2005 will hold me learning to play MP games competently lol yeah right who am I kidding.

It will also seem to hold awesome Q1 SP maps in all styles imaginable from the oldest of the old skool to the nuest of the nu skool. W3rd. 

Laser Chess 2005 

nobody has mentioned Call of Cthulhu

http://www.callofcthulhu.com/

while it's not pushing any boundaries, I've always enjoyed a good lovecraft story. 

call of cthulhu!

i want a cheap new computer for 2005. something that will let me play doom3 or half-life 2 in a nice-fast way.

:( 

Resurrection Of Evil - cool it's out, will get it soon.

Half-Life 2: Aftermath - looks exactly like HL2. No bad thing, though.

UT 2007 - wow another fantastic and irresistable title. Hardly the shockingly innovative revelation of the decade...

Gears Of War - so Epic are abandoning U3 and going for an XBox360 3rd person game. Happy happy jo....bleh. Balls to that. Still look good though.

Prey - well well, pretty interesting to have it revived. The previews sound optimistic although the shots look very Doom3. Early days yet so fingers crossed.

Serious Sam 2 - yawn snore piss off.

Hellgate: London - interesting indeed. Looks quite like Painkiller but promises RPG elements. Hmmmm. Yes worth keeping an eye on for sure. I like the style despite the crude graphics.

ET: Quake2 Wars - (title corrected as it has nothing to do with Quake) well well, interesting idea, an online teamplay game in the Strogg conflict? Quite refreshing, and the Strogg universe seems to be getting richer all the time. I personally think it could be a neat idea. Baggsy I be a Strogg.

Quake 4 - see topic. 

you forgot STALKER!! :( :(

Fuck everything else, gimme stalker and lock me in my room for 10 years. This game will fucking rock.

ETQ2W looks fun, but will it be better than BF2? WHo knows....


Q4 who knows, looks ok I geuss.

Hellgate london looks like an interresting one yes.

Prey LOL, DNF lol. 3d realms LOL, etc...

Gears of war bah, gimme unreal 3 but as a sequel to unreal 1 not some ghey unreal 2 clone. I want lost civilizations, a world to explore, strange things to find, inspiring scenes to look at, deep explorative atmosphere, etc... Not some ponce in massive shoulder pads with the worst dialogue ever, shooting crappy sounding guns and people that fly a million miles in the air when they die (oh no that was Pariah my bad...)

anyway shutup, gimme STALKER, and bye bye 

I realised I already posted in this thread, shame. 

I left Stalker off the new list as it's not been announced / video-promoed etc recently. 

 

....that man is Blitz, and there's no 'net connection on the moon, I'm happy. 

I remember back when we saw the first screenshots, Stalker's graphics looked like really exciting next-gen future-wow-tech stuff. Now everything it does graphically seems like a checkbox feature that a PC FPS needs to get any publisher/consumer interest whatsoever. They've spent too long making it and time has caught up on them. Basically, this means it's going to have to prove itself through its gameplay - which is as it should be. At least it looks like they may have got some AI in, finally, in the newer trailers.

It makes me feel a bit sad for the developers. 

has anyone read the book btw? Although somewhat similar inspirations have been used in a lot of movies and games after that (The Sphere and Doom for example), and the game is not going to follow it 100%. Well, the book is kinda more atmospheric than a complete idea chest for a game.

I've noticed the trend anyway that lots of hollywood sci-fi movies have blatantly stolen from soviet scifi assuming the illiterate audience won't notice. Well, they haven't noticed. Matrix, The Abyss, the list goes on. I could probably work as a screenwriter, get moeny by plagiarizing... The Strugatskis and Lem have a lot of sixties-seventies production that hasn't yet been used, although some of that might be too challenging intellectually to ordinary burger people, even when dumbed down to minimum...

But back to the game.
That autonomous task-based AI they describe sounds pretty ambitious and might be a lot harder than it sounds to develop to be working believably for the player. I wonder if they have any population dynamics /cybernetics researchers helping them... The single organism/npc/enemy must be a pretty complex and finely-tuned statemachine if it's going to be working freely without much help from scripts etc.. I wonder if it can stay away from converging to some dead-set states or patterns for example - all monsters tending to gather to one point etc.. 

Any game out there, other than HL2, that looks comparable to stalker? 

tho that might make me look like a stalker.

seriously, stalker was all about gameplay all the time wasnt it? as long as the world is convincing i dont care for the latest grphic features. heck, i am just playing through descent 2: vertigo atm (ok, with an ogl engine), and i cant remember when i had THAT MUCH FUN. mustve been the last time i played through quake or something. Ok, stop the rambling now - stalker is all bout exploration of a world (at least that's what i am expecting from it) and i dont think a tiny bit outdated graphics will influence the atmosphere so much. 

It looked good on G4. After playing the demo, I must say I am quite unimpressed. It plays that Star Trek game by Ritual, but you get automated turrets (your squad) you place ONLY at pre-chosen locations. Either you place them or they follow you. That's about it.

From the demo I would say avoid this game. 

It was very very fun overall I thought, but what zwiffle says is true throughout... the whole squad thing could have been taken so much further but it has been dumbed down quite a lot, and yes u can only do special actions are pre-chosen locations. Half the gameplay is working out what action points are best to use for each squad member and when to change positions etc.

That said though, some great moments to be had playing this game, fighting off hordes of droids while healing and ressurecting your squad mates in a desperate attempt to keep your firepower up and theres down. Very tense and great fun. 

It's been talked about before, but I'm still waiting eagerly for AoE3. The screenshots do NOT do this game justice. There was a video released showing the game in action from E3, and it's simply breathtaking. The bad news is it's geared for higher end systems, which means to run the game smoothly some of us less fortunates would have to seriously upgrade our systems(like me).

This game looks badass. 

<Shambler> okay, i confess, prey trailer full size does look pretty damn cool
<Shambler> visually a lot like doom3, but looks like some interesting shit for sure 

From Blues:

http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&threadid=57491

""Project Offset" is a game like no other first person shooter to date. We wanted to make an FPS set in a epic fantasy world. A game where you can choose one of many character classes. A game where clans can combat over mission based objectives and be ranked accordingly. A game where you can play alone, coop, team based objective or deathmatch.

The controls feel exactly how an FPS player would expect. Play as an archer and
your skill using the bow and leading your target is what will set you apart. When the battles get close up, pull out your sword and continue the fight melee.

For players who like vehicle combat, we won't disappoint. Project Offset will have creatures you can ride, dragons you can fly, siege weapons you can man -- all part of an epic battle between you and your foes.

Project Offset is built around a next gen engine, where every model is created with the amount of detail and effort normally found only in a cinematic, making you feel like you are part of an epic story."

Now obviously this is VERY early days, but I think the idea sounds excellent. Like really cool indeed. In fact, someone page Tronyn after he was asking about fantasy FPSs on his Hexen/Heretic thread.

There's also a tech video:

http://www.projectoffset.com/media/project_offset_june_2005.wmv

Tech looks good, but there's a snippet of what is hopefully sameplay gameplay at 0:45, and indeed it does look really cool.

W3rd. 

That snippet of what is hopefully sameplay gameplay at 0:45 does indeed look very good, only wish it went for longer.
I like the sound of it, another I am watching is Huxley, supposed to be first person MMORPG thing, which might be good. 

It's A First Person MMORPG 

Offset looks quite yummy, I'll have to watch out for that. Got a link for Huxley? I'm kind of wary about 1st person MMORPGs after what happened to that one game ... you know, that ONE game - that one. 

MMORPG, well that might not be the correct description, maybe MMO First peerson Shooter, anyway, whatever, here you go

http://www.webzengames.com/Game/Huxley/ 

Actually, I thought they might be developing this at Human Head.

Anyway, the gameplay footage I downloaded from IGN looked interesting. The visuals weren't anything special; actually the detail level looked like about what you might see in a Quake map. I don't really like the new story they've developed, either. However, I'm definitely looking forward to this title. 

Prey looks a LOT better than I previously thought. Seeing it in action and seeing screenshots of lame-looking enemies all up in your face are two TOTALLY different. I can't believe how great Prey looks. It will be game of the year for whatever year it's released, I have no doubts.