Okay so I'm slowly catching up on all the games I've missed over the last several years. Haven't really played anything since 2001, apart from Unreal 2. I got a new computer this year (March) so I'm started from 2001 and playing all the good FPS since then! Already done Undying, WOT, SOF2 and this week played through Halo.

I was expecting it to be ugly repetitive shit, but gave it a chance. It didn't feature very good level design; there was alot of copy/paste of rooms and corridors, made worse by incredibly bland textures. But, the outdoors levels were good, and huge. Especially given this was released in 2001. I absolutely hated no quicksave and having to wait for checkpoints. Not because it was too hard, but some of the outdoor battles, eg. flying ships, gun turrets and rocket tanks with a dozen aliens on foot, can take up to 10min of strategy gameplay to get through. Getting 90% of the way through only to get hit by a rocket and having to start all over again is inexcuseable. I actually found most of these outdoors battle scenes (particularly in level 8) to be much harder than the final 2 levels. Where's the big finale aswell? A lame poor-handling buggy ride is the finale.

Only carrying 2 weapons at a time was also a rubbish idea. But with the machine gun and shotgun combination, some of the close range combat against the Flood was surprisingly enjoyable.

Still, with ugly indoor level design and only say 30% of the gameplay being enjoyable, I can't say I'd ever sit through the game again. Nor am I eagerly anticipating the sequel. Very, very overrated. And while the story was decent, it was nothing worth being made into a blockbuster. 

Am I the only one who thought "free during the first 24 hours" meant "downloading during the first 24 hours and play it when ever you want"? I am pretty sure I played the previous episodes after more than 1-2 days even, not it is not possible anymore. Using Gametap.

Oh yes, DRM, kiss my ass.

Kona: If you like great stories and atmosphere, then give Max Payne 2 a try. 

I realized when I tried to play episode 2 one day later. Makes sense not allowing people to stretch the free offer indefinitely. It's a Steam clone, after all.

I've lost interest anyway (after having played three episodes). The game has nice art, but gameplay gets old quickly. Unless, that is, they saved the really interesting features for later episodes. I also found that I hardly remember any of the tales which makes the game's story all the more confusing, especially the dark version. 

I already wondered why they would allow people to get the game(s) for free. Yeah, it got boring, especially since none of the episodes reached the fun of Episode 1. In the latest you sometimes have only one level to reach to finish the level, how boring compared to the "you have to jump"-birds in ep1. 

crap looking enemies and indoor areas, outdoors do look better. But I do find the core gameplay to be quite fun.

Still, only about 1/3 of the way in, will see how it fares up by the end. 

Yeah Contract Jack (crappy Nolf prequel), Serious Sam 1 and then Max Payne 2 are next on my list. What's better - SS1 or SS2?

Nitin... it gets pretty tedious after a while. Once the Flood come into it (think Halflife headcrabs... only thousands of them), it actually gets slightly more fun, but the big outdoor scenes when your fighting heavy machinery is a pain in the ass. I nearly punched my computer on one instance. 

I preferred SS2 to 1 personally. 

I felt the other way around.
They are both very stupid though. 

can't wait http://www.monkeysofdoom.org/ 

halo: nice core gameplay, shitty, awful, horribile and repetitive art and level design (interior), shitty and stupid sounding and looking enemies.

One of the stupidest sequences in the first one was the corridor with the flood.

For who hasn't played it or doesn't rember it:

take one corridor and fill it with thousands of headcrabs. Now copy and paste the same fucking corridor for one hundred identical instances until the damned sequence finally ends. 

http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/games/bloody

Where blood is used as a puzzle element. 

I heard it sucks! Shame cause I enjoyed Shadow of Chernobyl and it was cool, but too buggy to finish!! 

 

I played it for a short time.
Looks great and the "enhanced full dynamic lighting" renderer seems to work with dx9/xp, too. I can't tell for sure, though, because the game is crashing a lot. I'm not sure what is to blame - surely the game, but I'm also a little suspicous about my card. Regular "full dynamic" renderer works slightly better but I still have to save often. Maybe it's because the first level is so large.

Not sure about gameplay. The first few quests in level 1 feel somewhat un-stalkery. At least the one in which you have to repel hordes of bandits with your team mates and there's action music in the background... Too early to see.

Stalker SOC. was great and it was definitely playable/finishable. I recently played through it again with the Oblivion Lost mod 2.1 which, apart from script fixes, added many nice little bits, monsters, weapons, vehicles, and random blowouts - very enjoyable. 

Stalker SOC. was great and it was definitely playable/finishable. I recently played through it again with the Oblivion Lost mod 2.1 which, apart from script fixes, added many nice little bits, monsters, weapons, vehicles, and random blowouts - very enjoyable.

I've been doing the same last week the exact same mod, it really does add a lot to the game!

It basicly turns it into what GSC gameworld has in mind before THQ stuck their noses in, you have to sleep, shelter during blowouts (which are awesome) and generally survive.

Lots of new and tweaked weapons and armour, fixed quests etc, tons of new enemies that GSC had made but not implemented fully into the game, that really add to the atmosphere.

It really does take the game a step up.

I'm sad to hear that clear sky is possibly a step backwards in the franchise, as I felt that all GSC had to do was polish the Stalker game and it would be perfect, but it sounds like there are just as many issues/crashes in this new version as well. A real shame as the bugs really do destroy what could be an utterly fantastic and engrosing experience. 

If anyone has bought Doom3 + expansion and can't run it then its because you need to run the expansion and then the original game to cicumnavigate the cd-key. 

anyone try out Spore? I guess it's released. 

The 1st part is great (where your swimming around eating stuff) then there is a rather boring section where your creature gets onto land and has to make a nest and gather food/dna. That is followed by the tribal part which kinda like C&C but dumbed down to boredom, then the civilization part which is like C&C but dumbed down - But you can make your own vehicles (which is actually really cool).

By this point I was not really impressed, but decided to carry on and see if it got better in the space stage, and it does!

I've only played about 30 mins of the space stage, but im loving it. You can design your own spaceship and then fly around planets abducting lifeforms and wildlife so you can seed other planets with life.

There are tons of upgrades you can get for your ship which makes it better at combat/teraforming/trading and I cant wait to try them all out!

This is really short and badly written I know, but I really need sleep right now :) Just thought I would share my 1st few hours of the game with you.

Hehe, I just had a flash of that Futurama episode where bender gets shot into space and those two civilizations start to evolve on either side of his body... :) 

The game is really a bit to cute and fuzzy for me tastes, especially for the first two or three stages, all you get are cute giggles and woo'ing noises from your creature - it made me feel like vomiting all over my screen tbh... Luckily I managed to resist the urge and got to the space age.

It looks like the space portion of the game is where all the meat is at. You can basicly think of all the minigames before it as "customizing your ride, and picking the paint job" as that is essentially what happens there.

For instance, my race of dazpods (yeah, kill me) are hell bent on galactic domination and have just about made extinct every other race on their home planet in their evolution. If you take the path of war you get special tools that make you better at it, for instance in the civilization phase I got some nifty nukes to throw around, while in the tribal phase my leader could lay booby traps and throw bombs.

I'm gonna start another race soon and see what happens with the peaceful / trader / gatherer race choices... 

http://www.gog.com/en/intro

Seems like a very nice service for purchasing and downloading old games without any DRM at all. Should be open to the public very soon by the looks of it. 

Okay I'm gonna start reviewing every new game I play and put them on Ethereal Hell. I reviewed Halo a few weeks ago. Here's Serious Sam II.

After reading reviews from Gamespot & IGN that gave rather average ratings (6.9/10), complaining of cartoon-like design and repetitive gameplay, my expectations for Serious Sam II weren't high. However, I didn't have the option of comparing it to the first two parts of Serious Sam, as I only ever played the original demo years ago. This may have been a good thing.

As it turned out, the further I progressed in the game the more I realised this is a well underrated game. In particular, it was the level design that truly impressed me. Compared with other FPS' that have you plodding through the same themes for hours; eg. Doom3 and it's indoor base, Croteam throwing in a brand new world and theme almost every second level was very welcome.

Some players might complain that it's all too inconsistent (those some players probably complain that the gameplay is too repetitive), but it was all well tied into the story as to how they could present so many different themes and cultures.

Some of the memorable themes for me were the swamps of Deadwood, giant tree village of Woodstock, the Giant Junkyard, the entire Kleer chapter - very similar to Doom3's Hell levels, and the many little villages in different planets. Fantastic level design all the way through the game, all very colourful and bright. This may be the first game I've ever played where I didn't have to turn the lights out to see properly! My only nitpick in design was the lack of vertical design - it's all very flat and open.

Gameplay was all very enjoyable. I will say that those reviewers that complained about it being too easy on normal are very much wrong. The in-game menu describes normal as being for the "Experienced FPS Player" and that's exactly what I am. I found the gameplay to be pretty spot on. There were some parts that were a little tight on health, but ammo was always plentiful. I played through most of the game with the DBL-SG and Minigun, always with more rockets (and later cannonballs) left than what I should have. My only criticism is the final level, which went on far too long. By the time I managed to make it to the final arena, I felt it was already enough of a build up to bring on the final boss. I was wrong, it's time to battle around 20 giant spiders. By this time I was sick of it and ready to put god mode on just so I could finally get to the boss. The final level was also probably the worst looking level in the game, so it was a poor way to end the game.

One more strength Serious Sam II has is the humour, albeit sometimes too cheesy. Still, this beats NOLF/NOLFII as the funniest FPS made. And it actually had a story with two cutscenes after every single level. Good job for a game supposed to be about pure hardcore action. In fact, Serious Sam II probably has more cutscenes than Halo and Half-Life! Admittedly the story was rather straight-foward compared to something like NOLF.

Overall Serious Sam II is very good game, particularly if you don't take gaming too seriously (Halo & RTS gamers may not like this). Croteam are very tight-lipped on Serious Sam III, but I'm definitely going to be on the lookout. The Serious Engine III is said to be at least as good as Unreal Engine 3. 

Thanks Kona, keep them coming.

I liked SS1 but the enemy set was very limited. I finished it more out of bloody-mindedness than anything.

I probably won't buy SS2, but its nice to hear an opinion. 

Please don't say anything about review scores. 

decent flash platformer, nice pixel art, decent steampunk theme.

http://www.nitrome.com/games/dirkvalentine/ 

Very nice! Film buffs in particular will appreciate some of the sound effects...