Cool game, worth the $6 I paid for it during the Steam sale.
you're awesome, thank you. 

OK, I was looking forwards to this game since pretty much when it was announced (although I actually got very worried for a while because I figured it meant that they had scrapped Colonial Marines).

I agree with all of Negkes observations pretty much. I have only played through the Marine episode, and I did that in two sittings (!).

I must admit though that the marine episode was great fun, mainly because of the quality of the maps and overall immersion, and the A.I. of the aliens, which was very good indeed, you could tell it was the sme crew that made the original AvP PC game about 10 years ago (fuck has it really been that long!?). Aliens use the darkness to there advantage, even when it is the AI, they will scirt across dark patches on the cieling and then come up behind you. They dont make much noise, only deep growling, the weird elephant-pig sound they make when they get shot in Aliens, the other sounds being very subtle. So yeah - make sure you have a clean pair of trousers handy! There are also parts when you get attacked by many aliens at once which is very retro-doom style gameplay, you really get a cool sense of awesomeness as they are closing in on you from all angles........

Scripted sequences worked well for me, and although the voice acting could possibly have been better (I read someone complaining about that somewhere) I felt that it was very engaging nonetheless. The weapons felt good - just like the movie Aliens.
I also like the hive environment because of the way the aliens would hide in the walls and you wouldnt see them until they began to move - some walls had so much detail on that you wouldnt spot them until they had spotted you. Also there are some parts in the walls which look like an alien is sitting there, and when you get closer you see it is just a part of the hive. Very gigeresque :)

But yeah - im a bit of an aliens fanboi..... 

sort of rig do oyu need for this game?

I've been hanging out for a new aliens game. 

http://www.bluesnews.com/screenshots/games/crysis2/20100304/

Definitely time so start saving for that pc upgrade =) 

Maybe not, as they are aiming for a console release this time. The PC version will probably still be quite scalable, but it should run on most modern machines. 

nitin: Min specs: 3.4 ghz, 1 gb ram, 256mb DX9 card.

Ricky: I thought the Aliens were too slow. Unlike in the other games, they didn't really dash towards you, but rather circle you, attack, then retreat a few steps. Much like a cat toying with a mouse (in this sense, the remark by the scientist in the Alien tutorial fits). A clear concession to the console players. Another one is the facehugger grab if you have more than 1/3 health. In the game's predecessors, once a facehugger jumped at you, you were done for; here, they aren't much of a threat.
This doesn't mean there were no difficult situations, though. 

if thats min specs. Although I have a 9800GTX, might cover for lack of cpu power somewhat. 

==========================
Intel Processor - Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz
AMD Processor - Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4800+
Nvidia Graphics Card - Geforce 8800 GTS
ATI Graphics Card - Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MB
RAM Memory - 2 GB
Hard Disk Space - 10 GB
Direct X - 9
==========================

Blindly staring at a CPU clockrate doesn't work these days, as a modern 2,66 Ghz i5 CPU or similar will be more than twice as fast as an old 3 Ghz Pentium 4. 

Its on steam.

It does suffer from some consolitis in the control scheme, but really that is the only downer I can think of right now. This game is *FUN*

Its been a very long time since I laughed with glee as I caused absolutely ridiculous amounts of destruction in a game... I guess this is kinda like gta3 on steroids mixed with far cry & Indiana Jones (!?), if that makes any sense.

You are basicly a vigilante guy with lots of guns, a parachute and a high tech long range lasso that can grapple onto just about anything, helicopters, cars, buildings, people, anything. You can also use this grapple to stick objects and enemies to other objects, with hilarious results. For instance you can tether an enemy to a gas canister, then shoot the canister making it fly away with the guy still attached =)

The demo gives you a complete sandbox area of the game a few miles wide and has a 30 minute time limit before you have to start from the beginning again, but what a fun 30 minutes it is!

The demo, and the game, require directx 10 so its Vista/Windows 7 only, no XP support. It looks gorgeous but requires a fairly decent pc to run it with everything on.

Give it a try! 

Some student game, apparently a few of the guys were picked up by Valve to work on Portal2, not so surprising considering the gameplay they have. Fun little FPS puzzle game.
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&download=1506 

Human Revolution runs on a proprietary engine and is played from a first-person perspective, though it pops into third-person for certain attacks and taking cover. 

I am so hyped for Brink

http://kotaku.com/5491753/new-brink-trailer-plays-peekaboo-with-big-guns 

aww that looks awesome.

I've been loving their in-game videos too - they really look to have made a lot of original decisions with the gameplay, and completely thought through every aspect of the game.

I was reading a feature on the sound design in Brink, and the lead audio dude was talking about the shotgun sound, and how he'd been tweaking it his whole career - 10 years or so. He was talking about using samples of lions roaring for the blast sound, because the animalistic quality gave an innate fear response. Just an example - I just love it when people take things that seriously. 

Speaking of R.U.S.E (or Ruse), open beta is available on Steam. World War II RTS game with... ruses, a focus on strategy instead of tactics, and plenty of factions. Even lets you play as Italians and French. 

(Trying to avoid spoilers as best as I can!)

I completed this late last week, but held off
posting about it until now to try and be a little more objective about the game. With that said though, I'm going to start off by saying that this is easily the best game I have played in the last 3 years or so!

Where to start... The most important part of any rpg game for me are the characters and the story, and ME2 nails both of these things perfectly. It is engaging from the very first moment you start the game, and only gets better the further in you progress. The game revolves around you being hired by some shady characters to stop a new threat to the galaxy that no-one else appears to be lifting a finger to stop. You spend most of the game searching the galaxy for a crack team of people to lead on a suicide mission to stop this new threat. Finding these people, persuading them to join you and then gaining their trust forms most of the game content.

The missions you undertake with these characters are the highlight of the game, every single one has a deep and rounded story surrounding them, and your actions can make or break them in very real ways.

Combat is handled much better than the original game also, it feels more like gears of war than elder scrolls, with an over the shoulder camera, cover system and gratuitous violence. Different enemies have different defences that require different tactics to take down, some enemies have shielding while others simply have heavy armour, some have both, and your squads abilities may not work against enemies who have a certain type of defence active.

Some things are a bit annoying though, for example the planet scanning minigame (scan planets to find minerals that you can use to research new tech) gets boring very fast, and must be done to fully upgrade your equipment.

I suppose I should mention that the game is gorgeous to look at =) I can't be sure but it feels like a heavily modified UE3. Special mention must go to the cinematic effects for conversations and cutscenes, things like depth of field and film grain are used excellently to give everything a cinematic quality. The character models and especially the animations are fantastic in every regard. Even the lens flares are the best I have ever seen in a game =)

I find myself thinking of battlestar galactica as a good analogy, in the trailers you see all the action and space combat and the show looks cool, but you end up appreciating the character stories and plot developments so much more. For me at least I really felt attached to the characters by the end of the game, and I actually gave a shit what happened to them, they weren't some dumb game characters any more.

There is so much more to this game, but I cant be arsed to write any more, suffice to say that I recommend it to everyone that reads this post. This is a fantastic galaxy to get lost in! 

I am playing Thief 2 now and love it. Halfway through the second mission at the moment. 

I see a few people on steam have this, how is it? Worth getting???

Also, how scalable in the engine? Can you turn stuff off to make it run smooth on an older pc? I have a 2ghz athlon X2 with a nvidia 9600gt and I'm doubting I will be able to get a decent framerate out of it! 

Finished through the third (or was it still the second) mission. So much fun to find secrets and loot. Next is the mission where I enter the city watch. Yikes! 

Jesus! Who's stupid idea was it that when you are hurt your screen is covered in blood so you cannot see to take cover and the freakin indicator of which way enemy fire is coming at you is red as well!?! grrrr >:( 

it looks awesome though. 

damage indicators that actually make it near-impossible to fight back along with "realistic headbobbing" are some of the stupidest things in games these days. I don't know about you folks, but when I run down the hall, my head isn't doing any owl-like movements. 

Mine does.

But then I am generally listening to tunes while walking... 

When you're done with Thief 2, be sure to check out the quality fan missions out there! 

Is motion blur. 'It's more realistic' they cry. 'It's a fucking game' the rest of us say.

Engine programmers drunk on how awesome they are.