What are you playing now?

Just picked up Never Alone. Very first native american game made by some veterans helping this nation with their first game. it's supposed to be a pretty standard platformer, which I'm always a sucker for, but the trip is well worth taking for the setting and the culture narrated.

Quote from dux

RO2 trash? Playing it single player by the sounds? Banable offence.

Re RO2: Yep single player only. Haven't tried the multiplayer. But even for multiplayer, I can't imagine it being a shitload better. Level designs are just average for UE3, only a couple weapons were enjoyable. The times I got stuck with the mounted MG's which you can only use if you find a special little ledge to place it on, sucked big time. But the worst thing was the repetition of sp levels so many times over and just making it a timed defence, that was pretty lazy. So at least mp won't have that.

Ban him Sprony please.

Quote from Vilham

Ban him Sprony please.

Wow Vilham. How about "welcome to the forum Kona"?

I'll assume I'll be banned by the time I return - not that I've broken any rule but we couldn't possibly have a "new member" with an opinion on a game, could we?

Quote from Kona

Wow Vilham. How about "welcome to the forum Kona"?

I'll assume I'll be banned by the time I return - not that I've broken any rule but we couldn't possibly have a "new member" with an opinion on a game, could we?

it's called mapcore humour, you'll get used to it! No one means no harm, just having a laugh!

And be most welcome to the forum!

Quote from Kona

Wow Vilham. How about "welcome to the forum Kona"?

I'll assume I'll be banned by the time I return - not that I've broken any rule but we couldn't possibly have a "new member" with an opinion on a game, could we?

What HP said, just a joke my friend

Welcome to the forums.

Cheers guys. Wasn't sure if Will was joking or being serious without knowing him but if just jokes then sweet!

im fucking serious your opinions make me sick

GTA V and Evil Within - good shiet

Quote from Kona

Re RO2: Yep single player only. Haven't tried the multiplayer. But even for multiplayer, I can't imagine it being a shitload better. Level designs are just average for UE3, only a couple weapons were enjoyable. The times I got stuck with the mounted MG's which you can only use if you find a special little ledge to place it on, sucked big time. But the worst thing was the repetition of sp levels so many times over and just making it a timed defence, that was pretty lazy. So at least mp won't have that.

There is so many things wrong with this on so many levels |:

Quote from jaboo224

Re RO2: Yep single player only. Haven't tried the multiplayer. But even for multiplayer, I can't imagine it being a shitload better. Level designs are just average for UE3, only a couple weapons were enjoyable. The times I got stuck with the mounted MG's which you can only use if you find a special little ledge to place it on, sucked big time. But the worst thing was the repetition of sp levels so many times over and just making it a timed defence, that was pretty lazy. So at least mp won't have that.

There is so many things wrong with this on so many levels |:

Any of you guys played Red Faction: Armageddon? I've been playing the last couple days and loving it.

It's nothing like RF:Guerilla, no longer a console-stye-rpg on mars with mass-destruction but bad combat and driving. Instead they fixed the combat but made it into a linear corridor third-person shooter, like Doom 3. Kind of weird that they'd go in that direction, but I'm fine with it, not everything has to be sandbox with minigames. I guess the average reception it got were partly because everyone was expecting another GTA on mars instead of what they got. Maybe should have just had a completely different name.

Anyway, the weapons are great. The magnet gun is epic. It lets you rip any structures away and into another target - usually aliens. Or you can toss the aliens around where you want. It's probably a bit overpowered actually. But later in the game you get a powerup which lets you have infinite ammo for a short period of time, like 10secs, but only takes 10-20s to recharge again. So I took to spamming the Singularity Cannon, which is a blackhole gun, pretty much a BFG, causing mass chaos. This gun here but imagine 5 of these shots fired at once

In Dx10/11 mode it looked great as well, really nice mostly underground caves. It's just a bit linear, dull story, and the rails/vehicles section are a chore, but the great combat and weapons make up for it. Probably 8/10.

Quote from Kona

It's nothing like RF:Guerilla, no longer a console-stye-rpg on mars with mass-destruction but bad combat and driving.

wtf is this

Anyway, it's true Armageddon is no where near as bad as it was made out to be. The alien enemy AI is actually pretty good to fight against and the destruction, even though it's scaled down is still amazing and fun.

Guerilla still top 10 games of last gen though.

Quote from Erratic

wtf is this

Anyway, it's true Armageddon is no where near as bad as it was made out to be. The alien enemy AI is actually pretty good to fight against and the destruction, even though it's scaled down is still amazing and fun.

Guerilla still top 10 games of last gen though.

Just reading back over my review, perhaps the combat was okay, it's just that I tended to avoid it because of the nearly infinite spawning of enemies while removing the ability to save meant for most destruction missions the aim was getting the hell out of there and back to base (or a save point). Can't quite remember that far back. But Volition's vehicle handling wasn't great in this or Saints Row 2 from memory.

Not sure about Guerilla in top 10 last gen though, not for me anyway. I have 20 games released that same year (2009) that I rated higher than Guerilla. 2009 was a pretty good year.

Tuesday night I played through the whole Gone Home: really liked the semi-liberty to find clues to the final solution. It's really simple and linear, but I think the story is very well constructed/narrated.

Tonight I started Dishonored, played through the escape and been messing around the base of operations.

Playing RO2 singleplayer only is like playing TLOU multiplayer only....

Fallout Tactics, haven't played much yet.

Last night I test drived Alien Rage and played a good chunk of Mirror's Edge.

The former is your average "clone" shooter, like we used to say back in the days of Quake and Unreal. I remember buying it thinking that it had good graphics and seemed solid from the videos. Graphics is a great deal of noisy grey sameness I must say, reminds me a lot of Prey: confusing environment with a few eyecatching sparkling setpieces... but at least shooting it's ok, weapons handling feels alright and bullets behave a bit differently than usual shooters (they fly slower). Like Prey and Q4 there's basically no Z-axis play tho.

Liking Mirror's Edge a lot, one of those games that really makes you want to replay to get everything right and smooth, there's quite a satisfaction in getting a section properly... although I must say that whether in the first few chapters it seemed to have an overload of "over here!" red props, further down navigation gets confusing sometimes.

Spent the last hour before turning the computer off on the first few time attack maps.

I am currently playing...

SINGULARITY!

Finally got hold of this one four years after release, I was put off by it when it was originally shown due to the some of the cliches I was seeing and a lot of funky coloured lighting which didn't really fit the setting for me. Since several people at the Core worked for Raven back in the day, I saw an art dump about a year later and liked the amount of detail that was put into it like the propaganda posters and general environment work but I still didn't get it then and largely forgot about it for several years. I've corrected that now for Crimbo and have been playing it at some length so far. The big question is; what does our resident Russia Expert™ think of it?

First of all, I'm impressed by the attention to detail in the setting, it seems as though Raven did a lot of research on the theme they were going for, perhaps even going on location for some references. The cliches aforementioned are there, but mostly they make sense anyway, Soviets certainly liked to have statues of Lenin everywhere (as demonstrated by the amount that fell all over Ukraine recently). The propaganda posers and films are great, having seen some Soviet movies about the West during the Cold War, they hit the mark right down to the rhetoric and the style of artwork used. I have to frown at the faux cyrillic stuff that rears it's ugly head though, I think it's obvious what a sign reading "КАТОРГА-12" says rather than having nonsense like "КАТФЯGA" (KATFYAGA...?!). Also the English translations on some notices and banners are out of place, sure you want people to be able to read them but it's unrealistic since no "English speaking capitalist pig dogs" would set foot on the island.

Gameplay wise, to begin with it was just a straight shooter (some dodgy hitboxes, I shot a guy in the head TWICE and he still carried on shooting me in the face...wat) and then eventually you get the centrepiece of the game, the Time Manipulation Device or TMD and things get interesting. I must admit I spent a good 30 minutes renewing and aging things, it's a bit gimmicky since you can only age things that have had contact with E-99 but the animations are superb and really capture the process perfectly:

At one point I had to age that crate, stick it under a garage door and then renew it so it pushed the door up enough to be able to crawl through, pretty clever stuff.. I look forward to more of that sort of thing. the TMD also upgrades such as being able to force enemies backwards or age them so they go into slow motion and you can kill them easily. You're also able to pick objects up and hurl them at enemies, certainly useful when the mutant Spetsnaz try to throw an explosive barrel at you and you catch it and throw it back at them... how does that napalm taste, tovarisch?!

There's a lot of nice touches to the environments, such as being able to open draws to read hidden notes, play with telephones, typewriters and microphones and listen to audio recordings of the Island going to Hell, and some creepy kids toys audio that will unsettle you if you press them... The school is particularly nicely done, similar to F.E.A.R. 2'S elementary although much much shorter. There's a good contrast between locations as you time travel between one point in two different zones, the difference between old and new again.

The storyline is a bit skew whiff, at one point you go back in time and save some guy who ends up being a tyrant and killing one of the good guys so you go back and kill them. Perhaps I had the option to let them die originally or something I don't know... it just seemed a bit rushed. There's also some chick who's British but wears an Orthodox cross round her neck.. *shrugs*

So all in all, so far so good really, I shall report back on what happens next when it uhhh... happens.

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