That's very true. The only Euro Forces servers I can normally find are in Europe. Very few, if any, American hosted servers are playing Euro Forces.

Personally, I'm probably going to pass on Armored Fury and keep playing the USI mod. Not a very big following either but it's a load of fun.

In the defense of crappy GTA license rip-offs, Simpsons Hit & Run was actually pretty dang good but the Godfather game is a mixed bag of good (the overall arcing storyline and hit contracts) but also repetitive tedium in some parts (taking over storefronts and killing hundreds of mobsters).

(Sorry, had to do it.) =)

No, you really didn't.

This game is my secret shame. I'm downloading Kingdom of Sky right now. A friend asked me to try it out and after quitting for a few months I came back to it and split my time evenly between this and BF2.

Graphically the game is great and when I turn down the settings a little to accomodate my 9700 it runs fine. The biggest slowdowns occur during raids which have 12+ people in a small area so it's trying to render all those people at once.

The biggest problem is that you must have a plan for this type of game or else you'll quickly become overwhelmed. Going to sites which have the quests spelled out on what to do are essential to making any sort of progress so you'll often not only be spending time in the game doing tasks but spending time out of the game getting the appropriate information and co-ordinates for the tasks.

You can quickly level grind through the first 20 or so levels but after that you would want to start getting into groups more often, especially the Heritage Quests where the spoils of battle are good. Even if you don't need the item(s) you can turn around and sell them on the in-game open market to other players and have make a comfortable digital living doing that so you can buy your own character new gear and what not.

Regardless, I feel so ashamed to admit liking this game as I used to avoid MMORPG's like the plague. But.. well, there it is now. Mock away.

All bets are off though, when Quake Wars arrives (hopefully this year).

WebDemon, unfortunately those people exist in all games. Perhaps he could've thrown a greande or two instead. Regardless, I always try to give snipers the knifey knifey since actually putting lead in them is just a waste of perfectly good ammo on sub-human snipers.

I have had a noticeable drop in problems with this game since 1.2. Load times for levels actually seem a bit faster, I have not seen the red tag bug, and the AA issues make it a real challenge for pilots who up till now seemed to be able to roam the skies with impunity.

It's unfortunate that the new weapon unlock for AT wasn't a shoulder mounted SAM because then they could've left the AA performance about the same pre-1.2 and just given grunts some sort of chance against jets when out in the open or not near stationary AA assets.

oh ya, that'll stop the cheaters.

Punkbuster is an incompetent piece of software. Real cheaters will always have a way while the rest of us legit players have to suffer through lag everytime we connect to a server. Maybe they should reverse their standing and hire some of the cheat coders within the community.

Idiots.

Personally, I did have a problem with PB last week when BF2 was updated. I understand though that many people did and it was subsequently fixed. The lag you speak of I'm not familiar with and most games I've played on line in the past few years (RtCW, Wolfenstein, and now BF2) have all used Punkbsuter.

PB will not of course stop the hardest most extreme cheaters. To use an anology, PB is like the lock on your house door. It's there to keep honest people honest but the real thieves will always try to break into your house.

PB's shortcoming is that it's dependent on a database of KNOWN exploits (wallhacks, auto-aimers, etc), so they can not spread "into the wild" and be subsequently used by everyone including match players who, one would hope, are relying more on skill than cheating.

Of course it's not a perfect system but I feel it adds a little extra security on public and match servers that properly administrate it.

It seems to be at the developers discretion. Enemy Territory, Doom 3, and --I think-- Quake 4, for example, came with it at the start.

It being a third party program there's most likely licensing and legal agreements that must be worked out that a saavy production lead would handle during development but others, whether it's time constraints or financial, might have to defer that until a later time.

I think deep down this is a cry for help.

It's an enthusiastic review, but it lacks profesionalism; you mock people who like games like Painkiller, calling them "stupid"; you tell people who don't like titles like SSII to "go back to Barbie dolls" and openly wonder why people would want to play this in singleplayer.

Newsflash: just because you don't like singleplayer games, that doesn't mean other people don't.

There's also barely any description of the environments, weapons, or enemies, and nothing about the technical aspects of the game. That sort of thing is important, even if you don't think it is.

You can still keep the 'off-the-wall' style and be informative and entertaining. The review wasn't boring to read, I'll give it that.

A few screenshots wouldn't hurt either.

But if you're comfortable with that style of review, don't let me dissuade you.

I don't agree with the assumption that technical aspects are important. I don't want to drive down that road like so many sites where they rattle off so many things about the bloom effects, anisiotropic and AA filtering, and all that rot. It makes a review sound like it's written by Data and not a person. I won't do it. Unless there's just something eye explodingly awesome in the game (for example the textures in Doom 3 are the best in any game to date due to their depth) then I won't nitpick about pixelation, v-syncs or trilinear filtering.

I *do* however go down the server administration side since I like hosting games for friends. More importantly, a game like Serious Sam 2, in my opinion, DEMANDS you play it in multiplayer co-operative. Other sites like Gamespy simply state, "Well single player is okay but multiplayer helps you ignore all the problems."

No, screw that! Skip the single player entirely. Ignore it on Serious Sam II like it doesn't exist. Single player in Serious Sam II is like the Easter Bunny being real or Bill O'Reily having a rational conversation. It just doesn't exist. Single player is Serious Sam II (and any of them) only gives you about 1/10th of the experience of co-operative play and so if someone does want to play Serious Sam II in single player they're cheating themselves out of a fantastic co-operative experience.

A game like Painkiller, though? Heck yeah play that single player mostly because there's no co-operative (unless a mod was made that I'm not aware of since it came out two years ago). Also, I never directly called people who played Painkiller stupid. I loved PK when it came out.

I used a possible argument (a silly one to be sure) as an example where if someone said they'd seen everything in a shooter (for example, a stake gun that throws enemies 50 feet backwards and drives them into the wall), well, they really need to reconsider that fact when playing Serious Sam 2.

Do I lack professionalism? Hell yeah I do. Look at that 1998 HTML code. Look at all those inactive verbs. I write a review or post some news from time to time and hopefully it might give people a chuckle or make them try a game if they hadn't already.

Details on the environments? Ok, yeah I messed that one up but I'll fix it. "Imagine the most ridiculous, yet graphically amazing game world you've ever seen. That's Serious Sam II. A Chinese carnival full of suicide clowns on unicycles, an oversized backyard where you end up using twigs as cover and are threatened by massive killer bees, or a massive Inca ruin overrun by zombie stockbrokers and an army of undead football players that make Jerome Bettis look tiny. That's Serious Sam II and if such things do not even cause a mild itch in your digital gaming subconcious then perhaps you should consider a new hobby."

Thanks for the input.

This comment was edited on Jan 24, 18:20.

HERE BE SPOILERS!!

It's quite true. With video! http://x300.putfile.com/videos/31221282591.mpg
http://x600.putfile.com/videos/31221493095.mpg
http://x600.putfile.com/videos/31221584221.mpg


This comment was edited on Nov 12, 10:42.

ARGGHHH!! More games that I want, all shipping at the exact same time. I really need to start saving money year round so I have enough moola handy to buy all of the good games that come out in the fall. I'm serious! Here's my short list:

Warhammer: Winter Assault
Serious Sam 2
Black and White 2
Brothers in Arms :EiB
Indigo Prophecy
Rome TW Barbarian Invasion
Dragonshard
The Suffering: Ties That Bind

That's just a list of games that shipped in the last 2 or 3 weeks. I've yet to pick up BF2, AND I'm planning on getting FEAR, Call of Duty 2, and Civilization 4 when they ship! Anyone got a thousand bucks handy?


Well I can help out here:

Black and White 2.. I mean Jesus it's Black & White 2. Isn't that a sure enough sign NOT to buy it? There, saved ya $40.

Rome TW expansion. Download the Realism mod instead. There, another $30 saved

Warhammer. Another RTS. Too much point and clicking already.

The others should just be put on the back burner. Except Serious Sam 2. And there ya go!

Well I really want an asteroid to hit the earth before October 7th so the world isn't exposed to another Black and White.

Probably because I screwed up. Was a bit tipsy while typing and editing. *sigh* Fixing later.

Thanks for posting the link Blue!

-Sphinx

Gentlemen, calm ourselves. Let us all just agree that killing Nazis will always beat any other type of online killing and leave it at that. As someone else once told me, "If I ever tire of killing Nazis, then I've stopped caring about life."

But from another article (as pointed out on PoeNews)

But from the march EGM ...
While Coppola himself has refrained from any direct involvement in the game, EA says he has been supportive of the idea. "We did meet with him," DeMartini says, "and he embraced the project--not as something he wanted to work on, but he invited us up to his private library, where we spent many hours, and we have access to all of his notes via this library. He was very gracious, but he's done three of these things and he's really not interested in doing any more Godfather stuff."

They listened to my request and actually sent me the one and only copy of the patch since I was the one and only person to steal it from the shelf.

I mean buy it. I bought it.

No.. Wait no I didn't. Who the hell are they patching this for since it didn't sell?

Fine, I'll be the first to say I'll buy it. Double barrel shotgun, Threewave CTF, shooting imps, and running down dark corridors where the only light you often have is plasma bolts hitting a cacodemon.

-Sphinx

Zombies are the best form of entertainment.

I will have to disagree. Nazis and the violent dismemberment thereof, is the best form of entertainment. Evidence: Levels in Wolfenstein with Nazis compared to levels in Wolfenstein with Zombies. Which was better? I'm sure an insightful person such as yourself sees my point.

Killing Nazis provides more entertainment. Anyone suggesting otherwise must be licking frogs for the high.

If the game is as good as the movie then this would be a very good thing.