Posts by Skacky

  • Crysis 2

    Blame that on their shitty hardware.

    Anyway that's amazing, some of these shots are truly mindblowing, especially the one with the concrete block and the metal handler thing. Too bad the texture itself looks a bit lowres, or it's maybe just me. You should have released it when the game hit the stores though. Not that I complain, but it would have impressed people a lot more IMO.

  • Deus Ex 3

    I'm okay with this. I will definitely get this one.

    Now Eidos, make us a worthy Thief sequel. :derp:

    What I find somewhat interesting with this game is that I get a huge Metal Gear Solid 2 vibe when I look at the pics, they remind me of the Big Shell (orange futuristic textures).

  • What game would you make and why?

    My dream game would be a noir steampunk stealth game, with a female thief protagonist. Kind of a femme fatale in fact. Basically a mix of 30s/40s noir stories and environments with very tall and threatening structures, steampunk elements (giant clockwork machines, pipes, cogs and all) with an endless rain having an impact on gameplay (you leave trails when you're soaked for example).

    An interesting story involving political conspiracies and 'behind the curtain' stuff, cool non-linear levels (hotels, banks, mansion heists) where you can plan your break-in, and cool gameplay mechanics.


    Basically a spiritual successor to Thief minus the undead (even if I like them a lot), and the medieval/victorian elements.

  • American Mcgee's Alice II

    I'm waiting a bit before I buy this one. I'm a huge fan of the original game and I don't want to be disappointed.

    What I've seen so far has been really great so I have high hopes nonetheless. And Chris Vrenna did the soundtrack again.

  • Duke Nukem Forever

    Clearly the game isn't good. It's not awful, but it's not good.

    It's just a big, narrow corridor full of scripted events with zero exploration and no rewards for doing so. I played it for almost two/three hours and sadly I'm already quite fed up with it.

    What made DN3D great were, first of all, the amazing level design — secrets everywhere with powerups, weapons, etc, really rewarding the player for searching every nook and cranny; that's something you don't see often in games anymore — that fast paced and CHALLENGING action, the great music and of course the humor.

    Here in DNF there's only the humor, and maybe the music, even if the latter doesn't really stand out. Duke is as over the top as ever and that's great. What I enjoyed were these interactions with the objects (water fountains, toilets, pinballs and all) and of course the little voice clips by Jon St. John that always crack me up (

    Quote

    the 'What the fuck?' line when Duke gets shrunk for the first time made me laugh out loud

    ). The game is also quite diverse, even if diversity doesn't necessarily mean quality (boring stationary turret action, for example).

    But everything else is just a real bummer. You are set on rails and you can't take another path, since there's no other path. The game is so damn slow and the maximum number of enemies on screen I counted was around 5 or 6. And holy hell that auto health regen feature is frickin' crap. Why, oh why do game designers still use it? Return to medpacks already, or self-healing maybe. Health is a major resource in FPS and that auto health regen crap completely removes it. There's absolutely no challenge with this 'feature'. You just have to hide behind an obstacle, wait a bit and tadaaa, your health bar is full again! [Blocked Image: https://migrationtest.mapcore.org/public/style_emoticons/default/mapcore_smilies/emot_shakehead.gif]

    The fact that you can only carry two weapons at a time is a real let-down too. I mean why? Is there a good reason why we can't pick up more than two weapons at a time? And the worst thing concerning these weapons is that they have absolutely no feeling at all. That alien Pulse-rifle you obtain at the start feels like a plastic toy.

    I don't know what the devs did to the controls in the PC version but they are godawful to say the least. The mouse suffers from a kind of mouse smoothing that is really damn annoying, and you can't even turn it off. The blur effect when you drink a beer to make you stronger is so bothersome, and if you use the Duke Vision at the same time (I had the misfortune of doing this at the beginning of the game) the result is quite simple: you can't see anything. Usually I hate blurring effects on-screen, so yeah.

    Another thing that bothered me were these QTEs everywhere. Wanna open that door? Here's a QTE for you. And there's another door there. And another. The lift is falling? Yup, here's another QTE, man. [Blocked Image: https://migrationtest.mapcore.org/public/style_emoticons/default/mapcore_smilies/emot_shakehead.gif]

    And this checkpoint stuff on PC is a definite no-no. That was just a huge and unforgivable game design mistake guys. Give me my quick save/quick load back already.

    I won't say much concerning the graphics, I found them okay. The Lady Killer palace is really nice actually. The game has some massive FPS drops though. My PC runs recent games pretty well, but with okay graphics I thought DNF would run a lot smoother. Guess I was wrong. I noticed that lights cause these drops, since I gain more than 25 fps (I'm not even joking) when it's pitch black.

    Well that's just my opinion, but I can't really say I'm disappointed since I didn't expect a lot of this game anyway. Imma return to DN3D after I finish this game.

    I agree with PaulH on the fact that if it had been released in 2001, I think it would have been a huge success. But now it just fails at almost everything, I'm really sorry to say this.

    Oh another thing, I haven't tested the MP yet since nobody seems to be able to access it on PC yet (I didn't try for myself). If the devs did something like DN3D's it can be cool actually.

  • "Modern Warfare 3" ??

    That plus the low replayability and the short length of the SP 'scripted-corridor-with-infinitely-respawning-NPCs-to-make-you-believe-the-game-is-challenging' mode and the more or less shallow MP mode. (depends on which MP game mode you play of course).

    The first CoD games were ace, but from World at War it went drastically downhill.

  • Bioshock Infinite (Spoiler free thread)

    Well Bioshock never scared me while System Shock 2 made me shit my pants, the Hydroponics level and the whole Rickenbacker were amazing for that.

    Bioshock was designed as a game with scary bits that's for sure, even if these bits failed to scare me, but I won't say it was designed as a survival horror in the first place.

    On to Bioshock Infinite, it's looking really amazing but that trailer is too short!

  • What have you watched recently?

    Quote from D3ads

    Dark City.Amazing film.. how the Hell did it take me so long to see this?!!

    Dark City is one of my favorite movies ever, it never gets boring even after you've watched it 10 times.

    I hope you watched the Director's Cut though, as it is a lot better than the theatrical release (the director's cut deletes the useless and somewhat spoiling narration by Schreber at the very beginning for example).

    I've been watching Game of Thrones lately and I absolutely love it. I can't wait for the next episode.

  • ITT: Post maps/scenes that never saw the light of the day.

    A 5CP map I was doing for TF2Maps's contest, but ultimately decided to drop it because of what TF2 had become.

    [Blocked Image: http://i54.tinypic.com/29zvp60.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: http://i52.tinypic.com/156wtwl.jpg]

    A huge map for the mod Bisounours Party that didn't make it. The map takes the whole grid.

    [Blocked Image: http://i55.tinypic.com/1eq9t3.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: http://i53.tinypic.com/30iwdxs.jpg]

    A level I did for EP2 to toy with the antlion behaviors and patrols, and to work on the antlion cave environment showcased in EP2. At the beginning this was going to be a 3-4 map mod set on a combine-controlled planetoid with a citadel and a gunship bay the player would have to destroy, but would first have to cross the caves to reach the other side of the valley.

    [Blocked Image: http://i52.tinypic.com/f2ki36.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: http://i52.tinypic.com/x27zmv.jpg]

    I have more abandoned maps but since my pc crashed a week ago I lost them all.