You know, if I ever named a band, I'd call it 1 + e^(i*pi)=0. That'd be cool.

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This series has been around forever, and they've always been enjoyable. Hopefully the jettisoning of the LAPD license will let them do some fun things (oddly enough, I imagine losing the license will let them live up to the LAPD's reputation even more than they could before, if they make it an M-rated game).

"SWAT: Urban Justice is the only game to reward players for saving lives and protecting the innocent." Little hyperbole there?

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The "M" rating logo at the end of the trailer seems a little redundant after seeing people explode into a shower of gibs and blood before it. Doesn't look like anything particularly groundbreaking in terms of the effects, but it should be fun...can't wait for the demo.

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Obiwan is already out (as would seem obvious since you're posting reviews). It's supposed to be horrible.

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What single player FPS has ever had 20 hours of gameplay? Deus Ex got me up to around 15 hours, and that was the longest FPS I can ever recall playing. I beat MOH in about seven hours. I think the trend is definitely going towards shorter games, so I really doubt you'll be getting your 20 hours out of it. Could be wrong, though.

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Sounds...wonderful. Now all we need is a Romance of the Three Kingdoms Online, and we'll be set in the Incredibly Boring Online Game category.

Most of those sound fairly boring anyway. And if they don't drastically overhaul the mechanics of Resident Evil, I have a feeling that will be a hilarious train wreck of a game. The controls make the games barely playable in single-player...

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Jesus Christ, you people are idiots. Why is it that any halfway intelligent discussion about games always comes around to a submoronic flame war about consoles and PC's? Why on earth does everyone feel the need to defend their choice to the death? Christ, it's all about the games, and to tell you the truth, 90% of games on any platform in any genre are absolute turds. So if you're happy with the games on the PC, fine; if you like playing on consoles, fine; if you own a console and a PC, fine. More power to you, if you have fun playing games. That's the whole point, isn't it?

What is it with this "debate" that makes it so compelling for you people? You guys remind me of the monkeys in the beginning of 2001 that are fighting over the waterhole: lots of screeching and chestthumping, but no one ever wins any territory. No one's ever going to win the war...they both have their good and bad aspects, so what's the point of arguing about it?

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"*LilWookie* How will you be supporting solo gamers, especially crafters?
<Holocron> We've seen lots of debate on this on the boards. Basically, the answer is that we are trying to make sure that you are part of a society online.
<Holocron> So there IS interdependance required. But you can play without ever actually player WITH other people. We have a lot of things in the game to allow you to trade and engage in buisness without needing to actually talk to those people.
<Holocron> You can set up missions to have people deliver goods to your factory, for example, you can sell thing without being online, etc."

Sounds like...fun...I guess. I don't know; when I think about Star Wars I think about Jedi slicing through stormtroopers with lightsabers and then beating other stormtroopers down with the first stormtroopers' severed arms, not about people sitting back manufacturing blasters for sale. Why would anyone want to play an MMORPG just to make bric-a-brac? It's always escaped me.

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I like how they posted comparison shots for max detail / min detail settings, and also gave approximate fps for a variety of systems (with believable specs, as opposed to the "this benchmark is on a P4 OC'ed to 2.8 ghz with 2gigs of DDR Ram" syndrome). For those interested, the pics are here:

http://www.packmule.org/preview/worst_gfx.jpg
http://www.packmule.org/preview/best_gfx.jpg

Hard to tell how good the game looks, even in the best shot, simply because there don't seem to be many spell effects or colored lights or anything like that to ooh and ahh over, but it's useful for comparison's sake. Can't wait for this game...

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You're probably right about it's competition. As it was, I waited a while to buy it (it was 20 bucks when I finally pikced it up). I believe I actually waited on it until after Half-Life came out, and that of course that would influence my opinion a bit. If I had gotten it closer to its launch, I might feel the same way as you do.

As it is, I suppose it was alright. Not the worst game ever, but there have been plenty of games to come along before and since that have impressed me much more. Here's hoping UnrealII is better out of the box, if only because Legend's headquarters is like 15 miles away from where I live. Got to represent the NOVA love, etc., etc.

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I remember Unreal as being all-graphics, no gameplay. At least, the single-player was just boring, and the multiplayer, when it was implemented, was never really playable due to lag and other issues. It looks like these guys may have enough technology to make this game another graphical benchmark, but hopefully the story and level design will make it worth playing through more than once. The animation technology definitely sounds neat, even if I didn't understand the particulars of it. I remember reading that Jak and Daxter on the PS2 had some kind of system that let the game "fill in the gaps" between frames of character animation, which made them seem much more smooth than if they had been meted out in the traditional way; I don't know if this is similar, but it sounds like the technology they're using, if it can truly produce completely unique animations, will have to have something like that...should be neat to see.

I'm somewhat surprised to see the article making a big deal about the need to have a card with T&L. That's what, every performance card released in the last two years, excepting the KyroII? Big deal.

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The only problem is that no one knows when the mid-grade GF4 will be out. They've announced the ti4600 at 399, the ti4400 at 299, and the ti4200 at 199, but the first two will be out before the last one, and I can't find a solid release date on it. I imagine it won't be held up too much longer than the first two cards, but the longer they wait to release it, the shorter lifetime it'll have. Just another way to make more money, I suppose: release the fastest cards first so that anyone who wants to upgrade has to spend at least a hundred more bucks than they would if they waited for a card that is exactly the same, but with lower clock and memory speeds. Pretty annoying.

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Not sure what they were thinking when they decided to name this thing a GeForce4. I suppose you can simply put it up to their willingness to use their brand name to sell somewhat inferior products? No one can take a look at the benchmarks and claim that the GF4MX is comparable in speed even to a low-end GF3, and it certainly isn't a match for the GF4 Ti. It's an odd thing they've done.

I just hope they come out with the GF4Ti4200 sooner rather than later. I'm still abusing my GF256 DDR card that's almost two years old.

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Hmm. Well, I would imagine the Lucasarts website still has it; it's not that difficult to sign up for a membership. I imagine it'll be up soon on the Raven site if it's not working now. It's definitely not to be missed. Can't wait for this game; it looks stupendous.

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I for one can't wait. Even though he won't be able to use the TA brand name, Total Annihilation is still one of the only RTS games I can bear to play, simply because it's utter simplicity. It can devolve into speed rushes and impossible stalemates because of the infinite resources, but the unit ideas were really cool and the animations for the little robots beats anything I've yet seen in an RTS. Hopefully it'll be another game set far in the future...

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I think he was responding to post #3 but clicked on #2 (yours) instead.

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Wasn't Force Grip known as Force Choke in JK2, though? I guess they wanted a more general term for it.

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4,999 testers, because my spot is already on hold for me, I believe. The voices told me so.

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I don't remember making this post, but I might as well have some text here. This game looks neat, but I think it's doomed to be among the most cheated-on games within a year of its release...we've all seen what happened to Diablo 2. Hopefully they can figure something out to prevent the mistakes of the past.

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This comment was edited on Feb 6, 22:17.

Another year, another baffling list of nominees. Did Wolfenstein get on their due to the hype machine, or did no one at the AIAS actually play it? The SP in that game was boring through and through, but it still goes up for game of the year? I can see it maybe up for Online Game Play, but I think MOH:AA is a much more deserving nominee for the other categories. Maybe it was released too late, though.


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This comment was edited on Feb 6, 21:13.