games are still too young, and growth from tech is still insanely fast.

if ever the point is reached where there are no more meaningful improvements in graphics, than maybe the industry can finally settle down and get back to making games.
the graphical quality of AAA titles needs to be attainable at low cost in order for gameplay quality to go up. right now, it just costs too much to make a AAA game such that no one (beyond the designers i guess) is willing to make anything interesting. it's the same kind of thing with why we keep getting film reboots-- the investor dudes would rather put their money on a film when they can see how the original did than on some completely unknown quantity.
ie: "Make it like CoD". 

What's the gameplay like? To be honest, the evil faction in a game could be called "Alan Titchmarsh's Band of Merry Haberdashers" and I wouldn't give two hoots if the game was otherwise good. 

The main problem I had with Rage was that the environments were so static, there is essentially zero interaction with the environment barring the odd door or two.

While the visuals are seriously impressive, the interaction is seriously antiquated, Half-Life 2 laughs and takes a sly piss on Rage in this regard, and it hurts the game imo.

As a straight up shooter, Rage is great! Controls are slick and responsive and the combat is meaty and satisfying. The engineering stuff was a nice quirk and for the most part is very useful.

If I carry on with the half-life 2 comparison, the Authority is basicly the Combine but less cool and nefarious. The lack of engaging story also hurts here also, I just wanted to fight more dudes and when a cutscene or driving section happened I just wanted it to end :) 

U played them? MP that is. Fucking fun games. 

has some really nice shooter elements in super static environments, with fun weapons and ammo types that actually are fun to fiddle with, generally.

Racing is meh - super easy, except for the derby type shit, which is sort of a pain/randomish it seemed to me.

Story is as blah as explained above. Not that it matters.

carrying the HL2 comparison further, Authority HQ is like the end of HL2 but even more of a letdown.

Definitely worth it, but I'd have preferred an undiluted, concise, derivative shooter - something it could have been.
have to agree now that I think of it with Daz - the HL2 driving is so much better and immersive despite being much older tech etc.

Another thing that got my goat was how often you'd warp from place to place. the sense of continuity - of sheer unmediated embodiment - which HL2 achieves is not present here. along with the not fully formed, fractured story and not fully formed, fractured gameplay modes this not fully formed, fractured sense of embodying a character lets the game down.


play this instead
http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/?id=16551 

A lot of generic dross in there but the actual proper in-game shots look cool. Looks very much like Doom3 meets RAGE meets a bit of HL2. Semi-apocalpytic Earth under seige from Doom demons?? Sounds ace to me :) 

For some reason I was under the impression they would make game with more oldschool gameplay. However, this would probably require or benefit from a more comicy style of enemies, which in turn would need more comicy environments, unlike the 'realistic' high quality stuff in the shots.

Probably best not to expect too much. Rage was fun, but it wasn't really that much fun to make me want another game in that style. 

I really liked it. Controls were good, gameplay was fun, graphics were excellent as was the atmosphere in many places. I'd happily have more RAGE....if it included Doom monsters ;) 

"What's the gameplay like? To be honest, the evil faction in a game could be called "Alan Titchmarsh's Band of Merry Haberdashers" and I wouldn't give two hoots if the game was otherwise good."

Yeah, it's sort of a top down problem. If they can't even be bothered to come up with decent names for factions, what are the chances the rest of the game is good? Think it over. 

Just like RemakeQuake, the name is as irrelevant as the views of people who take the names too seriously. 

Willem, that was a pathetic trolling attempt, you can do better, you know that! 

Fast movement speed and dodging projectiles as opposed to cover-based hitscan combat. 

The leaked stuff clearly shows a push for a rather realistic style, with the characters properly proportioned and wisely steering well clear of the silly big-boots-and-tiny-heads space marines cliche.

What this means for the demons though, I have no idea. I have to admit i kinda hated the cheesy cyborg components on monsters in doom 3 (it didn't matter in classic doom because the suspenson of disbelief was so much higher). I can only assume the idea was that the demons had somehow possessed and "demonised" UAC technology to explain these cyborg bits.

If the demons do use or are combined with some sort of machinery/technology, I hope it's of an eldritch style that looks like it was forged in the fires of Hell, and not just like some bloody plasma gun fresh off a Mixom production line.

Projecting the Doom 3 idea to the "current-day-ish" tone implied in the shots, I guess the equivalent would be seeing an Imp strutting about with an AK47, at which point I think I'll nod sagely, turn the xbox off, put the disc back in its box, and go outside or something.

To be honest I have no idea what point I am trying to make with this post. It's quite the turd really, as posts go. 

U played them? MP that is. Fucking fun games.

A little. I appreciate that "best game" is subjective. Personally I wouldn't put a battlefield game in the top ten of a list of new releases I'd play in a given month*, let alone a year.

* I should mention that I only play at most one, possibly two new games a month. 

Is Danny Trejo a character in Doom4, or are they just modelling one of the characters off of him. Can't be a coincidence to look that similar.

I'm a bit disappointed. Lighting looks like shit, but maybe it's not lit properly yet. But why in the blue hell does id think we need another earth city under attack game? We have millions of them already. I do hope at least a good portion of the game is in hell or something similar or gothicy. Enough with the post-apocalyptic stuff, id just fkn did it with Rage. Maybe they're re-using tonnes of assets? If it speeds up the long development cycle Rage took, then that'll be fine. 

about the post-apocalyptic stuff in general. Too many of these city ruin/wasteland/shanty themes lately, I've personally got sick of seeing them since they get visually stale after a while, seeing rubble here, rubble there, broken building here, more rubble here. Been avoiding such games for a while. 

Rage seemed like it suffered from design-by-committee. "The Authority" is a name everyone can agree on. It sucks, but it gets the job done. You say: come up with a better name? Well the point is that something more unique isn't going to make you go "WOW what a great name", but something with character means at least someone is directing the ship. At least someone who has a say in the matter might have a strong opinion or vision in how the game should be.

I'm generalising of course. Holden Caulfield could have been called Jack Strongfists and Catcher in the Rye could probably have survived it. Rage however has an overall sense of blandness that makes "The Authority" seem symptomatic of a bigger problem.

Perhaps it's a criticism of Tim Willits as creative director. To be honest, I never thought of id as creative geniuses, they were just in love with games.

In Doom and Quake, you can see them taking chances, doing what excited them. So they liked listening to metal, playing D&D, watching Aliens films, reading Lovecraft? It's all in there. Like playing pranks? "Well now you have to defeat me, John Romero!"

Maybe it's that Tim Willits is just a sensible guy. Rock solid level designer, but never with the ability to go full wildcard (and sometimes full retard) as did Romero or Tom Hall. Maybe its that they used to be young guns full of passion and now they're middle aged men who have to worry about market penetration and 9 figure development costs.

Great. Now I've made myself sad. 

Agree with most of that.

There's a pretty good paralell here though - The Authority Vs The Combine.

A ton of thought goes into Valve's games as Kinn says, and its this love of their craft that is making them money hand over fist.

The mark of a good game is when you can tell the developers had fun making it. 

Maybe its that they used to be young guns full of passion and now they're middle aged men who have to worry about market penetration and 9 figure development costs. 

Those images have nothing to do with what you're gonna see in Doom4. When we officially show things you'll see awesome 

Reviewed Quantum of Solace (2008)http://www.etherealhell.com/etherealhell/reviews/2012/quantum_of_solace.php

6.5/10 typical average-ness. Next. 

I thought they were going to release downloadable content for the game. Or was that just the boring sewer monsters thingy ?

Good post, Starbuck #5599. 

"Maybe They Know Names Don't Actually Matter Much."

It's indicative of the care and skill of the designers. If they can't (or won't) come up with creative names for the factions in their games, how deeply thought out is the rest of it?

It's one of the tools you can use to measure how much the designers actually cared.

Gears has the Locust. Half-Life has the Combine. Good names help to cement your world and get the player to buy into it.

You can't argue that id didn't try because every dev video they released had at least 2 people telling the camera how awesome the story was and how deep the world went. They cared. They just couldn't do it. 

For the reasons Willem states.

Why bother thinking up cool enemies or balancing them properly if you can't be bothered to name them.

Naming things gives them a narrative. Without that they're cardboard cutouts.

I'd say the individually they definitely could do it, but as a corporate entity they couldn't.

Seems to sumup what everyone thinks of id nowadays. 

Have you played Doom or Quake by any chance?