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 

i totally agree about the role stealth would play in any kind of space engagement. it's much more akin to submarine combat than traditional naval battles.

crawling around waiting for some whisper of the enemy and then blowing the shit out of him before he even knows it.

on the other hand, you can't always rely on lying doggo to catch the other guy, sometimes you gotta light up your drives and let the other bastard see you... 

the speeds would be huge and targets tiny.

You could shoot (well, accelerate with multi-stage missiles) lead balls from the other side of a planet on an elliptical trajectory opposite to your opponent's trajectory (it's called retrograde) and they would hit him thus at double orbital speed relative.

In low Earth orbit that would mean 16 km/s.

(Normal weapons on earth have less than 1 km/s muzzle velocities.)

You could detect those projectiles by radar though. Radar echo weakens by the fourth power of distance, and even small balls hitting at 16 km/s do a lot of damage...

You could also shoot from multiple directions by varying the inclination and eccentricity of the orbit.

You'd have to know where your enemy is very very precisely.

I've been toying an idea of such a game where gravity plays a big role. I was such a fan of Star Control and wondered what it could do in 3D and with slightly more realism added to the dynamics. (Like no speed limit, that was completely unphysical.)

Could still be arcadey. The targets would have to be unrealistically big though so that humans could judge the targeting without calculations. 

I'd imagine it would be kinda hard to make a realistic game like this, as I'm guessing in space warfare, computers would really be doing most of the fighting anyways, everything would be going too fast, and the calculations too complex for humans to really take part in any way (other than in designing better, faster computers/AIs before the actual fighting). 

have to have computer helpers, ie dynamically updated trajectory maps. So you could move your mouse and these curves would move, bending with the gravity field and depending on the direction of your thrust... and the enemy location and speed would also generate a curve for the enemy future location. They could be ticked for certain time intervals. 

that sounds very interesting /me takes notes 

Got it Monday, completed it Monday night!

Very short single player mode, I would say around 5-6 hours on normal difficulty, but damn is it fun!

It follows the same formula as call of duty 2 really, if you loved that then this is more of the same but in a modern setting. The developers have been watching way to much "Aliens" and "Black Hawk Down". Some of the missions are lifted straight from that movie now that I think about it.

The game does feature some of the most awesome scenes though, from attacking a freight ship on a stormy night through to escaping a nuclear explosion in a helicopter, its just breath-taking.

One final thing I must mention, there is a Chernobyl level where you play as a sniper, this single level PWNZ Stalker in so many ways, it almost makes me sad that GSC Gameworld are going to play this map and be so pissed! :)

Also, you can shoot dogs.

The end. 

Anyone has tried this game already? 

From what I've seen so far, the Witcher is a very nice "interactive movie"... apart from, perhaps, the interactive bits. :D

To be fair I've only played for about 5-10 minutes. I actually clocked in 1-2 hours overall, but actual playtime was less than 10 minutes. The rest of the time I was watching cutscenes and loading bars.

I trust the game will open up a bit more soon, once the initial story setup has been done, allowing me to play a bit more and get a more informed opinion on the gameplay. So far though, the fun factor has been hampered by crappy camera controls and a fairly annoying combat system, so I can't say I've truly enjoyed my play time thus far.

The camera has a few different modes and can be adjusted automatically or manually... I preferred the manual setup, but instead of allowing full control and playing nice, the camera jumped around a lot in a really shitty and distracting way. It seems like they've tried to allow for both a point-and-click style movement/auto camera model, while also allowing the option for WASD control for movement with a manual camera. So rather than being perfect for one of those styles, it ends up being pretty average for both.

The combat so far is a bit... meh. Rather than simple button mashing or auto-attacks, The Witcher lies somewhere in between - clicking on a bad guy will initiate an attack sequence, and you're required to press the mouse button at the appropriate times to perform extra attacks (bad timing will fuck up the sequence and you'll have to start again). It works well enough, but I'm not sure if I really like it or not yet. You can also change stances and cast spells, though I don't have many options yet (for spells at least) so it's hard to say whether those additional skills will make it interesting enough or not.

Ultimately if the game overall is good enough, I can see myself putting up with the less-than-ideal camera and combat... but only if the rest of the game is above average. So far it looks pretty good - the story is interesting enough, art is nice, voice acting is pretty good, etc, no complaints really, other than the aforementioned camera and combat issues. 

JohnXmas wrote:

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


I tend to agree. Whilst it basically 100% IS Half-Life 2 + bullet time, it is still pretty fun. The FPS basics are all present and correct and done well, and there are a few things I like:

Timeshift is easy and useful and fun (although will probably get old?)
Weapons are powerful and feel good - death animations and blood are rewarding.
Destructable enviroments are a nice touch (although the enviroments and currently visuals are pretty cluttered).

Overall it seems to do the job, albeit a derivative one. I could be tempted. 

There seems to be a few shooters and stuff recently.

Am I right that I should be buying / playing:

Bioshock
Crysis
Gears Of War
and Timeshift since I like the demo
???

Any others??

I am so behind with gaming it's ridiculous. Have still got to start Dark Messiah, Vampire and Thief 3, and make progress on Guild Wars and Gothic 3....hmph. Still it's always good to have straight up shooters to play, right?? 

You should buy the Orange Box and have some Team Fortress 2 with us online!

/me votes TF2 best game of 2007.

Anyways yeah, so many games coming out these days! Have to play Gears of War and Crysis, but will probably get a 8800gt first to play them in proper quality.
And have to get Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3 on Wii! And if I had a 360 I'd be playing assassin's creed. =\

Oh and been wasting time on Hellgate a bit, Frib, what do you think of the full game? 

checked it out for a bit at the local shop, that looks like a great game. Although I wonder if the missions would get repetitive? WIth good level design they shouldnt. Either way, it looks cool. anyone know if its coming out on pc ? 

Yeah, apparently early 2008. 

I heard it gets a bit repetitive yeah. So far I've done only one assassination though, and I'm really enjoying every aspect of it. I take my time to explore and shit and just chill out on the rooftops. So far very little action for me, which I love, because I hate action.
It's a brilliant groping sim. 

Okay, this will sound dumb but can someone inform me here.

I played HL2 a while back, it was cool. I played HL2 Ep1 a while back too, it was also cool.

Ep2 is the one just out, that's been delayed for ages??

Now, what purchase options does this come with?? I presume you at least have to buy it with TF2 and Portal included (which is fine by me). Can you just buy it like that, or do you have to buy this Orange Box bollox with HL2 and Ep1 as well?? 

As far as I know you have to buy it all!

Still - Its OK for me - I now have 360 versions of all of them, I preveiosly had HL2 on xbox1, [HL, HL2, HL2 ep1 - PC] and now [HL2, HL2 ep1, HL2 ep2, Portal and TF2 - 360]

Oh well...

360 versions all look better... 

There will be stand-alone versions of them all, I'm sure, but I'm not sure how eventual that will be.

There was talk of "The Black Box" version for a while (that contained the three new games without the earlier content) but I seem to remember reading that it was shitcanned entirely. 

You can buy HL2 ep2 alone if you want on steam, it costs $30 though I think, so it's really not worth it considering the Orange Box is $50, and ep2, portal + tf2 are worth $80 total, and all 3 games are great. Just think of it as HL2 and ep1 being free bonuses you can give away as gifts to someone else. =)

I kinda wonder how much they were planning on selling the black box, cause the orange one is already really cheap. 

Orange box is insanely good value for money, even if you already own HL2 and EP1.

Hell its worth the entry fee for TF2 alone, and with the amount of custom maps that are no doubt gonna be released for Portal it will have a huge lifespan if you enjoy the 1st person puzzle gameplay.

I would seriously pick it up Shambler...