Has anyone played Unreal 2 yet? Gamespy only gave it a 76. 

I finished it a couple of hours ago. decent levels. some infuriating design decisions. a few bugs. probably manegement fuckups - my guess is they had a project lead who couldn't stop the feature-creep, hence the lack of polish.

The drakk levels were the worst. mostly due to bad texture-choices. 

is it as pretty as it looks in the screens (especially those gorgeous skins)? and how's the gameplay, all the reviews dont seem to like it too much but they dont hate it either? 

I'm a bit jaded. I personally get more excited about the aesthetics rather than the execution itself. ICO is a good example - it's not the prettiest game technically speaking, but the visual design comes together to make every single frame absolutely fucking beautiful.

The gameplay is your basic run of the mill stuff, with some defend-the-perimiter type missions thrown in to break up.

This is a solid buy for $20-$25, not so solid at full-price. 

I found the gameplay far too linear. The defense bits aren't particularly amazing, but they do at least give a little variety.

The boss combats suck (as ever).

The graphics are gorgeous although there are some bugs in places. Some amazing scenes (the very first scene, when you walk out of the general's command room and you're standing on top of a tower overlooking an entire island :)

I do think some amazing things could be done by the mapping community if they tried. 

guys, looks like I should wait till I upgrade then :)

wrath, what's ICO? 

The boss combats suck (as ever).

Indeed, why do developers persist and insist on these boring boss combats, all they can ever be is dodge, shoot (repeat until bored fuckless), i dont think i have ever enjoyed a boss combat, honestly. 

That is exacltly the type of computer I wanna buy for this coming april. And I'll get that remote control for the DVD player. Now good question here; I bought the monitor PF795 Viewsonic Professional Series 2-3 years ago, it is a flatscreen monitor 19inches CRT and dot pich = .25 center, then .27 for corners. I went to a friend that had recently bought also a kickass computer and his monitor is a Samsung with .20 for dot pitch. Now I'm worry to have blur all what I will see with my new computer in april IF I keep my PF795? What should I do? 

the cyberdemon rocked. 

and chton too

as for the unreal2, i'm playing thorugh it now.
well indeed, visuals are the best there. they crammed bazillions of polys there, and every poly does its work. and it seems developers were too busy adding polys and forgot about proper gameplay. too much intermissions that break your immersion into the gameplay. the missions are short. indeed, some designs look uber pretty, but true atmosphere is only in certain places/maps, not in the entire game. (remember u1, it was fully atmospheric game)
and what i disliked the most is jump puzzle room with broken lazers. this is the most stupid place i encountered so far: arseloads of polys (ie lower framerate), and you have to jump with high precision over lazers and melted metal. this just plain sucks. it's clear that developers wanted to increase playing time via such silly attempts.
anyway, have to finish it yet, maybe there will be more good things in the game i hope... 

do you mind posting more when you're finished with u2 please? 

it is one of the best games I've ever played - it was developed by sony and released on the ps2.

http://www.gamespy.com/games/2763.shtml

It's perfection on a disc, really.

---

u2;

also, non-skipable cut-scenes makes wrath reach for the big red button. 

Good
* Great graphics
* Some good weapons

Bad
* Shockingly slow loading times ( made worse by the frequent need for quicksaving/loading )
* Crap enemies ( plus most take at least 3 close range blasts with a shotgun = not fun )
* Vomit inducing attempts at humour.
* Cutscenes that are so dull your brain will shut down, thus you will usually have no idea what you are supposed to be doing.
* Falling into the same stupid traps as every PC fps ever, such as not giving you enough health/ammo to take on extremely tough enemies.

I'm probably about 2 thirds of the way through and I really cant be bothered to go back to it.
But did I mention the nice graphics? It will probably form an OK base for user levels/mods. I'd recommend someone makes the enemies weaker to hopefully make things more fun. 

was the cyberdemon the boss at the end of Doom? (or Doom 2)?.

I never made it to the end of Doom or Doom 2 i stopped near the end, about 5 levels off i guess, so i dont think i ever faced a "cyberdemon" and if i do i dont remember it. Dont ask me why i stopped before the finish, i just got bored i guess, although i do love Doom, of course. 

well, i still keep me words with me.
and fully agreed with damaul.
gfx part is 10/10, but gameplay/story is silly. and indeed, cheap jokes are enraging. there were some fun moments in the game, but i can use one left hand to count them all. after finishing the game i have load of sweet screenshot in my head. but not a single remembrance about funny gameplay moments. there, of course, are very nice ideas, i was impressed (won't tell you, don't wanna spoil much) watching how developers made it. but as i said, they (developers) were too busy making visuals looking top. it looks like their primary task was to make shiny new geforces of casuals to work off their money 100%. i'm sure the game will not fly 120fps even on powerful computer. but it'll work as a good test for hardware testers :)
and of course, using such vast possibilities of the engine, it's OUR job to make proper levels for this game :) there is excellent editor, top textures and possibility to modify the gameplay. so, i'm really hope there will be talented designers who'll make proper maps/mods out of this engine.

now, only doom3 left, my last fort of hope :) 

Boss combat is not a bad thing on its own, but it needs to be setup well. For some reason in most 3d shooters boss combat is either boring frustrating or both.
I`m finding classic console games bosses much more fun 

so basically it seems like its:

graphics over gameplay.

is this what the state of current gaming is now?
and if so, what hope does the future hold? 

"what hope does the future hold?"

Putting back in the gameplay, maybe? Probably need to start with making it easy to put in the slick stuff.

As to boss battles, Good finale if they're not too long. Maybe something smarter instead of something you dump ammo into. Max was pretty cool in Nehahra, could have been over in half the time and still got the point though (but hey, after 20 levels or something...). Actually, the standard big tough fast Unreal enemy would make good bosses. 

The current state of gaming is thus:

If you want to play fun games: get a console ( or 3 ), if you want to play online games or tech demos with a poor excuse for a game tacked onto the end: get a PC. 

now tell me what you REALLY think of pc gaming. 

play zelda instead 

That the Vietcong multiplayer demo is absolutely incredible, and the game really has some possibilities. Like my friend so nicely said, "It's like air soft, I like go 'OMG! lolol n00bz' when playing!" Oh, and I already introduced his ass to my boot.

But in any case, the game can be really atmospheric, and it's mostly because of a few simple tricks, like hearing the heart beating really fast when shot, not actually hearing the shot that kills you, tinning when a grenade goes off right next to you, the need to use iron sights to really hit anything, and the lack of any HUD. And on top of all that, the level is quite nice, finally with enough foliage for some good jungle warfare. 

Sorry for taking such a long time to reply. Where can I get OUM?

DaMaul: I like consoles, but the one problem resides in the making and obtaining of quality mods. Haven't seen any Armored Core 3 mods on Playstation II yet. :) 

Picked up and started playing The Thing, but very little info on the web about this game. From what I can tell UK based development. Anyone know more about the game or the development? 

I found <a http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_jenkins011503.asp?p=0>this article</a> rather interesting.