Mixed feelings. By itself, it's not a bad game. Polished, bug-free, (mostly) nice graphics and some cool-looking areas. However, as a sequel to the Gothic series I'm afraid it is.

It was a obviously developed as a console game, and should work very well there (minus the reduced graphic detail maybe). As a PC game, it falls short on many levels - it ultimately ends up being a linear action game with watered-down RPG elements. Everything that was great or unique about its predecessors is neglected or left out, for example skill upgrades, alchemy and forging don't require trainers and workshops, friendly NPCs can't be attacked and the AI doesn't infight, you can steal everything and nobody cares, no sleeping, heavily simplified magic system etc. Exploration is hardly possible in the more or less confined 'levels' (seamless transition between the areas but blocked until the corresponding point in the main quest line). Needless to say, it's impossible to climb or jump up larger rocks and other structures. There are some semi-hidden chests here and there, and a few optional console-style "Find 30 hiddem items" quests, but that's it. At least it's possible to turn off the radar and quest markers.
Relatively low number of side quests, though this makes sense given the small scale of the areas.
Combat isn't very sophisticated and it's easy, even on hard difficulty (which I played on). Ok, to be fair, I used the Inferno spell a lot, especially in the samey dungeons later on.

The story is kind of silly. Felt somewhat random, not as epic as in the other games. They could have filled the holes a little better. One does meet all the main characters and all the monsters from the Gothic universe, but in the end, I think this game would have been better off as a standalone RPG. That way, the bar wouldn't have been so high and people probably less critical.

Bottom line, a good game (mainly for non-PC platforms), but a bad sequel. I did enjoy the ~22 hours (except for the two hours I wasted running around confused and clueless in the city before and during that asshole quest where one has to find stuff to destroy the magic barrier :P), but still I have to lower my inital SFP rating to ~2-2.5 / 5 

I agree with most of that negke.
Suprisingly the first area (around the tavern) felt the most interesting to explore, then as you go things seem to be more and more linear, and I had very little interest in exploring.
Also, what the hell is up with the teleporter stones that only work in pairs? That was stupid.

It almost feels like you could take the island, open it up completely, and make a new game out of it, that would be more faithful to the Gothic series.

Risen was more of a Gothic4 in my opinion really. 

http://www.onemorelevel.com/game/necronomicon_cards 

Not on the PC, but I play MW2, L4D 1/2, Bioshock 2, Nazi Zombies, Borderlands, &c on Xbox live when I have time. Gamertag is BetterThanUNIX.

Sorry for going off topic. 

http://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=51058&start=151 

 

Anyone try any of these yet?

http://www.ripten.com/2010/10/24/five-essential-pc-mods-for-fallout-new-vegas/

They all look pretty obvious I'm not quite sure why Obsidian didn't already to these for the game? 

While I enjoyed the original Vietcong, released in 2003, the follow-up two years later was very lacklustre. It almost felt more like an expansion pack than a sequel.

The graphics were exactly the same and hadn't upgraded at all in two years. This definitely wasn't helped by the majority of the game being set in urban environments and towns. What made the original so great was it's lush jungle atmosphere, but that's missing here until the last 1/4 of the game.

The game is split into two parts (in theory), which a US campaign which is all urban based, followed by a VC campaign where your now a Vietnamese Soldier. Unfortunately the VC campain only takes a couple of hours, while the US campaign is around 5-6 hours. It all adds up to a well under 10 hour game, which feels like the developed pushed it out in an unfinished state.

The final battle at the end of the VC campaign was just another battle, no epic finale at all. The game just suddenly ends. I wouldn't be surprised if the VC campaign was supposed to be much longer but, for whatever reason, it was never finished.

Gameplay is similar to the original Vietcong except this time you have limited saves and some of the enemies can be very frustrating. There are countless times you'll see the enemies' head sticking out behind something, but your hopeless weapons just aren't capable of an accurate headshot. He'll hop up and somehow you still can't hit him. Your spray of bullets seem to be so inaccurate. The best line of attack is to sprint up to your targets or flank around and catch them face-to-face rather than trying to pick them off from a distance.

Overall, graphics that are dated for late 2005, ho-hum level designs and unpolished gameplay make Vietcong 2 are very average game. Perhaps it's a good thing that it's so short; that way you can play through it all on a rainy Sunday. 

http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/10/26/top-mod-recreates-hexen-in-doom-3/

Doom 3 Hexen Mod 

that's been in development for years. those guys are doom heroes for how much they've done. 

Yeah, I'm looking forward to that mod. Was on the team for a while until I got hired at HH cuz I ran out of time and the team sort of fell apart, which I've been told was not the first time it happened. They had a sort of weird set up on how to do things, so ... hope it actually gets released. 

98% downloaded :) :) :)

Been waiting for 8 hours for this to download :(

220KB/s is too slow. Looking forwards to seeing what the new shooting style is like (you can now look down the barrel of your weapons, yay!). 

It has ironsights. Now that you mentioned it, I realize FO3 didn't have them.

I haven't reached New Vegas yet, but I'm close. The game is pretty much like FO3 in terms of everything. Especially in the field of BROWN and LACK OF CONTRAST. Samey ugly wastelands. Some enemies are harder, giant radscorpions and deathclaws in particular. I guess this is where the new crafting/ammo creating system comes in handy, though I haven't bothered with it yet.

Typical FO3-style quests; the faction standing seems to be more sensitive now, which is probably a good thing.

If you liked the original, you'll enjoy this one, too. It's basically an addon, albeit large (and priced like a full game). I found that I could always only play it for some two at a time before getting too bored, and sometimes skipped through whole dialogues just to get the quests not caring about the story. 

 

Decent adaptation of the Shadow of the Colossus concept to a 2d platforming engine. Kill giant sky serpents while climing around on them and hopefully not falling off.

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

 

 

http://dmytry.pandromeda.com/games/index.html

anyone tried it? 

Project: Snowblind was originally supposed to be the third Deus Ex game. However since Deus Ex 2 didn't do well enough commercially, Project: Snowblind became it's own universe.

You play the role of a soldier who, after being injured in war, is surgically enhanced with a number of pointless powers.

One of the biggest problems with this game, that I found, is that I struggled to get my head around all the powers, weapons, alternate fires and general rubbish used to improve your assault. Give me a shotgun and machine gun and i'll be happy. And that's basically how I played the game, switching to the plasma gun and lightning gun (don't know what the actual names were but they're very similar to Quake 3) later in the game. It boggles the mind how a console gamer could come to grips with all the shortcuts for this game when I strugged to remember everything on the keyboard.

You also have a railgun and rocket launcher, both of which I chose to save for boss battles. In the end, there was only one boss battle a few levels from the finish. The actual final two levels were difficult overall for the only reason that you have such limited ammo (and I never realised the vehicles have insanely destructive guns). In fact throughout the entire game ammo is very tight, probably because I was sticking too much to the same weapons.

Project: Snowblind has no difficulty settings, a fairly big flaw and from what I recall the first action shooter I've played without them. Nevertheless, the game was fairly good at getting the difficulty just right. It's hard at times, but often it's because you don't have ammo for the right weapon. I probably died several times during the game, half of which I was able to resurrect myself using an item acquired for this purpose (there's plenty littered around).

The other major flaw in the game is no quicksaving. Instead in most levels you get 1-2 checkpoints; which are basically rooms with a computer where you can save progress. It wasn't until the last 1/3 of the game that I realised you could return to the checkpoint and resave again. It's a silly and pointless idea, they should have either done quicksaving or automatic (magic) checkpoints.

The enemies are all fairly similar, just carrying different weapons or shielding. There are some robots which take a bit of firepower and dish out a lot of damage, but they're slow and can easily be bought down by keeping cover.

The design of the game is fairly average for a 2005 release, although it was only February 2005 that it went gold. It was also intended for Xbox and PS2, so this may explain some of the average looks. But i'd expect better. None of the levels are fairly big, there are very few set pieces and instead of lot of corridor-room-corridor designs. Doom3's corridors look a lot better than Project: Snowblind's corridors.

The game was criticised for being too short, but coming off a 6-8 hour walk in Vietcong 2, Project: Snowblind isn't too bad. Perhaps just under the 10 hours.

Crystal Dynamics aren't known for their first person shooter PC action games, so it's a good start. Pity they've done nothing since except overflow the market with Lara Croft games. 

By the way what's Second Sight like? Are the graphics complete shit? I'm thinking of playing it next.

Also curious about Bet On Soldier: Blood Sport (also 2005). Otherwise my list of next games to play run like this:

Second Sight (2005) - 70%
Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005) - 76%
Area 51 (2005) - 78%
Peter Jackson's King Kong - 78%
Quake 4 (2005) - 81%
Call of Duty 2 - 87%
Resident Evil 4 (3rd person) - 76%
F.E.A.R. - 89%
Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 (2005) - 88% 

Atmospheric too. Good AI.
R.E. 4 is meant to be good but I haven't played it. 

Felt it was pretty stale and uneventful.

RE4 was pretty good though, provided you can stand quick time events.