<czg> jesus christ people! I've been sitting on f5 on func_qmap all day, and +there's only been like 2 new posts! I am so bored here people! I need some +socializing or at least some new posts to read (interesting ones and maybe +about barney and dicks)

So. Are there any other poker players out there? 

No.

Also: I've heard Barney has a dick. 

I'm glad I brought that up. 

 

is hip and cool 

I just got re-addicted to it over the weekend. I think it's a prime example of a game that comes in cycles for me. I'll play it none stop for a week or two, then not pick it up for a month. Strange.

The game is truely fun tho, great balanced between HL2DM.

Also I've been playing Soul Calibur on my buddies DC since my copy is scratched to hell and back. Forgot how much fun that game is. 

I've started playing the PC version of Escape from Butcher Bay, having previously completed it on XBox... So far I can't see any real differences, apart from I think the textures might be higher res, but it's difficult to say that for sure without comparing side by side. Also, there is a "commentary" option on the difficulty selection screen, which I haven't tried as yet. (The menus are the same crazy design as the XBox ones by the way)

The game itself is pretty good - a mix of reasonably non-annoying and often actually enjoyable stealth sections, shortish bouts of run-and-gun, and RPGish talking to people and doing 'favours' for people (which usually involves killing people). It's not showing any signs of lasting any longer than the original yet - which is a shame as the XBox version was a very short.

It's worth noting that this game has something I thought impossible - the minimum specs on the box are actually surprisingly honest! I fall somewhere between minimum and recommended and the game runs fine with everything pretty switched on - admittedly only at 640*480 though.

Oh, and sadly no printed manual except one of Sierra's cacky "keys you'll remap anyway" cards. This sucks because the manual for the XBox version was really worth reading and explained some stuff more clearly than the ingame help.

And HL2DM. Must harrass some of you for friends list addition (for those rare occasions when the Steam friends network isn't "being maintained"). I prefer to get whupped by people I already know! 

nick: DaZ
Email : daz@dazv3.co.uk

shame hl2dm chugs and lags like a mofo on my pc tho :( 

Cheers for the comments Starbuck, intending to get this one next.

I'm mostly playing "that game". 

Fuckin' ell, fucn_tabbed again =/ 

I'm now on my second playthrough on this game, and enjoying the hell out of it. It's not really a "pure" RPG (whatever that means)--it actually reminds me more of Deus Ex than anything else. You can approach problems in a number of different ways, depending on your clan/skills/attributes, the story is good, the HL2 engine keeps it looking relatively nice, and the dialogue and voice-acting is mostly really good.

Bad stuff: It could have really used another week or three of QA. The dialogue subtitles are full of misspellings, there are various small dumbass scripting issues, at least one encounter is ridiculously hard, IMO, and, although I didn't get it, there's at least one show-stopping script bug that crashes the game out and requires fixing via the console.

That being said, I really, really like the game and recommend it to one and all. If you get it, there's a fan-made patch that fixes the crash bug and a host of other bugs and dialogue problems available here:

http://www.planetvampire.com/bloodlines/files/patches/ 

I'd been wondering about that one. Sounds like it could be my kind of thing.

Lots of people have been saying that although it is source-engine based, it is nowhere near as pretty as HL2. Would you agree with this? 

Out of all the new MMORPGS (EQ2 and WoW), this is the only one that really holds any interest for me. Plus, no online fee. I haven't played any of the open betas, but all the articles I've seen say it looks/plays amazingly well. It cracks my defense against MMORPGs. Anyone try this in open beta, and if so how does it play?? :O 

Calling it a mmorpg is a sham. It's no more massively multiplayer than Diablo was. You start off in a town where you do the whole merchant / find a party thing, and then when you take a quest you end up in an instanced land or dungeon. So basically it's Diablo except you have avatars in the chat room.

For a hack and slash game it's not bad. I didn't feel that the abilities tree was particularly intricate or creative. The terrain is pretty though. 

it is nowhere near as pretty as HL2. Would you agree with this?

Yep. Don't get me wrong--it's not ugly by any means, but the aesthetics aren't as good.

But the boobs are better, complete with Boob Physics(tm), and a console variable to make them bigger. You go, Troika. 

and a console variable to make them bigger.

Come in id software, your time is up. 

Yeeeees. Hmmm.

In other news, I finished the Riddick PC yesterday. It was still really short, although there was a new combat sequence during the doublemax section which was cool, I won't spoil it by giving specifics on it though. I suspect there may be a few more cigarette packs around than there was on XBox, but I'm not certain of that (finding cigs unlocks stuff in the 'extras' menu). Directors commentary mode adds floaty icons scattered around the levels that can be used to pause the game and hear some blather from Starbreeze folks.

One thing that I've noticed is that most of the weapons are hopelessly inaccurate at ranges greater than three feet. I think that this is to encourage you to move closer to guards before initiating combat so that you can hear them swearing at you properly. 

Doom3's physics have realistic boob movement. Spawn one of the dead female actors and you can fondle her realistically with the physics grabber thing... That's totally better than just being able to increase tit size on the fly 

I actually noticed that the first time I played it. The part where you go into the lady's office...right before you have to battle a ton of Pinkys I think. The lady is a zombie, but when she's dead on the floor, shoot her a few more times and you will see her tits jiggle. 

I'm about 2/3rds of the way through this game:

Goods:
- Nice semi-fantasy settings - quite enjoyable settings to see and good variety
- Navigation puzzles are mostly fun as are most of the other in-game puzzles
- Offers some rewards for exploring and is pretty intense, especially for those who fear heights
- Good voice acting and good story so far
- Sweet East Indian female companion who travels with you and mostly stays out of the way. She's not Superfly.

Bads:
- The movement of the Prince using the movement keys moves him relative to the screen view and not relative to the Prince himself. When the camera is moving around on its own (and it can really jump a lot), there are times, especially during tough multi-enemy combats, that this becomes incredibly frustrating. It is equally frustrating during timed navigation puzzles as well. I found Heretic II to have a way better 3rd person control. The funky movement frame of reference made PoP4 feel very unfair at times and really made controlling the Prince a struggle when you had to fight the controls as much as the enemies. When this wasn't a problem, the fighting was a lot more fun.

It's a good game and beautiful to look at but did it ever make me mad too.

Any other opinions on this one out there? 

Tried POP3 demo. Looked nice. Camera blew decaying goat ass. Uninstalled straight away. Basically a nice game setting rendered entirely awful to play by the deliberately shite camera (compared to Heretic2, Rune, Blade, FAKK2, Enclave, etc). 

Sands of Time is basically a console port, so it is really designed to be played with a pad... I'd imagine playing PoP with keyboard and mouse is just as rank as playing the average PC FPS with a joypad would be. I think that why it feels wrong is that basically, if you're controlling a third-person game with a keyboard and mouse, your expectations are usually that the camera can be used to steer the character. If you're playing with a pad, your expectations are that you push the analog stick in the direction you want to move the character, and the camera follows. Does that make sense? I do think it sucks that completely unsuitable control modes get tacked onto so many console to PC ports. Either put a huge "REQUIRES JOYPAD" logo on it or don't fucking port it.

I haven't gone anywhere near the new PoP: Warrior Within yet, it looks like they've thrown away too much of what made Sands of Time distinctive in a misguided effort to appeal more to "the kids".

Drifting back to control issues, on the console side of things, I think that The Suffering is the only third-person game I've played recently that had FPS style controls without feeling dreadfully wrong, probably because it was mainly about shooting things (and had a first person mode you could pop into, which I didn't really use). It was an enjoyable romp, although far from flawless. There is a PC version I think, no idea how it compares. I hated the controls on XBox Enclave: It really felt like it had been built with the keyboard/mouse controls of the later PC version in mind. I did play the PC version later and the controls were indeed better, but didn't persist as I didn't find it that engaging, mainly because the melee combat felt a bit wooly. Back on PC I have previously enjoyed Rune and Heretic 2, never got around to playing Severance, and was recently frustrated to find the FAKK2 doesn't work at all in Windows 2000. 

Just curious - was that demo PoP 3D (which was pretty much considered crap compared to the 2D PoP and is now an old game) or was it a Sands of Time demo - the recent release which has been very well recieved.

I agree with your comment about the camera if you are talking about Sands of Time. 

Was a little annoying (on xbox/gamecube) but most of the time worked. Note: the camera system did improve between the xbox demo and the xbox shipped game.

My only complaints were that the combat was a little bit too button-mashy, and that the final boss was too easy and too simple. Oh, and that the voice-overs were hard to hear when the camera wasn't really close to the characters.

I'm getting PoP5 for christmas probably; i'm worried by what i've read about it but hopefully it's still fun. 

I'm at 81% completion. Just finished the battle after the torture chamber section.

Thank god the boss is easy because the gang wars are nothing but mashing the mouse and keyboard and hoping you get lucky. It's as if there is a rotten brat on another controller trying to steer your character into certain death while you're trying to coordinate your attacks and retreats.

Also, the torture chamber had a really hard jumping puzzle section (the two timed switches for the two moving walls) due to the poor camera/control link.

This would be a truly great game if they cared enough to independently design control methods for PCs and consoles separately. Either that or have a setting to slave the character movement relative to either the Prince or the camera. It's a simple transform mathematically.

But I'm compelled to finish because the settings and puzzles are very cool.

BTW, I also finished Deus Ex 2 - Invisible war and also found the PC/XBox duality to be a pain for managing weapons and inventories. Nowhere near as bad as PoP4 but holstering your weapon in DX2-IW was clumsy.

Most of the game development money must go into content, AI and engine coding. Is it really too much to ask for more effort to go into the separate control needs between PCs and consoles since this seems to be current business model for many new titles. The perfect game would have you not even thinking about what your hands are doing - the challenge is in the game world alone.

Like Quake.