The Gamer's Quarter

dhex · Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 8:41 pm Post subject: genre gorging

so i've been playing half-life 2 quite a bit lately, specifically ravenholm, the introduction and the nova prospekt chapters. got a new videocard on a whim to celebrate my vacation and picked up a few titles to go with it, all fps stuff. doom 3, far cry and halo (which i can't actually play because it don't like the 5500 series of nvidia cards, so if someone wants it...)

half-life 2 is trying to be a watchowski/our scumbag future kinda thing

and far cry is a jerry bruckheimer "IN A WORLD..." type game

and doom 3 is a ewe boll masterofsuspense experience (i think, i haven't really tried it yet)

but they're all kinda stuck with what they have to do. half life 2 is the only one which really tries to be more than what it is, specifically the introduction sequence. 1984+the handmaids tale+every other dystopian future novel and movie tossed into a blender. and it does it without crossing over into an rpg hybrid or anything like that. it's not that it tells a great story in the least, but that it makes you feel it, just a bit. a twinge of grey creep, and the only vestiges of civil society pre-combine are a crazy russian priest, empty coastal shanty houses and a prison/torture center. it's actually communicating something, i think, beyond shoot kill shoot. looping that endlessly weeping woman and endlessly pitying man at both the intro and the beginnings of the uprising...they clearly made it exactly the same for a reason. maybe that reason is to demonstrate how useless some women are when it comes to fighting an alien invasion, but somehow i don't think so.

far cry is hilarious. it is an absolutely hilarious game, and i want to believe it's that way on purpose. so i'm going to assume it is, because it's the most realistic jerry bruckheimer movie ever...in that you die every 3 seconds, but get to try again and again and again. even on easy it's damn near impossible. i can't imagine how difficult hard must be.

doom 3 has a pretty neat intro, but the whole demons devils ooga booga look out there's a zombie with a handgun dude thing is, at first glance, kinda stupid. i'm hoping it gets better. it's a beautiful game, however. they're all beautiful games, in their own ways. hl2 is very efficient in that sense.

anyway, one point is that first person games are excellent for creating a certain kind of mood, and in a way are better at cinematic stuff than most action movies. unless you're counting those prone to motion sickness, is there a better way to sort of cheat and suck in your audience than using that pov?

sidenote: why is it so easy to get competent voice acting - if ridiculous, still appropriate - for games like this and final fantasy x get's dorkwad and co.?
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Mister Toups · Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 8:56 pm Post subject:

The strength of both Half Life and Half Life 2 is that they never lose sight of the immediate moment, wherever you are. So even when the narrative gets downright wacky, you are still compelled to move on.

Your assessment of Doom 3 is spot on. You probably shouldn't bother playing it, it's a waste of time/hard drive space/marketing effort/human capital/etc.
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Mister Toups · Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 8:57 pm Post subject: Re: genre gorging

dhex · Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 9:11 pm Post subject:

oddly enough, i was very disappointed when i found out it was a 3rd person game. i will check it out when it becomes economically feasible.
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disneyland · . Joined: 16 Jun 2005 Posts: 131 Location: Shinsei

Wait till the last boss-but-not-really and final level of Far Cry. Totally ridiculous difficulty. I was laughing.

I really do enjoy Half-Life 2. I think it's excellent. I have a fairly insane PC (the SLI stuff, all the trimmings) and playing it at 1600x1200 resolution with no jagged edges or shimmer on any 3D surfaces -- well it's really nice to look at, basically. Besides that, I think the action is great. How the hovering 'Man Saw' drones bounce off walls as their guidance systems fail them (that's the clear impression given, anyway, not game pathfinding failure) in tight spaces. Just the shooting itself is superb. It's "hard". It has a "punch". The Halo games, the Pariahs, Project Snowblind - they have gunplay that feels soft. That critical connection you feel between the first person perspective and the release of firepower into an enemy or object feels soft in those games. In Half-Life 2, and I think they captured it in Doom 3, that connection feels like it has a real physical effect. It's raw; not so contrived. Like the rocket launcher in Half-Life 2: it has this sort of frightening velocity and impact.

So besides the rather affecting story and character devices used and all those lovely visuals, Half-Life 2 feels really great, inside that world and inside that action. The physics aren't "ooh, look!" so much as "ah yes, this completes the environment nicely". I also like that there are no cut-scenes and you never leave the first person perspective, ever. I decided last year that it was one of the finest games I'd ever played. I like first person done well, and I like action stuff. It's probably the best use of the POV in an action game yet. 3 or 4 years ago, had you asked me if I could ever take a FPS game seriously enough, no matter how cool it was, for it to be a favorite - I might have giggled.

simplicio · . Joined: 03 May 2005 Posts: 1091

Blazehedgehog · . Joined: 11 Mar 2005 Posts: 21 Location: Colorado

Mister Toups · Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2005 2:38 am Post subject:

The music's a little generic. That's the only real problem.
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simplicio · . Joined: 03 May 2005 Posts: 1091

dhex · Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2005 9:31 am Post subject:

playing ravenholm on headphones for the first time on a cold winter morning at 3 a.m. was definitely rapture-inducing. the way those pipes would shake and that RAAAAARRRGGGHHHAAAAAGLLLAAAAAAAA pain-ridden zombie sound... like they want to die so badly but can't because there's this fucking thing eating what's left of their head.