I don't know what planet you live on Beamer but game prices have been 50 bucks since the genesis/Snes days. At least here in the north east US they have. Plain and simple prices for everything are going up. I fully expect most next gen xbox/ps3 games to release at 60 and people will buy them without even a second thought.

I don't honestly know if VU funded any of HL2 at all but the fact remains they stood by valve for years waiting for a sequel, they stood by for years waiting for TF2 (wheres that?) But because the're the big bad publisher! oh nos! lets dump on em! The industry would die without publishers. Hey guys I hate EA as much as the rest of you but the're good for the industry as a whole.

As for the debate on Tribes it was a combination of 2 things, releasing at a terrible time between HL2 and Doom3 and catering too much to the Tribal War fanbois on the development end of things. Not to mention no one bought the fricken game to begin with. I do think Irrational redeemed themselves with Swat 4 however.

Its the way you defend Valve to death that makes me say that. No HL2 was actually not that great at all imho I know most people disagree with me but after all the hype I honestly thought the game was kinda craptastic, Source is a decent engine, I loved Bloodlines and quite honestly if BL had been a little more polished it would have gotten my GotY award but thats a whole other topic.

Don't bother feeding Beamer, its become obvious to me he either works for valve or wants to have Gabe's love child. One or the other.

If it means more Steam like programs that force you to have them run while playing single player, than no, no its not a good thing. I have no problem with trying to cut out the middle man. Its the way they go about it that worries me.

Thats where my thoughts differ from alot of you guys. Without publishers half the games you know and love would never have seen the light of day. In most cases a dev studio simply can't afford to pay for everything, let alone just the development cost of a game, espcially considering how the cost to develop a game has been rising steadily over the past few years.

Yes there are some publishers that push things out early and that isn't excusable, but alot of you seem to be pretty nieve when it comes to the money side of the industry. Like it or not the publishers 9 outta 10 times are footing the bill for the games in the first place.

If I were putting that much into a project, I'd want it done in a timely manner and within a schudle thats more often than not set by the devs themselves in the first place, ie. give us 14 months and your game will be done. well 16 months later the're still in alpha mode, this kind of thing happens all the time.

If a dev team realistically can't get a game done in 14 months or what not, they shouldn't say they can. It just makes publishers look bad for shoving stuff out the door early when in reality more times than not its the devs themselves slacking and dropping the ball.

Good luck to Valve on finding a publisher willing to put up with their shit for the retail side of things, unless of course they think everyone is going to embrace steam now. I'm certainly not.

You're an odd one Beamer. The return to city 17 towards the end I thought was the only decent levels of the game,At least action happened there with the striders and resistance etc rather than the kill a few combine & move on theme that was pretty much the entire rest of the game. I felt like I were finally where you needed to be after going from point a to b for the WHOLE ENTIRE REST OF THE FRICKEN GAME, seriously, thats all the game felt like to me, one big ass line of keep going Gordon! maybe if you're lucky in the next area we'll mention a story! Oh you got here? we were kidding about the story ha ha fooled you!

But hey, if tedious levels and crate stacking jumping puzzles are your thing, by all means! enjoy!

Thats pretty much what I meant Squirrel. I don't hate Valve at all, they've never done anything to me personally.

Really I just think both HL2 and Valve on the whole are kinda over rated, that is all. No hating just stating my opinion, I'm sure some people disagree with that and thats quite fine, the're also entitled to their opinion as well.

No I meant more so the engine itself Beamer, Altho I'm assuming the first project we see on it will be another UT game while not innovative game wise, the tech alone seems pretty fantastic.

People honestly still care about HL or Valve? Are there really that many of you who are just suckers? The ai in hl2 blew, the story was non existant, the physics consisted pretty much of stacking crates to jump on top of. ooo thats so innovative! I do think Source is solid don't get me wrong but HL2 as a game was imo mediocre as shit.

Much more interested in what Unreal 3 has to offer quite personally. CS Source doesn't do it for me, with its floaty movement, and god aweful hit dectection. looks like an SOF2 clone, no thx.

And this is why I have stuck with Nvidia. Sure they may have an issue or 2 in a driver with a particular game here and there, but you never see this sort of VPU Recover issue on Nvidia's end. OOO I may get 110 fps in HL2 rather than 112! I'd rather have stability and solid performance than have to deal with the types of issues ATI users seem to come across on a regular basis.

Clerks of course!

Hmm do ya think since the site was down for 2 days we could maybe get the popups removed for 2 days to compensate? I mean it'd only be fair right? hehe I keed I keed.

Hey Blowski, do us all a favor, strap some C4 to yourself, find somewhere really secluded and blow yourself up. k thx!

Thanks to some of you for proving my point about how Blizzard can do no wrong. I rest my case.

This is exactly the thing that gets me. How much people complain, especially on Blue's. Blizzard does the same thing with Wow and not a sole complains. SoE does it with EQ2 and everyone has a massive corinary over it. C'mon guys really. If you're gonna bitch find a good reason to bitch.
SoE could have given people nothing. That would have been a reason. This however is NOT a reason to bitch.

On another note I've never really understood the holy pedastal Blizzard is put on. I don't think they've once made an innovative game. Hell WoW heavily borrows from every other mmo out there already, Even down to a talents system thats clearly ripped right out of Diablo2. But its ok if Blizzard doesn't innovate, no one bitches. If its SoE or any other company people cry holy hell. I just don't get it.

Jesus Beamer pull your head outta Gabe's ass long enough to realize in this case Valve is wrong, and that they are being greedy, to the extent of going after cybercafes for having their games playable just because OOOH "They didn't pay us, Valve! full price! WE WANT OUR MONEY!" sorry guys but that reeks of greed to me.

Noted, I guess its just not a game for ya then. Altho one comment I kinda disagree with, I really don't find it a step down from HL2 at all graphically, Hell I think Troika used far more shaders than Valve did and personally I found most of the building textures in HL2 to be pretty god awful and bland. Again possibly just a difference in taste.

My specs are a 3200+ (non 64)
Gig of DDR 400
Nvidia 6800GT

I believe I get an average of 100 on the Source Demotest and BL runs great for me unless I'm playing for a good 4-5 hours then I notice some mem leakage setting in, not sure what my fps is exactly in BL as I don't know the command to check, or even if there is one. But it really runs very well for me. Sorry you're not enjoying it tho. Like I said earlier for me its a definate game of the year canidate altho that may change with LOTR:Battle For Middle Earth shipping in about a week. Been looking forward to getting my grubby lil hands on that as well.

To each their own Scottish, I enjoyed the combat, but then again I've played the pnp version and it translated pretty much how I would expect it would. I think you may be going into the combat with an FPS mentality tho, clearly its quite different in that reguard.


I'd be interested to hear your system specs since it sounds like your issues are more due to poor performance to begin with rather than the game itself.

edit: whoops just saw your reply. You do know you can switch to 3rd person right? You may have an easier time with combat that way. The whole game I did all the combat in 3rd person and I really didn't have any issues and found it to be pretty fun. Altho this very well could be a case of different taste, in that reguard I guess we agree to disagree.

This comment was edited on Nov 28, 03:00.

Granted we all know Troika doesn't exactly have a good track record reguarding bugs, but I for one would put the blame far more on Activision in this case as they have an even bigger habbit of sitting on patches or not releasing them at all (anyone remember starfleet command 3? that patch still never officially came out and is prolly still sitting in Acti's QA dept somewhere rotting on a HD)

Is the game buggy yes, is it playable? yes, I'm on my second run thru with no crashes and no real issues aside from some slowdown here and there and some texture poping from time to time.

SMA: as for you comment about the combat, obviously you have never played the PnP version, its pretty much translated directly from that as it should be and works pretty damn well if ya ask me, keep in mind it's an RPG not a first person shooter its not going to work the same as HL2 or Doom.

Should the game have been shipped in the state its in? No prolly not, but really if you look past the bugs it has, its a damn awesome rpg, and since VTM games are very few & far between well I'll take it, bugs and all.

As for Troika striking out, I'd partially agree with that, both Arcanum and TOEE were imo utter crap, Bloodlines on the other hand is a fantastic game in a somewhat flawed (due to bugs and glitches) package, I'd more call it a check swing rather than a full strike.

First time posting here but I've been lurking on blues for close to 4 or more years now. Had to toss my 2 cents in as BL for me right now is game of the year, even with the bugs. Personally I found HL2 to be pretty lackluster gameplay wise, its only redeemable factor was the physics gun and even that got old after awhile.


edited since I can't spell for crap

This comment was edited on Nov 28, 01:41.