The Gamer's Quarter

Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

The first time the doctor teleported, I thought he just exploded in a fine mist of gib for no reason. It looks very cool.

This game is looking better by the minute. I just hope they make the more humanoid mutants look different enough one from the other and they centre the weapons a little.
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

I kind of hate spoilers, so I'll just take you folks word on this. I'm excited enough that I don't need more prodding (that dev walkthrough spoiled way too much for me).
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Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

Yeah I try to avoid spoilers with any game I'm looking forward to, unless I'm asked to write up a preview. Otherwise games tend to lose their impact!
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Nana Komatsu · weak sauce Joined: 17 Jul 2006 Posts: 1293

I hate when major spoilers to games I am currently playing are blurted out in my presence by people who are aware I have not yet completed said games.
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seryogin · Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 9:42 am Post subject:

Guys, I have never played any System Shock, though this thread has made me curious enough to read about it. It sounds like quite a game and here's an article by Gillen that's pretty good. (warning massive spoilers)

http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/?page_id=1103
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Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

It is quite a series, though overall, I prefer Thief. The problem with System Shock 2 in particular are the RPG-like stats, which undermines the purpose behind a direct first person perspective. It doesn't destroy the gameplay as offensively as Deus Ex does, but it does leave a sour taste in the mouth.

I'd suggest looking into both the Thief series and the System Shock one if you can. You'll at the very least be pleased by the cleverness and maturity of the stories woven. Thief's stealth mechanics are certainly worthwhile at that.

There's something about Bioshock that bugs me: The little girls are the only ones capable of recycling dormant Adam, the "currency" of the game. Hence the imposing bodyguards. But it's been confirmed that, if we so wish, and if we can defeat their guardians, we can steal their Adam supply, as they'd logically be stocked up on it. But that means child murder. Regardless, does that mean that the more of them we kill, the less they are around recycling Adam, so that by messing up the eco-system, later in the game, we're less likely to find Adam around?
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Why does that bug you? That sounds awesome.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

It bugs me because I don't know if they've incorporated it.

And with all their talk of emergent gameplay and creating a credible ecosystem, they'd gain so much if it is.
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dhex · Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 1:04 pm Post subject:

i'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.

ss1 is good but ss2 is better in many ways, especially with the updated texture patches. it's a very credible environment, though i don't know if it would make any sense to someone who didn't play the first.
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Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

SS2 is a terrible mish mash of ideas that don't gel together. The only thing it did better than Deus Ex was to create a horrifying atmosphere, which DX didn't try to do.
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internisus · . Joined: 25 Nov 2006 Posts: 354

dhex · Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2007 2:36 pm Post subject:

i want to point to a thread at another forum but i am afraid so i will do so stealthily...

Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

It's not particularly interesting. They sound like the most stereotypical of shut-ins, especially in regards to having *gasp* a female member of staff opening and closing the video. I mean, what an UGLY WHORE!

How they whine and whine about the super abilities and advertise their ignorance.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

dhex · Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2007 3:08 pm Post subject:

i find it highly interesting, if only because i love the shit out of fps viewpoints in games. i can't really imagine playing a horror ish game in any other type of viewpoint - you get single direction vision and stereoscopic hearing and, whammo. it's good for things like that. it's not an isometic viewpoint but uh yeah.

i find it harder to quibble with the cross platform development issues, and i do feel their pain on that - rts games and fps games seem to be the only pc-only (or pc-first) dev games left. console production generally limits the scope of what you can do on a pc, not vice versa, so it's a reasonable complaint.

edit: it is a hard balance between "accessibility" and depth, especially when you're talking about rpg's. but mostly things change, the world changes, and games change, and life changes and hopefully you don't get stabbed to death and die alone.
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The Soviet Onion · . Joined: 05 Dec 2006 Posts: 41

Stones, glass houses, etc. The more information is released, the more it looks like Bioshock is going to be to System Shock 2 what Deus Ex 2 was to Deus Ex. Those videos give me the strong impression of somebody just going down a checklist (e.g. gravity gun). Don't let's forget how linear System Shock 2 was.

Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

The Soviet Onion · . Joined: 05 Dec 2006 Posts: 41

simplicio · . Joined: 03 May 2005 Posts: 1091

But the mechanics weren't what made the SS games great. It was the tone and the presentation and writing.

I mean, weapons degredation was a nice addition to the survival horror feel, but it wasn't entirely essential.

Not saying we won't end up with xboxification, mind you, just that if those are the only compromises made for a new audience it wouldn't necessarily spell disaster.

Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

The problem being that System Shock 2's mechanics were pretty poor in the first place. The weapons degradation was utterly superfluous.

Saying that Bioshock is going to be to System Shock 2 what Deus Ex 2 is to Deus Ex, well, those last three games are all heavily, disgustingly flawed either way.

If you want to cool perfecting, simplification and focusing on the things that truly matter "xboxification" bad things, then go ahead. All I've seen so far is ambition which may or may not deliver, but is aiming far higher than the self-imposed limitations and RPG tropes, utterly redundant for an FPS, a couple of stats-obsessed fans believed were the crux of the games they loved.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

dhex · Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 5:39 am Post subject:

well, they were rpg-fps hybrids.
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Mister Toups · Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 3:20 pm Post subject:

Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

Man are you fucking kidding, it was a total pain in the ass. The guns broke like after every five shots (slight exaggeration alert) which fought the realism the game was trying to pull off and it just became tedious and frustrating, rather than adding to the tension. IIRC, you couldn't even USE a gun if you didn't have the right stats. What, I need training to know how to pull a fucking trigger? C'mon! Argh!
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dhex · Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 6:47 pm Post subject:

i kinda see that as a bonus, though.

plus it was patchable. a great strength of pc gaming.
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Mister Toups · Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 7:42 pm Post subject:

Mister Toups · Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 7:43 pm Post subject:

And anyway, if you just used the wrench for most situations and only saved the gun for difficult moments it wasn't that bad.
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Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

Yeah, they didn't make the melee combat all that enthralling either. And if I sink a whole heap of points into a certain type of weapon, I want to be able to actually use it! Argh! Grarr!
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Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

dhex · Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 8:15 am Post subject:

Mister Toups · Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 4:33 pm Post subject:

Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

oh no please don't delete my game gamecube please don't i don't know what i'd do without it!

oh no my tv shut off now oh god this is terrifying!
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

Lasa · . Joined: 26 Nov 2006 Posts: 128

I think we can all agree that the insanity effects would have been better if there wasn't a bar telling you when the wacky hi-jinks would occur. Ditching the status effect glowing and really the hud in general would have done wonders for Eternal Darkness.

Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

That much I agree with. They would also have worked better if they were so concerned with really, really shoddy fourth wall threats.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

RPG stats are pretty superfluos, Deus Ex could have handled the progression system better. The sequel went in the right direction by ditching them, but the replacement system was also shite, stripped down to just biomods. Also, the rest of the game was poor to average.

Dark Corners of the Earth did the sanity thing better (even if the game is very flawed). I think all of this breaking the fourth wall crap is silly, I mean the stuff in Metal Gear Solid was cute and kinda clever, but that's about it. Same with Enternal Darkness.
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dhex · Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 7:55 am Post subject:

well, the thing about the FPS viewpoint - and what i think makes it most compelling - is that it attempts to bypass the disconnect between watching your character and seeing as that character.

frankly, i think first person horror is totally tip-top when done right. sure, cthulhu was utterly too hard to even think about, but the viewpoint was excellent. same with fear. it's one thing to go "uh, what's that" from a top down or 3d perspective, and another to have to shine your flashlight into a dark corner, leaving most of your perspective blocked. ravenholm was good at this, and the first fear game was truly excellent in parts (expansion pack, definitely not so much, because it didn't understand that eschewing the jump through the window bits is more frightening and unnerving, though the hospital was done pretty well regardless).

not having real peripheral vision kinda sucks though.

i like stats, but i don't care about the wii or casual gamers so i'm waiting for the comet to take me home anyhow, har har. naw, i mean, i think of a lot of these titles as the last great gasp of pc gaming before invisible war and the age of xboxification; it may be utterly silly to be hoping for the best with bioshock in terms of this legacy but so far i haven't seen anything in the demo movies that doesn't make me go "ok, this has great potential."
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

dhex · Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 5:51 pm Post subject:

i am!

it will, i hope, be different.
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Ok, I think I will finally attempt to play System Shock 2 again because some loving soul put out a 2K7 patch for Windows XP.

now I just need to track the game down.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

Mister Toups · Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 2:08 pm Post subject:

dessgeega · Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 5:26 pm Post subject:

cheap as it is, the bath tub scene catches me off guard everytime.
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dhex · Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2007 8:15 am Post subject:

yeah, that was well done.

,
the cockroach running across the screen got me too, but that's just because i'd lived in other places where that actually happened...not cool.
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dhex · Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2007 12:14 pm Post subject:

oh hey stalker comes out next week.

well, we'll see what we'll see.
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B coma · . Joined: 06 Dec 2005 Posts: 279

most of the insanity stuff boiled down to "hey that's neat" for me, but the one I liked the best was the moment that leads you to believe your save game is being deleted. that really, really got me.

Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

The Lurking Deep article on Bioshock, featured in Edge magazine 167:

dhex · Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 12:07 am Post subject:

judging from this 25 minute play video i just watched of stalker, it looks like it captured a lot of the qualities it was supposed to. how buggy, of course, is another story.
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Cycle · Mac daddy Joined: 08 Sep 2006 Posts: 2767

The first english review is out, it got 87%. Looking good so far.

Winged Assassins (1984) · Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 12:38 am Post subject:

Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

Now that I've posted the core of the article, here are the three sideboxes (so I was told they were called), that appear within it:

dhex · Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2007 8:39 am Post subject:

i am so getting stalker tomorrow or at least this week sometime.

edit: here's the link to that video i mentioned, i think it's 200MB)

got it from here.

i should be picking this up tomorrow presuming the local gamestop has any copies in.
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