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Mister Toups Hates your favorite videogame
Joined: 26 Jan 2005 Posts: 1693 Location: Lafayette, LA
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Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 7:57 pm Post subject: |
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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. _________________ where were you when nana komatsu got a wii? |
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Mr. Mechanical Friendly Stranger
Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 1276
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Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 8:48 pm Post subject: |
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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. |
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disneyland .
Joined: 16 Jun 2005 Posts: 131 Location: Shinsei
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Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 9:20 pm Post subject: |
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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. |
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Mister Toups Hates your favorite videogame
Joined: 26 Jan 2005 Posts: 1693 Location: Lafayette, LA
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Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 9:22 pm Post subject: |
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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. _________________ where were you when nana komatsu got a wii? |
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Mr. Mechanical Friendly Stranger
Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 1276
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Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 9:26 pm Post subject: |
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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. |
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dhex Breeder
Joined: 13 Dec 2004 Posts: 6319 Location: brooklyn, Nev Yiork
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Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 9:32 pm Post subject: |
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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 Hates your favorite videogame
Joined: 26 Jan 2005 Posts: 1693 Location: Lafayette, LA
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Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 9:37 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah, that annoys me to no end. _________________ where were you when nana komatsu got a wii? |
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Mr. Mechanical Friendly Stranger
Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 1276
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Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 9:47 pm Post subject: |
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dhex wrote: | due to never having had cable, i had no idea that games had their own entertainment tonight thing going on. freaky. |
Call it the right kind of attitude, just misplaced.
dhex wrote: | anyway, stalker seems pretty hot too. or at least promising. |
It looks nice, and the story behind it gets me a little giddy, but there just isn't enough information out there on it to get me truly excited. That, and hasn't it been delayed a couple times now? Sometimes that works out for the better, but most times it just means they didn't really know what they were doing in the first place.
If you're into first person-ish games then you should look up Hellgate: London. It's a first person shooter RPG type game set in the future with guns and swords and armor and such made by the same guys that made Diablo. Custimization out the wazoo for weapons, radomly generated dungeon sprawls between safe hubs, and Hell minions. It's 1998 all over again. It's also being published by Namco, so there's the possibility that they could actually branch out into backing western PC games, or even port this one to a console, among other things.
Mister Toups wrote: | Yeah, that annoys me to no end. |
What, the Entertainment Tonight thing or the Seven Dwarves thing? What were you saying yesterday about ambiguity? |
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dhex Breeder
Joined: 13 Dec 2004 Posts: 6319 Location: brooklyn, Nev Yiork
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Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 10:13 pm Post subject: |
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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
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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 12:19 am Post subject: |
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Namco's also doing Mage Knight Apocalypse on PC. It was early and chuggy at E3, but they had some good ideas. |
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Mister Toups Hates your favorite videogame
Joined: 26 Jan 2005 Posts: 1693 Location: Lafayette, LA
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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 8:31 am Post subject: |
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Mr. Mechanical wrote: | What were you saying yesterday about ambiguity? |
Something.
The voice acting for the aliens in Halo. It's stupid. It's like I'm fighting a bunch of fucking muppets.
Kind of broke the immersion for me. _________________ where were you when nana komatsu got a wii? |
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dhex Breeder
Joined: 13 Dec 2004 Posts: 6319 Location: brooklyn, Nev Yiork
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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 9:39 am Post subject: |
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meet the feebles in space? _________________
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Mr. Mechanical Friendly Stranger
Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 1276
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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 9:51 am Post subject: |
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Mister Toups wrote: | It's like I'm fighting a bunch of fucking muppets. |
You mean to tell me you've never wanted to blast a muppet in the face with a shotgun?
Oh, now there's a game idea. |
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SuperWes Updated the banners, but not his title
Joined: 07 Dec 2004 Posts: 3725
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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 9:54 am Post subject: |
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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 Breeder
Joined: 13 Dec 2004 Posts: 6319 Location: brooklyn, Nev Yiork
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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 10:05 am Post subject: |
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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
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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 12:27 pm Post subject: |
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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. |
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dhex Breeder
Joined: 13 Dec 2004 Posts: 6319 Location: brooklyn, Nev Yiork
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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 12:31 pm Post subject: |
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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 Updated the banners, but not his title
Joined: 07 Dec 2004 Posts: 3725
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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 1:42 pm Post subject: |
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I've got some kind of Geforce to Go from a few years ago...
-Wes _________________
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Mister Toups Hates your favorite videogame
Joined: 26 Jan 2005 Posts: 1693 Location: Lafayette, LA
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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 3:24 pm Post subject: |
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dhex wrote: | (my monitor is like, 4 feet away from my face at all times) |
Mixing boards and other equipment, I assume? _________________ where were you when nana komatsu got a wii? |
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dhex Breeder
Joined: 13 Dec 2004 Posts: 6319 Location: brooklyn, Nev Yiork
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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 4:57 pm Post subject: |
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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
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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 5:01 pm Post subject: |
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Your computer desktop looks cluttered. |
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disneyland .
Joined: 16 Jun 2005 Posts: 131 Location: Shinsei
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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 7:16 pm Post subject: |
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Ahh, you have one of those Asian keyboards with a key for every letter of the Cantonese alphabet.
Zang! |
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dhex Breeder
Joined: 13 Dec 2004 Posts: 6319 Location: brooklyn, Nev Yiork
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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 7:17 pm Post subject: |
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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
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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 7:51 pm Post subject: |
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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. |
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dhex Breeder
Joined: 13 Dec 2004 Posts: 6319 Location: brooklyn, Nev Yiork
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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 8:31 pm Post subject: |
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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
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Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2005 5:21 am Post subject: |
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dhex wrote: | Quote: | That said, they do a really really good job of hiding how linear the game is. |
yeah. it feels like a great journey, even though someone's pulling the rope at the front of your wagon. shit, i want to go play it now. the city fighting near the end...you're running around with puppets, but it feels as real as a completely unrealistic game about war and bloodshed can feel.
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HL2's the world's greatest triumph in scripting too. There are these moments like "That train's coming this way; I really ought to start running now. Oh dear, my sprint meter's run out," followed by a jump off the track with a second to spare. They made things so perfectly balanced that I found myself running through large sections of the game on something like electronic adrenaline, just barely making it through on the first try every time.
Oh, and if you're physically nauseated by console FPSs, HL2 is probably a bad idea; motion sickness is a noted issue with it already. |
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dhex Breeder
Joined: 13 Dec 2004 Posts: 6319 Location: brooklyn, Nev Yiork
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Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2005 7:13 am Post subject: |
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what causes motion sickness in relation to pseudo-3d displays? _________________
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Szczepaniak .
Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 770
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Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2005 9:13 am Post subject: |
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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. |
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dhex Breeder
Joined: 13 Dec 2004 Posts: 6319 Location: brooklyn, Nev Yiork
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Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2005 9:34 am Post subject: |
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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
Quote: | The Anatomy Of Balance
Dizziness, vertigo, and motion sickness all relate to the sense of balance and equilibrium. Researchers in space and aeronautical medicine call this sense spatial orientation, because it tells the brain where the body is "in space:" what direction it is pointing, what direction it is moving, and if it is turning or standing still.
Your sense of balance is maintained by a complex interaction of the following parts of the nervous system:
* The inner ears (also called the labyrinth), which monitor the directions of motion, such as turning, or forward-backward, side-to-side, and up-and-down motions.
* The eyes, which monitor where the body is in space (i.e. upside down, rightside up, etc.) and also directions of motion.
* The skin pressure receptors such as in the joints and spine, which tell what part of the body is down and touching the ground.
* The muscle and joint sensory receptors, which tell what parts of the body are moving.
* The central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord), which processes all the bits of information from the four other systems to make some coordinated sense out of it all.
The symptoms of motion sickness and dizziness appear when the central nervous system receives conflicting messages from the other four systems.
For example, suppose you are riding through a storm, and your airplane is being tossed about by air turbulence. But your eyes do not detect all this motion because all you see is the inside of the airplane. Then your brain receives messages that do not match with each other. You might become "air sick."
Or suppose you are sitting in the back seat of a moving car reading a book. Your inner ears and skin receptors will detect the motion of your travel, but your eyes see only the pages of your book. You could become "car sick."
Or, to use a true medical condition as an example, suppose you suffer inner ear damage on only one side from a head injury or an infection. The damaged inner ear does not send the same signals as the healthy ear. This gives conflicting signals to the brain about the sensation of rotation, and you could suffer a sense of spinning, vertigo, and nausea. |
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simplicio .
Joined: 03 May 2005 Posts: 1091
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Shapermc Hot Sake!
Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279
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Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2005 5:40 pm Post subject: |
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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. |
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dessgeega loves your favorite videogame
Joined: 16 Jun 2005 Posts: 6563 Location: bohan
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Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2005 3:17 pm Post subject: |
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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 Hates your favorite videogame
Joined: 26 Jan 2005 Posts: 1693 Location: Lafayette, LA
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Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2005 3:25 pm Post subject: |
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dessgeega wrote: | even quake had a wider palette than this game. |
That's just mean. _________________ where were you when nana komatsu got a wii? |
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DonMarco .
Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 349 Location: 33903
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Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2005 7:06 pm Post subject: |
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Mister Toups wrote: | dessgeega wrote: | even quake had a wider palette than this game. |
That's just mean. |
So in some asinine way, you managed to "bait" the toups, dessgeega. Congrats.
And Halo sucks. |
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SuperWes Updated the banners, but not his title
Joined: 07 Dec 2004 Posts: 3725
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Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2005 8:24 pm Post subject: |
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DonMarco wrote: | And Halo sucks. |
Ain't it the troof. But Halo 2 is incredible.
-Wes _________________
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DonMarco .
Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 349 Location: 33903
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Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2005 3:31 am Post subject: |
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SuperWes wrote: | DonMarco wrote: | And Halo sucks. |
Ain't it the troof. But Halo 2 is incredible. |
I heard it sold very well and is getting a sequel! The system works!
Hurrah! |
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simplicio .
Joined: 03 May 2005 Posts: 1091
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Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2005 4:56 am Post subject: |
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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. |
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dhex Breeder
Joined: 13 Dec 2004 Posts: 6319 Location: brooklyn, Nev Yiork
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Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2005 7:27 am Post subject: |
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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
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Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2005 3:38 pm Post subject: |
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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. |
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disneyland .
Joined: 16 Jun 2005 Posts: 131 Location: Shinsei
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Posted: Sat Aug 13, 2005 8:08 pm Post subject: |
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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. |
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