DocSeuss

Of course, we also have gaming journalism where, instead of praising the game, they attack it for nonsensical reasons, which results in people praising them because they have absolutely no idea what good journalism is. Being negative about a game for no good reason ("It wasn't the game I thought it was going to be!") is just as stupid as being positive about it just 'cause the PR guys told you to. It was interesting to learn recently that even game interviews have PR people present. Sounds like Battlefield 3's beta. I want to blame the PR guys for this. Unlike the film industry, the gaming industry seems to think that reviews and previews are a privilege or a gift, as opposed to a vital part of their existence. They desperately attempt to control everything people hear about the game in order to generate massive sales. It's quite disappointing. :\ If I ever end up running a game company, I want to be independent enough to be able to release a demo of the game to the public at the same time the press gets their hands on it, so I can get some unfiltered reviews of what people think, rather than ones influenced by having half a dozen PR guys standing around.

An expansion could be $20-40, though, while DLC is usually $5-10. Bundling lots of DLC means you're still getting an equivalent amount of content for the same price, no? And I don't necessarily think that's a problem any more than an expansion pack. I think it's entirely possible to make a complete game and then think about what else could be added. That's how some DLC, like Broken Steel, was created. After all, in this day and age, trade-ins are a huge industry, and developers, to be profitable, need to combat them. Drip-feeding content at a lower price over the course of several months is preferable to "wait! Don't trade this game in yet! We'll release an expansion in a year! We swear!" Besides, most DLC is built after the game has gone gold, and, in some cases, not complete until after the discs have been shipped. Obviously, stuff like the Catwoman DLC is pretty bad, just like the on-the-disc DLCs of Street Fighter IV (I think?) and Bioshock 2. In the case of "stuff what is available on launch day," I don't think people need to be all pissy about "THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN THE FINAL GAME!" I think Gears of War 3, for example, is fine as-is. That it's shipping with a 3 hour solo campaign in November or December doesn't really bother me. Gears was a complete game. This is just more Gears.

I can't help but wonder if it's primarily console gamers who are confused by the whole "complete releases" that happen later on. See, PC gamers have seen things like Unreal Tournament 2004: Editor's Cut or Age of Empires Gold for years. They come with a ton of extra/new content. Gold and/or GOTY editions have been fairly common on the PC for years. And then there's things like expansion packs. I think the concept of "the full game" followed by "more stuff for the game" is the way gamers used to the PC look at things, while console gamers, who didn't have the benefit of downloading or installing extra content until this generation, really haven't grown up with the idea of there being more to the game than initially ships with it. So they look at expansions like they're somehow stuff that was cut from the original game, even though this has rarely been the case (Shale and on-the-disc DLC being the only examples I can think of).

That notion seems highly prevalent amongst gamers (ie. that there's not much advantage beyond better graphics with next gen consoles). Better processing units and greater and faster amounts of memory will mean that we should finally be able to significantly advance certain aspects like AI, interactivity and overall complexity. The major hurdle right now, I believe, is that the industry and community at large still see better graphics as the sign of advancement and pursue better graphics as a result. Hopefully this generation, the industry can look past the graphics and make advances where they're truly needed. This. A thousand times this. Processing power isn't just used for graphics, and even then, we've got a long way to go. Look at games like Uncharted 2: It looks fucking UGLY at a distance (lots of simple buildings that are just blocks, really low-quality textures, etc) because it's incapable of handling both the insane amount of up-close detail as well as the stuff at range. Games like Halo: Reach manage to do both (not well, mind), but don't have as much detail up close. Having played Rage... well, more power would allow better Megatexturing, which is why that game absolutely blows away every other game on the market in terms of games-looking-as-detailed-as-concept-art. Then there's the AI issue: AI requires LOTS of ram and processing power, and most games just aren't capable of making kickass enemies, or, worse still, Also, with more power, games could actually be produced more quickly, because you could begin to implement stuff like raytracing for lighting (thus not having to bake shafts of light into the map; just create a light source, and bam!), better procedural animations (meaning you don't have to mocap animations), and so forth. It also means better visual effects and can ultimately open up new ways of playing a game. Consoles have incredibly bad physics--I refuse to play games like Mirror's Edge or Arkham Asylum/City on my consoles because their ability to simulate physics properly is so absolutely crappy compared to what my PC can do. Check out this stuff showing off how much better Arkham City is with physics on the PC. Every time someone says we don't need more powerful, I feel like I oughtta smack 'em. I remember when Flight Simulator 1998 came out and the tagline was "as real as it gets." We're nowhere near as we could be, and it isn't just in terms of how shiny our textures or how detailed are character's faces are.

Jaws The Sting The Rock The Yearling Ocean's 11 The Italian Job The Jerk Airplane! Dirty Harry Magnum Force The Terminator Iron Giant Wizard of Oz The Maltese Falcon The Third Man Con Air Gladiator Spartacus Ben Hur Fiddler on the Roof The Longest Day Links & more edits later

Hey, forums are public discussions, no? If they're not, that would make PXoD a bit of an anomaly. Unless the questions are like, "Hey, person, how do you feel about this thing," and definitely personal, what's it matter who answers? In the past three years, Valve has released three games. Of those games, two are multiplayer games with bot support for solo play, those being Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2. They are no more single-player than Unreal Tournament was. That leaves Portal 2. In the past four years, yes, they also released Portal 1 and Episode 2, neither of which were full games, but that's besides the point, because the Orange Box is still easily the greatest gaming deal I've ever seen. (I realize that my paragraphs can be dense at times, so I'll spread them out in order to avoid going off onto tangents. Hopefully I'll write less dumb.) Right, so, you know how Gamestop wanted to sell DLC? They worked out an agreement with Microsoft and Sony. Microsoft, as you know, has Games for Windows. Prior to Fallout: New Vegas's shift over to Steamworks, most games used GFWL for their DLC (Bioshock 2, Fallout, etc). After New Vegas went Steamworks, a lot of games started using Steamworks. DLC is all digitally distributed, and games published on the PC didn't have a unified platform for DLC distribution, the way that the 360 or the PS3 had. As a result, most publishers went with GFWL. When Gamestop worked out this DLC arrangement, Microsoft had the infrastructure for allowing others to sell DLC (through the whole "add code" business) in place. So, I can walk into Gamestop, buy a code, and get DLC for a game using Live (360 or PC) easily. Basically, it's really easy for most publishers to sell their DLC on Steam now, because they either use Steamworks or can sell it through the previously dominant PC DLC delivery platform, GFWL. That requires the least amount of work. Things are different, however, for EA. For the most part, EA did not use GFWL (Bulletstorm is an exception), they used their own distrubution services. Most of their DLC wasn't on the PC at all (Dead Space 2). When they did extensive PC DLC, it was done almost exclusively through the Bioware store. EA's PC DLC infrastructure is set up to use their own systems. GFWL's DLC is set up to be purchased elsewhere. Thus, it was easier for GFWL to adapt to Valve's abrupt TOS change in June than it was for EA. Valve made the change in TOS to avoid F2P gameplay providers offering DLC outside of Steam (the kind of "greed" that most people enjoy accusing EA of). They basically tried to render competition impossible and force everyone to do DLC through Steam; EA wasn't equipped to make that change without incurring great cost, so they instead just moved everything to Origin. Valve's TOS was altered after Origin's announcement, and that TOS is why Crysis 2 got removed. EA hasn't changed the way they do business, Valve has. If anyone engineered this situation, it's Valve. As much as I love using Steam, I really dislike what they've done here. Interestingly, a large number of people said that competitors ought to shut up when Steamworks-powered games were removed from stores like Impulse. The idea of businesses removing products that advertised their competitors was somehow objectionable when Steam was the target, but now that Steam is the perpetrator of such actions, EA's the one getting all the shit, and it sucks. Fanboyism ought to go die in a fire.

...ex...cept for the fact that Microsoft implemented this infrastructure due to a deal with Gamestop on the 360. Congratulations, you've just named the game I was referring to! What, exactly, were you trying to say by pointing this out? I said Valve has made only one SP game in the past three years. That game would be Portal 2. Four years ago was Episode 2, which wasn't even a full game. It sounds that you, like dean, are smugly suggesting that I missed a game... Too bad Portal 2 was the game I was referring to, right? Personally, I've had issues with Fallout 3 and some RTS game that sucked. Other than that, Steam and GFWL tend to work pretty well together. How did we get on this tangent?

That's cool, and one thing that makes Valve's business methodology awesome. The flip side is, of course, no phone support for Steam and only one SP game in the past three years...

I do? I used the phrase because you said "let's be honest," and if we were being honest, well... then no, the suggestion that EA engineered this just doesn't work. EA wanted to continue business as usual, and Valve wanted to implement draconian policies. Unless EA had been planning this since before they appeared on Steam (iirc, the Mass Effect 1 DLC you had to pay for had always been available through EADM only) That's the truth. For what it's worth, "you know that isn't true" is a phrase I can't recall having used. I've quite likely done so, because it's a common enough phrase, but I'm baffled that you would suggest it's something I use a lot. I am kind of frustrated by the insistence that EA's the bad guy in this case; I know Valve's built up a shit ton of goodwill, and EA's been screwing up ever since Mass Effect 2 managed to sell really well (because, hey, remember when a lot of people were coming around to the notion that this new EA that was making Dead Space, Dragon Age, and Mirror's Edge was pretty cool?), but if you've been following this case, you know EA's just trying to do the thing they've always done, and Valve's been changing things to make things more profitable. Honestly, Valve's going the route of Blizzard. It's starting to get worrying. The prototype was DAO (with Shale), and the first "official" Project $10 was, I believe, Mass Effect 2. The reason for this is because most developers have released their DLC, traditionally, through GFWL or not at all. There's been an increasing shift to Steamworks, since it's the ideal DRM, but, in addition, Valve and Microsoft appear to have worked out a deal similarly to Gamestop's DLC sales thing. Basically, Valve sells you a code which you then register on Xbox.com, and can download through the GFWL Marketplace. That's how I got Fable 3 and the DLC (in part because I'm hoping good sales of Fable 3 on Steam will encourage Microsoft to put their not-inconsiderable library of old PC games up there, and maybe Alan Wake. Yay pipe dreams.) this last week, for instance. Basically, Microsoft and the GFWL DLC providers don't really suffer, because this infrastructure is already in place. EA prefers not to do the middleman at all. Plus, it's cheaper to cut out the middleman, and it's also cheaper to avoid having to work out the infrastructure required to support buying DLC from Valve. I mean, they'd have to rework a bunch of these games' DLC systems from the ground up, and at least two of these games, Crysis 2 and DA2, were released well before Valve's policy change in June. Last I checked, you can't buy EA DLC from Gamestop either, except for, maybe, 360/PS3 codes that work for those platforms.

What about the Chief/Johnson Bromance? D: Yeah. Basically, it's the best way to do a silent protagonist: have him say just enough (while being neutral) that you can subtly guide how the player thinks about the situation without getting in the way. Halo: Glasslands hits... October 25, I believe.

Oh come on. You know this isn't true. To be brutally honest: EA had a way of releasing DLC: they did it through Bioware's store (as with most of people's recent complaints about EA, it began with Bioware). You'd go there, buy the DLC, and get it in-game. They really made this a thing with DAO, and both ME2 and DA2 utilized this new scheme of things. Valve suddenly decided they didn't want to play ball (around the time F2P games came out; iirc, it was literally the day after), so they released a new TOS which basically said "EA can't do this anymore." EA was a bit upset with that, but then Valve started removing all games with DLC released post-TOS (DA2, Crysis 2, etc), so EA went public. EA isn't the bad guys here. They didn't engineer anything. They continued business as usual. It seems to be any games with DLC content released after June 14th or 15th, 2011.

RPS, easily.

Bulletstorm needed to be longer, to let you jump, and to have an advertising campaign that showed just how smart the game and its writing actually were. Also, it seems like suddenly the gamma is very bright in Rage and now I'm seeing lots of texture issues I hadn't seen before. I don't think I did anything to change it, so I'm not sure what gives! Also, anyone own it on PC? Anyone interested in co-op (I can't do voice at this point; sorry)?

Since I just beat the game for the nth time, I thought I'd explain the ending for peteer01. Also, Kenshi: . Seems pretty clear-cut to me. Also, it doesn't follow through because it's structured not just like a psychological thriller, but also like a TV show. It ends on a cliffhanger.

Can anyone link me to some solid mod guides? I'm particularly interested in creating new worldspaces.

Why would you want to accept flaws, though?

I agree that Halo Wars worked, and even though I didn't enjoy it much I thought EndWar worked also. I'm not opposed to RTS on console if done right, I just meant that playing an RTS on PC with a controller would feel wrong. Absolutely. That it did. Likewise, all console shooters feel like FPS jr. Except Halo and Gears. RPSes review basically mirrored my own opinion, but I'd suggest that Bulletstorm might have been better. It certainly had better boss fights and graphics options. Which is irritating. The AI is one of the best that I've seen, those authority guys even stay behind their comrades with shields to avoid fire. The difficulty is too low, though. Started playing on normal, switched to nightmare which is challenging enough, but not as challenging as previous id games. Overall, very good game, those guys at id software know what they are doing. Found this secret room in the distillery. Pretty neat. You're right about the AI. It's amazing. Wouldn't know about the difficulty. It's not like I'm dying all the time, but I've permdeathed three or four times. I find each fight to be a challenge--it's like the game doesn't want to punish you by making you refight large sections of the game, so it kills you less, but the fights themselves are often gripping. My deaths rarely, if ever, feel cheap. I prefer challenge over difficulty any day. I don't like the Cuprino. It handles weird, even with better tires and such. Is the distillery later on in the game? I'm eleven hours in and I haven't come across it yet. Also: I find it strange that people are claiming that Rage is short. I don't appear to be half-way through yet (they said you get about half-way through when you switch discs on the 360, like there's some natural point where you have no reason to go back to the earlier sections of the game, and I haven't gotten there yet), and, like I said, eleven hours in. I just entered the Dead City for the second time (a little disappointed it's just the same level in reverse).

Yeah, the combat itself is designed with a mouse in mind. You have a lot of enemies prone to rapid vertical and horizontal movement, as opposed to the frequently slow/stationary movement found on console games. The mouse acceleration is because while the game was designed with a mouse in mind, from guys who are clearly used to designing enemies better suited to the mouse, they built the controls with controllers in mind. Does that make sense? The enemies and levels are mouse-oriented, but the controls are controller-oriented. http://alphatown.wordpress.com I posted a brief explanation of why mouse acceleration and narrow FOVs exist in games last night. It was... inspired by Rage. I'm glad that I've fixed the FOV. RTSes on consoles, as far as I'm concerned, only worked with Halo: Wars. That said, I think with the lessons learned in HW, World in Conflict would have worked. I'm glad it's a PC-only game, though.

Just to address some comments near the top of the page: as I played the game, the more I found myself slipping into the role of Adam's character, and the more I found myself being willing to kill people. By the end, I was a one-man army of slaughterific proportions. I only let civilians live. Anyone with a gun died, and the more cruel their deaths, the better I felt. I actually enjoyed the game MORE when I did that than when I used stealth.

While that's true, it honestly feels like it was designed with a mouse in mind. Some enemies do stuff like rolling and jumping that I can barely keep up with even using a mouse, while others hide behind cover. There's an incredible amount of enemy variety in the game and they all behave in enough ways to make the combat encounters super-varied. There's a massive amount of AI variety, and while the game's more horizontal than vertical, it doesn't necessarily feel compromised for the mouse any more than the PC-only Call of Duty did. Honestly, it feels like a slightly toned-down Unreal. The Ghost Clan in particular requires a lot of vertical-focused combat.

Other than texture pop-in (which is resolved on an nvidia 400 or 500 GPU with that GPU transcoding option enabled, apparently), a narrow FOV, lack of vsync, and mouse acceleration, I'm loving the game. It just feels right. I haven't played a game that felt this right since Call of Duty 4. Before that... um... Unreal Tournament 2004, and before that, Unreal Tournament. The control feel is amazing, the weapons are FANTASTIC, the attention to artistic detail is literally the best I've ever seen in a game (and the advantage of Megatexture in full force, but the pop-in kinda ruins that). The cars feel amazingly fun, the crafting system is smartly designed and so far, everything's proven useful. Character animations are amazing--not flawlessly smooth or anything, but they gesticulate so WELL! So far, the gameplay is literally the best I've had in years. It's like a heavenly mix of Bioshock, Twisted Metal, and Unreal with... like... just a pinch of STALKER.

I didn't think I was capable of hating a game this much. The lag, server browser, and map design suck. Where's the Battlefield experience?

Um, what about CS:GO?

I wish I had something to add, but RPS covered it really well. What I can say is this: I have literally never once had this sort of mental crossover thing that I can think of. There was one time where I looked at a sunset and thought it had great graphics, but I wasn't even a gamer at the time. Also, I put my use of Microsoft Flight Simulator to the test in real life once. Unsurprisingly, those hundreds of hours in five iterations of the game resulted in my flight instructors all telling me something to the gist of "you fly like someone with years of experience, not 10/20/30 hours of flight instruction." Gaming made me. Awesome.