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/ 

That's really mind bending. Also, the music is terribly addictive. 

There went a couple of hours.

I got to the end with four skips left (having used one).

Pretty cool. 

The third Soldier of Fortune game was developed by Cauldron, instead of Raven Software who did the previous two. The original 2000 game was great; a purely fun action-packed shooter. The sequel in 2002 was still a good game, though not quite as good as the first. So why hand the game over to Cauldron? Well the surprise sleeper Chaser from 2003 was a good, long game developed by Cauldron using their own engine. This same engine is used in Payback, a game released four years after Chaser, so they must have made some hefty upgrades to the engine.

Ironically, that's the only redeeming factor for Payback - the fact that the game doesn't look too bad. The engine has all the usual bells and whistles you'd expect to 'pretty' it up. Of course, what game post-2007 doesn't at least have decent looking graphics. There's actually only 14 levels in this game, most of which aren't even big. You could probably rush through the entire game in a couple hours. For me it would have been about five hours game time, which is very poor. However each level is a new setting, from jungle and cliff settings, farming villages, middle eastern outposts, even a hotel brothel before finishing in an awfully designed car parking garage and nightclub. Some levels look poor, but others are fairly well polished. In particular the outdoor jungle levels. Unfortunately, the game doesn't hold a bean to Crysis, released the same month. Their outdoor capabilities and size, level of detail and realism are not even comparable. Payback doesn't look bad at all, but it's only average for 2007.

And that's the highlight. The low point of Payback is just about everything else. Poor checkpoints with no quicksave, jumpy controls and unrealistic movement, especially when firing weapons. Inconsistent difficulty where often you'll breeze through a level, only for some enemy to suddenly take a potshot from out of nowhere and drop you instantly without any chance of survival. There were a few times when I had to take on the same enemy several times over because he'd blow my head off within a micro-second of eye contact.

The boss fights, which are all too common, are simply the same enemy you face throughout the entire game just with insane amounts of health added on. The standard fare enemy are all the same, just with a different weapon and model. They unrealistically drop dead with a mere fraction of bullet spray in their general direction. Their heads pop like balloons and limbs just fall over the floor. There's no sense of power or enjoyment when your weakest gun unrealistically mows through an opponent like that. Blowing off limbs used to be fun, back Payback has lost that somehow. Then you get the sniper scope weapons which only hit enemies 50% of the time. The rest the bullet just vanishes and misses it's target, despite pointing clearly at the enemies eyeball.

The biggest problem with Payback was the insane bug where enemies are invisible to bullets. Yes, the bullets just go straight through them as if they're not there. This happens with probably 15% of the enemies in this game... by the time you realise it's another invincible enemy you're dead and replaying from the last checkpoint. This time in god mode or you have no chance of moving forward. It quite often happens with enemies that are on higher ground to you. But it's a ridiculous bug that ruins the already bad gameplay.

Overall okay visuals for 2007 but the levels are small, extremely linear with clipping all around you. The screenshots make the game look better than it actually is. Then again, it's hard to judge any games' visuals as that great after you play Crysis.

The gameplay is easy for most of the game until you get hit by a pot shot, but the invincible enemies bug ruins this one. Not really worth the playtime or money, but at least it doesn't go for too long.

Rating: 5.0/10 

 

http://youtu.be/r7b_GEDlH9c

Could be interesting, the developer says they are going after a "doom, quake, painkiller" style shooter.