The Gamer's Quarter

Mister Toups · Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 7:57 pm Post subject:

What is brilliant about Halo is that it manages to make a FPS into a console game; it's surprising how well Bungie understood the difference between PC and console games.

For kicks, play Oni to see them fail at this.

I'm not inclined to like Halo either way. I really just want to play the whole game, though, so I can make a full judgment.
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where were you when nana komatsu got a wii?

Mr. Mechanical · Friendly Stranger Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 1276

Some of the later levels drag on a bit due to repetative design, but Bungie nailed the "30-seconds-of-fun" rule and balanced out all the weapons beautifully. Certain weapons work better in certain situations against certain enemies, but you can only hold two at a time. Add in a button dedicated entirely to grenades and AI routines that never actually outsmart you but put up a pretty good illusion that they are and it's a romping good time. That, and it's a console FPS that actually rewards you for getting better at aiming, rather than just making up for it with auto aim. People said the pistol threw the balance off in multiplayer matches, but it was really just a case of people having better aim than others.

There's an auto aim, sure, but it's so subtle I didn't even notice it until I had heard about it. Besides, if you want to tone it down just turn the difficulty up, though if you're playing it on a PC it doesn't matter because that was a console only feature. I like how I can still play it today and the combat situations are almost always different. They never play out exactly alike, unless you somehow manage to repeat your previous actions exactly or you've played the game so many damn times you can predict what the enemies are going to do before they even do it(which I've had happen to me, though the game is still so playable after that point because you can actually play with it, rather than play through it). The checkpoint system is also great. Really, it's just a matter of knowing what it takes to make an FPS work on a console and doing it. Working within your limitations and all that. It's not as technically brilliant as other games that came before it, like Half-Life, but I have a lot more "Hero Stories"(instances in gameplay where you just have to stop and go "Damn, did that really just happen?!" due the ever shifting AI situations) from playing Halo than I do Half-Life.

And I played a mean game of Half-Life, trust me.

edit-I should probably note that I'm speaking of the first Halo game here, and not the sequel. The sequel mostly did away with the great gun balance by adding duel weilding which, while cooler and all that, resulted in turning all the guns into either sniper rifles or bullet hoses. I blame the muiltplayer aspect the most.

disneyland · . Joined: 16 Jun 2005 Posts: 131 Location: Shinsei

By the way: single player demo for F.E.A.R. goes public this Friday.

The multiplayer has some amusing novelty like universal slow-mo effects, but the single player game is the attraction. Seems like it will be interesting. Not sure what we'll see in the demo, but considering the event pacing (there's a big secret) I think they'll keep it early in the game and short. Make an effort to check it out. The bits of the campaign I've seen were rather spectacular.

Mister Toups · Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 9:22 pm Post subject:

My computer can't handle that shit. But I played it at E3 and it played damned fine. Perhaps even better than Half Life 2.

Wasn't scary, though. But then horror doesn't work at an event like E3. I think the final thing will be scary, because I know Monolith can do horror, if NOLF2 is any indication.
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where were you when nana komatsu got a wii?

Mr. Mechanical · Friendly Stranger Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 1276

http://www.gametrailers.com/gamepage.php?id=426

Check out the GDC 2K5 presentation of FEAR, it looks pretty nifty. I have high hopes for their attempts at taking a more psychological approach to scaring the player, like a good thriller film, rather than resort to basic shock tactics that get old.

dhex · Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 9:32 pm Post subject:

due to never having had cable, i had no idea that games had their own entertainment tonight thing going on. freaky.

anyway, stalker seems pretty hot too. or at least promising.

i really like first person ish games, but i don't know why.

i only got as far as getting off the ship on halo. it wasn't bad, though the 7 dwarfs thing the enemies had going on was a bit distracting.
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Mister Toups · Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 9:37 pm Post subject:

Yeah, that annoys me to no end.
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where were you when nana komatsu got a wii?

Mr. Mechanical · Friendly Stranger Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 1276

dhex · Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 10:13 pm Post subject:

hellgate looks pretty dope too.

i think i'm sticking with farcry for the same reason i love the first four steven segall films. not that i can play it when it's this hot outside.
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disneyland · . Joined: 16 Jun 2005 Posts: 131 Location: Shinsei

Namco's also doing Mage Knight Apocalypse on PC. It was early and chuggy at E3, but they had some good ideas.

Mister Toups · Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 8:31 am Post subject:

dhex · Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 9:39 am Post subject:

meet the feebles in space?
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Mr. Mechanical · Friendly Stranger Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 1276

SuperWes · Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 9:54 am Post subject:

Yeah, those guys are NOT well designed. What the hell were they thinking? Oh yeah, and I bought the Half Life 2 Collector's Edition on a whim today. I'm easily influenced. Wonder if it will run on my computer?...

-Wes
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dhex · Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 10:05 am Post subject:

it ran real well on a mx440 geforce 2 card, so...yeah.
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disneyland · . Joined: 16 Jun 2005 Posts: 131 Location: Shinsei

Wow, that's pretty amazing. Didn't know the engine had a Dx7 fallback mode. Thought you needed at least a Dx8 card for basic shaders. Source is one hell of a flexible engine.

dhex · Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 12:31 pm Post subject:

or is the mx440 a ge4 card? i forget. anyway, it worked pretty well with that at 800x600 (my monitor is like, 4 feet away from my face at all times)
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SuperWes · Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 1:42 pm Post subject:

I've got some kind of Geforce to Go from a few years ago...

-Wes
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Mister Toups · Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 3:24 pm Post subject:

dhex · Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 4:57 pm Post subject:

o n e a n d t h e s a m e

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Mr. Mechanical · Friendly Stranger Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 1276

Your computer desktop looks cluttered.

disneyland · . Joined: 16 Jun 2005 Posts: 131 Location: Shinsei

Ahh, you have one of those Asian keyboards with a key for every letter of the Cantonese alphabet.
Zang!

dhex · Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 7:17 pm Post subject:

you should see the cinema display i have at work. icon city, baby! i have to index like, 12,000 photos, now that i think of it.

but yeah, that's all people talk about. they're like "how do you find anything?" and I say "magic!" and they go "no, really, how?" and i reply "magic...i kill an unbaptized baby and drink its blood" and then they leave and i don't have to make dinner for them.

it works well.
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Mr. Mechanical · Friendly Stranger Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 1276

The old dead baby, eh?

When I was in high school computer classes a few people would sometimes intentionally make tons of copies of shortcuts to stuff so they're desktops got cluttered and hard to navigate. They did it so that people in the class after theirs would have to take the time to delete all the unnecessary shit before they could start their work.

dhex · Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 8:31 pm Post subject:

the old dead baby gambit. gets em every time.

i dunno, i use this computer for a lot of stuff. i'm also pretty badly organized.

- music recording, editing and archiving
- mp3 archival, vinyl archival
- photo editing and archival
- work stuff sort of
- games
- internet
- porn
- editing elipsesesises out of everone's TGQ articles

one shitty thing about computer gaming - hot days + bad airflow + no AC = hot computers.
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simplicio · . Joined: 03 May 2005 Posts: 1091

dhex · Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2005 7:13 am Post subject:

what causes motion sickness in relation to pseudo-3d displays?
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Szczepaniak · . Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 770

Isn't it an old genetic reflex meant to make you throw up if you'd accidently eaten something poisonous?

Like if cavemen ate bad berries/shrooms, and their vision went all funky, they'd get nauseus, puke it up, and then live.

At least I think so, all to do with the fluid in your inner remaining motionless, while your brain is processing supposed movement. It can also apparently happen with some cinema movies.

dhex · Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2005 9:34 am Post subject:

well, that's true. i get not motion sick, but a horrible feeling of vertigo at imax movies. (i don't like heights or roller coasters, though elevated subway lines suite me just fine. go figure)

do people who get motion sick from games end up trying those relief bands they give to people on boats (they send a rhythmic pulse that, for whatever reason, relieves the nausea and vertigo).

http://www.entnet.org/healthinfo/balance/dizziness.cfm

simplicio · . Joined: 03 May 2005 Posts: 1091

Motion sickness in HL2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Life_2_controversies_and_criticisms (down there at the bottom)

Seems it's either a field of view or a refresh rate thing.

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

I got motion sick from both Quake 3 and Half-Life 1. Both were for the console though. THUG2#Remix also made me motion sick for the PSP.

Anyways, I just got back from vacation with Theif II. I bought it for $2 at a thrift store. The store was frightening, but that is aside the point. I realized after I talked the lady down from $8 that this might not work on my XP computer. I have not tested it yet though.

dessgeega · Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2005 3:17 pm Post subject:

well. i just finished watching a doom 3 speedrun, and my first thought was (actually, my first thought was "there sure are a lot of brain flying out of bodies. in one piece. from shots to the chest.") that the enemy designs are incredibly bland. it's a bunch of grey people, and on occasion larger grey people.

oh, and skeletons with jetpacks.

and did halo make it mandatory for zombies to have whips for arms?

now that i think about it, the whole game seems to take place in grey corridors. even quake had a wider palette than this game.
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Mister Toups · Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2005 3:25 pm Post subject:

DonMarco · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 349 Location: 33903

SuperWes · Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2005 8:24 pm Post subject:

DonMarco · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 349 Location: 33903

simplicio · . Joined: 03 May 2005 Posts: 1091

I just finished Halo. I think it was pretty interesting for its time, at least environmentally. But now that we have Far Cry that's not such a selling point. Spot on about the muppets though. I was never able to take the covenant or the flood seriously enough to appreciate or even believe their role in the story.

Will Halo2 ever hit PC? I might play it, but I have a feeling its praise mostly stems from the online experience, which I'm not interested in.

dhex · Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2005 7:27 am Post subject:

yeah, i gotta say as hard as far cry is, it's something else. it's really goddamn something else.
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simplicio · . Joined: 03 May 2005 Posts: 1091

You know, the difficulty just made me like it more. It wasn't MoHAA with everybody shooting you in the head through dense foliage from 100 yards. Far Cry sets it up so well, with these poor mercenaries being eaten by waves of trigens on one side and slowly annihilated by some superhuman assassin on the other, and they're all terrified and willing to go nuts on anything that so much as moves. The only thing that might have made it better would be having more deserters.

Yeah, and decent voice acting and plotlines, too.

disneyland · . Joined: 16 Jun 2005 Posts: 131 Location: Shinsei

Seriously, that outdoor level--"Rebellion", is it?--with the Trigens and troops going at it, while you (optionally) fly overhead on a hanglider watching the carnage below...yeah, that was damn memorable.