I thought Episode 2 lacked 'filler'. It felt like short set pieces bolted together with not enough simple run and gun to rattle through
yeah I think filler is a very good thing :E

Also those ant-lion caves were seriously too long, and Alyx just got irritating. EVERY time the player does something, she stops just short of kissing your pecker. Enough with the NPC 'OMG you're AMAZING!!' shit, I'm not four.

Oh and the car was way better than the buggy but then they don't let you enjoy it. In Highway 17 you had stretches you could bomb down, areas to explore at your leisure etc. In Ep2, alyx + the tighter design + that stupid beeping supplies thing meant you couldn't just chill out in the same way, you're constantly getting little pokes from the game to stop, go this way etc (yeah I know you can ignore it but I just wish it wasn't there).

...I loved episode 1 for the fact it didn't do a lot of this stuff. The hospital section for example was a fantastic bit of simple combat fun :E 

i did actually prefer ep2 to ep1 but i can agree about the lack of filler. and to some extent the antlion caves, which got a little tiresome after a while. but the finale was probably the most fun i've had playing any shooter game ever, and i generally loved the forest/mountain settings throughout, especially the setpieces like the falling bridge, that massive wide shot of a destroyed city 17 or when you see the armies advancing to white forest in the distance. loved the vortigaunt/gman twists in the story too and looking forward to where things are headed

ep1 was good but it pretty much felt like 'more of the same' and i was kinda relieved to finally escape the city at the end; any more and it would have dragged a bit

i have a feeling ep3 (if it ever comes) is going to be much bigger. i am so booking a few days off work and queuing outside GAME at midnight XD


i was never a *massive* fan of HL1... still liked it but could never see why such a huge fuss was made about it. tried replaying it after HL2 and found the gameplay much more frustrating in several places. and the story felt kind of random until this site helped tie it in. never got round to checking out opposing force or blue shift though, annoyingly as i have as part of the generation pack but have lost my cd key :( 

Oh and the car was way better than the buggy but then they don't let you enjoy it. In Highway 17 you had stretches you could bomb down, areas to explore at your leisure etc. In Ep2, alyx + the tighter design + that stupid beeping supplies thing meant you couldn't just chill out in the same way, you're constantly getting little pokes from the game to stop, go this way etc (yeah I know you can ignore it but I just wish it wasn't there).

YES. that's it, right on. it was too... i can't believe i'm saying this about a shooter, but too fast paced. i would have preferred a more leisurely pacing with some more optional areas to drive around and just explore.

the coastal driving section in hl was one of my favourite parts of the game.

i just love that concept that you're driving along this long road and stumbling on abandoned house after abandoned house.

i could totally play a unit where it's just driving from one encounter to another and maybe you pick up some gas here, or a part to fix your vehicle there, and each stop has some kind of sad or disturbing story to it. totally like a 'slice of life' of like mad max 2 or something.

if anyone remembers when i posted those venice hl2 shots... i was really hoping to do just that, but i'm just not very proficient at WC3.3 and also hl2 scripting is kind of goofy. :P

ep1 was good but it pretty much felt like 'more of the same' and i was kinda relieved to finally escape the city at the end; any more and it would have dragged a bit

i guess i'm just a huge sucker for post-ap settings. i love run down, destroyed city stuff. and not just freshly wrecked stuff like in a ww2 game. i could have an ep1 that was twice the length.
one part of ep1 that stands out for me, really in just capturing the whole atmosphere, was that tiny area right after going up the rickety lift after being mobbed by tons of zombies.
it's this dusty room with junk strewn all over the floor and the crank for the door is broken. 

gman/vort aspect of the story was one of the parts that bothered me most.

things could definitely go in a bad, tacky direction. X-files style, where the attempts to tie up some of the ambiguity (which made the show) really are lame/gay/unsatisfying. 

Necros: I am somewhat hoping that rage might be like that. 

However I am finding Crysis to be even better. Great graphics, even better gameplay. 

I am somewhat hoping that rage might be like that.

yeah, all the promo stuff i've seen of it definitely points in that direction.

but.... it's iD. they are fully capable of fucking it up. :P
i was very happy when i heard they were ditching that 'dark' game. 

I just remembered the Gnome achievement, and how the fucking thing had no friction with the car - so every time you turned it'd go flying out the door, even during the helicopter chase.

Insult to injury, the gnome fell out of the shuttle at the end somehow so didn't get the achievement. Refused to go back to a quicksave as well :I 

 

Sure theres an applied insult in there but cant be arsed. 

You bellend. 

"However I am finding Crysis to be even better. Great graphics, even better gameplay."

Once you're fighting the aliens it gets pretty damn boring. But fighting the human enemies is great fun. I probably replayed all of those missions five odd times just fucking about approaching them in different ways. 

This looks pretty damn impressive...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSRtYpNRoN0 

I should probably play oblivion. 

wow, their new terrain engine looks crazy good. anyone else catch that floating terrain? :D

i only hope all of the terrain looks as hand-crafted as those quick shots. 

Anyone else care to speculate? Would make sense with the merger with id Software. And the GFX look awesome, soooo...... 2+2= ? 

They said it wasn't iDTech 5, apparently it's a new internal Bethesda engine called Creation. 

and call it something else...

ps- it's 5 

Bsps don't look like a good idea with that kind of level design. I wonder how they render the world. Hmmmm. 

More like Bullshitstorm.

Visually it's great. The theme is a nice weird blend of familiar environments and sci-fi/other planet stuff. There are good designs in the levels, although they're also somewhat busy visually. Models and effects look cool, too.

The skillshot system is fun and makes for some novelty. Unfortuantely, that's about it already. Apart from these things, it's just another stupid consolified game that reduces the player to almost spaz-grade. In other words, extremely linear and scripted with no freedom whatsoever.
I was annoyed how blatantly it was even done. Everything is clipped off - but not in a subtle way; it seems it was done by a retard. You can't fall off ledges - in many cases you can't even go near them! Invisible walls everywhere, placed generously far from the actual objects they need to clip off. Even bushes and spaces between crates.

And of course all the in-your-face stuff like interaction hints, autosaves, quicktime-like parts, semi-autoaim etc.
Leash and skillshots are fun, but more often than not the fights are very much geared towards certain tricks and tactics.

The story is silly and there's a number of "what did just happen?" events, the dialogue is super-dumb, but no one expects much from such a game anyway, so that's okay.

At any rate, playing this makes the COD4 mock teaser appear in a different light. When I watched it, it seemed to imply COD is another boring linear shooter (which it is), whereas Bulletstorm was some sort of badass oldschool shooter that doesn't take itself as seriously. However, while the latter is true, the game is actually pretty much exactly the same as COD4, only with a different theme and a bit more comicy with the skillshot gore (which isn't a good thing).

So, bottom line: not recommended unless you're one of those hopeless console FPS players, or find the game in a cheap sale somewhere.

[I complain about linearity every time, but case I haven't mentioned it elsewhere: of course I don't expect totally nonlinear games. But ffs it's not so hard to make linear games FEEL a little less linear by adding a couple of additional rooms and corridors and, I don't know, balconies maybe, on the route from A to B. I guess, a good example for that is Bioshock.
Often the levels in such games look they would easily support a bit more freedom. Lots of wasted potential.] 

heh wow, i had semi-high hopes for this one. :\

maybe brink will still be good. 

But you're right. I'm still finishing the game, though. 

It's not a bad game as such. Polished and well presented. But I'm disappointed because it's different from what I expected and/since it follows a common trend of game design I dislike. 

well, like you said, the goofy 'demo' sort of painted a different picture. 

insane mountain climbing film set in pre-wwII germany. Crazy stuff and I'm amazed at how the pulled off the visuals, did not look like much CGI at all.