Lun

BTW, sorry about going after you like that. I guess I was feeling down or bored yesterday but that's no excuse. So, I do apologize.

We had the Gears of War 2 gold party last night and I drank my attitude away. Best. Gold party. Ever. 

http://www.cedmagic.com/featured/he-man/skeletor.jpg 

http://www.cedmagic.com/featured/he-man/skeletor.html

Your JPG link doesn't work for some reason. 

You may have already seen it elsewhere.

http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.com/2008/10/review-world-of-goo.html 

...some of these debates sound more fun than the games do. 

a careful mix of 8-bit retro essence and modern flash-game-ishness.

http://www.doublefine.com/news.php/minigames/Tashas_Game 

Released in 2004, Thief: Deadly Shadows is the third game in the series. However, this time it was developed by Ion Storm Austin, after Looking Glass Studios closed doors.

I played the original Thief demo in 1998 but didn't particularly enjoy sneaking around in shadows, so I never played the full game or it's sequel. But with Thief 3 based on a heavily modifed Unreal 2 engine, I decided I could put up with some slow gameplay in order to explore the gorgeous Victorian city.

I'm glad I did too, because it was very well designed. After playing through Enclave and now Thief 3, I've been spoiled with highly detailed, tight and twisting little levels. The FPS genre needs more games in this style, rather than modern war or sci-fi themes. Every level in this game looks great, and there is just enough variety in there so that you don't get sick of the town theme. Level highlights were the short but foreboding haunted, rotting ship full of zombies. But it was an insane asylum slash orphanage which wins the award for spookiest level I've ever played. You help a ghostly little girl try to escape the asylum, playing from present time to back in the past through the eyes of one of the insane patients. Very, very well done.

Due to the level of sneaking around in shadows and trying not to be seen, this brings a whole new level of suspense to first person shooters (if you can call this that), which even horror games like Undying couldn't do. If you get seen and have to engage in a fight you're going to take a lot of damage, which means you really can't treat this as an action game. The style of gameplay works well, but I did wish at times I could just run in and shoot everything and be done with it. Instead, you can easily spend ten minutes in an area trying to knock each opponent out.

The game ends up being very long, perhaps around twenty hours which is double your average action FPS. Unfortunately, you spend a great deal of time returning to levels you've already played through over and over again. Made worse by the fact that your maps are useless and the levels are very non-linear, so you can easily get lost in the streets which often lack distinguishable features.

The biggest problem with the game were the loading times. On a fairly new system brought for gaming (8800GT, 3ghz Intel Core 2 Duo) you don't expect loading times of 20 seconds on a game that is four years old, featuring relatively small levels. Every time I'd sneak up behind an enemy ready to knock them out, only for them to slightly turn at the last second or the character not swinging the bat properly (it happens a lot!) I get to sit through another 20 seconds of loading. Also Garrett, the main character, acts like a complete drunk sometimes with the way he moves - and his ability to jump even a foot high object is laughable.

Another big probably was over 15 hours into the game, my saved games corrupted themselves and I lost everything. Fortunately, someone had put all their saved games on the internet for me to play from.

Overall, Thief: Deadly Shadows features some fantastic little levels, enjoyable gameplay and a great storyline. But you need to be a patient person to sit through 20 hours of creeping in the shadows. 

About 2 hours or so into this game. FUcking bad ass game so far. Almost like a FPS GTA or something. Really bad ass.

Only complaint so far: Every character in the game talks fast. They sound unbelievable. It wouldn't kill them to talk a little more normal.

Otherwise it's super awesome so far. 

Great, seems the designers picked a bit of everything, mish-mashed it and there you go! We have a winner...! Hey! What about freakish voices like "the many" or somethin'? Got that too? 

and how does it run? 

I haven't had a hickup yet. I'm debating trying to turn the graphics up even higher. I didn't bother seeing what all had changed, I just selected the 'High' graphics option, out of like 5 options, but you can change everything individually if you want.

Intel Core 2 Duo 3.0 GHz
2 Gigs Ram
9800 GTX 

I really shouldn't be this cynical but it's far too easy for me to picture someone on one side of the glass in a recording session saying "Can you say it faster? We only have 200mb for audio data on the disc." 

Any of you know about some great horror games like SS2 with the same elements?

Sorry; by the way - Hello all! 

System Shock
or
Serious Sam
or
Perhaps something else. 

Seriously, I haven't played it. 

sort of.

its all a bit tongue-in-cheek though... 

skeletons (oddly fiend-shaped, btw.)

I believe he meant System Shock though.

I thought BioShock was pretty awesome, pretty moody. Others thought otherwise (generally those that played System Shock 2 were let down.) But seriously give it a spin. 

but you can't really call it old... 

aka Bloom - The Game. Seems to run fine on my machine (2.6, x1950pro, 2GB), even on high settings. Though I haven't gotten into a larger firefight or vast open area, yet - played only one hour so far.

The extreme bloom sucks. The introductory sequence was basically almost completely white. Problem is, without bloom the game is too dark. But with bloom enabled it's too bright and everything looks somewhat shabby if the details (shadows etc) are not set to ultra-high.

What Zwiffle said. Feels a bit like a GTA game indeed. And yes, the characters do talk very fast. Considering there's a console version too, I can see why. ;) 

Bought this.

Like the Graphics, and the free-roaming, the tackling people for loot stuff, the atmosphere etc.

Dont like: (deep breath)

The fact that people no-longer carry money. (wasn't there money when you searched bodies before?)
The fact that many "missions" are broken and incompletable
The fact that it KEEPS CRASHING TO THE DESKTOP REGARDLESS OF WHICHEVER PATCH IS APPLIED, OR EVEN COMMUNITY "FIXES" WHICH DONT WORK EITHER.

Fucking waste of �30. 

I gave it a last chance when the fifth patch was released. But alas, the game still crashed. And not only that - it also gave me my first ever bluescreen on XP. Didn't even know there were such things. Lowering the video settings seems to increase the stability somewhat, but why play on low settings only because a game is so poorly made.

NPCs never carried lootable money, I think. They only had some to buy stuff from you. Ricky, have you played SOC? If not, you should - it's much less frustrating. 

And found similar problems. Although I found the missions to be a bit more stable. I've been debating playing it again, because I hear there's the "Oblivion: Lost" mod, or something, which basically fixes everything.

The thing is I paid �5 for SoC, and din't feel ripped off at all! Yet today I see that Far Cry 2 is out, even in the shops in my tiny town, and if I had known that CS was going to be such a fucking cock-tease let down, I would have waited and bough that instead.
I paid �4 for Far Cry 1 a few months back, and really enjoyed it! I would definately pay �30 for FC2, simply on the basis of my experience of the first game.

There have been a few releases of late which caught my eye, and more just over the horizon:

Crysis - Warhead
Stalker CS (GRRRRRR!)
Far Cry 2

and soon

Fallout 3

Of those four, why did I have to buy the shit one?!?! 

Ah yes, played this recently, too.
While it was pretty short, had an anti-climatic ending and no map that really stood out, I somehow enjoyed it more than Crysis. Kind of odd really. Maybe because the Psycho character had such a cool accent.

Gameplay is pretty much the same as in Crysis, only more linear. Half-way through, there's a train ride sequence with turrent combat which seemed to be the most special or new aspect of the game as compared to its predecessor, but I didn't like it that much.

The performance was better than in Crysis on high settings. I suppose that was because many environmental details were turned into mapobjects with a limited distance of visibility - as a result, all those things, e.g. stones, constantly popped up some 10 meters before me as I was moving forward. Looked pretty silly, but I could live with it regarding the potential perfomance boost. 

Don't worry, they all suck in one way or another. 

Despite the game being gorgeous, I just can't play through it, it's sooooooo boring. =\