Maybe that's because he's getting reamed-1 in Painkiller?

Well, after numerous accounts of HalfLife 2 having problems in XP that suddenly disappear while using Windows 98, I would say that whoever still uses 98 might have better reasons for this than the average Joe on this board could come up with.

Don't worry Sho, a post in defense of doom3 on Blues is almost as fruitless as trying to get into a rational conversation with a G.W.Bush zealot.

I mean, it was Half Life 2 that stole the show with its insanely intelligent AI-routines and its baffling story evolution, right folks?

This comment was edited on Jan 21, 11:11.

"If someone does this mod, I GUARANTEE if you do it right it would blow counter-strike away."

Hold your breath, WarPig. The mod community is not asleep.

I'm happy to see the intelligent minds of the Blues News Message Boards report - just after their announcement that Doom3 is the worst game of 2004 and HL2 the best game ever made - that the Americans had the biggest share in defeating the Germans in WW2.

Very informative stuff, this.

"...puzzle solving and stealth action for the gamers that prefer to use their brains..."

These are the same poor people that constantly get fragged in Q3RA, wonder why, and then blame the game for being "mindless", hehe.

Soooo...I wouldn't expect much more than Half-life 2 graphics from the next generation of consoles.

Uhh, yeah, and what planet do you live on? Oh wait, what would I expect from someone believing in major memory overheads caused by "plots". ( ;), I hope )

On topic, the shots must be fake. They might very well approach the level of detail on next gen systems (or the other way around, I think they could be pretty close), but I don't think this is actual game code running on anything even resembling a devkit.

I agree with your opinion on the extra "functionality" added by the physics, it doesn't hinder the experience at all (like scripted evvents, imo, totally take away the action and spontaneity of the game). Using it for certain set purposes or goals is great, but I think things shouldn't be made all too scripted or obligatory. HL2 does really well in this regard and that's why everybody likes it so much of course.

To explain a bit more: I really really disliked Call of Duty, because the whole game was scripted to a literal death. And that game was GOTY 2003? I don't believe it! Even a game like doom3, despised by so many on these boards offered 500% more gameplay and applicable intuition to the gamer than the whole "oh yeah, and then the player comes in and points his gun somewhere, shoots, and the scripting continues"-approach of that bogus movie-like pile of crap. I thought the days of CDi were over.

Fishy, I knew that this was the background to hl2, but it still didn't make a difference. You know it at the start, you can see it in the end, and nothing really changes in between. You meet some people, but it's like you meet a person and immediately go on to kill some bad guys just because they want you to...the fact is that gordon is confused and has the position to not simply start doing what everybody says...a more dramatic introduction to the story is what I must be missing, I think.

Furthermore, this combine has massive power but all you do is travel the whole freaking country whistling, without being held back. It's like the game leads you to the end using a golden cord, and anything you touch bows down like you're the president himself. This is realistic nor fun.

I don't know what you mean by "a story that doesn't give you much to chew on but has it where it counts". In my view, you knew from the start that you were going to work for some guy named the g-man, who could apparently transport you to various (parallel?) dimensions. All that happened in the second game was that this fact got acknowledged. There wasn't a single bit more to it than that, and all the stuff about city 17 (which everybody knew except you) remained left to guess (like why does everyone expect gordon to know the situation in city 17, if he has been away for such a long time?).

Such important info - it is essential for gordon's motive to kill - doesn't get presented or hinted at, but instead you get some cheap melodramatic "social interaction" which is only an excuse to show off a facial animation technology. Alex was REALLY out of place in this environment (and useless IMO), and not for a single moment I felt compelled to go out and move to their (Alex/Eli's) place or save their ass.

All this means that in the beginning I was totally disconnected to the reason why I should ever kill anyone or get into so much trouble in the first place (although I had the feeling nobody really wanted to block my path anyway, another letdown).

Personally, I think the story of half life 2 doesn't bring anything new to that universe and therefore it was the only letdown (still a big one) of an otherwise classic game. I rather even have a somewhat simpler and tackier story like doom3's presented well (in the form of the stones, for one), than one with so much promise that just doesn't evolve during an entire game like in HL2. They don't have to hand it to me on a silver platter, but this way I really felt like the story and people in city 17 didn't matter.

Just my opinion, so feel free to flame.
This comment was edited on Nov 23, 08:04.

If NFSU2 were a presidential candidate, would one suddenly vote for G. W. Bush?

If G. W. Bush were a racing game, would one suddenly like NFSU2?

Tough questions, I'd say.

Well, I can't say I have had an easy time playing on easy difficulty either. I played with a mate (both controlling 2 members) but as of yet we haven't been able to finish the last level in campaign mode. I have the feeling that sometimes you and your enemies just move too fast, making it easy for things to go totally out of control, especially if you also need to take care of a computer-controlled character.

I feel so incompetent.

Some of the ideas in this game are excellent though, thumbs up!

"I did not bother to read the link"

Well I found it to be a very good read; although - or maybe "because", but that would be too arrogant/generalizing - I'm not American, this whole convention made me laugh about the nature of the speeches...it looked like a festival of blind idealism, a conference of contradictory statements, a fully irrational hype-a-thon where the current president was approached like some god and everybody acted like they just won the lottery.

However, it's always hard to put these (often biased) feelings apart and start an objective analysis about what has really been said: and in that respect I think it's a great article. But hey, what do I know, many times I just don't understand a certain culture (like, say, the chinese). Then I look at it, frown a bit, and then just discard it on the basis of lack of experience and knowledge of a certain area.

Don't bother, toad. This acleacius guy is seriously trolling, hoping that someone will bite. Here are some idiot statements that will convince you of that, and actually they're pretty funny.


"Its really starting to look like its the same, Doom hatchet/boys that post [...] Begining to wonder if they are actaully paid to make stupid statments or if they are just little kids whom found out they had a dick and think the rest of us, give a shit or something. "

"This just cracks me up, that a game was made where player cant hold a flashlight and a pistol/weapon at the same time."

"Yeah I have heard about this, apparently objects do not move even close to correctly, I have read that ID is up for the, Deus Ex Invisable War Stupid Physics Award for the grenade physics."

"Monster living in the wall, waitig for you to walk up to a desk to trigger the wall to disappear is childishly amateur "

"ID enginge games stick out like a sore thumb cause they cant do large levels, which severly limits game development."

"Its seems painfully obvious that given the size of the levels balanced with the state of the netcode this engine shouldnt even have been released yet."

"Any engine developer could release a engine so detailed it couldnt run on current tech. "

" Yet they release an engine that cant be fully used for at least a year. "

"Maybe they consider it a gamble, after the Q3 engine problems it was almost obsolete after 2 years."

" The last 2 games made with [the Quake 3 engine,] Voyager 2 and cant remember the other but they looked way out dated compared to other engines at the time. "


Hehe, it's apparent that he hasn't even played doom3 (I have heard! :P), but that doesn't matter. I'm sure he cannot mean all of this, that would be an insult to his own intelligence.


This comment was edited on Aug 8, 06:39.

I played through system shock 2 as well, and as far as scaryness goes, IMO they're on the same level. System Shock has a setting of terror that I found to be even better than doom3 (the Many are really your worst nightmare), but the lighting of doom3 is so terrifying that I'd be amazed if system shock 2 would scare me as much as it did back then. I mean, that game should be a sunny day in the park now.

Furthermore, what's with all the complaining about the spawning enemies? That happened to me in System Shock 2 all the time! I just knew that after I'd cleared a room, some bugger would start running at me from just that direction. After some time it got predictable, you just knew when to expect someone.

"DUKE NUKEM 3D had more interactivity in its game world than Doom 3... "

Yeah well, somebody not liking a game and then turning up on a messageboard with such arguments DOES make me a "fucker that cant accept the fact that people have their own damn opinions about things ".

Well then, could anybody explain to me what's the "variety" and "originality" in farcry? I mean, I had a blast playing it, but already from the demo it feels like they had a good engine and tried to tack some levels onto it afterwards. From the vehicles to the AI, it all looks and plays nice but it's clumsy at the same time. That's the overall feeling I get from that game. I tried to play the game a second time, but all the situations are the same again; no matter what approach I try, it always ends into some sort of standard gunfight again. If you know exactly where everyone is, you could try the sneak approach (with a lot of effort), but after you've done your predefined routine for 100 times it gets kinda boring. So it ends up in the same fight where people duck for cover behind crates and barrels...actually something that happens in doom3 as well.

I have the feeling that doom3 realizes the gameplay the developers imagined much better through the small corridors, limited light (flaslight/weapon switching is awesome, especially with muzzle flashes), and much more in-your-face combat. I know the basic principle makes it simpler for the designers to guide the player into the action, but because the game is so professionally executed, it's not that bad to step into the same situation twice. You just feel that you're constantly being kept busy and you never have the feeling some parts don't really "connect" due to leveldesign allowing for unwanted behaviour or AI having a bad day/getting stuck somewhere. Half Life is THE perfect example of giving the player the feeling that the AI is great just by picking the right situations. Because really, the AI-part of the enemy behaviour there isn't THAT great/complex, they are helped a lot by the leveldesigners being able to tell beforehand what an NPC *could* do and where.

Secondly, is there ANYONE out there who doesn't like doom3, but thought that Call of Duty was an awesome experience? In all seriousness, I would like to hear arguments supporting that, because it's totally unimaginable to me.

And they seem to work very very well here. I can't post number because I don't know how to enable an fps counter but on my Radeon9700 Pro AMD 1.6ghz rig (which should be HEAVILY processor-dependent) I could swear it runs 10-20 fps faster at 1024x768x2AAx4AF.

While I wasn't really satisfied with performance already from the start (eyeballing 35fps average), I'm really satisfied now. Gonna play some more to see if it really holds during fighting scenes.

Edit: Hmmm, others aren't experiencing huge performance gains (5-10 fps). So maybe Ati's marketing department tricked me here.

This comment was edited on Aug 3, 19:25.

Dunno if it's already mentioned here like 10 times or something, but Ati released some very early betas for the performance hungry buggers among us, to boost up doom3 speeds. Check out rage3d, gonna try them now.

I feel the same way about Quake3 deathmatch versus UT. And I'm glad to hear some people who have the same thoughts, because most of my friends don't get it either.

I like to describe this UT-phenomenon as a twitch factor that makes every close-combat battle feel and look like some RSI-inducing manifestation of purely digital combat maneuvers. Like: press the button and change direction instantly. This way, people move like they are muskitos on steroids. And then they even raise the speed of the game as by a factor 2 as well.

In Quake, when you change directions, you really feel your mass/player being slowed down due to acceleration along the negative velocity vector. Just at the middle of this process there's this small pause where you stand still in space. That's when you're vulnerable, and that's the price you'll have to pay for changing directions. Which makes such tradeoffs more tactical, IMO.

Unreal does not have such a price, it's just twitch until you die. I always felt like there wasn't as much of a "tactic" while moving your player (when considering very short time intervals).

That, to me, is what gameplay is all about.