...So you're saying that a stealth game has shitty gameplay if you play it like a shooter?

I would probably say the same thing about Thief. 

It'd be hard to play Thief as a normal shooter, you'd get your ass handed to you. But in Hitman your given the option of going stealth or just going in shooter mode. Now I wouldn't mind if I was forced to do stealth, but don't give me the option to go in shooting everything in sight, when it's so poorly done. If you did restrict yourself to stealth ONLY in Hitman, then it might be okay.

It has other problems too, like reloading or saving the game takes several clicks through menu's, having to slowly load profiles everytime you start, the death sequence takes 30 seconds which you can't even escape out of and have to sit through it, the mouse aiming is strange - it's actually hard to aim at someone in this game, the sensitive is weird, like gradual or something. Oh and the walk speed is ludicrously slow.

Thief and Splinter Cell are great stealth games. Even Call of Cthulhu had it's moment. But Hitman is a miss imo. 

Tell us about Prey 2. 

Well, it's a sequel to a game called "Prey" and it should be out sometime in 2012. 

http://games.adultswim.com/cardboard-box-assembler-puzzle-online-game.html 

�3.75 on steam right now!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/35140/ 

What are the controls like on the PC version? Just fps controls?

Cause on a console the whole hold-run thing was fucking horrible. 

it's still downloading :P

But for the same price as a pint of beer, I won't really be complaining if it's like that ;) 

seemed fine to me. Dont remember any real issues with running. 

ye as you say, that cheap might as well :p 

That game was AMAZING fun. Such a good game. The controls were fine - everything about that game oozed quality. Def a must buy for this cheap. 

So its loaded with Securom and games for windows live, sigh.

I can't even play it because securom says my steam-provided game key is invalid, and a quick browse on the forums seems to show that many others have the same issue.

Securom, punishing the innocent, 1 game at a time :P 

In Prey 2, a source close to the game tells Kotaku, players will take on the role of a federal air marshal who is aboard the commercial airliner seen crashing in the spaceship early on in the original game. Prey 2 takes place during the same time frame as the original, but with this different perspective, we're told.

Prey:Warhead?

Who makes these choices?

Source: http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=24283&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a 

 

They call it 'high level thinking' which means not considering the outcomes of any of the decisions you make. 

 

Hmmm but the first game already setup the plot/location for the sequel. They're just going to completely ignore that? Idiots.

Anyway here's another review... i'm only 5 yrs behind in gaming now, so my reviews might start being a bit more interesting :P 

So i'm moving on to the 2007 releases. I've skipped 2006's Gears Of War and Rainbow Six: Vegas - I'll play them on my new computer. So, starting at the bottom of 2007's shooters was Hour Of Victory. Installed okay, but upon loading there's no menu. Probably a good thing anyway as the game got awful reviews.

So next on my list is Infernal from Metropolis Software, a game developer i've never heard of and who was bought out by CD Projekt (The Witcher) a year later. So I guess this is their one and only title.

Now Infernal received fairly average to harsh reviews with an aggregate of 60% on GameRankings.com. However, it was actually a pretty decent game so if this is an indication of the 'worst' of 2007, with 19 other action games on my list that ranked higher, then 2007 is shaping up to the best year for PC action games ever (up until 2007 of course).

Where Infernal received flak was it's short length, repetitive gameplay and not pushing the boundaries. Honestly, those 19 shooters that ranked higher - did they all push the boundaries of gaming? I seriously doubt it. I'll quite happily take a solid, good looking game with fun gameplay that does nothing to evolve gaming. I might have played this type of game a dozen times already, but that's the kind of game I enjoy.

Infernal's level design is good, but often it just feels like you're in a huge room with a maze of small walls and walkways to navigate through. Sure it's better than the corridor-room-corridor of F.E.A.R., but there's still massive room for improvement. We do get a bit a variety in the levels; there five missions going through a monastery, refinery, steelworks, a massive ship and the mountain-based satellite centre.

Now what hides the lacking level design is the great looking engine. Everything has a glossed over feeling and the lighting in particular is very well done.

The gameplay is a little weaker and took some criticism from critics, but it was still fun all the way through. Infernal leans more towards the higher difficulty rather than being an easy game. You can tap your movement keys twice to do an invisible roll to avoid fire, and without this the game would be very difficult. It's an addition that sped up gameplay a lot and is well done.

What slows the game down to a halt is the way you have to hold Enter to strip your dead enemies of health and ammo. It takes a few seconds each time, which you need to do on probably 75% of the dead bodies in this game. It ends up being a strategy of killing everything, then slowly raping the dead bodies of health/ammo for a couple of minutes before moving to the next section. It absolutely kills the flow of action in the game.

On top of that, the game is perhaps in the 5-7 hour zone. It's NOT a long game. I won't go into the story as it's the typical cliched rubbish with a hot chick teaming up with you. Same of the one liners were good though.

Overall Infernal is a good game and certainly worth playing. It won't be the best of 2007, but certainly deserves better than a 6 out of 10. 

Decided to give it another go, this time with the "Complete" mod (graphical overhaul, bug fixes, other stuff). Looks a whole lot better than the original game, but hell if you don't have a fast machine...

Originally I wanted to play SoC, inspired by all the recent tragic events and a macabre sense of end times nostalgia, but then (as always) remembered certain 'workout' situations from the game, like the entire first level and the garbage bandits, which put me off a little. So it's the third installment now, which last time I lost interest in upon reaching the city. Probably missed the best part of it.

Anyway, bottom line, if anyone's about to replay Stalker, be sure to give the Complete mods a try. 

Oh, and I've finally played FEAR - mostly for cultural capital, not actual interest. A very boring game, no idea why I even bothered to finish it. I didn't care about the story, and the 'horror' elements were lame to say the least. Like people in this thread mentioned, the game lacks variation. The levels are very monotone in style and the enemies/encounters don't offer anying special, either.
The level design issn't all as bad as people in this thread claimed, though - but yeah, it does lack variation and unique setpieces, and indeed feels unnecessarily mazey and corridory in many places. However, I liked how most maps have a slightly nonlinear route to the goal, even though the gameplay doesn't faciliate stealh approaches or anything. On the other hand, I can see how this must have been annoying for many people as the potential for getting lost is definitely there, especially considering how samey everything looks. 

Because the lack of any risk, challenge or consequence to anything you did in the game was a pretty big blight on the original, I felt. 

I'd be surprised if they did that again. 

Where to start, I guess the obvious thing to say is that its awesome and that you should buy it ;) Also, for those wondering about performance, I could run the game on my gtx460 at the "extreme" setting and had no problems.

The single player is great fun, there are a few key differences from Crysis however, the most plainly obvious for me was that there isn't so much exploration any more. In Crysis you could explore the map in any direction but only certain areas had any actual gameplay in them. In Crysis 2 you are directed through the maps in a linear fashion but each area provides many different routes and ways to get through it.

In each area the game just lets you tackle it however you wish, and gives you a bunch of toys to play with. Cars can be kicked at things and off ledges, explosive barrels can be hurled, and just about any solid object can be moved around as you see fit. It's a playground of carnage and its fantastic :)

Guns! They all feel great to use, really meaty and the customization from the first game is still there to modify your weapons on the fly. A new feature is the ability to customize your actual nanosuit with upgrades also, such as bullet deflection, threat tracers, proximity alarms, reduced energy usage for modes and an awesome "air stomp" that will take out multiple enemies if you aim it right ;)

Story is serviceable for the most part, there are a few WTF moments but its mostly enjoyable, and its presented very very well, always from first person. There is some slight retconning from the first game but nothing major. A few characters from the first game seem to have gone missing without any explanation however :P

The one thing that is kind of a letdown however is the enemy AI, far too many times they will remain stationary and not attack, or get stuck in some sort of animation loop bugginess. It also has the ability to amaze however, some of the alien enemies will jump from floor to wall to ledge to another wall then slam you in the face and its very very impressive indeed.

I've been playing the MP also, not really enough to offer a decent opinion but I'm liking it so far, its very similar to call of duty but with added nansuit powers to mix up the gameplay a bit.

One final thing I'll add, I really love the sense of movement the new cryengine manages to convey with its motion blur. 99% of games I've seen motion blur in seem to apply it to the entire screen no matter what is moving and what isn't. In Crysis 2 motion blur is applied to objects relative to their movement speed as viewed by your player camera. The effect is fantastic and really sells the visuals.

Screenshots (Could be spoilery! You have been warned!) http://steamcommunity.com/id/darrenweekes/screenshots?tab=public&showdate=1&filter=app_99830 

One of the best-looking games as of late. The engine feels a bit like an updated version of UT3, but without the restriction to brown and blurry.

Performance is great indeed. Though unfortunately it's still pretty much unplayable for me thanks to the random system lockups. Hope there'll be an update soon that addresses this issue.

It's a bit unfortunate the game itself turned out to be this consolized, though on the other hand this was to be expected. At least it's not CoD-level. Also quite easy (even on Hard), enemies go down quickly and the assault rifles have an insane accuracy. Perhaps difficulty romps up later on. 

snooze