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. 

Seriously, though: No wonder this game gets such poor ratings. The graphics are fairly dated, but that's not even the problem. It's a mediocre military/sci-fi shooter that has Alien models instead of soldiers, typical generic gameplay and a ridiculously bad AI. It would probably pass as one of those games, but it since it takes on the Alien franchise and thus carries a lot of baggage, invoking expectations which it fails to satisfy, it has to be judged on different terms.

The strength of the Alien theme, the idea of facing a superior species, uncompromising and extemely deadly, is reduced to absurdity. Here, they are slow and weak fragbait that you can push away and QTE to death. Or maybe just walk past if the AI decides not to notice you. And what about the acid blood?
Admittedly, the other Alien FPS games, especially the latest AvP, weren't particularly masterpieces either, but this one manages to set the bar to the lowest possible point. I didn't expect much, especially after that dumbass trailer, and was ready to blame it all on contemporary console bollocks/decline of the industry blahetc, but this game doesn't even seem to live 'up' to that standard.

A proper Alien game needs the tension and suspense of being alone in a dark maze-like sci-fi environment under constant pressure; always having to be 200% aware of the surroundings and a single fuckup means instant death. Perhaps something along the lines of a blend between Stalker and Amnesia. Unlikely to happen, though. 

This one was okay. No improvement over DS2, but not worse, either. It probably could have used more variation in the environments. Apart from that I don't really have any negative impressions or complaints - though neither do I remember any part of it as special or outstanding. Gameplay was fun in parts and mostly routine. The game seems to lack one or more clearly distinguishable or definite 'highlights'. At least it concluded the story (unfortunately still with a backdoor for sequels).

Making some levels optional missions was a good choice considering the overall picture. Those levels reminded me of the side missions in Rage, they consist basically of grinding for loot and a few bits of background story.
Surprisingly long play time overall.

So metl, which levels did you work on? There were a couple of Rubiconish areas!? 

I think A:CM is quite good. I found one reviewer that gave it a 4/5. The graphics are a little dated, but the AI is quite good if you put the game on hard, and the level design is decent. Very decent.

I can honestly say that I don't regret paying �30 for it. The graphics in AvP we're a little bit more modern looking. But not by much. But the characters and story in A:CM is better. The voice acting is better too. The musical score is well implemented.

I don't think it's bad at all TBH. I've been enjoying it. I've heard that the 360 version looks bad or is buggy or something. But playing it on the PC here (with Anti Aliasing forced on the GPU which runs nice and smooth too), it seems perfectly OK to me. And the levels are pretty, well designed, crafty in places and BIG.

Maybe I'm biased. I like Aliens.