had included a better Onslaught map, as the bases in Tornas are too simplistic and open, and thus offer limited close-range enjoyment.

Grrr i want to buy this game, but I don't have a DVDROM drive, so I can't get the $40 special edition DVD set from ebgames.com. I'm also hoping the standard CDROM set drops to 30 or lower quickly. Eh I'm broke.

And I can't believe there's gonna be more than 100 maps with the game. That's just insane.

I doubt they'll make a VC game from the VC perspective, Vietcong was really umm...... politically umm...... let's just say it very much took a side, and sometimes in baffling ways. If my memory serves me correctly, the Montagnard soldier ally even claims he's fighting for the US because he doesn't like French imperialists, and that the Commies are the ones supporting the French. Riiiiiiiiiight.

Great game! Only dissapointment is the "local" voice chat. In the previews, local Voice chat was supposed to allow your voice chat to come out of the player model's heads. You know, just like any other environmental sound effect. Instead we have a funky local range system of some sort, I believe. Guess it was too tough to code. But what we got is not bad, although the demo has severe sound volume problems from what I can tell. Very widespread. Eh i'm sure it will be fixed.

Definately buying this one. 100 maps! Yowza! And can't wait for full mods to start coming out.

I was looking forward to this game from reading the Avault preview, but eh, too bad. I was hoping for a "Return of the King" style action game with strategy command elements too. That would be great, definately a good idea. Guess it's not executed well here. Hope it doesn't discourage any others with the same idea from trying their hand at it too..

Vengeance will flop. It just will.

does IL-2 have the "plane jump" feature? That is, when you get shot down, can you immediately jump into the seat of another allied plane? I was playing Forgotten Enemies in the bomber campaign, but every single mission my bomber would get shot down by flak. I didn't see what exactly a high altitude bomber was supposed to do about dodging flak. So I just kept restarting the mission and failing. Then uninstalling.

If there's a plane jump feature, someone tell me. :-\

i called, they didn't pick me I wonder why?

i dunno, the previews for Joan of Arc are pretty cool. The graphics don't look great, but the gameplay looks very nice to me. Plus Trevor Chan has a ton of high quality strategy games behind him. (none of which i've played, since i don't like strategy. lol.) But yeah, Chan's games get good reviews usually.

If the PC-only game market continues to shrink, then the customer base will shrink, and I would imagine the game prices would rise in return.

The other day i was thinking.... is the computer gamer market pushing along the console market, in the way of video card technology? Every few months, a new video card comes out to top the competition. Seems to me that this wouldn't be happening if it wasn't for the fact there ARE computer gamers out there who are pumping money into the video card industry.. making sure there are funds to keep technology coming along. Then, the latest vid cards are used to fuel the next generation of consoles. If this is true, then console gamers should be somewhat thankful that computer gamers spend enormous sums of money on their relatlively dead hobby :-P

anyway, hopefully computer game designers will realise a big advantage of PC Gaming is user-mods. Besides a handful of RPGs and RTSs, creating user-mods is a very difficult process and essentially left unsupported by game designers. Computer games can have lots and lots of replay value through this, something that console games usually fall short on.

This comment was edited on Jan 13, 14:08.