Haven't tried Stalker, but the discussion is reminding me of Thief 3. I forgave the dodgy game structure, small levels and buggy feel for the fantastic atmosphere, which I very rarely do Assassin's Creed is an example where the gameplay just pissed me off too much. Really tried to like that sucker but no. Perhaps it's better on the PC... 

is it weird that http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=39255 makes me want to play oblivion again? :P

i'll have to sort of nehrim's installation because it seems to interfere with oblivion... 

Hah, that looks like an awesome mod, I'll resist reinstalling Oblivion to try it though.

Kind of reminds me of Recettear, a jap style RPG where you manage an item shop selling items to adventurers
http://store.steampowered.com/app/70400/ 

AMD Phenom II X4 965, 3.4 GHz with 4gb ram and gtx 465.

Not super fast but can play most games at 1920*1080 at max settings including Crysis. What settings in particular should I turn down? 

All the stalker games generally don't run as well as you might expect from your pc, I guess some things about the engine are a little rough around the edges :)

In Clear Sky and COP they have an option to enable SSAO, turn that off and you've instantly saved yourself about 10-15fps for an almost unnoticeable visual quality loss.

After that, the 2nd most draining thing is the fully dynamic lighting, though it's a real shame to turn this off as it provides so much atmosphere (lightning w000000). Iirc there is a "dynamic lighting distance" slider so try messing with that instead.

Give this a read too http://www.tweakguides.com/ClearSky_1.html

COP uses the same graphics technology as ClearSky so this should apply to that game also, apart from the new dx11 stuff in COP ofc :) 

http://www.tweakguides.com/images/ClearSky_SSAO.gif

just fyi :) The visual difference is not noticeable in gameplay and it can really kill fps especially on older cards. 

I think this one is about guns.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STZ7UuA5ynY&feature=player_embedded 

Chubbies on all of my penises. 

wait what? rage is coming out this year? I assumed it would come out in some indeterminate future... maybe i need a new PC. 

I thought it was out October 4th, 2011, but the date on the video was October 7th, 2011. Either way, yeah, it's coming out roughly a month before Skyrim. 

Rage is looking more like a corridor shooter in that video. Where's the wow factor?

If Tim's favourite weapon is a boomerang style blade, that's not saying much for the other weapons. 

its not saying much about Tim. 

Went back to another of my forever-unfinished games.

This time I knew what to expect, so used a gamepad from the start (no mouse support Capcom?!). Still, my PSX-style controller doesn't support all functions of the original gamecube one. Oh well. No analog support either.

Anyway, on to the actual game. I remember being underimpressed with this when I first played it (probably due to the PC port issues and the slightly crappy combat controls). However, after reading some FAQs I can make better use of the game's combat system now (like leg shots and kicking). It's actually enjoyable after all.

Combat and enemy design are the highlights. Good "gun feeling". Aiming is still too slow and cumbersome - Leon takes ages to turn left and right. I feel that as far as 3rd person combat is concerned, the latest Tomb Raider games offer a lot better aiming and shooting while moving (impossible in RE4). However, RE has the edge in enemy design and the locational damage system.

It's debateable if locational damage really adds much to a 3rd person game with sucky aiming, though.

Inventory is OK since it actually pauses the game and the overall number of items in the game is thankfully limited. Matter of practice. UI is also OK.

The quicktime events are really, really crappy, especially in the PC version. It's sometimes unclear which buttons are which.

The whole escort type gameplay is well done; interaction with the escorted character is well thought out. She is pretty annoying, though; her excessive screaming "Heeeeelp!" is reminescent of Jen from Prey, another damsel in distress that I found highly annoying. The sequence where you control the weaponless Ashley was just superfluous in my opinion (let's not talk about the slider puzzle - that was horrible). Who wants to control a defenseless 15 year old girl in a game that is otherwise about brutal combat? Every time she got abducted, I welcomed it because it let me concentrate on combat. At least once she was out of hearing distance. There are not many sounds more irritating than a woman's high-pitched screams for "heeeelp". Don't they realize that it really doesn't help?

The game looks, in part, shitty on PC (low-res textures and UI, very ugly and generally almost non-existant menu system). Overall the atmosphere and especially the enemy design mostly makes up for it though. A slightly "meh" experience, but the gameplay and storytelling keeps it together.

The environment design was enjoyable in the village part. Unfortunately, the castle that I've almost finished was mostly a linear corridor shooter with pillared walls and flat floors and ceilings. Almost simplistic. The hedge labyrinth that you're supposedly "never leaving alive" is ridiculously simple. Admittedly, labyrinths usually aren't good for gameplay. The sewer with the insect creatures was surprisingly short. The castle also really suffers from low-res textures and cookie-cutter corridor design.

The NPCs are pretty good in this game, even Ashley (apart from the "Heeeelp, Leon!" part). I look forward to playing Ada (and killing Saddler).

Let's hope it gets better again. 

The NPCs are pretty good in this game, even Ashley (apart from the "Heeeelp, Leon!" part). I look forward to playing Ada (and killing Saddler). 

Soon there will be a Quake Injector(tm) like tool for Source maps (mostly HL and HL2 I presume) from planetphillip.com

http://www.planetphillip.com/posts/maptap-beta-testers-required-again/ 

This makes me wonder if and how well the Injector works with a Steam installation of Quake. Can anybody share that information? 

they don't even mention injector :( 

@MegaMan, That's because I didn't know about Injector until after I started working on the MapTap idea. 

The idea really is nothing special or unique at all. ;)

I wish more games had tools like this, especially Doom. 

I'm sure some maps are not Half-Life enough. 

The steam installation of Quake is literally the same as any other installation, it's just in steam's directory (on windows, C:\Program Files\ Steam\ steamapps\ common\ quake\) rather than wherever else one might put it. I don't use Quake injector (sorry), but I would assume as long as the end user specifies the directory Quake is in in Quake injector, there wouldn't be any problem. 

gb:
Well, Black Mesa Source surely is. :-)


By the way, I have not seen any input from you on my question about mod categories. Why not do something useful instead of whining? 

gb:
Well, Black Mesa Source surely is. :-)


By the way, I have not seen any input from you on my question about mod categories. Why not do something useful instead of whining? 

100% 

Flash puzzle games that plays with the figure/ground ambiguity.

http://jayisgames.com/games/gap-monsters/