hahaha 

Waiting for Deus Ex Human Choadalution to arrive, so I fancied some simple shooter action and felt it was time to give GOW1 another go, having got vaguely used to horrible consolised over the shoulder cover system bollox in the space marine demo. It is an....interesting experience.

Pros:
+ It looks pretty cool for the time, still looks good today.
+ The squad system works pretty well.
+ Flanking enemies is quite fun.

Cons:
- Everything is in a shade of grey.
- Squad members are generally stupid and go down easily.
- You can revive them but can't be revived yourself.
- The checkpoints are sometimes too spaced and there is no manual save.
- Some checkpoints are right as unskippable cutscenes start, forcing tedious reviews.
- Unskippable intro clips/logos.
- Far too many cutscenes, all the bloody time and spoiling immersion.
- The characters and dialogue are completely awful.
- There is no context for how it starts.
- The health indicator is in possibly the worst position ever, right where it gets completely obscured by gunfire and right where you're trying to look through the hud.
- The enemy look almost identical to your squad members (and have little character regardless).
- The gameplay is super-repetitive.
- The cover fighting is very artificial with concrete shit everywhere.
- The shotgun is completely useless given the gameplay when you get it.
- Running controls are awful: lag before running, change in perspective, awful lack of turning, awful headbob.
- Can't vault/mantle obstacles without going into cover first.

Basically it's striking me as a clear and objective bad game. How was it ever popular again?? 

You forgot to mention the number of sequences which are designed around having two players, which in single player practically mock you via the pathetic partner AI. 

I love Epic, but I can't stand their design at all. Gears of War is a disgustingly horrible game. It's just terrible design wrapped in ugly looking meat-robots. 

I love you.

That is going on my Facebook page. 

I liked GOW1, pity they went cuntsoles only for the sequels. Didn't like the cover system bullshit and concrete blocks everywhere, but the game looked great for 2006, despite grey and brown everywhere.

That titan or whatever it's called boss is a CUNT. 

- Both your squad and the enemy models have irritatingly juvenile proportions.
- Picking up items is slow and tedious.
- The blood is daft cartoonised nonsense. 

havent played it yet but isnt one of the lighting options really important to how it looks? Ie without it, the game looks monotonal and drab and very different if you turn it on?

Also, finally finished Episode One, more of the same really, not as epic as the original game but very enjoyable nonetheless. 

I just played Portal for the 1st time. First 18 levels I felt were a bit uninspired... left me wondering why this game is one of the most popular of all time, but the last level is awesome and makes it a great mini-game - although the puzzles are never really that difficult throughout. Pretty cool though. 

I've tried Vivid and Intense post-processing, it still looks monotonal. 

that's the one, I wonder what you would say if you turned it off :) 

I.e. I turned the whole game off, uninstalled it and binned the CD. Not out of frustration or anger, just the simple purging of shit :D 

It's too bad you uninstalled it as I was going to recommend you open a map in the editor and see how bad GoW really looks without color correction. 

what should I get? I'm thinking 2 5 dollar games. Not sure I can actually handle Amnesia. Thinking Bioshock 2... is it embarassing to consider Terraria? seems like it would be an INCREDIBLE time waster. 

Bioshock 2 is great, I bought a 4 pack for like $15 and just gave them out to people because it was a great game imo.

I only ended up with Dead Island because it was the only game I wanted that I didn't have. 

i'm trying to play amnesia right now.
a couple of hours in so far, but had to stop after a pretty close run in with a monster. sound effects in this game are really really well done. unbelievably atmospheric game. 

not an action horror? 

http://www.teamfortress.com/
Unfortunatly I won't be here this weekend to play it. :( 

Horror adventure seems more fitting. There's no action or survival gameplay except for occasional fleeing or hiding from monters. The rest is puzzles and exploration. 

doesnt really sound like my thing. 

is great fun, cant go wrong for less cost than a pint of beer :) 

is not available in Germany. Can someone buy it and gift it to me? I'd paypal the money right away. 

Yeah I can when I get home unless someone does before then. 

Thanks. Do you need a steam id or can you just look me up in the func group?