I wonder if that's up to date? It reads the same as it did 15 years ago. :P 

bluesnews has looked the same for years and blue never sold it. the great part is that the news archive is completely intact 

The old tech keeps getting used in new ways.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOg0BhlIvyQ&feature=share&list=UU2FGv_ILFowWU9tvYMSVm4g 

wow, that's pretty crazy that it's the doom2 engine.
for these kinds of high tech mods, i wonder how that impacts the mapping, specifically the speed and simplicity which is what I like the most about doom mapping. 

It was okay, but not as good as I expected based on the reviews.

One level, the final "boss" glitched on me 3 times in a row. Due to their garbage autosave system, I had to try replaying from the beginning of the level 3 times. I finally gave up and downloaded a save game for the start of the next level. Whoever made that save game had less money and worse weapons than I had. I was not happy about that, but it didn't matter much in the long run.

They at least fixed that annoying gas mask game mechanic. Filters were plentiful (I finished with about 60 minutes worth left)and Artyom finally figured out out to wipe the front clean so he could see better.

Unfortunately he apparently cannot swim, which shouldn't have been much of a problem except that even on just slightly rolling terrain, rain puddles in Moscow are 10 feet deep.

It took me about 22 hours to finish, so it was well worth the $6 I paid. 

https://pay.reddit.com/r/gamephysics 

Only site I go to for gaming news. I like the simplicity and Blues no-frills approach. 

Been playing through the original Unreal lately, first time in a decade probably.
It has some cool environments, (or at least ideas for environments/concepts, often poorly realized due to the tech) but holy crap the level design is bad.

Just now I'm at Dasa Pass Cellars.
There's a room where you enter and bars close behind you, and there's a Titan and endlessly spawning Kralls. How do you exit? On the pillar in the middle of the room there is a stone sticking out slightly. Pushing this reveals a staircase up to a catwalk, from there you can drop down to a niche and push a tiny button that opens the bars again. You better discover this quickly before you waste 30 mins pew-pewing away at the endless stream of fuckers.
After this you come to a pool of water with a culvert leading out of it, blocked by iron bars. Best go around and look for a way to open them right? Wrong, just jump into the pool and one of the bars are snapped off at the bottom. Just swim through. So good.
In the same area, you enter a room with a barred exit to one side, and again bars close behind you and endless Kralls spawn. How do you get out of this one? YOU JUST FUCKING WALK UP TO THE BARRED EXIT BECAUSE THESE BARS ARE ACTUALLY DOORS. Fuck you Myscha the Sled Dog.

Don't get me started on the fucking Sunspire. Five floors of identical fucking rooms and corridors, some of them are even labled the same. I get nauseous just thinking about it. To actually find the exit you have to find a switch in the pitch blackness under a balcony, this summons a lift in the adjoining room.

There's a whole lot of "Pull Lever => What The Fuck Did That Do => A Door Opened In The House Across The Street" in this game. I'm all for game environments being puzzles to solve, but these are less puzzles and more completely random events you have to perform in a certain order. And there are places where a button is a toggle button, but you don't know that, so you might accidentally hit it twice and reset whatever it triggered, so you'll run around the whole level wondering what the fuck just happened. (Nothing!)

Fuck the spiders! The mosquitos and frogs in Daikatana were pure joy compared to these fuckers, they can survive a fucking rocket in the thorax! Vile! And tentacles! They're the second enemy you meet in the game, and they still fucking wreck me even now that I'm fully armored up!
Fuck every enemy dodging the instant you press the trigger on a non-hitscan weapon! Fuck those assholes that are sometimes armed with Eightballs.

Every time there's a sci-fi level the level designers seem to lose their mind and go full Daikatana for the looks. Pulsating shit, rainbow lights and fucking terrible brushwork everywhere. ISV Kran is a turd of a level. It's like Baby's First Quake Level circa 1996 but with purple, green and hot pink in every corner.



i haete th1s gmae!11!! 

Because I just progressed like 3 minutes and ANOTHER room where you're locked in and endless waves spawn.
EXCEPT this time they're actually not endless and you just have to hang around a while and kill stuff.
What the fuck! 

TL, DR: Unreal was awesome. 

I gave up playing it after wandering round in circles in that fucking tower for ages.

I missed the game the first time round and played it halfway through before realising 'I got better stuff to do'.

The game is very front-loaded - the experience gets worse the longer you play it. 

That's why games have gotten progressively shorter over the years. Or, at least, one of the reasons. Nobody finishes a 40 hour shooter so the developer doesn't care that much about the later content and it's a bit of a spiral.

A tight, contained 6-10 hour experience can be polished and cared for start to finish. 

I always thought it was because in recent years they seem to devote most of their effort to cut scenes and quick time events instead of creating user playable content. 

Or, chasing the visuals.

It costs more and more to keep up with the imaginary standard of AAA quality, so you have to reduce spending elsewhere.

Cut scenes / QTE are a symptom of this - you've got loads of nice looking art, now show it off. But you already downsized design, so what's an easy way?

These rising costs and the emergence of tablet gaming (eg. Candy Crush) have seriously reduced AAA's slice of the pie. I suspect that visuals have plateaued as well. Realistically, games aren't going to look significantly better than anything previously created at this point.

Sweeping statements like 'nobody finishes...' tend to be uttered as a justification - surprised to hear you say it Willem.

'Nobody will get this far so let's not bother doing it properly' is a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

If you're making 40 hour FPS games then you've already made a big steaming decision all over the meeting room floor. 

 

Ha ha I have 644 hours played on Skyrim. Apparently I spent 40 hours playing Bioshock Infinite, 105 hours on Deus Ex: HR, 123 hours on Dishonored and that lying bastard Steam claims I've spent almost 900 hours playing Fallout New Vegas. 

He beat bioshock infinite in one sitting, took about 9 hours. 

Well, I finished Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 in just 9 hours, never played it again and will never buy another Call of Duty game.

On the other hand, big games with interesting places like Bioshock Infinite, I tend to waste a lot of time just poking around and exploring.

Fallout New Vegas, I've never actually finished, but I've played it on multiple characters up to the level cap, doing the majority of quests and visiting most locations. 

I put 180 hrs into skyrim and both expansion, found every locale (244 i think?) and beat all main quests and expansions.

I think I beat MW2 in 4-5 hours. The game is tiny.

Bioshock1, which IMO is far better than Infinite, took about 10-12 hours. mmmm, I like that game. 

On the other hand, big games with interesting places, I tend to waste a lot of time just poking around and exploring.

My gaming modus operandi! Even better if there are optional things to kill/collect in the areas you poke around in.

Most FPSes I play for AT LEAST 1.5 times as long as the general status quo of how long most people say they are, and at least 2-3 times as long as the whining twats who always bleat on about "OMG xxxx is such a shit single player game I completed it in 6 hours" whatfuckingever like I care if you semi-speedran it and now feel short-changed you piece of DICK.

Some of Unreal was a bit long winded but it made up for it being being fucking awesome. Bluff Eversmoking was fairly late in the game right? Took me about 2 hours for that one level and it was 2 hours of great gaming. Fuck you all. 

"I always thought it was because in recent years they seem to devote most of their effort to cut scenes and quick time events instead of creating user playable content."

That's certainly another theory! 

Maybe I need to try Unreal again? I tried it like 3 times but frankly it just bored me. I feel like I need to like it because I really fucking love UT... 

it was great at the time IMO.

I think it's something that I cannot honestly judge objectively now because I have such a deep nostalgic love for it. I mean, I got the game at the same time as I got a voodoo 2... the damn thing blew my mind from start to finish. 

Recently started playing the latest Tomb Raider for the first time because of the high praise it tends to get. Unfortunately I'm close to skipping this one because it's plagued with those insta-death QTE sequences. They're simply no fun for me and sour everything else about the game, despite the platforming/exploration being quite fun. :(

So I've been playing Witcher 2 instead (on Hard difficulty). Had a rough start figuring out group combat but now have a blast everytime I jump into it. Until the QTEs... but not nearly as hair tearing.

It's sad because I absolutely loved both Shenmue titles, stuffed with QTE sequences... but at least not every failed QTE meant game-over though.