Hello guys :).

Good discussion. PK had some good-looking and striking maps, they just didn't play as exciting as their themes.

I tend to agree with Kell. I think that's the second time that's happened this month! 

I thought Randy's Shambler was a good start:
http://qexpo2005.quakedev.com/booths/randy/148.html

It seems like the Shambler is the most memorable monster as there are loads of fanart. Maybe I will compile a post with some good ones.
This one is most excellent in my opinion:
http://fc02.deviantart.com/fs28/f/2008/050/0/f/Shambler_by_David_the_Cenobite.jpg
http://david-the-cenobite.deviantart.com/art/Shambler-77903614 

of design - "look, we can do this!" instead of thinking "should we do this?".

It's an easy trap to fall into, especially since once new feature X is included the team fires headlong into yet another new feature, instead of getting the previous one to work properly.

Then delviery day comes and the good bits are diluted in a soup of unfinished features. 

That Shambler model is excellent. 

My comments about a Q3-engine PK clone potentially looking good were not in any way refering to that game on Bluesnews, the screenshots of which I didn't bother checking out until now.

Also don't you just hate it when a couple of modders call themselves some stupid shit like "Mangled Eye Studios", completely giving away the fact that it's just some angsty kid and maybe one or two of his internet friends mucking about in the Q3 engine (for seven years apparently). 

Vanilla Q3 is not particularly fast. Try standing in the worst spots of blacktown or tvy-bench - my 7950GT gets single digit framerates for scenes that a modern engine should fly through at 100 FPS or more.

There's a bunch of reasons for this, which boil down the the fact that q3 is a decade old and wasn't written for the fast paths of modern hardware. 

I agree with BlackDog I guess 

those are unoptimized 3rd party maps and ofcourse it�s easy to kill an engine fps-wise by not minding it�s limits (there are plenty of those on lvl); pom.pk3 also runs poorly for me with maxed gfx, but quake engines were always weak rendering big open spaces.

Show me one 8 years old engine that is still able to look very good in these days and also gives good fps. ---> Q3 <3 

i think it's more the number of polygons/surfaces the engine's not good at. 

Finished Dark Messiah. Was good. Fairly long and substantial. Would have happily played more of it, got into the style of the game. The semi-RPG elements were pretty effective, I tended partway between jack of all trades and a swordsman, I definitely could have original chosen to go in different directions. Some great settings and fantasy styles too, and good gameplay. A bit clunky in feel sometimes, and some random slow downs, but otherwise a fantasy thumbs up. 

Hmm, they totally cripple any physics worth mentioning so all that is left is aim.
But even then, the constant spawning while player reloads/turns his back is sure to unnerve even the most patient players.

I guess they just design these games w�th the concept in mind that players save every 30 seconds so it seems to be no problem. Pffft. 

Sweet jesus lord on multiple vibrating sticks!

This is the most fun I have had online in a LONG time! You can level up your character and unlock all sorts of things for each of the weapons such as grips (reduce recoil), and various laser sights, scopes and silencers. You can also select 3 "perks" for each loadout you create, these are little tweaks you can make to your character to make it a little better, these are as simple as faster reloads and faster weapon firing, through to dropping a live grenade when you die (hehe) and extra bullet penetration through walls.

Ahh yes, bullet penetration, this game does it perfectly! Firing through thin objects with a beefy gun will actually hit people behind thin walls and obstacles, you can tell your hitting someone because you get that funny "dink" sound, this is so much fun!

Blah that was fairly incoherent, but I can't be arsed to re-type it when I can be back in the game. I am level 32 now (55 is the max) and have more unlocks to chase! 

Yeah, as much as I hate to admit it (so bored of realistic war games), Call of Duty 4 is a really good game, the solo is really well made and fun, and the multiplayer is great action, nothing like CounterStrike etc... So much that I'm lvl 55 twice (at home and at work). =)

In the end though, after playing it for 2 months, we've gone back to TF2 at work, and that remains the best multiplayer FPS of the moment for me. =) 

He loves teh latex! 

I tried COD4 MP and it was ass :(

Mind you, I'm sure the actual GAME is good, but it felt like shit to play. There was an INSANE amount of view bob with ridiculously exaggerated animation of the player arms and stuff. The weapons fire just didn't feel right either... and everything looked the same (same colours everywhere on the environment and players), I couldn't see shit.

I guess I'm just too picky and have played Quake based stuff too much - nothing else ever feels as solid or as nice as that.

I haven't actually tried the single player yet, but I will eventually (it's on my list). I'm sure I'll like it, I loved the original COD single player (and, incidentally, thought the multiplayer was ass... :) 

I bought it based on the demo. Maybe next on the agenda to play. Yeah it feels like ass but it has bags of style. 

I think the movement and feel of the game is spot on and really solid, everything has a real weight and I like that. Each to his own I guess :)

I also enjoyed cod2 multiplayer, but only in team deathmatch (which incidentally, is all I play in cod4 really) so maybe that helps here too. 

Another thing I love about the multiplayer is that they really nailed the epic combat feeling, which is a lot easier to get in the single player portion as you can author it to be that way. The multiplayer levels always feel like this gigantic carnival of death and destruction and I sometimes just stand back and watch the scenes unfold like I was watching some in-game scripted scene.

Fear my airstrikes. 

I liked the fact you can talk to opponents on XBox Live. I had some guy called Psycho Smurf laughing at me every time I died...

1 on 1 is a bit dull tho. Still, one map is a town setting with a machinegun nest. Its quite good for 1 on 1 cause you can see the direction of the opponent on the radar, then go and beast them! I play like I was playing Quake though - run and gun! Doesnt always work though...

Singleplayer is really cool - like the scripted sequences, but it feels on a rail! 

and its really good and underrated (demo is not much and most of the bugs are already patched)

Feels like the right blend of Diablo and fps.
Combat gameplay is somewhat like painkiller but with more tactical abilities and more fun beacause of the monsters variety and the whole motivation of levelling up, completing the quests and the loot! Ofcourse Im playing as a marksman in FPS mode 

It was enjoyable for a while, but got old really fast. Very limited amount of content in the game (and it just wasn't quite fun enough to consider re-playing many times over like Diablo...)

Some things were done exceptionally well, and some stuff was very amateurish. It's feels as if they had a bunch of veterans/pros and some absolute n00bs as well (which is probably exactly the case with their team make-up).

Such a big disappointment... I was really hoping for a Diablo replacement, but they just didn't quite nail it. 

when you 'level' up your character, is it only for that game or all games you join? 

Its saves your character info/unlocks/level etc with your character profile. 

It doesn't really give you a huge advantage over others though, just a wider range of options/weapons to chose from. I had no problem being the guy with the highest score on servers filled with lvl 55s, while I was still under lvl 10 (I'd already been playing it for a while at work obviously).
The achievements and all are quite fun to do really.

Hellgate London, yeah I'm somewhere between Speeds and Fribs on it. I think it got alot more bashing than it deserved, it's not a bad game, but it's definately not the succesor to Diablo. I'll probably get a one month subscription for it in a few months, to try out the new content. 

mostly cool and fun, a couple annoying or dumb.

http://www.nekogames.jp/mt/2007/09/2.html