In multiplayer games, they need to let one side have the option of playing the supernatural baddies.

I've been quite impressed by Raven's more recent games. Some of the old criticisms really don't seem to be true anymore.

This comment was edited on Apr 6, 2009, 20:54.

I will happily dance on their grave after what they did scamming those 6 great developers out of their companies and then closing them.

Why haven't criminal charges been filed against these people ?

The first Cobra 11 was surprisingly fun. It should have got much more attention in the U.S.

The 256 mb cards probably won't even allow the program to start. 256mb cards don't have v3 shaders. This just nailed everyone who bought DIRT or Flatout:Carnage. The program won't even start. Even those with cutting edge systems had them run very slow even at lower settings.

***Warning*** Box lists ATI v1800+ as the minimum card (add that to ATI repeatedly changing their numbering system). That leaves out most current ATI owners. Nvidia only needs a 7600+. They print this in a tiny greyed out box that is nearly unreadable even with a large magnifying glass. The print is about 1mm and has grey dots going through it making it even harder to read. It also needs v3 shaders. Again, most current ATI owners are out of luck. They also list 2gb ram as the minimum(not as big a deal but still surprisingly high).

Cool game but people should know that this is Flatout2 but with a few new modes and now allows up to 12 racers. I think they added 2 new cars and some reverse tracks as well.

This comment was edited on Sep 12, 08:33.

It's worth pointing out that for the last few years EA has been pulling the plug on most of their titles after only a year or two.

Pay near full price for an old used game and then have EA pull the plug on it and make it worthless right after you buy it ? I don't think so.

Online activation is garbage. Remember companies like Trygames/Trymedia ? All those people who payed for online activation are now completely out of luck now that Real Networks bought them out and stopped supporting most of their titles. They are by no means alone and even more will follow.

This could be very cool if they do it right. It looks like Powerslide.

Almost no one could get DIRT to work on PC. Even most brand new ATI graphics cards couldn't run it at all. This was so bad that most retail outlets refused to put the PC version on the shelves here. They didn't want frustrated customers trying to return open software.

Even the few people who did manage to get it to run on pc tended to have frame rates so low that it was nearly unplayable.

I didn't bother trying GRID because of this.

FUEL sounds interesting but there's no way I'd try it unless they fix their absurdly high requirements.

Don't buy any of these games unless you download the huge demos and make sure that they will work on your system.

Have they forgotten the Driv3r disaster already ? Gamers don't want a movie. They want a game. The Driv3r devs spent tons an absurd amount on the filming and the game didn't pay off.

No demo- no purchase.

I guess they don't need me as a customer.

Forcing customers to go online and transmit who knows what data about themselves is obnoxious enough to make me not buy a title anyway.

EA just gets worse every single day.

The free Caligari Freespace and tutorials are great news. There is a big need for a good free fully featured 3d modeling program with something approaching user friendliness. Blender's interface is nearly impenetrable and still doesn't have such essential things as an undo button (unless they've added it very recently).

Do they still plan on making money off of Freespace or is it just a labor of love at this point ? If they do plan on making more money, then how ?

Raven improved with Quake IV and it turned out better than I expected. The trend may well continue. I guess we'll see when this comes out.

I see complaints about lack of innovation but in previous posts about all the new things that they are adding or changing, people complained about each of those as well.

I'm willing to give them a chance on this one.

One thing that I hope they won't do is try to pack in so many extra visual effects that they are afraid to put more than one or two baddies on the screen at the same time for fear that the rendering engine will slow down to only a few fps. Gameplay is far more important than cramming in every last doodad. This has happened to too many games in the industry.

Well, they just lost me. I almost never buy a game without trying a demo first. I've simply been burned too many times.

I also see it as a bad sign. It's like the movie studios who won't let the reviewers see the movie before it comes out. The movie invariably turns out to be awful.

If I didn't dislike consoles, I would jump at a chance to ditch Windows and MS's bs in a heartbeat. These people need to remember where their bread is buttered. The 360 hasn't done very well financially. If people start jumping ship and breaking Windows' near monopoly by moving to Apple or (free and much more spyware free) Linux, MS is toast.

Since most PC games have started turning into lame dumbed down console ports, I have started buying far fewer video games. I don't buy console games at all.

I only tried the demo for Quake ET. It didn't have the same feel as Wolf ET at all. Yeah, QW ET seemed a little dumbed down. All the cheesy voices and distracting floating visuals didn't help either. Did some of the other maps have more of the old feel ? I like mission based, strategy oriented multiplayer much more than run-and-gun multiplayer. The high price also helped prevent me from taking a chance on it.

I loved Wolf ET. Is there some holdup with the next Wolfenstein ? I thought that it was supposed to be out a long time ago. I hope that this time they have an option to let one side play the zombies or some other baddies.

Amazon just changed the release date to Jan 1, 2009 for some reason.

Is the July 11 date only for Europe ?

I hope not. 2009 is over half a year away.

I liked the first one the best.

In both games, the physics are far better than any of the other racers like this.

The main difference added to the new one from Flatout2 is the "carnage mode". which sounds sort of like Carmageddon but instead of pedestrians, you try to destroy objects or each other to gain time. You can also race against twice as many cars and there are a lot more objects added to the tracks. That said, they still really need to make sure that they let people who already bought Flatout2 know this.

I certainly plan on getting this though.

They had better make this optional.

Automated driver updates are an absolute deal breaker for me. No way.

The rest is a step in a direction that makes me very uncomfortable.

They just don't get why most people refuse to have anything to do with Vista.

This is a very creepy step.

Wow, this is much better than I would ever expect from a free game. The graphics and many other features are great !

I'm wondering if they have any plans to expand this. An import filter to allow custom car model meshes to be added would also be great.

A big thanks to the group that released this for free !

There doesn't need to be such a divide between sim and arcade racers. Just give the players the option of playing with arcade or sim physics. All they need to do is tweak the AI a little.

Another problem is that half of the racers never get released in the U.S. or only get released a few years after they came out elsewhere and the buzz has died down.

The other problem is that many of the top racing titles simply aren't very good. Either that or they don't really add anything to the previous release in the series. I'm appalled at how poorly the AI and physics are handled in many of the current games. This goes for both the sims and the arcade racers.

Sim racers also face the problem that most sales these days are for consoles and developers are forced to dumb down the physics if they want to get their game licensed for the consoles. I've even heard of the console makers going so far as to list the specific stupidity they want added for titles to get the ok for license.

The reason that the Flatout games did so well is that they are among the few exceptions. They were first rate in nearly every way and I'm glad to see true quality and innovation be rewarded. However,I didn't much like their decision to switch to the rubber-band catch up mode the AI used in Flatout2).

Another problem with some of the racers is their apparent hatred of old muscle cars. Things are slowly changing though. Many just flatly refuse to put them in. Others only put a few token ones in. Others include some but make the performance so bad that they are almost guaranteed to lose. Either that or the upgrades or bonus cars for the muscles aren't nearly up to par with the other classes. Half of the racers in the American market more or less demand old muscle cars be included before they will buy a game.

This comment was edited on Feb 27, 17:48.