Some games

Post by **Popcorn** » Thu Oct 28, 2004 7:09 pm

It's a fuckin' myth. Skies, Grandia and PDS own me.

Post by **Segaholic2** » Thu Oct 28, 2004 7:17 pm

A myth, like your being straight is a myth?

Post by **Popcorn** » Thu Oct 28, 2004 7:20 pm

No, like you're gay is a myth, like you're gay! And you're gay!

Double-S- · Post by **Double-S-** » Thu Oct 28, 2004 7:51 pm

I remember watching a friend play Half Life back in the day when it first came out and I wasn't all too impressed by it. But, the multiplayer definitely was fun.

aso · Post by **aso** » Thu Oct 28, 2004 8:43 pm

You know, I gotta side with Half-Life being amazing for an FPS. Back in the day, it felt more immersive and more real than anything that had come out up to that point. Rather than going through a dark castle, a Hellish castle, or a somewhat gray castle, you find yourself working through a science facility, a cliffside, a series of ramps, a storage facility... and you did this all while being assaulted by some of the flat out freakiest monsters that had come around.

These enemies were actually smart, too. Especially the military squads, which managed to outwit and kill me in several games. And don't get me started on the NPCs... you actually saw them die in horrible ways. You could save them or let them be massacred. You could turn traitor on your 'sidekicks' and see what happens. (Releasing whatever those Alien things are on a soldier buddy always makes me giggle.)

And this all came from single-player. Never played multiplayer. The full culmination of what came in single player was enough to make it landmark.

Should be noted, though, that Xen sucked.

As far as PC studios went, Looking Glass Studios was the fuckin' bomb. Any lineup with the Thief games and System Shock 2 is an instant winner. Shame they had to die... at least Warren Spector moved on to Deus Ex, which I actually rank a bit higher than Half-Life.

Post by **Popcorn** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 6:21 am

Yeah, Looking Glass rocked. I should've mentioned Deus Ex as another good PC one, but I didn't like its sequel an awful lot.

Xen did suck, yes.

Post by **Esrever** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 1:07 pm

Another thumbs up here for Half-Life... the only FPS I ever really got into. And CS was the only multiplayer FPS I ever played with any great regularity. I am very, very excited about HL2.

Post by **Green Gibbon!** » Tue Nov 09, 2004 6:42 pm

So I got to somewhere in level 4 with Sly 2, and I hate to say it, but I think I'm going to quit here.

That lack of long stages that irked me in the beginning has grown into a full-blown complaint. Rather than long, satisfying platformer stages, the entire game now takes place in these "hub" areas. I guess the goal was to provide more freedom than the very linear Sly 1 stages, but now there's just no focus. Figuring out where I'm supposed to go and how to get there is more of a pain in the ass than anything else, because I'm running past the same obstacles over and over and over. There's no sense of progression. Plus guards spawn and respawn, and sneaking around them quickly turns into a drag when you're just trying to get somewhere.

My least favorite thing about the original were the occasional mini-games, because I felt they interrupted the flow. Now, basically, the entire game is like that. There's alot of variety, but there just isn't any focus. All I want to do is maneuver the wily Sly through some long, satisfying platformer stages. Instead, I get to run back and forth over the same small area performing what are essentially tag missions, and half the time I'm not even playing as Sly. It's the Sonic Adventure 2 syndrome. Murray and Bentley, while they're great characters and more than welcome in the story, simply are not as unique or fun to play as Sly. The mini-games, like last time, are more of a distraction than anything else, and there are even more of them now.

Maybe it's just me. Everyone raves about how big an improvement over the original this is, but I'm extremely disappointed. This is like the combination of everything I hated about GTA 3 and the last couple of Sonic games. It's not what I was looking for at all.

Post by **Segaholic2** » Tue Nov 09, 2004 6:45 pm

Does anyone here follow the R&C or J&D games? I've never played any of them, but I finally bought the first and second in both of the series and I plan on playing through them in order whenever I can find the time (read: never).

I've been hearing lots of good things about the third and final games in both of those series. Can anyone else confirm this?

Post by **Squirrelknight** » Tue Nov 09, 2004 9:28 pm

The original Jak and Daxter and is better than the original Ratchet and Clank, where as the opposite is true of their sequels. Where as R&C2 refined and near-perfected the formula it layed out in the first game, Jak 2 is like that really dorky kid in high school who tried to be really cool by dressing in baggy clothes and pretending to understand rap... That game is like a wigger in videogame form. It tries really hard to be "cool" and appeal to the GTA crowd, but the GTA-esque elements of Jak 2 are pretty shitty, and even though the platforming parts of that game are top-notch, the GTA sections make waht should've been a fantastic platformer into a mediocre one.

I don't have the third games in each series yet because well... Halo 2 this week, Metroid Prime 2 next week, and the DS after that. I have no time for them.