This is a pretty cool idea...

http://home.cwru.edu/~jnt5/Planarity/ 

Yes, yes I do.

http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~grajkows/planarity.png 

Nice one! I was only at level 11 after 19 minutes... 

it's funny at first but gets boring after a while, i only played until about 40000 points and went to bed. 

Yeah well I've had a bit of vodka so maybe I should spout about Max Payne 2?

I bought it a while ago when I had a job. The gameplay was basically the same as the original. Take that for what you will; it's either good or bad, depending on what you thought of the original.

Anyway, basically my complaints reside with the story. At this point it's been years since I've played the original, so take my comments as you will--my memories have faded along with everything else.

They basically changed Max around completely. He went from being a good guy who wanted save the world but was turned into a victim into a total loser who deserved everything that came to him. And they changed his look?! What's up with that? Totally horrible.

Not only was the character changed both in the art and point of view, but the entire story aspect has changed. Now we have the story inserted in a combination of comic-book penals and in-game cinematics. What's up with that? Why be so inconsistant? Even something from the same story point will have a cut from a comic-book style and then cut to a in-game cutscene, which basically makes no sense since the comic-book style cutscenes were part of the original selling point.

Basically I found the entire game to be a huge disappointment. I know sequels should be different from the original in order to maintain creative originality, but why ruin a character that you could empathize with by making him into a total loser and then ruining the entire story-telling mode by taking away the creativity of the original? 

Poorly written, but I'm glad that post is off my chest. I hated that game so much. Considering the fact that I'm such a sucker for games that focus around art instead of actual substance, that game really disappointed me. The story was a total let-down, and I hate the publisher/developer for that.

If a game is story-based, try not to make it based around a character that is totally unlikable. I was basically rooting for Vlad at the end since he summed it up pretty well: "You hate life, you're miserable all the time, afraid to enjoy yourself even a little. Face it, you might as well be dead already. Do yourself a favor, give up!" Oh believe me, I wanted to. 

Yes, I beat Max 2 on hard mode in 3 hours flat. The game was a HUGE disappointment. Absolutely poor imo. 

I played this week-end "Saint Seiya - Zodiac Knights - The Sanctuary" on PS2... I'm not really a fan of "fist-fight games", but this games comes from a manga movie release 10/15 years ago, and I was a fan of this manga movie series... so...

Animation / video sequences are really cool: it's like in the manga movie. As well, the special effects like lights halos, etc.. are very well made
Commands are a little bit complicated and annoying sometimes (it's not like tekken), i.e. you need to learn special combo in order to have efficient damages on your ennemy... Maybe it's not so easy as I would like... or maybe I'm too old for this game ... ;)... As well, keeping in guard without attacking your ennemy is not helpfull, and after more or less 5 attacks of your ennemy: hits, and you loose health... You really have to attack to survive..
There are 3 modes: a "one vs one" as usual, the "12 house of zodiacs" like in the movie (yo have to defeat the 12 gold zodiac knights in their respective house, so if you missed an episode of the movie, it's pretty cool... ), and a third one (I don't remember the exact name..) where you are the pope (the bad guy of the movie) and you try to kill the heroes while they are progressing trhought houses of zodiac... So you are allowed to choose between the good and the evil...
The most crappy thing are the sub-titles ingame, and you are not allowed to remove them (or I still don't find where and how to remove them..)
Globally, it was fun, and I fall back in my late youth... 

Cool game, well done and I really enjoyed it. Maybe on the short side, only took me 12-15 hours but it was a fun 12-15 hours. Gameplay was pretty standard but the atmosphere and style was distinctive and a very cool - a bit OTT but it did what it did well.

Then again, I was enjoying it on it's own merits, I hadn't played MP1 so I didn't have any preconceptions....and I've heard unbiased views are so passe these days.... 

I enjoyed MP2 a hell of a lot more than the first game. I thought the art was generally better, the gameplay much more forgiving, the dream sequences done better with regards to gameplay (although perhaps they had less impact). As a result, I actually bothered to play it on all skill modes until I got the slightly altered ending.

It's a fairly short game, but I find most games a bit too long these days, so that was a refreshing change.

As for Max, I didn't really think he was particularly likeable or dislikable, and I didn't care much since all he was there for was to allow me to run around shooting things. 

As for Max, I didn't really think he was particularly likeable or dislikable, and I didn't care much since all he was there for was to allow me to run around shooting things.

Max is too emotional and navel gazing for my taste but this had no effect on how I enjoyed the game play. The loony asylum haunted house set up was a particularly inspired moment of game design IMO. As was the gangster in the costum with the giant feet you have to save from a mob hit. 

although the general idea was cool and execution was great, the mission where you have to save that guy was massively frustrating. It was the only point I remember constantly hitting quick save/load.

One nice touch is that when you go through his flat you can smash his Captain Baseball Bat Boy stuff up and he nearly starts to cry :) 

It was definitely an interesting gameplay scene. However, what bothered me about it is that in the previous game Max wasn't about saving the bad guys for any reason; he was about killing the scum and then figuring out what to do after they were all dead. It just didn't fit with the established character. 

he was in love, and not thinking clearly



blame the woman ;) 

Ok so I've played quite a bit of this game now, so I'm gonna share my thoughts on it.

Overall I enjoy it, but there are things that bring it down from being great.

Let me elaborate, in a game such as this where you are throwing down your gameplay to the mercy of the people playing it, quality can swing from good to bad in a matter of seconds, and this is the main problem with Battlefield 2. 80% of the people playing it are just fucking stupid.

Harsh but fair, how many times have I seen a player get into a blackhawk, which has ample room for a FULL SQUAD of soldiers to ride in (which just happen to be approaching to get in) and the idiot just takes off by himself and flies into the nearest friendly tank. You would think that this happens maybe once or twice a game, but I see this happen every 30 seconds at least. And if you are one of those squad members rushing to the transport you tend to get FUCKING PISSED OFF and shoot the thing as it flies off. And its not just limited to aircraft, it happens with everything.

Now I have had the luxury of playing on a server where most of the players have been very sensible, and the game was a joy to play from start of the match to the very end. I geuss what I'm trying to say is that its a arse to find a decent server to play on, which brings me nicely to my 2nd point...

The games server browser didnt work on release.... Well it KIND OF did, but its was fucking useless. How EA could green light a ONLINE SHOOTER with a broken server browser is beyond me, but I geuss I half expected it being EA after all. Luckily this has been fixed in a patch.

The game is also quite the resource hog, I have to run everything on medium settings or it lags, chops, stops and burps more than czg after a double helping of whale meat.

If you can find that golden server, then the game is great, but its a long and dark road to this great place. A shame... 

Any good? I'm gonna try it once I've got the time. 

I've been playing the hell out of this. Most of what DaZ said is true, public servers are a bit of a gamble. I've found that if you've got nice phat bandwidth as I do, the pubbie servers can be pretty fun if there are 40 or more people on it and you can find one with a playable ping. This is because with the greaters numbers theres a better chance of at least one or two squads on each side actually playing with some teamwork that you can get in on. And if thats not your thing, plenty of fragbait to vent your frustration :) But for the most part I play on private servers so pubbie faggotry is a relative non-issue.

Oh, and if you're in it for teamwork, definitely stay away from public ranked servers. Most of those folks just care about increasing their rankings, above all.

Game has some issues though, the UI, while useable since the latest patch, is still slow and poorly designed. It also consumes a load of bandwidth (disconnecting my AIM session when connecting to a server *every* time, forcing an alt-tab which is way annoying) and resources in general.

I plan on checking out the map editor IF EA RELEASES IT SOMETIME THIS CENTURY. 64 player all-city map? Oh yes, please. 

Make an id base map for it and maybe I'll buy the game. 

if you make the hi-res textures and shaders :) 

I won't repeat what has already so much, but just affirm their comments. No other game can be so supremely entertaining, and outright frustrating at the same time. When you play BF2 as intended, with an intellegent, well balanced squad, you will have an experience unlike any other currently available on pc. Teamplay like this hasn't been excuted so well in a long time.

However, within minutes of this gaming high, it's brought to a crushing low by several key design issues. First up, auto teamswitching. If you are enjoying yourself in a good squad, be prepared to be switched at a moments notice. This is so annoying, particularly when you and you're squad have gotten in a good grove.

Next, terrible terrible terrible UI. Like Notor said before, it's usable now, but that isn't saying much. Connecting to the Auth Server takes up to and over a minute, and then you're brought into one of the worst server browsing GUIs of all time. Slow, nearly unresponsive, this is just unthinkable to have considered 'good enough'.

Finally, and this maybe just my rig, but loading times are rediculously long. Granted it's loading a lot of content, but they should have been able to shave some time somewhere. I guess it wouldn't be half as bad if I didn't spend so much time just getting to a server. After the first load, things get better I'll admit.

But for all my complaining, it's worth it once you get into the squad gameplay it was designed for. Nothing feels as rewarding as playing with a great squad and accomplishing the various goals assigned to you. 

Of all of you that have both a PSP and a DS, which do you prefer?

I have to say that although the DS is full of really cool game ideas, most of these seem to last me about an hour before I get bored of them. My PSP games have had a lot more playtime and I don't get bored of them on a 2-3 hour train ride.

The PSP also has all the cool media options, and if you have an original Japanese or US model, it is very easy to run emulators on it. Apparently it is very difficult to do this on the DS.

Glad the DS is outselling the PSP though. I really don't want another market to be saturated by the same games we have on consoles (no NFS extreme hardcore underground illegal edition or WWF RAW kickass ultra violent edition.) 

But the DS interests me more than PSP, at least currently. So far, the PSP is full of mediocre, uninspired games like Madden and other boring pieces of donkey spittle. The DS has some REALLY cool games (or at least interesting) and as a game machine sports some awesome hardware ideas. The PSP is neat, yes, but it's not really a gaming machine as much as a multimedia machine.

Personally, I would go with DS over PSP because I think whenever the next hand-held Zelda game comes out it'll r0x0r your mom's b0x0rz. But my opinion is invalid and pointless because
1.) I own neither system.
2.) I am Zwiffle, and no one respects me. 

The DS is more interesting on paper, but so far, all the games I have bought, aside from warioware, have been a dissapointment. Even warioware was dissapointing after it was completed - I did not have any urge to go back for more.

Electroplankton was the last DS game I bought and was a complete waste of money. For a fiver it would be worth it though.

There are still a few interesting PSP games, and even though there is a drought of really exciting new stuff, there are a handful of titles that are high quality and lots of fun, despite their lack of originality. 

That was mentioend in the GA thread is really good, some of the best 2d platform action I've experienced actually with great boss fights that really gets the arenaline going.

Exceptionally good for freeware! 

Anyone tried this? I'm downloading it now.... their site's download doesn't seem to connect and they provide no mirrors, but check Filefront or Fileplanet.

http://www.knightonlineworld.com