Posts by Thrik

Quote from Bic-B@ll

it's brand new damnit

Right, which is exactly why there's no reason to use it instead of Firefox or Opera. As it stands, both are much superior browsers. Just because it's Google doesn't mean we have to go all starry-eyed and use it in the hope it'll get better one day — I'll use it once it is better than its competitors.

This Google loyalty thing is weird. As I said, if this came from anyone other than Google nobody would be even remotely impressed because it's not a particularly impressive browser.

All IMO of course!!

There's a good compilation of Chrome reviews and such here, for those who want to know a bit more about it before they give it a go.

I've given it a good go (well, an evening), but in all honesty I'm finding it difficult to see any incentives to use it over Firefox or Opera.

To me it just seems like a cut-down Firefox, which is really saying something considering how lean Firefox is. It's quite speedy, but I wouldn't say it's significantly faster than Firefox when tweaked a little, and it's definitely not faster than Opera from what I can tell.

They've done a good job with the interface; it looks nice on Vista. It's not enough to hide the screaming lack of features though, compounded by its inability to support add-ons which give Firefox a pretty much unlimited scope of features.

Perhaps I'm being overly critical here, but it seems like a lot of people are accepting a relatively mediocre browser just because it has the Google name on it. If this browser came from some random company and was exactly the same, I bet nobody would even give it the time of the day.

Being completely honest, Firefox and Opera both seem like far superior browsers at this time. Give them a go if you haven't already. :wink:

I look forward to seeing how Google take it forward, though. Their current features will end up in every other browser within months, so they're going to have to keep pushing forward the boundaries if they want to stay in the game.

Where do you find the time for all these old games, Quakis?

I wish we could all be as cool as you Erratic.

That comic could just as easily be about Firefox seeing as that's open source too (Microsoft love this fact, and even Internet Explorer 8 has taken the 'awesome bar' from Firefox 3 which just came out).

It's an interesting step, but I'm very sceptical it'll outclass Firefox and Opera in the long run. Firefox and Opera pretty much define web browser innovation IMO, between them being responsible for most progress in web browsers during the last decade and beyond.

A lot of people are getting starry-eyed about Chrome because, you know, it's Google. But when you think about it, Firefox and Opera really know what they're doing when it comes to browsers. They both deliver superb browsing experiences, and as of their latest versions they both have really attractive new designs too (Opera has the edge in this department I reckon).

Plus let's not forget that the web browser market is crazily competitive, so any nice features Chrome has will almost certainly be pilfered by the other big players. And with the other browsers having such strong install bases and legions of fans, they've got a big challenge when it comes to gaining market share. Google may find themselves unable to compete — as strange as it sounds for such a big company — because they usually go into markets that have less if any strong competitors.

One thing I am happy about is that Chrome's using WebKit for rendering HTML (as seen in Apple's Safari), which as a web designer means I don't have yet another browser's issues to cater for.

An extended trailer has come out.

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Are you sure we're talking about the same game, and that you're not confusing 2008's C&C3 with 2003's C&C: Generals? While Generals was quite different to other C&C games, C&C3 was a total throwback with all the FMV cutscenes and everything.

I ask because your earlier criticisms seem odd, particularly "I especially hated the three nationalities" (it's mostly GDI vs NOD, just like the original C&C). And C&C3 does use harvesters; skip to 1:00 to see one in action:

What was different about the resource gathering? It's been a while since I last played C&C1 so I genuinely can't remember.

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Oh. Well, those and the path/patrol features were good. They'll almost certainly make an improved appearance in RA3.

Can't imagine why you hated C&C3, though. It was a superb realisation of the classic C&C formula in a modern context, and I doubt RA3 will be much different. C&C3 got great ratings so it's even more likely RA3 will follow in its footsteps.

I just want to clarify that I was praising Halo for taking elements of other games and using them in different contexts. You're asking me to give you examples of games in a way that'd run contrary to the essence of my point. I'm not saying there was another game that did all the things Halo did in a single game.

Halo put many things together in a very competent way. However, examine those individual components (using vehicles, enemy encounters, weaponry, etc) and they're not so great. They worked well together, but a lot of PC gamers had already experienced all those components in an FPS before, whereas console gamers probably hadn't at the time. Other PC games had previously featured better vehicles, better shooting, better enemy AI, and just as interesting environments.

Most pre-2001 console FPS games were absolutely shit. Halo took the good parts of many different PC games (or even console games for that matter) and put them all into one console FPS. It's a milestone for sure, but very derivative. I wouldn't call it true innovation, and I wouldn't say it did a number of things it did as well as they'd been done individually in PC games. That right there is pretty much my overall point.

This is why I think PC gamers generally aren't too impressed by Halo, and there's absolutely a gorge there IMO — always has been. Clearly there's a reason for it, and I think my theorising is along the right lines. PC gamers by and large aren't too impressed because they've experienced much the same gameplay before, albeit across a range of titles. I've observed PC gamers saying they don't 'get' Halo for about seven years now.

Another thing I feel is important to clarify is that I don't think Halo was a bad game, nor do I think many PC critics of the game genuinely think so. I think it's merely a decent game, having not really shown me anything I'd never seen before. It didn't blow me away because I'd done a lot of what it featured before, including the totally free-range vehicles (albeit in an online context, in Tribes). This presumably goes for a lot of PC gamers, whereas a lot of console gamers hadn't experienced great vehicle physics in an FPS, etc.

Halo did popularise a lot of elements, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it did any of them perfectly or innovated the use of them. It was a very competent game and one of the better console shooters (consequently influencing most later console shooters), but it was in reality just stuff taken from various games mixed into one big hotpot.

To put it another way, Halo was a pretty good whole but the individual parts weren't so good. Earlier PC games did its various components better, including vehicles. This is why I suspect many PC games abhor Halo, because they recognise that most of the elements are mediocre implementations of what they've seen in other games before (albeit not all in the same game) and cannot comprehend its immense popularity.

To this day I still think the levels were very repetitive and bland, and it certainly wasn't a particularly outstanding or unique art style at the time (although FPS games have since become very dark and brown). The gameplay wasn't overwhelmingly original or varied either, although the regenerating health and equipment limits — neither of which Halo premiered — were implemented well and are deservedly quite popular now.

From a completely objective perspective, Halo wasn't an outstanding game. I believe its popularity came from it doing a bunch of things at once that console gamers hadn't seen to any real degree of quality before, showing that all the crazy stuff seen on the PC could be done on a last-gen console too. I also believe its popularity was a good thing because it encouraged many other console developers to step up their game and finally stop producing FPS games that're shit in 99% of cases (the likes of games like GoldenEye were very rare occasions).

Tiberium Wars was excellent so I am a bit sceptical it'll hit the same level based on everything I've seen so far, particularly with there seeming to be a lot more stuff that looks like it belongs in the tiberium universe (thus reducing the division between the series). Even the art seems to have less fidelity, including on high.

Didn't you see the formation features in C&C3?

Heh, cutscene trailer:

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Tim Curry, Peter Stormare, and Jonathan Price?

About time.

Yes, I should probably make clear that I was only referring to the game itself and not its commercial success. That is, for me it's going to be a pretty serious battle for one of them earn the title of my favourite.

I think it's fair to say that's some absolutely fantastic CGI and atmosphere.

Then you get the real thing and it's all...

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