Posts by Serenius

  • Assassin's Creed 2

    Quote from Nineaxis

    On the topic of the game itself, after waiting months and months for the PC release, was slightly disappointed. Same great gameplay, but it lacked the spirit of the first game. I think the creed itself was mentioned once near the end of the game, and it was just a loose reference. Ezio isn't likable as a character, freaking clueless about everything yet somehow knowledgeable of assassin skills. Altair was egotistical, but his journey to regain himself made him personable. Ezio just goes and decides to kill people out of revenge. And then

    . I liked the AC1 story a lot. It had meaning. AC2 not so much.

    Yeah, the story really took a turn for the WTF at the end. AC1 kind of did, but then AC2 saw the line of believability and broke out into wind sprints when it hit the line, and just kept going.

  • Splinter Cell: Conviction

    Yeah, that's understandable, since the game needs to sell lots of copies to justify its production cost. I just want to see another high quality stealth-focused game like the Thief series and Splinter Cell days of yore.

    Is it still going to score your performance better for going the stealth route ala DA or is that not yet public info?

  • God of War III

    My favorite review of this game.

    http://www.reddit.com/shirt/beniq/i_jus ... one_in_my/

    Quote

    Seriously, have you played this game? This the over-the-top action experience that Uncharted 2 was lusting for. This is the cinematic ball-stomping tendon-ripping ragefest I've been waiting for ever since I made Sonic jump on a badnik's head (boing!) and thought, You know what would improve this? A QTE where Tails comes in and chokes the shit out of the enemy, then lowers it into Sonic while he spins like a buzz saw. Blood flies everywhere, and then Sonic and Tails go have sex. (Not with each other, internet)God of War III is fucking great. It's not perfect, but neither is Christina Hendricks (married) and that hasn't stopped Reddit from it's salaciously-adolescent rampage. I checked /r/Gaming this morning (noon) for a page of 'GoW impressions' or 'Why God of War is more interesting than your entire fucking family' and found nothing. In the words of the Colonel, "You have failed me for the last time, Reddit!" (citation needed)

    This game is the best justification I've found for buying a $9,000 TV projector that you have to shine on the side of Ayer's Rock (suck it Atkinson). On the blowjob scale of awesome, it ranks in at a solid 6.8 -- representing the amount of lollypop-loving you'll forgo to finish this game (seven would be extreme, we're only human after all). This is one of those rare titles where the primary complaint is that it eventually ends. Buy. This. Game.

    Yeah, it's more of the same, but is that really an issue? "Oh no, not Quick! Time! Events!" Naysayers scream. Yeah, I reply, but there are QTE's and there are QTE's. Would you rather press X to Jason or Press X to rip a Gorgon's head free from its sinews and kill her cousin with it? The first boss in this game is more exciting than the final boss in most others. Remember when you beat Xenogears, and you got to kill GOD as the last boss? Yeah, GoW3 makes that step one.

    If you play this game, you will slay bosses taller than the twin towers and twice as explosive. Your one-man Greek Jihad against Heaven is faster, stronger, bloodier and angrier than anything you've played before. When I started the game yesterday my controller punched me in the face when I turned it on, just to let me know what I was in for. To compare this title against the two (four) others in the series, let me put it like this: in GoW 1 and 2, you die, and then escape narrowly from Hades via annoying jumping puzzles. In God of War 3, you die, and then escape by

    finding and killing the GOD of HELL

    . My fucking CAT has a beard after seeing that.

    Are you convinced yet? Need I go on? Here's the premise of the story: You're a giant black man that's so pissed off about the death of his family that he's going to kill the rest of his family with his bare hands. Aww, my brother made me kill my wife and daughter. Therefore I should kill my father, all my brothers and sisters, and a couple of cousins to round it all out. Oh, and he casually wipes out a good chunk of humanity in the process. ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?

    4/5 stars, would recommend.

  • How to break in the games industry - an insiders' guide

    I asked the guys at Ensemble Studios what their recommendation was since I worked in the same building with them. They all said for schooling to do the masters program at SMU's Guildhall. Granted a number of them were teachers or founders of that program, but the students who come out of it have mostly gone straight into Junior Positions at every major studio that I know of (except Blizzard). If you don't mind moving to Dallas after getting your bachelors it's a really good option. Expensive, but good.

  • God of War III

    Quote from Mazy

    Agreed. Can't believe they're the first to do that, seems so obvious when you think about it. Now you can actually focus on whats going on, while interacting.

    I remember reading an article way back about how Gearbox was going to incorporate a similar system into Colonial Marines for their QTEs. Wonder who thought of it first.

  • University final year project Level - crit needed.

    Overall the lighting is still too uniform. You want more shadows and more contrasting light colors. Here's a quick crappy example I did in Gimp. It's a little overemphasized to illustrate what people are talking about.

    First thing was lowering the global brightness to get some good dark areas. The lamps look like they should be casting blue light, so you can see the two variations shown and how much they should light up the area right around them (really bright around the lights, really dark elsewhere). Looks like you have a window of some type on the right, which is a great spot to use some nice contrasting orange light cast through the grating as illustrated. The idea is to light up the areas you want the player to look, while leaving the other areas shrouded in shadow. I'm sure some of the more graphically inclined here could paint a better picture with some photochoppery, but hopefully this gives you the idea.

    [Blocked Image: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4783596/Manhuntsworld/Manhuntsworld1.jpg]

  • University final year project Level - crit needed.

    Quote from manhuntworld

    Another things guys, if you notice on my first picture, the door is completely black and is not recieving any light. its an interpolating actor because im using matinee to animate it opening, i've made dynamic lights in the room, made sure it accepts dynamic lights but yet it stays completely unlit. any ideas to why this is?? cheers.

    You don't want to make the lights dynamic. That's way too expensive in UE3. All you need to do is enable "lighting environment" on your mover/interp actor and it will light up just fine.

  • Fallout (New Vegas)

    Quote

    ":3gcf7fvk] yeah... cos you all knew what that was! Anyways, there's some things in real life that just doesn't work in a game, and that's a perfect example of one of those things. Because you have to reuse the same prop over and over again. they could at least made a few solar panel variations like broken ones or whatever. Ah fuck it...

    All you had to do was watch Sahara to recognize what it was, HP.

  • University final year project Level - crit needed.

    A few images about what scary lighting looks like to go with what 2dChris said about the lighting. Really bright areas around the stuff you want the player looking at, dark shadow in any areas you want them to ignore (and possibly throw out a few noises from to go for the scare). A good trick to see if you made your lit areas bright enough is to either turn the brightness and contrast of your monitor way down, or jack up the mid-range under the world properties->post processing up to 1.5ish. If the areas with lights still look like they're lit up, then your lights are probably bright enough.

    http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/artic ... 0_640w.jpg

    http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/ima ... 1_640w.jpg

    http://www.definitivejux.net/files/u3/bioshock_06.jpg

    http://vgfive.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/bioshock1.jpg

    http://savepoints.files.wordpress.com/2 ... ay0012.jpg

    http://2.gvt0.com/vi/E2fPFb6P8oY/0.jpg

    http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/9021 ... ay0ht9.jpg

  • [GoW] Embry Station - Beta now available

    Playthrough video showcasing the level. I'm guessing not many people here have the game for PC.

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  • Downloadable Content for Console/PC RPGs...

    - After being exposed to DLC in Dragon Age and Fallout 3, I'm highly skeptical that I will ever purchase any DLC again outside of Rock Band. Standalone DLC content releases have an abysmal game time:money paid ratio for my liking. I was 100% cool paying $60 for Fallout 3 and Dragon Age. Each game got at least 80-100 hours of entertainment for the money spent, making it a solid investment. I bought each of the first three FO3 DLC releases as soon as they came out (Operation Anchorage, The Pitt, and Broken Steel) simply because I was craving more. Same with the Soldier's Peak release on Dragon Age. Then 4-6 hours later I was done, and really felt cheated out of the $10-12 spent (or in the case of Soldier's Peak, 45 minutes). If the Shale DLC content hadn't been included with the game, I would have been outraged at paying for it upon completion.

    Bundle all the DLC together, and knock about 25% off the price, and that seems worthwhile. I feel 10 hours of gameplay per $10 spent is a fair ratio. Any less than that is a rip off. I'd rather wait for the GOTY edition as a prior poster mentioned versus ever going the route of DLC again.

    - Probably not anymore, unless it was a full blown expansion pack with a significant amount of play time provided.

    - Again, depends on the quality and length of the content.

    - I would pick up an expansion pack regardless of how long it was after release as long as the quality and length of the content was worthwhile. Thankfully, I know to review online reviews before dropping any more money on DLC.