I haven't played Invisible War yet, but some of the bad things people have said about it actually sound like fixes to me
Actually, you might be better off playing IW first if you haven't tried it yet.
And it wasn't necessarily a bad game...it just certainly WAS NOT a suitable followup to such a great game.
Also, IHMO, the game is overlong.
Harvey Smith thought the same thing and we got Invisible War. That game probably adhered more to Smith's desire for DX1 to have been only 2/3 the length it was. I thought the length was a little bit long, too, but I consider DX:IW the opposite result of DX in terms of streamlining - they just went way too far with it.
Also there are many articles where Spector came out defending harvey's stupid ideas like Universal Ammo, he was intimately involved.
That still doesn't explain why DX:IW was so inferior to DX; presuming how much control you believe Spector had over the design of the game.
"Intimately involved". He represented the game to the publisher, I suppose. Beyond that, I have yet to read anything saying Spector didn't let Harvey Smith design the game to his (Smith) own vision. Anything.
And it's been stated in numerous interviews Harvey Smith had the reigns on the entire design of IW. A person doesn't have to read between the lines of these interviews to get the idea Smith had his ideas for a DX sequel devised before the first was even released. Or that by the time play testing got around to figuring out which features didn't mesh well, the game was far too along in development to be worth the big delays likely required to redesign them. Or that Eidos was leaning hard on Ion Storm to produce a game...you know, the whole "suits and marketing execs" thing.
Enemy troopers used squad tactics, flush you out with grenades, etc.
Well, they hid behind cover and chucked grenades at you anyway. And those damn Marines did that really well. Some of the supposedly evolutionary AI features the enemies were said to possess apparently didn't make it into the game. There were supposedly plans for enemies to outflank the player and even do coordinated rushes of the player's position. Encountering the blackops girls towards the end, they might have had some better AI coding, but it seemed to me they reacted like the Marines, just faster and quieter.
If I play a story-driven game for 40+ hours, I want a decent ending that lasts more than a minute.
If it's quantity of time you are looking for, pop in any Final Fantasy game (typical FF endings are great, IMO, but lengthy); or better yet, pop in Metal Gear Solid 4 and watch a 15 hour movie.
The endings for DX were very interpretative and if you're a player who would rather have an ending just handed over and explained to you, DX won't work for you. Considering your comments over the action portions of DX, Call of Duty is probably more your line.
This comment was edited on Nov 6, 2009, 11:58.