Posts by Thrik

Looks MINT.

Quote from Taylor

I'm pretty sure you get the same number of reinforcements no matter how you approach an encounter.The new melee stuff looks realy good, I really liked punch-ups and stealth kills when the setup allowed it. Nothing will mix-up dry cover shooters quite like the Vanguard, but that would be slightly out of place...

There's a fixed number of enemies in each area, but if you throw them into alert mode another 4–8 will appear from outside of the playing area. I've gotten through most areas during my second playthrough using only the tranquilliser gun and melee moves, and due to not alerting the enemies there've been far less of them (but it still takes ages because stealth is slow business).

The only downside to Uncharted 2's approach to stealth is you can invest absolutely ages into not alerting the enemies, only for one dick to randomly spot you and then you have to deal with the reinforcements anyway. The whole way through I wished they'd made it like Metal Gear Solid where after a reasonable amount of time they give up and go away again, allowing me to complete the area stealthily.

Yeah I'd say the combat feels great, myself — so long as you can aim. A single headshot will take the majority of enemies down, and even those wearing heavy-duty helmets will go down fast if you repeatedly hit their head. Then of course there's the insta-kill stealth moves which I tried to use as often as possible rather than playing it like a straight action game.

I love how you can play Uncharted 2 like Gears of War or Metal Gear Solid. If you choose the action route you get a fuckload of reinforcements to deal with, whereas if you go stealthy you still take ages due to all the sneaking and avoiding enemy eyes but there're much less of them and it feels much more precise. I hope they make the stealth side even better in Uncharted 3; it'd be a huge improvement if enemies eventually stopped looking for you and the reinforcements pissed off IMO.

Ah man, Uncharted 2. There's no one stand-out gimmick or anything like that which makes it great — it simply excels in every single way. Literally everything from the script to the music to the graphics to the audio to the (action-stealth) gameplay is absolutely spot-on in every conceivable way and results in an overall experience that I still consider the absolute pinnacle of this generation.

To be honest its biggest strengths are probably its excellent story, characters, and wit. Even without the other elements being as good as they are, those still make it an incredibly engaging experience from start to finish. I couldn't put the bastard down when I was playing it.

Really, just play it and you'll see that it deserves its near-perfect review scores. Even if you don't have a PS3 and just just get a cheap one in the future, missing out on Uncharted 2 is like missing out on Half-Life or some shit. It's one of gaming's prime achievements, an example of everything the medium can currently be.

The two main trailers give an indication of the game's writing/presentation strength:

I think you're getting a bit carried away D3 considering pre-preproduction has barely taken off and they're still simply putting stuff together. All of these shots are from the very earliest stages of production, and the chances are CGI will be used extensively to dress up everything you're looking at.

I was looking around and apparently the script has been very well received by those who've read it, and also unfinished Lawmaster motorbikes have been spotted although noone's been able to sneak in a photo.

Most films in Blu-ray tend to be far superior to the originals in my experience, but I think Band of Brothers deserves special mention for being something that most people probably saw in standard definition but is absolutely awesome in HD — so go get it!

I know that the upcoming Aliens re-release is meant to be particularly improved as they've done a load of remastering. You can see comparison shots here:

http://www.tribalwar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=619550

I expect this to be better than the previous abomination of a film.

Oh hell yes.

Like we just said, you can do it with Gmail or Yahoo. The only prerequisite is that you go to a domain registrar yourself and buy one (eg: Go Daddy) — it's about $10 a year for a .com. Then you can either use that domain with a web host (comparatively expensive) or set it up with Gmail or Yahoo for free.

I see reflections on concrete/tarmac all the time even when it's only been lightly raining. They are particularly shiny materials when wet, albeit only in darker conditions.

I believe the effect is meant to be the rain on the F1 driver's helmet, not the camera. It's more the way the rain itself looks though, because in the F1 video it actually looks and moves like rain. In GT5 it looks more like a cheap sprite, not just when it's on the windscreen but also in the air.

Hmm. I was kind of excited about this for nothing more than the graphics porn, but after watching this video my excitement has plummeted:

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/musta ... smo/707766

It looks amazing in the trailers, but the in-game stuff doesn't look any better than games we've all played before IMO — I'd go so far as to say the rain affects are downright lame, the cars seem to be lacking good shadowing, and the in-car model and animation is as jerky and stiff as it always seems to be in racing games.

To be honest even the original DiRT looked a lot better albeit more stylised, and I personally find the balance of realism/arcade in those games to be pretty much perfect. The extreme focus on physical realism in Gran Turismo isn't really something I find appealing in and of itself, though I'm sure the car equivalent of flight simulator players will love it.

If I hadn't already played GT5: Prologue to death years ago I'd probably be more intrigued, but this literally looks no better. Think DiRT 3 has just shot to the top of my racing anticipation list (which has a sweet trailer of its own).

Not sure about Yahoo, but one nice bonus of Gmail is you can set up a (free) business account which lets you use your own domain for emails if you have one. For example, my various @ryanjohnwilliams.com addresses are all accessed through Gmail and are entirely hosted by Google — not just forwarded. Means you get excellent performance, resources, webmail client, etc for free.

Looks like it. I do recall reading you can actually use native C++ on Android now so I doubt he's rewriting it in Java or anything like that.

Well I think just about any regular camera can do that, and apparently most webcams can too — it's just the manufacturers put filters in to stop it by default.

All you'd need is a regular cam and a second cam set to IR mode, carefully configured to look at the same thing. That's literally all the Kinect is, except packed into a single unit (and extremely expensive tbh, but with the 360 that's OK because you're paying for Microsoft's software which allows for body recognition, etc).

Haha, sweet. Although couldn't you have done this at any point in the last 10+ years by just hooking two webcams into your computer and writing the appropriate drivers and/or software?

It's such a brilliant concept in theory, but those old concerns raised from the outset are unfortunately still there: any kind of network latency and/or downtime is catastrophic, the video quality can be awful if your connection isn't speedy, and the game doesn't look as good as it would with your own hardware as they mandate turning off higher settings (including anti-aliasing).

I know for a fact that despite living in the absolute centre of a city, due to connection quality being so variable here I couldn't play games properly just like I can have issues with online video streaming if anyone else tries to use the connection.

There's also some fairly damning stuff summarised by Wikipedia:

Quote

DigitalFoundry conducted tests on OnLive that showed latency was greater than that for a locally-installed game. Best-case response times for button press to action was 10 frames or 150 ms, while other games ranged from 150 ms to 210 ms, and they noted that this would vary greatly depending on quality of connection to OnLive's servers. They also noted that such a response time "never meets anything like the claims made for it by company front-man Steve Perlman, on the record as describing end-to-end lag as being under 80 ms and 'usually... between 35-40 ms'.", and that while this may not be a problem for slower-paced games, for faster-paced games, "it is most definitely not a replacement for the local experience".Video quality was also analyzed with the finding that, owing to the use of video compression, "video quality is hugely variable in OnLive, ranging from very good to absolutely, diabolically dreadful. You will never get that disparity of performance on a local system", with video quality best when there was little motion or change in picture. Framerate and graphics quality was generally good, being comparable to the console versions of the games offered, but DigitalFoundry noted screen tearing due to the unlocked frame rate and the lack of full-screen anti-aliasing as mentioned by the developer briefing at GDC as being "mandatory".

In examining the value of the OnLive system, they noted that physical copies of games were often cheaper than those for use on OnLive, that OnLive's promise of better graphics quality than consoles counted for nothing if latency and video quality were inconsistent, and that the performance level could be "approximated or even exceeded" by purchasing an £80 graphics card bought for a computer that meets the minimum specification to use OnLive on a PC.

If connection speeds were extremely stable and extremely fast across the board it'd be fantastic, but until then it's just less hassle and cheaper to go with traditional console gaming and even PC gaming.

Haha, I'd genuinely forgotten there was a Quake 4 and it took me a good minute to remember playing it. What a memorable game.

:santahurg:

Well, if you insist.

Quote from Campaignjunkie

The problem is hardware interface. We need a more accessible control scheme for FPS games; mouse and keyboard are too difficult to pick-up. The dual analog sticks are slightly better, but I still see beginners really struggle with it. Almost every other game genre is easier to pick-up, I feel like.

As far as I'm concerned the kind of control that the Wii and now PlayStation Move allow is exactly what's needed. Microsoft have made a bit of a blunder with the Kinect IMO because it's pretty much limited to casual/party games and is basically just a glorified PlayStation Eye. Conversely, Sony and Nintendo have the best of both worlds: gestures, buttons/sticks, and precision pointing — although Sony's technology is considerably superior and doesn't feel jittery.

Sony are now without a doubt in the best position to enable excellent control in just about any genre, finally bringing to a high-definition console the kind of precision a mouse has. First-person shooters, real-time strategies, and god games can finally breathe. If we don't see those genres start to hit a whole new level during this generation, we sure as hell will during the next one.

Of course Microsoft could flip their fortunes if they bring out a Move-esque controller that uses the Kinect camera, just like the Move uses the PlayStation's camera.