Whoa wait, shit. I was just reading about Bad Company 2 and it turns out it's actually getting a PC version.
Seeing as Bad Company was meant to have terrific multiplayer (even in the opinion of PC Battlefield veterans) — much more faithful to traditional Battlefield than Heroes and 1943 seem to be — and that DICE is generally very good when it comes to PC versions, that excites me. 
Oh, didn't see your post there D3. Basing purchasing decisions on nothing more than review scores (as opposed to reading reviews and trying the game yourself) is really stupid IMO, as we mentioned on the last page. And basing it on just one magazine's score is even more stupid, even if it's one as good as Edge — which despite me reading every month, does have scores I occasionally disagree with.
Also why did you feel the need to mention F.E.A.R. 2? I know you're totally a fanboy and everything, but there's no need to go into totally unrelated game threads and say you should buy it instead. 
I'm sure most PS3-wielding Mapcorians will buy or at least try both.
I quite enjoyed the demo. 
I don't really empathise with the complaints about the floaty controls I've heard in various places, and I thoroughly enjoyed what little action there was. I think the demo is far too short to call any conclusions either way though, so I'm pretty much as oblivious as I was before of how good the overall game will be.
All I know now is that the combat is solid, the cover system works well, and that it looks superb. In fact, the game is a technical marvel in pretty much every way including the sound.
I never try to put too much weight on single-player demos anyway, because it can be really difficult to gauge the quality of a game based on such a short segment. I mean, pretty much all the criticisms I've heard of Killzone 2 (cliched set-ups, action in a warehouse, etc) could be levelled at games like Half-Life 2 if you were to take an equally short segment of the game out of context.
I seriously doubt the whole game will consist of the demo copy/pasted a thousand times, but I get the impression that's what people are expecting. Maybe I'm being too optimistic.
One thing I did find is that the combat is much better if you use the Call of Duty-style scheme (Alternate 2 and enable hold zoom), which puts zoom on the left shoulder button. I much prefer aiming this way, much like you do in Call of Duty 4 & 5, Metal Gear Solid 4, and Uncharted where you move your aim into position while zoomed out, then zoom in to actually fire once you're in the right region.
The aforementioned games pretty much force you into it though, whereas Killzone 2 gives you the option — I kind of think it'd have been a better design decision to softly force it in Killzone 2 too by taking away the crosshair when not zoomed out.
Annoyingly the only control scheme with this set-up has 'use cover' on L2, which is a serious pain to use at the same time as you typically don't use L1 and L2 at the same time in any game ever and it's a bit awkard on the fingers. I would very much like fully configurable controls.
I don't think those changes are terrible, but it definitely won't be Battlefield. I'm expecting something that'll play more like Call of Duty (which also has regenerating health), but with some of the Battlefield hallmarks such as vehicles and large, open maps. These things do take away from the teamplay though, as medics will no longer be needed to keep people healthy, support personnel won't be needed to restock your ammo, etc. But working as a team to secure the checkpoints will be as necessary as ever I imagine, and the Frostbite engine's destructable world will be quite cool (ability to blow apart buildings, trees, etc).
I think my original prediction of this being nothing more than a fun diversion will hold true. 
At this point I'm looking more forward to Bad Company 2 though, even if it is console-only, because it has a more traditional Battlefield multiplayer.
Way to boost his confidence, guys. 
I suppose whether or not it's single-player would be a big factor here. If you've put together a wonderfully atmospheric level that has scripted events and shit, you'll definitely want to show that off in a reel or something. Perhaps not the same kind of sequential reel that an animator would put together, though.
Maybe an interesting compromise would be to take movies of each scene as well as a screenshot, so if users click on the screenshot they can see it in motion with the sound, particle effects, etc. Might be more likely they'll see them, too.
It's based on the Bad Company engine actually. I've no idea what Heroes uses, though.
I'm really unsure what to think until we know more about this. One thing I've always loved about Battlefield is the depth and detail to the gameplay, ranging from the weapons and kit (which were tremendously varied in Battlefield 2142) to the maps, to the squad systems, etc. No other game has really given me the same experience, with even the greats like Call of Duty and Team Fortress 2 having tiny maps and scale in comparison.
If it's significantly dumbed down like Heroes seems to be then that's not really going to appeal to me much I don't think; I also won't be impressed if it has the kind of dumbing down you'd expect from a game targetted at the tactile inferiority of gamepads. Battlefield has always been quite hardcore with regards to difficulty, so it's hard to imagine regular PC Battlefield being appealing to Xbox LIVE Arcade and PlayStation Network users, which worries me as obviously a lot of sales will come from those avenues — by not being PC exclusive like previous Battlefields, I suspect it may suffer.
We'll see!
Theme is largely irrelevant with Battlefield to be honest. All three games regardless of era feel quite similar — it's that special Battlefield magic that makes the games great.
Wow, didn't see this one coming — I assumed DICE would be busy with Battlefield Heroes and Bad Company 2 for the majority of this year. See here for video:
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/02/05/battl ... is-summer/
I'm guessing it won't have anywhere near the depth of Battlefield 2 and 2142, but this'll be a very nice stopgap while I continue desperately desiring Battlefield 3. Hopefully BF3 will come early 2010, which isn't unlikely as DICE has this habit of announcing games literally months before their release.
Just to clarify, it is coming out on Xbox LIVE Arcade, PlayStation Network, and the PC (presumably through EA Downloader and maybe Steam).
"Want me to fuckin' trash your lights?!"
What is it, exactly? I'm at work so I can't watch it, but the brief snippet I saw seemed like an anti-religion type thing — which is kind of wasted on me since I don't believe in any kind of god anyway.
Quote from D3adsMeh, means nothing. Just imagine what Metacritic's scores were like for the Halo games and we all know how overrated those are... well.. some of us.
You are meant to read the reviews too, d3.
Anyone who buys on numbers alone wants shooting.
The average will definitely fall as it's only based on about 17 reviews right now. Intuition tells me it'll end up around 90, but that's still an extremely worthwhile play.
This has definitely crept onto my 'must have' list now, after looking at its reviews:
http://www.metacritic.com/games/platfor ... llzone%202
I have to admit that I've been sceptical about Killzone 2 from the start, because I vividly remember the hype for the original which also looked excellent but ended up failing to deliver on the gameplay — and wasn't reviewed particularly well as you'd expect. Seems like this is the real deal though, and the fact that Eurogamer gave it a great review is particularly impressive for me as it's a website traditionally very harsh on games and I generally trust their opinion.
Looks very good. Definitely will pick it up, especially with some magazines I trust saying how they've done a really good job of getting an RTS interface working on a console.
One thing that dumbfounds me is that Microsoft has seen fit to close down Ensemble Studios (the developer) before the game's even complete. Apparently they're now running on a skeleton staff to get the game finished, and immediately afterwards the studio is truly toast. What must that do to your morale, finding out your studio is unconditionally doomed with months of crunch time to get through? 
The fact that the game seems to be shaping up so well makes Microsoft's decision even more bizarre.
Hmm, sounds like I might not enjoy this too much. One of the things I liked most about Dawn of War was the enjoyable base building, upgrading, etc. It was fun building outposts all over the map and shit.
I can see that they want to do something different, but it seems extremely strange to use the Dawn of War IP to do that with. Clearly Dawn of War was an extremely well received game by players, and to be honest it was a milestone in RTS enjoyability for me. To basically shun all those original fans by effectively creating a different game under the same banner is bizarre, rather than evolving what was laid out in Dawn of War.
I've never really found anything better than FRAPS when it comes to pure quality, as it pretty much comes out totally uncompressed. If this is your main interest, FRAPS is the way to go.
However WeGame is a very serious free alternative, more geared towards building a community around game video sharing. So not only do they provide the software, but also the means to upload it and get lots of comments on it, etc. The quality isn't as good as FRAPS last I checked, but it also doesn't slow your game down to shit while recording either. Overall a very solid offering.
This is great, my brother will love it.
I really hope so. I've got a PS2 Slim, but I'd really like to replay my favourites in 1080p and with AA.
I suppose if worst comes to worst I could buy a really old 60GB PS3 one day once people no longer see much use in it.
