Get a trainer that has a sprint cheat ZQF. It might be cheating, but it'll make the game more fun. I can't stand slow walking games. 

make it non-skippable first time through if you want players to see the hard work and money, make it skippable for repeat attempts. 

Under "rocket science" or "brain surgery". 

had this feature, except it seemed to work for some cutscenes but not others. No idea why. 

what if players don't actually give a shit about your fucking story?

I actually liked the Max Payne story (well, it was ok), but in other games I have not given a rat's ass about the story and couldn't skip the cutscenes. I don't give a shit about the work that went into them, I just want to play the game. If there is some important info in the cutscene, then maybe it's ok to stop me from skipping it the first time, but I'm paying to play the game, not watch cutscenes, so any artificial restrictions on skipping cutscenes (non-technical, such as loading in the background) should be removed. 

I watched a housemate play Devil May Cry 4 once. I say play... 

scroll up to read how I played hl2 and how their method of story telling is fucking stupid (to me). 

This an old game that was re-released as a WiiWare title, and now has a proper PC release.
It's an old school metroid-vania style platformer, very hard and unforgiving, it's pretty good. Anyone who likes those type of games should check it out.
http://playism-games.com/games/lamulana/

RPS review :
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/07/16/it-belongs-on-a-pc-la-mulana-remake/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RockPaperShotgun+%28Rock%2C+Paper%2C+Shotgun%29&utm_content=Netvibes 

http://www.moddb.com/mods/nightmare-house-2

This was released in 2010 but I missed it. Holy shit it's good! Very high quality production value, great atmosphere and good pacing. The final confrontation is brilliant.

It'll take you around 3+ hours to finish, I enjoyed every minute. 

missed that one. 

Finished Hard Reset. There is a lot wrong with the game, but it has nugget of awesomeness that you need to learn to tap and then it becomes a really rather unique feeling game. It promotes rapid weapon switching, weapon combos and crowd control over pure dodging or cover use (though it does still have a lot of both).

A bit like Fear in that I could natter endlessly about all the cool stuff the game has as well as really bizarre or annoying design choices. Hard Reset pushes an FPS into even more classic arcade territory, and in fact I think doesn't go far enough.

It also has surprisingly oldschool level design. Though it doesn't place enemies in specific positions so much, it does have linear but interconnected environments that flow around, and you feel like each space has interesting geometry and you get to see each area from multiple angles.

Basically, love it or hate it game in the end. I had to play through it once to realise what weapons were worth buying and using and what to not waste points on (fuck RPG upgrade paths, especially when you limit my choices early on anyway). After that, second play through, ton of fun. 

PS it's had some free DLC so the game is much longer than it was at release. Someone told me where the original ending was and I got why people complained it was so short cause damn, sudden final boss out of nowhere. 

 

 

Apparently, Samuel 'Kaiser' Villarreal wasn't so happy with his and others' work on the older Doom 64 TC, Absolution, so he went ahead and coded a custom Doom Engine from scratch for emulating the physics of the 64 port as closely as possible. Even though there are still a few graphical glitches here and there, it looks like he accomplished what he had set out to do. Now it's possible to play Midway's Doom II sequel in its entirety in hi-res and with mouselook support. I didn't know that this game was much more than a port - it comes with it's own megawad and uses all new assets, i.e. new sprites, textures, sound, music and all. Starts off a little slow but progressively gets better. The most striking thing is that it has a very different atmosphere than the source game, mostly owing to a bleaker texture set, gloomy colored lighting and the ambient score. I'm halfway through the pack and enjoying it immensely. Definitely recommended.

Get the 'Kex Engine' at from Kaiser's website and find yourself a rom of Doom 64 (which is needed for creating an IWAD from):

http://doom64ex.wordpress.com

Oh, and don't worry about the screenshots on the Media page - you can toggle bilinear filtering off. 

Having a bit of fun perfecting some Hard Reset levels :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ30EZOEH_E 

 

Yup it's definately a problem with the level design. Although it's flow is better it's still very similar to Serious Sam or Painkiller.

You'll get the odd area with some monsters placed on a higher platform sniping at you or something but usually it's just a flat room with obstacles.

It's particularly jarring when you're surrounded by so many tall buildings (or so high up you can't see the ground) but you never look up except to gaze at the skybox. 

I never would have thought it'd be possible to make a game about shooting robots with big guns mind numbingly boring, but the Hard Reset guys really pulled out all the stops to achieve it. Based on the demo, at least -- maybe they're saving the best for last, but I'm not paying to find out. 

Yeah until you get some weapon upgrades the game is pretty bloody tedious, and without the weapons to play with the game is so dull compared to, say, Serious Sam, which is fun when given just a shotgun.

In fact the hardest part of the game on high difficulty is probably level three or so, as it's the combination of tough enemies and few weapon upgrades, which is stupid.

It is a pretty crap video though, but I was having such shit luck trying to record something more interesting as my PC just collapsed with fraps + bigger fights :p 

Has hit version 1.0.

http://www.warsow.net/ 

Gonna check it out. 

I like twitch shooters, but Warsow just looks a little TOO fast to me. Dizzying.

Hard Reset looks okay. Level design looked average. I'd play it still.

Is it just me or is there a major lack of shooters and actions games on the PC so far this year?

I might make a list... 

Well that was 4 hours wasted lol. I updated my list of games to play:
http://www.etherealhell.com/etherealhell/gamestoget.php

Goes by year, worst to best as rated on metacritic.

2012 does indeed look pathetic so far. Even if the number of play-worthy releases doubles, it still won't be close to 2011 amount. Was 2011 the best year for PC gaming?

What's also interesting is the severe lack of first person shooters, and even third person. They're barely coming out now, not helped when critics give great games like Rage an average score. The vast majority of PC games seem to be strategy and adventure. Who the hell plays all these strategy games?

Oh and these are almost all first or third person. I don't play platformers or top down 

am I seriously seeing another Painkiller game in that list?