Like typical xbox stuff. The graphics are a bit dated, but more than that the animation looks pretty crude..

The aliens in the films move like lightning fast mercury, here they look more like stop motion. The marines as well look pretty wooden.

The formula for the gameplay has been done quite a bit, (in the same series, and by others like Natural Selection)so should be pretty solid. 

a good trailer!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRjNMQZ1qBk 

 

Was just about to post that Daz, damn right, it looks very cool, the whole style and theme is really intriguing. Even tho it looks scripted to fuckery....could just be the trailer tho. Either way....excited. 

the scriptedness is a major turn off for me also.
I have friends who love that kind of stuff, I just feel like a rat in some experiment. You know, like daily life... 

( then again, it certainly scores major points for breaking out of the typical FPS rut ) 

I quite liked the scripted sequence in the first one where that guy challenges to break your conditioning, but you don't.

Nicely illustrated a plot point, and without any quicktime in sight. 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-02-06-screenshots-of-next-gen-rpg-the-witcher-3

...kinda...

/me sets bloom from 250% to 10% 

those were nice... except the sheep look like they were from Hexen2 with some normal maps stuck onto them. 

That's not bloom, that's glare. 

I know it's passe to whine about bloom and lens flare but it's hard to resist in this case. Post processing has finally gone full retard, they've put anamorphic flares on a fantasy setting RPG. That town looks like a fucking Rihanna video.

I'd like to have an opinion on the engine / art assets but I literally can't see either. 

my OCD took over and I tried to approximate what those shots might look like if the grading was done by a rational human being...

boat
town
cool pub 

but the other two look better.

I quite liked Witcher 1 looks wise, havent seen 2 but this looks too candyesque. 

http://www.littletinyfrogs.com/article/440090/RTSs_arent_dying_Theyre_waiting

Two fallacies in this:

Firstly confuses graphical design with gameplay design and doesn't distinguish between the two for the main points.

Secondly fails to realise that beyond a certain point graphics are relatively irrelevant in RTSes because you can't play the game zoomed in enough to see them, nor slowly enough to see them. You need a broad viewpoint and quick playing speed to play the game. SC2's graphics are often excellent but there's no time to see their true quality when you're actually playing.

Future of RTS I dunno. Innovative gameplay ideas, strong themes, mixing with other genres. 

The article buys in completely with the technology arms race ideals - you splash out on brand new hardware and need games that push the new technology, to justify spending the money in the first place.

I like RTS games a lot, and the more macro format experimented with by Relic in DOW2 was pretty cool. I think they went overboard on the RPG stuff and storytelling - it was nice I suppose, but untenable as a long term venture.

Something like that but more stripped down (no FMV story, RPG mechanics made optional), with a campaign generator and, maybe, an editor, would be the mutts nuts. 

We have done everything we can within 2 GB of memory and 2 cores

That is literally the most ignorant thing I have ever read. 

In large-scale RTS, clarity is by far the most important aspect of graphics. Being able to identify a individual unit as realistic is hugely secondary to being able to identify which units are yours, what type they are, and what they're doing. Functionality is far more important to the art style than graphical realism.

For most cases, isometric (blah, axonometric) projection is better than having a vanishing point when most of the action takes place in a 2d plane. Sorry if that seems quaint, but it's true.

Planetary Annihilation is a great example of when a regular 3d perspective is the right choice. The combat is 3d, you can run all the way round a planet and launch bombs from the moon. 2d wouldn't work. Congrats to them on developing such a clear and attractive visual style also.

It really grinds my gears when MORE REALISTIC GRAFIXX and BIGGAR SCOPE AND MORE TANKS are accepted as non-retarded premises for making the best RTS. What interesting tactical depth do you uncover by making a player struggle to spin a thousand plates at once?

...and when will anyone learn that graphical realism should match the realism of the game behaviour and not just be increased because we can? No one complains when Minecraft isn't realistic, because it never oversells the complexity of the game world.

Of course that cube pig is going to act like a fucking idiot, and it's not jarring at all. They can mate (whilst being of undetermined gender) and babies appear, and you can hit them and they turn into pork chops, but if a guard doesn't recognise you in Skyrim and their dialog tree gets repetitive, it sucks because that guard looks 90% like an actual human. We used to hang out bro! Don't you remember when I teabagged that dragon? 

I do agree with MOAR TANKS!

Or preferably BIGGGER TANKS!

I'm a total gfx whore but RTS is one genre where you can't appreciate MOAR GFX per se....although you can appreciate certain aspects (worlds, themes, art direction)....and there will be aspects of graphic realism that can be appreciated at super-fast-blink-n-you-miss-it speeds... 

I did write that and think... um, MOAR/BIGGAR TANKS sounds pretty sweet actually. To clarify, I mean, commanding a increasingly huge number of units isn't of itself good. 

been playing this for a evening or two and it comes with a massive gold star of recommendation from me. I might even award the Captain Janeway hat of general space game achievement.

It's quite like Star Control, if you remember that. You captain a ship with a few crew members, and warp jump from point to point on a little map of a sector until you get to the exit. Graphics are super basic, basically a top down view of your ship, and maybe a top down view of an enemy ship if there's one about.

Sounds pretty lame I'm sure, but the gameplay is balls-out fun. You command your little crewmates to man the shield room, or the weapons room, and when the baddies turn up you can board them with teleporters, or disrupt their shields and target life support. You can breach the hull and send in firebombs that kill the crew, or escape by light jump if you're losing the battle. Tactics so far seem really adaptive, and do a fantastic job of making you think like a real ships captain.

There's a lot of scavenging of scrap and using that to build upgrades to your ship, building new rooms, trading to get new crewmembers and weapons, or robot drones that can repair your ship or board another.

The roguelike element works pretty nicely, as the game is short but very hard. It's a great time to try out different approaches, and luck of the draw of what items you pick up has created a pretty unique set of playthroughs. I suck at this game though, and expect I will for a while.

When I do get a small victory and have lead my ship well though, I feel like an absolute badass. Sometimes I pretend I'm Cap'n Reynolds from Firefly. And then I get an erection. In space no one can hear you cream your pants. 

We have done everything we can within 2 GB of memory and 2 cores

That is literally the most ignorant thing I have ever read.

I think I've got some sort of waxy mental build up which blocks such internet shit from registering in the forebrain now. 

made me think about how awesome a Thunderbirds FPS would be. 

I guess it's a trailer? Anyway SOE added the ability to hide your hud + weapon in the latest patch which makes this game ridiculously filmable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOtZA_Ge8_A 

And I liked it!

It taste like cherry chapstick.