Half-Life Fallout: The Soapbox - Half-Life Fallout

Talking about mediocre.. anyone played the Quantm of Solace demo yet?
God. damn.

DrMatta, on Oct 7 2008, 11:34 PM, said:

does it have a lot of .. solace?

screechingringer, on Oct 8 2008, 01:36 AM, said:

To make me kill myself yeah.

Inspector *******, on Oct 7 2008, 07:27 PM, said:

??? really? i have to disagree. I thought it was one of the better parts in the game. the first few levels were great with but then the AI got old after so long. I was ready to quit before the aliens came They saved it for me. I was waitin for some change from the old korean ai and the use of vehicles wasn't my thing, that was worst parts in game imo. The aliens provided the perfect Shotgun action i was looking for.

mothmann, on Oct 7 2008, 09:23 PM, said:

Ugh, mothmann

I HATED the aliens. That whole anti-gravity level in the alien ship or whatever was retarded as hell 30 seconds in, and the alien AI was terrible. The ice and snow also cock slapped my computer into submission, so I had to turn everything down a notch.

ok the anti grav level was utter shizza. I agree with that. But that wasn't exactly a combat level either. I dont know what it was. But the ai of the aliens in this level was best in game maybe. to bad it just sucked ******* bein there.

there was to much non-combat-action scenes that took way to long during the alien scenes that ruined the game in some sense. But the alien combat was great i thought.



anyone got any good pc games i might need to play? 2006+

To each his own, I guess. I disliked the alien combat a lot, and wished they had simply stuck to the Koreans.

The year is almost over. Since my last post here I've played the following:

Crysis: Warhead - Way better than the first. 8/10

Far Cry 2 - Great game until an hour has passed and you realize you'll be doing the same mission type for 29 hours. 6/10

Fallout 3 - Mediocre graphics and a terrible main quest, but great subquests and exploration. 8/10

Dead Space - Pretty good at first until Chapter 3 where it starts getting extremely repetitive. The horror is non-existent since the game is really RE4 on space. 7/10

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway - A step down from the first two. The developers love to boast about how realistic the game is yet you switch to a third person perspective when you take cover, what gives? 5/10

Saints Row 2 - Really fun even though I bought it 3 months ago and haven't finished it yet. The diversity in the number of activities you can do and the over-the-top action make it extremely fun to play. 7/10

Legendary - Good music and some good scripted sequences, but pretty forgettable apart from that. 6/10

Gears of War 2 - Some improvements over the first such as a better plot, multiplayer bots and your AI teammates being able to revive you if you're down. Despite all this the first one is better since it had superior level design and an actual final boss. 8/10

Resistance 2 - Better graphics and level design than the first but the plot is nowhere to be found. The gameplay has changed for the worse too; what once was a strange mix between an old-school and a modern FPS has turned into CoD4 with aliens. My character is a half-alien badass yet he can take less hits than a human ally before dying. 7/10

Kind of funny how Resistance 2 and Gears of War 2 are the complete opposite. They fix the problems the first games had an introduce new ones.

Sonic Unleashed - Haven't played much but I can safely say it's a mixed bag: Sonic controls like crap, the framerate is terrible and the camera in the werehog levels will drive you insane. Yet despite all this the game does have its moments, most of the time during the Sonic levels. The PS3 version is also one of the few games that supports custom soundtracks so that's a plus. 6/10

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts - I'm not sure what to call this game, is it a platformer? Is it a racing game? Is it an advanture game? It's a strange mix between all three. The graphics are beautiful and the vehicle creation options allow you to create anything you have in mind. Its only problem is how repetitive it is, if they could have added more sections where the player has to do something on-foot instead of having to use vehicles all the time it would have been amazing. 7/10

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia - A huge improvement over Portrait of Ruin, the locations you visit have variation this time and the difficulty is hard without being cheap. Only bad thing is how mediocre the plot is, but the only Castlevania game with an acceptable story was SOTN so I can forgive this. 8/10




Best Graphics: Crysis Warhead
Best Cinematic game: Alone in the Dark
Best Action game: Metal Gear Solid 4
Best Adventure game: Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
Best Horror game: Condemned 2
Best Music: No More Heroes
Best Voice Acting: No More Heroes
Best Plot: Metal Gear Solid 4

Worst Graphics: Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway
Worst Cinematic Game: Dead Space
Worst Action Game: Far Cry 2
Worst Adventure Game: Far Cry 2
Worst Horror Game: Dead Space
Worst Music: Sonic Unleashed
Worst Voice Acting: Dead Space
Worst Plot: Fallout 3

GOTY: Metal Gear Solid 4

Someone on IRC requested a mini-MGS4 review so here it goes:

The game is extremely good but had they implemented the new shooting mechanics and controls in MGS3 I'd be playing that instead.

You have all these sweet gameplay possibilities like the MKII, the 70 weapons, the emotion bullets, CQC and so on yet you can only really use them in the first two acts. Act 3 is extremely bad and only consists of slowly following someone for 20 minutes (an hour if you're unlucky and let him spot you), Act 4 has no human enemies so that makes CQC and the camo instantly pointless and Act 5 consists of one room with enemies that infinitely spawn, one boss battle, button mashing, 30 minutes of cutscenes, another boss battle and that's it.
There are also the handful of on-rail sequences which are extremely boring the second time around, MGS4 is at its best when it isn't forcing you to one play style and actually let's you do whatever you want. Want to play it like a third person shooter? Go on ahead. Want to be absolutely stealthy? Do that then. Want to do a mix of both? No one is stopping you. The on-rail sequences and Act 3 pretty much strip these choices away from you and force you to do one thing, which is not what MGS should be like. The third game started something good by letting you shoot your way through or be stealthy, they need to keep it that way.

There is one part where Kojima Productions pokes fun at the original MGS for the disc-swapping you had to do (which took 5 seconds unless you were morbidly obese like IceOrb) yet the game has a ton of limitations because of the 3 minute installs:
- Costumes only being able to be used in their respective Acts.
- No Boss Rush and Demo Theater modes.
- Having to wait 3 minutes for each Act to install. This isn't a problem the first time around, but when you know your way around the game it's extremely annoying having to spend 3-5 minutes doing nothing every 30 minutes.

It's interesting how most gamers mention Kojima should be a movie director. MGS4 is the best example why he shouldn't get close to a movie set unless he wants people to laugh at him. The plot contains dozens of unneeded retcons (, new characters that get no development (Sunny), cringe-worthy scenes (), laughable cliches (RAIDEN SUPER CYBORG NINJA W00T JAPAN ^_^) and Snake is overshadowed by every single returning character so there are not too many memorable scenes with him.

Despite these shortcomings the game is still one of the best to have come out this year. The gameplay is amazing, no matter what you chose to do the result is enjoyable, getting no Alerts is awesome, playing like a badass and killing everyone is cool as hell since the shooting is fun this time around. And finally, a bunch of cinematics are some of the best I've ever seen in a video game or movie such as .

I bought a PS3 for MGS4 alone, had I not bothered with Uncharted and Resistance I'd still have considered it money well spent.

Left 4 Dead isn't mediocre

soldier_of_war, on Dec 29 2008, 05:48 AM, said:

I stopped playing with it when it became too repetitive and couldn't join with friends because A) they were already in games, B), waiting around for them to join in C) Playing with strangers all the time....

EDIT: In fact, worst buy of the year. I would even consider building a time machine to tell myself that it wasn't worth it.

^I agree, that does get annoying. If you do get into a game with friends, it's really fun.

Really? It's pretty fun when you find a nice group where everyone uses the mic. However, I only seem to find these guys in expert games :(

Empire: Total War FOR THE WIN..09' will be a great year for games simply because this is coming out.

Dead Space is one of the best games of the year.