Rolling (though slowly, I'd imagine) Gaming Thread

cobretti

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Recently clocked Halo: ODST, which was a nice little timewaster, but maybe a little brief. Maybe that's for the best though, because with epic titles like Oblivion/Fallout etc, I usually fail to finish them even after playing for 20+ hrs.

Picked up Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising last week, which is like a pre-GRAW Ghost Recon mixed with some COD4 & Full Spectrum Warrior for good measure. Lots of camping out in bushes, planning attacks and ordering your men to hold positions, flank enemies and such. Definitely worth getting your hands on if you find the likes of Call Of Duty a little too dumbed down or Hollywood at times. Asda & Tesco had it at £27 over the weekend, I'm not sure if that'll continue this week.
 

viktorvaughn

Well-known member
ok tip please!

i am not up on games really but veyr much enjoyed fallout 3 and have a decent pc that can run stuff

any tips please? either like that or strategy one, thanks
 

matt b

Indexing all opinion
Picked up Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising last week, which is like a pre-GRAW Ghost Recon mixed with some COD4 & Full Spectrum Warrior for good measure. Lots of camping out in bushes, planning attacks and ordering your men to hold positions, flank enemies and such. Definitely worth getting your hands on if you find the likes of Call Of Duty a little too dumbed down or Hollywood at times. Asda & Tesco had it at £27 over the weekend, I'm not sure if that'll continue this week.

Sounds pretty good, but I'm hanging on for MW2 to get my guns fix (an addiction I didn't know I had until playing COD4).
 

hint

party record with a siren
Picked up Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising last week, which is like a pre-GRAW Ghost Recon mixed with some COD4 & Full Spectrum Warrior for good measure. Lots of camping out in bushes, planning attacks and ordering your men to hold positions, flank enemies and such. Definitely worth getting your hands on if you find the likes of Call Of Duty a little too dumbed down or Hollywood at times. Asda & Tesco had it at £27 over the weekend, I'm not sure if that'll continue this week.

I'm in 2 minds about getting this. I only play Hardcore multiplayer on COD4 these days, cos I'm into the whole stealthy one-shot-kill / no radar style of play. But I was reading about Operation Flashpoint and the review mentioned that if you die in a mission it will throw you right back to the start, which can wipe out an hour's worth of progress, for example.

I'm all for high difficulty / tension in games, but the idea of making progress and then having it wiped out due to one mistake is a bit too extreme for me in this day and age, I think.

Forza 3 is out in a couple of weeks. I think I'll save my money for that.

Assassin's Creed II is due soon too, right?
 

Dusty

Tone deaf
OFP-DR is brilliant when played with 3 friends via online co-op. Discussing what to do next, shitting yourself when bullets start flying out of nowhere, crying like a girl when you bleed out on the floor because your medic was too scared to run over and help - hardcore gaming doesn't get any better.

But the bugs, oh Christ the bugs. I've been killed 3 times walking up stairs. The first time it was hilarious for all involved... but when it takes up to an hour to finish a mission and once you are dead - your dead, the novelty soon wore off. Oh, and floating off at the start of a map only to fall to my death... watching people freeze in place like a statue when dead instead of falling over... not being able to swap guns with each other... AT missiles exploding in your face when you try and fire over a wall. It just goes on and on.
 

mixed_biscuits

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cobretti

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Yeah Flashpoint is quite buggy, but it's just a symptom of having such a large sandbox environment with so much going on across such a scale at any one time. Unfortunately, throwing co-op players in to the mix only serves to exacerbate things. There is a patch on the way though, which should eliminate issues such as weapon swaps, non-team leader co-op players being able to loot bodies etc, as well as some of the more back end/tech bugs. Still well worth picking up though, if you don't like it after playing, Gamestation are offering MW2 for a fiver with selected trade ins, Flashpoint being one of them.

Oh aye, Hint, it's only on the Hardcore difficulty (no compass, one hit kills, not even a bloody crosshair) that you get sent straight back to the start once you're killed. To be honest, normal is enough of a challenge with waypoints/compass/crosshair etc turned on, so the checkpoints it provides are definitely handy.

Viktorvaughn, if you're after a similar experience to Fallout, give one of the Elder Scrolls series a go. Think of it as Fallout 3 in swords & sorcery fantasy land (it's developed by the same mob, Bethesda), and it's just as epic. IF that doesn't sound like your scene, give Mass Effect a go (sci-fi action RPG), or try Warcraft 3 for a melding of strategy & RPG elements. I've always fancied the Total War series of strategy games too, but haven't had a PC since the series started.
 

massrock

Well-known member
Ambient / Psychedelic indie games...

Brainpipe

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Osmos

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hint

party record with a siren
Oh aye, Hint, it's only on the Hardcore difficulty (no compass, one hit kills, not even a bloody crosshair) that you get sent straight back to the start once you're killed. To be honest, normal is enough of a challenge with waypoints/compass/crosshair etc turned on, so the checkpoints it provides are definitely handy.

Ah - good to know. Thanks. I would have grabbed it if I'd known it was cheap at Tesco. I'll put it back on the list and see if there are any bargain copies around in the coming weeks.
 

matt b

Indexing all opinion
Finished Batman last night. Last two boss fights were a little dull and certainly repetitive. Still got a few trophies to collect- 'tis quite fun to wander round.

But, that means I can go and buy Uncharted 2 tonight :eek:
 

mrfaucet

The Ideas Train
Any thoughts on FIFA Vs Pro Evo this year?

FIFA is far more realistic but I don't think it's much fun, whereas Pro (judging by the demo) seems not to have really changed at all, and so still has all the stuff that has previously caused me to shout at my tv like goalkeepers consantly palming the ball into the path of opposition strikers, but I think it's still more enjoyable.
 

mixed_biscuits

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To me the best football game would be one that simulates perfectly the unfun lowscoringness of most football - FIFA's getting there, but even with all controls set to manual (manual passing...mmm) a ten minute game will tend to have two or three goals rather than the expected 0.276. A proper simulation should force players to play the full 90 minutes in order to get a realistic scoreline.
 

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
Game developers really need to work on endings. It's crucial because if you have a shit ending it doesn't make you feel very good about wasting all that fucking time playing it, does it? I have played Gears of War 2, Fallout 3 and Bioshock through the end now on my Xbox and while all were enjoyable, the endings were anti-climactic, rushed and stupid. I really liked the ending to The Darkness though, in fact that whole game was great.
 

mrfaucet

The Ideas Train
To me the best football game would be one that simulates perfectly the unfun lowscoringness of most football - FIFA's getting there, but even with all controls set to manual (manual passing...mmm) a ten minute game will tend to have two or three goals rather than the expected 0.276. A proper simulation should force players to play the full 90 minutes in order to get a realistic scoreline.

It's not even that though, I don't think it's even that enjoyable to score when you do when you might think that it'd be more satisfying to score when it really counts because there are so few goals. Whereas with Pro I find even the shit goals slightly satisfying, but that might just be me.
 

matt b

Indexing all opinion
Game developers really need to work on endings. It's crucial because if you have a shit ending it doesn't make you feel very good about wasting all that fucking time playing it, does it? I have played Gears of War 2, Fallout 3 and Bioshock through the end now on my Xbox and while all were enjoyable, the endings were anti-climactic, rushed and stupid. I really liked the ending to The Darkness though, in fact that whole game was great.

you're WASTING TIME when playing games!?

Shit. Don't say that.



The problem now (esp. when compared to the 1980s), is that games are a tad too easy- you never feel completely lost, so the endings aren't quite the great relief they once were (if you ever finished games in the first place).

Also, endings are almost happy- as Graham Linehan commented on Gameswipe, much to gamings detriment, not to even touch on the enforced teenage male mindset games are still in thrall to.
 

mixed_biscuits

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For me, the direction that shots take in FIFA is subject to many contextual factors that can diminish the sense of control that one has. Not only are one's shots affected by fine body/foot/ball positions in ways that can be difficult to grasp intuitively but they are also, frustratingly so, influenced by simulated psychological effects, such as the 'pressure' that one's collection-of-polygons-that-is-the-striker is feeling from having other, opposing, collections of polygons encroach into their impersonal space.

I'm surprised that the developers feel obliged to simulate bottling-under-pressure, when I'm more than able to react adversely to emotionally or cognitively loaded situations myself and bottle scoring opportunities off my own back. :mad:
 

cobretti

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For me, the direction that shots take in FIFA is subject to many contextual factors that can diminish the sense of control that one has. Not only are one's shots affected by fine body/foot/ball positions in ways that can be difficult to grasp intuitively but they are also, frustratingly so, influenced by simulated psychological effects, such as the 'pressure' that one's collection-of-polygons-that-is-the-striker is feeling from having other, opposing, collections of polygons encroach into their impersonal space.

I'm surprised that the developers feel obliged to simulate bottling-under-pressure, when I'm more than able to react adversely to emotionally or cognitively loaded situations myself and bottle scoring opportunities off my own back. :mad:

This also happens in Pro Evo I'll have you know. The 'Shot Technique' stat denotes their ability to maintain their cool and perform accurately under pressure. I am slightly ashamed that that knowledge is taking up space in my brain, mind.
 
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