Frozen throne has a harder single player than the original it seems.

Traditionally (Brood War, D2X, etc.) it should be harder. I can remember having to repeat entire missions in Brood War because of failing to consider long-term stategies.

So far it's been fairly easy actually. I'm on the Night Elf mission involving the runner.

No other game makes commanding up to 12 troops in first person so easy.

Easy? I thought OFP's command interface was unnecessarily complex and too cumbersome for in-combat usage. Nobody should need to press 3 buttons to issue any tactical command. This annoyance was only excaberated by the friendly AI's inability to promptly follow orders that would clearly save his ass. Give me the Quick Command functions of Raven Shield or the point and click orders of SWAT3 anyday.

I have to agree on your points concerning OFP's scope and simulation of war though. Nothing else comes close and I doubt MoV will either. This to me is OFP's true appeal.

I have a feeling MoV could be another VietCong. A very tight and intimate experience with your squadmates and only a passing reference to the spectacle of a huge war.

NOLF2 is the only recent non-tactical FPS I can recall that didn't play in a completely linear fashion. The map design was as realistically functional as it was fun, and there were definite rewards to exploring all of it.

And I challenge HL2 to come up with a set-piece battle as engaging and memorable as the Ohio mission.

I did encounter a few frustrating moments playing it on Hard (It's harder than most games on Hard), but luck and some time to clear my head got me through them.

IMO the subject matter made up for it.

The plot is just about as riveting as X2's but there's also an added level of depth to the story and the characters.

Not on the broad pseudo-philisophical level of The Matrix but more on the histories and motivations of the main characters. A good chunk of it is drama though, and like any good drama there were some interesting themes being discussed in the dialog (Repression, Selfishness, etc.)

Oh yeah, and Jennifer Connelly is in it.

Oh yeah, and the specular-hightlighted, environmentally mapped reflections off her sweaty glistening ass.

OK I'll stop now.

MMOG indeed. We were specifically discussing the RPG part which AFAIK doesn't exist in Vatsim.

I haven't played a good combat flight sim in ages

LoMAC is on the horizon, but if you can settle with a historical setting in the Eastern front there's none better than IL-2 Forgotten Battles.

Far Cry seems to be taking on an almost cartoonish look from those screenshots.

Having spent a lot of vacation time in such environments, I can personally attest that those screenies don't look very realistic color-wise. Mountains for example tend to take on a bluish hue the farther they are, regardless of foliage. The blues of the distant ocean don't look deep enough either and the greens of the trees need more variety.

Whether this is intentional or a technological limitation remains to be seen.

They had to write a new game engine for this one

I suppose this will be the new engine that promises separate AI identities and accurate collision detection for each breast to render realistic cleavage properties, and Karma physics applied on the per-pixel level to every curve.

Not that I cared though.

It's a sim, and by nature it doesn't offer much in the way of predestination or objective progression like in an RPG.

Experienced simmers looking for a "game" experience usually challenge themselves in MSFS by setting their own goals such as time limits, nasty weather conditions, and/or by analyzing their ability to follow realistic procedures (Especially in multiplayer.)

Newbies on the other hand are probably neither skilled nor familiar enough with MSFS itself to set up such goals. IMO they would benefit from more stuctured gameplay, similar to the campaign modes in combatsims.

Why bother? They've already got the Halo series.

I wonder how they'll handle the sounds in this game. It would seem a disservice to the 80s to stick with modern hollywood-style SFX.

I wanna hear projectiles go *Put*, *Put*, *Put*, *Put* as they fly, weapons that really sound like *Peew*, *Peew*, *Peew*, and explosions that mimic the screech of an angry cat. ...Oh yeah and MIDI music.

looking at games like Unreal 2, the developers weren't imaginative enough to use the fantastic technology at their disposal to anywhere near it's full potential

Are you saying that Unreal 2 didn't have good graphics and art? And that this is why it sucked? Most of the people who were around here when it was released and many review sites would beg to differ.

This only emphasizes my point. It's all in the gameplay. Halo isn't going to look as good as anything in the near future, but there are already countless people who can attest to it's fun factor.

I wish we were over that damn horizon already. Damn the calm before the storm!!!

Soo much good stuff....

I wonder how this "discussion" of important issues could be presented in such a game.

Naturally having the characters just sit down and talk like in a movie would be intrusive, but this wasn't uncommon just a few years ago. Other games (NOLF and DX in particular) have dealt with this by scattering little bits of the discussion around the level. Bits that can be freely picked up by the player at his leisure or simply ignored. Then there's the diary option they had in VietCong, but this by it's nature is too cumbersome to access and too lenghty for the average player to bother with.

My best guess is that the charcters in MoV will occasionally mouth out relevant sound bites when not blowing stuff up. Press "Pause" to contemplate.

BTW the interview itself is a pretty good read. The questions were concise and the answers very informative.
This comment was edited on Jun 11, 01:04.

How about a game:

"The first person who can give me a picture of his girlfriend wins a FREE COMPUTER!"

Oh wait... nope... that's not gonna work.

I thought the humor in Giants was a bit too crude and pedestrian (They talked about on old man's testicles!) I prefer the subtle mockery of NOLF's jokes... But I guess that's just me.

The information available on DOOM3 so far makes it sound like another AvP-type experience, which is good.

The general look of the original Half-Life was so realistic that it was devoid of any emotion, and it was only the well-crafted scripting and the sheer scale of the events that imparted any sense of suspense on the player. HL2 so far appears to continue this let's-make-it-look-real-and-then-have-some-crazy-shit-happen approach to ambience. Irony is good, but you can only pull it off so many times before it turns into normality.

Yes, the graphics and physics technology of D3 won't be as functional as HL2's, gameplay is probably going to be quite linear, and naturally how can you get more unoriginal and blatantly derivative than by calling your game DOOM 3? But the AvP2 series and other moody shooters like SS2 or even VietCong showed us how ambience and pacing alone can create an immersive and visceral experience. While I detest the brute force approach of horror films, I like a good suspense/drama/thriller ride from time to time, something I hope DOOM 3 can deliver.

I switched over to Blue's a few years ago when VE3D started slacking up, and was certainly impressed by Blue's consistent and no-bull reporting.

Thank you very much.

years of crappy games, followed by a logjam of great games

More precisely IMO, years of a few great games with the occasional year of many or really great games. We saw some really good releases in the past two years (Max Payne, NOLF1/2, MOHAA, WCIII, D2, Mafia, etc.)

Sparks: So... looks like I'm in the market for a new foreman. Whaddya say there, bub?

Marco: What kind of benefits we talkin' about? Hypothetically.

Sparks: Uhh, ya gotta talk with Henchman Resources on that. It's, uh, not my department. But, you will get a helmet, and jumpsuit. Oh yeah, and, uh, metal teeth.

Marco: Hmm!