"Gears intrigued me when it first came out because it looked like a modern version of the Quake we all know and love"

... it did?! 

Mercs/Marines gibbing monsters in drab, brownish 3D environments. 

How can you not have liked Unreal? I've said it before (and I'm sure I'll say it again) but the epic vista when you left the Ryker (I think that was the name of the prison ship) for the first time at the start of level 2 was unparalled at the time. 

I remember finding that amazing at the time (and the skaarj running away in the level before - both very cinematic bits, which the game was clearly aiming at) - but, he was playing it later, not at the time. 

#18949 posted by [85.138.15.226] on 2010/07/17 16:23:18
Awesome, finaly I found out who block me and remove my op from #tf :)

people really are shit, thanks god I have a life... go fuck your selfs

Assholes bewind computers hiding...

Spirit best thing I did was removing my page from QuaDdicted... FUCK OFF

I will not bother you fagets and niggers lovers anymore... delete mirc! and remove this page also but this time I can garantie is my last time... I'm sick of almost you assholes

#tf beef has reached a suitable level of wholesome interaction. Hurrah for Trinca <3 xxx 

Gears looked cool to me, I was well keen to play it. The gritty sci-fi style, proper monsters, and straight-up shooting looked good. Didn't look super-amazing but looked a good shooter, bit like an updated Q2 I guess. I just couldn't hack the controls, didn't feel right at all, weird as other 3PSs like FAKK2 felt fine. If it had been proper FPS then I'm sure I'd have liked it.

NNTTTT is right about Unreal, how can you diss it?? Looked great at the time, awesome skies, liquids, detail textures, massive maps and scale, great variety of maps with some dramatic themes (Sunspire, Na Pali Haven, Trench, Bluff Eversmoking etc), cool monsters, varied weapons, NPCs (and it touches like this and scripting and shit before HL did, overshadowed my arse), funky little power-ups. Yeah okay the pacing was slow and the combat wasn't as visercal and chunky as it should have been, other than that a total classic.

P.S. #offtopic, back to Trinca plz 

been playing some new custom maps lately and tell you what it can still look great despite the dated engine. Gameplay takes a bit more to get right but in proper maps, I love it. Sure its more cat and mouse than quake, but in the right hands, it works brilliantly.

Have a one pack to go, if anyone's interested, I can post a news items with some links. 

I can accept that Tronyn, but it raises an interesting point about playing old games (not replaying, that's more a nostaligia trip), I feel you have to, to a certain extent, judge/view them in context of when they were released. Comparing them to 'modern' games seems unfair, especially given the inherent technological dependancy of computer games (it's possible to compare films from today and the 50s since they can be judged on largely the same standards). It's akin to comparing the original silent movies to the Godfather trilogy.

I dunno, I'd be interested to hear your views, but I think you have to look at them in almost a 'historical' context... 

(it's possible to compare films from today and the 50s since they can be judged on largely the same standards)

Wrong if you consider special effects and digital images insertion in nowadays movies...

Technology evolution has to be taken into account, and comparing 50 years ago movies with nowadays movie is for me trying to compare horses and cars performances: let's do it apple to apple please ;) 

from a storytelling perspective, you can compare.

But graphics are such a big part of games, its much harder to do. 

What I said: just try to compare "War of the Worlds" original (1953) and remake (2005) movies.. almost same story, different results... 

"The Day the Earth Stood Still".. original movie in 1951, remake in 2008.. same story, different results....

Anyway 

The new ones are much better because they used special effects! 

When I played Unreal for the first time, I had already completed Quake, Hexen II, Quake II, Half-life, Heretic II, and most of SIN. I am not saying that the game didn't contribute anything to the FPS genre but, by that time, it wasn't offering much more than what I had already seen. 

day the earth stood still original shits all over the remake.

War of the Worlds not so much IMHO, but the original holds its own in storytelling, the remake has much better effects and uses them well to be successful as an action adventure. 

I didn't think anyone had seen The Day The Earth Stood Still remake. 

storytelling is not the same as story. 

I had to, just to see how bad it could be. 

I agree about judging old games by the standards of their times; I also think that the new/old movies things can apply to new/old games - new games seem a lot flashier and more shallow (hollywoodized) than games 10 years ago. It's harder to make new intellectual property in both games and movies now. 

... evilution of Humanity :P 

how do you do that? that seems like an invaluable thing for testing. a lot of times, i've died more than half way through and have no first run demo of the last part of a map. 

After dying, stop the current demo recording. Disconnect. Then start a new recording in the console but without entering the map name this time. Load the savegame.

It's indeed an invaluable method - doing a demo of one's "first run" should always be understood as recording a demo of the "first run-THROUGH", particularly for beta testing. Otherwise, it's pretty useless. 

that's awesome! i never knew you could do that, thanks! 

Tronyn: Yet the same doesn't apply to books, or music. There is still heaps of good music, just not in the mainstream charts... there are also heaps of good films for example coming out of Scandinavia or Germany. It's just that no one in Hollywood notices.

The Hollywood comparison is an america-centric view. 

negke: It's not useless to see where the player died, and the stuff that happened before that can still contain valuable info.