so apparently gears of war is being released on the PC in a week or so.

i only found out yesterday browsing through gamespot.

i've seen screenshots of the xbox version and it looks great. since i never play console games, it was a pleasant surprise. :) 

Crysis Demo: Looks laavely, although the AI is rubbish by today's standards. Check out the editor - it's very nice, especially with its graphical state-machine-like interface to the triggering system.

Halo3 - as a vehicle-based open battle game it's brilliant. As an indoor FPS it's very mediocre. I didn't try the multiplayer.

at the part where you are fighting the flood in a massive catacombe style level, and it is one of the best environments to have ever graced a computer game of any kind!!

I hope you don't mean that fleshy pink cave network near the end, because I thought that was about the worst level design in the game :p 

I got lost in there. Me and my friend were playing on split-screen co-op. We blasted our way through so far, and then we seemed to be running around in circles, unable to progress any further. But eventually, thinking outside of the box a bit we realised the only way of getting out was to climb upwards, by doing a bit of jumping and traversing. Genius! Probably the most interesting part of the game! Plus I wouldnt fancy trying to do a Quake re-make of that level. Halo3 weapons are just like other Halo series weapons. One of the guns used by the aliens is a sorty of long-range artillery style one-shot thingy, which I though was rubbish cause of the re-load times on it. But in that cave it was very usefull for picking those fucking spider things off of the walls.

I dont think Halo3 has moved on much from Halo2 as far as gameplay goes, but the graphics and level design are better. The gameplay and co-op modes are (always have been) very good fun!


On another Point

*||New Soldier of Fortune!!!||* :)

Really looking forwards to this! I love Gore in video games. Doom3 was a dissappointment (for me, anyway) in this department. S.O.F. 1 was the only game to have really got it right!

I just hope the new game has good gameplay. I watched some videos on IGN, and it looked OK but the player needed to be moving a bit faster. But REAL LOCALISED DAMAGE!!! Hehehe!!! 

Is fighting the flood still a mindblowing tedious chore as it was the first time?

I automatically hate anything solder of fortune since paying SOF license money is utterly depressing. 

I'll take the silly gibs in TF2 over any kind of sick SOF type gore any day thankyouverymuch. 

I never played the console version but I am looking forward to playing it on the PC. It is the only game in recent history that reminds me of Quake -- dark atmosphere, monotone textures, marines vs. monsters -- and that includes the later Quakes and Doom 3 ;) 

I hate you all. I hate the world. I hate you. 

I thought it was good. The combat system is pretty original. The graphics were sweet, some good level design. It was a bit short though. Plus the cut-scenes were dumb. Also over here the christmas commercial for Gears of War had that bloody depressing Tears for Fears cover on it. I didnt get that at all!! Also, if any of you guys thought 'The Sickbase' was too hard, there are some very hard bits in Gears. (I admit the Sickbase was too hard, badly balanced gameplay BTW:(

Luckily loading times are quite short (on a 360) 

Gears of War had that bloody depressing Tears for Fears cover on it.

The HaloIII commercial had a freeze flash battle scene with Chopin's Raindrop Prelude playing in the foreground (sounded like it was coming from behind me on my surround sound television setup, gave a real tingly feeling up my headshaft). Kind of an interesting approach, but I need some hurtful (heh, see what I did there) metal for my FPS carnage. 

You invented yet another metal subgenre, adding to thousands. 

but I was going for this:

http://www.amazon.ca/Hurting-Tears-Fears/dp/customer-reviews/B00000K413 

only done 3 levels so far.

it's fun, but more of the same. i really am starting to hate the way they keep locking you in and spawning in monsters. there's very little variety for the horde combat this time, and the second level is very cramped and not very fun.

also, visually, i find the levels not as interesting as the original.

i'm hoping there will be some hidden jewels later on for maps though. like the mine shaft from the exp or like the island with the cathedral in the original.

to me, painkiller has always been about generally fun gameplay taking place inside amazingly beautiful maps. this new exp started out as a fan project, and i think they somehow forgot about that. at least so far. :x 

http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/35419 

I liked the original as well, but the first expansion got lost somewhere, most of the guys here turn out better design consistently.

Forcing the player to rely on trick maneuvers like bunny hopping is a criminal, newbie mistake.

Sounds like this new expansion is repeating old errors - a shame. 

Somebody tried it? The time-suit generates great variations (slowmo, stop and reverse) on a known gameplay... At first, you have to get used to the kinda clumsy aliased visuals but once you're in, the well made lighting and design and colorful, quite cartoony textures add some olkskool fun to the experience. AI is correct, weapons are powerful. I'm not ashamed to say I really LIKE this game!

If you had fun with F.E.A.R. or HL2 (urban levels) and Painkiller type weapon effects, just grab the 1Gig demo (one full SP level) and see for yourself...

http://demo.timeshiftgame.com/

Settings and menus are plain and efficient. In the 'video' section, I found 'hardware quality' settings on 'good' might really boost fps without ruining the visuals too much. DoF might be turned off with no regrets too. And hey! There's a built-in FoV cursor in the 'game' settings!

Unlike Crysis or Jericho, this game runs fast and smooth in 1920x1200 here. Pent D 3.2 - XP SP2 DX9c - SLI GeForce 7900GTX (Forceware 169.04 beta required, but working well)

http://www.timeshiftgame.com 

Not convinced yet but will check it out.

I need more demos and stuff to try. Someone give me some links. 

Flash puzzle/platformer:

http://www.mousebreaker.com/games/tallstump/play.php 

Have any of you guys seen any space flying games where they focus on capital ship combat?

So far, the only one i know of is star trek: bridge commander. from what i can recall of playing it, it was pretty cool and was a lot more than you'd think.

the ship's weapons would basically work like capacitors, and there were a few all around the ship. when you fire at the enemy ship, which ever phaser was pointed at him would be the one to fire and it would deplete the energy in it which would slowly recharge.

the idea is to fly around the other dude while rotating your ship such that phasers that have a full charge are pointed towards him.

i think it was a good idea and a lot of fun, but i guess it didn't do very well because i never hear about it.

i was just wondering what you guys thought of a game that tries to do this type of thing. it doesn't have to be star trek or anything, of course. just something where you are maneuvering to get the upper hand while keeping track of which parts of your ship you want to expose to enemy fire and what not.

any opinions on that? 

if i'm wrong and there are other games like that out there, can you suggest any? :) 

That sounds a lot like the starship combat chapter of the Aliens Technical Manual I've mentioned already. There are no SW type starfighters, instead a picture of Hunt For Red October type manoeuvre and counter-manoeuvre is painted, a game of outsmarting in silence.

The chapter is written as a fictional lecture "Excerpted from the STARTAC '76 introductory seminar to the USCM staff college by Colonel James Mortimer, USASF."

The closing paragraphs read:

"Good captains should have an assassin mentality - prepared to sneak up on an enemy and stab him in the back before he can react. Almost 90 percent of space battles are settled this way - without even an exchange of fire. The key phrase here is 'emission control'. A starship captain can't always use his radar and lidar, broadcasting electromagnetic emissions which are gonna light him up like a beacon for everyone to see. The good captains, the ones that survive at least one battle, stay invisible. They control their infrared and EM emissions to become an invisible 'blackbody' in space; they limit their relative motion against the starfield so as to prevent visual detection; they plan their attack pass to fall on the enemy from a sensor blind spot such as a system's star; and they disguise the flare of their ASAT launches. When they light up their radars, it'll be to obtain a firing solution for their weapons, and by that time it'll hopefully be too late for their enemy.

Stealth is everything, and in a battle in which both sides are attempting to find each other in a vast, vast sky, the winner will be the smartest, most alert and best trained.

This is the essence, the Zen of space combat..." 

I'd probably love a game like that, and would probably suck at it too :P

There's something attractive about the challenge of wielding an entire starship like an assassin's blade. It would certainly be a change from conventional space games.

You looking for project ideas..? 

Nice game, I like stuff that remakes oldschool concepts without needing to over complicate it.

And being able to wear a paper hat is pimp. 

I'm always expecting seizure man. 

Seizure man? This is close. It's a terrible game, but the story nearly makes up for it.

http://www.greatgamesexperiment.com/game/gunlimb

You don't have to play, so don't blame me afterwards if you do ;) 

just doing a bit of research.

the thing is that i'd love a game like that, but i don't think it would be possible to make it so that it would appeal to a broad audience. :\

i've played one of those sub games (silent hunter #) and they are incredibly slow paced.

it would be nice to strike a balance between that and something like x-wing or freespace... i thought st:bridge commander did it fairly well, but the emphasis on movement is a little too much for me. i think that's just because it's the startrek universe that's like that.

if you think about it, real engagements between space ships would be on the order of hundreds or thousands of kilometers. add to that inertia and the lack of gravity... engagement ranges could be incredibly long and down to how accurate your targetting system was.

i dunno, there's a lot to think about. :S