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Sucutrule
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http://bestof.ign.com/2007/xbox360/20.htmlReally, was the fanboy service nessesary? Saving, replaying and watching replays is not new. A multiplayer map editor is not new. I know it's for the Xbox 360, but really those features aren't innovative. Farcry had a map editor and it was for the original Xbox. And saving replays is the oldest gimmick in the game industry. Really, IGN now has that horrible taste of fanboy website.
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Phoenix
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And this is why I don't read IGN. It looks like they're kissing ass to Microsoft over Halo 3, but then Microsoft made the Xbox360 so... naturally you can't rate Microsoft's big budget sequel as anything but the greatest thing since sliced bread, right? I wonder where their advertising dollars come from on IGN. Hmm... Here's a rant for you to back up what you're saying.
Every other review I've read about Halo3 is that it's a great game, but it's not necessarily innovative. It's pretty standard FPS. I've not played any of the Halo games, and I'm not out to knock them, but let me tear apart IGN's statements a little bit.significant leaps forward in so many areas Care to be more specific?Saving, watching and sharing replays of entire levels are just the beginning Funny, I remember doing this in DOOM...There's also a multiplayer level editor and a meta-game that turns the co-operative mode into an intriguing competitive match Hmm... level editors have been around since Wolfedit. Coop being competitive? I think Quake 2 kept track of score in coop.Once again, Bungie has left the competition scrambling to catch up. That's a fanboy statement there. When was the first time Bungie left someone scrambling to catch up? Hmm let's see... Id? Nope. Valve? Nope. Oh wait, we weren't including them were we?
If you want innovative, I can name a few things. Portal is innovative. Half-Life 2's HDR system is innovative. I've heard a lot of Bioshock's gameplay elements are innovative.Best character being Master Chief, eh? Why am I not surprised.
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scalliano
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Yup, that's me
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Because he looks like the Doomguy [/sarcasm]. Having played 1 and 2 at length and a reasonable bit into 3, none have impressed me in any way, shape or form. Bioshock has a lot of innovative elements (not least of all the game's overall theme), Portal was a joy to play (even though I finished it in one sitting) but Halo is just another example of budget over content. And I'm not just saying that because I'm a self-confessed Sony fanboy. The 360 has some ace games, it's just that for my money H3 isn't one of them. I hate hype. |
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PSN ID: scalliano
The Arena knows no gender, colour or creed, only skill.
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Angst
Rabid Doomer
Team Member
Elite
 
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Articles like this make me feel old.. None of this is revolutionary unless you started gaming with the release of the original xbox. I've largely stopped hoping for games that can make me feel like I wasn't just robbed of $50 and 4-8 hours of my life. Almost any time I see a title that receives some level of acclaim, it's hailed as groundbreaking, revolutionary, etc. And to be honest, very few of them are anything beyond derivative or hinge on a single gimmick. Example:
HL2 was beautiful, incredibly detailed, and at the same time, the most boring goddamn game I've played in years. And it's all in how they handled it. HL2 was almost entirely eyecandy. It looks good, hell it looks GREAT. But I don't particularly care how detailed the texture, or how realistic the shader effects are on a toilet are, when I'm abusing the hell out of the gravity gun by wielding my ceramic Mjolnir to deflect bullets that would otherwise cleave the skull from my neck, and then bludgeoning the same hapless clone amidst the prettily floating dust in an incredibly detailed Orwellian nightmare city-state, ruined beachfront property, or the inside of an alien-run corporate headquarters. Stale is stale, regardless of the number of different complex geometric shapes I can choose to throw at ragdolls. The 'puzzles' reviewers were so fond of touting amounted to little more than trying to figure out which end of object A to smash into object B, or deciding which brightly colored object you want to drop into the sand so you can safely cross without offending the Gods Formicidae.. And sadly, in the end, the engine itself wasn't BAD per se.. It was just a richly detailed world with little to no story. (I'll excuse Ravenholm, I'm convinced that part of the game was a fluke, I actually enjoyed it.) Leading around a group of pathetically useless, though detailed and individualistic, goons every 20 minutes or so, is not epic. At least Overlord had the sense to make said cognitive rejects AMUSING. I almost wonder if they'd intended it that way.. The ending was certainly a good example of everything I loathed about HL2: All flash and no substance. Point. click. win.
So much for heroes having to be good at anything.
Portal, on the other hand, embraced an increasingly foreign concept: fun. They took a comparatively simple level of media, and made a hell of a ride. But it's short, almost infuriatingly so. There's very little variation in textures or obstacles. But it's all well done, and it all adds to the whole.
And I'm more than willing to forgive it for that. Because in the short time I played through Portal, I had more fun than in the entirety of HL2. It was fairly quick, it was relatively small, and it had a lot of personality. It's amazing what that team did with Valve's stillbirth..
(/rant) A gimmick, by itself, does not a game make. And ignoring everything that has come before just because it wasn't released this year doesn't do anyone any good. Though I'm probably wrong there too, just look at how much Madden makes.. |
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"Who says a chainsaw isn't a ranged weapon?"
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Kain-Xavier
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I know it's for the Xbox 360, but really those features aren't innovative. Farcry had a map editor and it was for the original Xbox. And saving replays is the oldest gimmick in the game industry.
While I agree with you that Halo 3's Forge mode is not innovative, it's still uncommon in the console space. Far Cry: Instincts, Crackdown, and Halo 3 are the only titles I can think of off-hand that have this kind of real-time, multi-player feature. As for recording gameplay demos, can you think of any other console-based FPS that has this feature? Furthermore, can you think of any console game that allowed you to send/receive these demos online? Halo 3 is innovative in this regard because I can't think of a single title in the past that has done this. Halo 3 is also a leader when it comes to online match-making. Really, the only console-based FPS's I can think of that beat Halo 3 in terms of server customization are TimeSplitters 3, Unreal Championship 2, and Unreal Tournament 3. I'm not agreeing with IGN's choice for most innovative design; in fact I dislike the Halo series. I'm just saying that recognizing a popular game doesn't make you a "fanboy." It wouldn't be popular if it wasn't doing something right. One last thing...  Why is everyone using spoiler tags? |
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Sucutrule
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Yeah, maybe on Consoles that's something new, but it's really a very poor excuse for being innovative. It's like saying a napkin is the most innovative napkin to date because it green or something. And every one seems to copy me on this spoiler thing. |
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scalliano
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Yup, that's me
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Angst: With regards Madden, FIFA, NHL, etc. there is always going to be a demand for updated stats/new kits/players/etc that sports game fans are always going to fork out for this year's update whether or not the game itself has been improved (I'm a Pro Evo fan so I don't count  ). Licensing has a lot to do with this, taking soccer as an example. FIFA has all the real team and player names and kits, whereas Pro Evo doesn't, so it is outsold by FIFA every year despite even by reviewers' standards being the better game. The thing about the PC is that it's kind of like an expensive Merc. All the interesting bells, whistles and gadgets you find on a big Merc will end up on every other car ten years later. This comes down even to the fundamental things on consoles these days such as HD. The PC has been HD for more than ten years, it just wasn't called HD. And besides, the best character was the Andy Serkis bloke from Heavenly Sword. |
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PSN ID: scalliano
The Arena knows no gender, colour or creed, only skill.
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Phoenix
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Where the PC has always won over consoles is flexibility. Sure you can play games on it, but you can also do such things as modding said games, writing, reading the news, communicating with others, buying and selling things online, hacking, viewing naughty material... the list goes on and on. With the console, you could play games and just play games. That's fine if that's all you want to do. I think what's happened, and I think Microsoft and the Xbox probably gets some of the blame for this, is that consoles and PC's are converging a bit in terms of hardware and somewhat in terms of capabilities. I think that's why you're seeing Carmack talking about multi-platform development so much when it was always PC first with Id. I can understand this too. If you're selling a game and you want it to be available on more than one market, you want it to look and play the same on everything so that everyone has the same experience. It's also games that have driven the computer hardware market. Nobody needed a 3dFX Voodoo card to run Excell. They bought them to play Quake 2. I don't think the console will ever replace the PC as a multi-function tool, nor do I think PC's will replace consoles as dedicated gaming systems for people who just want to play games, but I think you'll see more and more of consoles that can do some things that used to be exclusive to the PC as the result of this convergence.
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Rubilacxe
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I'm pleased to see such distaste towards the Halo series. The games never caught on with me and I'm annoyed by the constant praise the games keep getting. They claim to be so innovative, yet to me, all I see are blatant rip-offs of nearly every FPS that came before it.
Halo is only innovative and revolutionary in a console speaking sense (as some of you have touched on). Its brought things already widely available on PC to the XBOX and the general console market (online deathmatch, now apparently map editing and demo recording). Whoop-de-doo, good for you. Those who aren't computer savy will be blown away, and the rest of us will be frowning.
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Kajet
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Um... I'm not sure but can other games let you pause and move your view around during a replay? That might be what they're talking about when they say "innovative"...
If not it blows that it had to be halo to introduce such a thing...
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Sucutrule
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Yeah, I know that map makers are "new" to consoles, those are just gimmicks to excuse a mediocre game. I actually espected something innovative like , say, GAMEPLAY. OR DESIGN. OR SOMETHING ACTUALLY IMPORTANT.
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scalliano
Elite
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Yup, that's me
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Um... I'm not sure but can other games let you pause and move your view around during a replay?
Driver. PS1. Circa 1999. .gif) |
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PSN ID: scalliano
The Arena knows no gender, colour or creed, only skill.
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Kajet
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Ah, good... I dislike halo too much to want to admit it has something new
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ReBoOt
Mean ol Swede
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I see alot Halo sucks here but tbh i do believe Halo 1 was actually good. at that time it brought Co-op play which almost doesnt exsist on PC anymore since PC is more to either SP or deatmatch type of games and MMORPGS. With my IRL mate we had some rly good times with Halo. In my opinion it doesnt matter if the game is to XBox 360,PS3, wii or PC i prefer to let the game talk for itself not taking side on what hardware it runs on. However i do believe the "magic" that existed into Halo 1 was lost in the follow up and i have no idea how Halo 3 runs. Also ppls who doesnt believe shoot em up works on a console should try metriod prime 3 to wii  Tho i have to agree the mouse is a far better tool compared to the analogic sticks on the normal consoles like xbox/ps3 . |
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scalliano
Elite
Posts: 1095
Yup, that's me
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It's not that I don't believe that FPS games work on console (try Black - highly recommended), it's just that consoles these days have USB mouse/keyboard support and yet practically no one is making use of them. The only exceptions I can think of are the PS2 ports of HL1 and UT (can't speak for the PS3 version of UT3 yet) and for me the developers are seriously missing a trick.
Oh yes, and the Dreamcast version of Q3.
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PSN ID: scalliano
The Arena knows no gender, colour or creed, only skill.
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fourier
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Coop is one of my favorite methods of play, but barely any games have it. D3 didn't really run at playable rates on my old computer. I've tried more than once to play through the single player on my current PC, but always end up encountering issues with stuttering and freezes. I've gone through all the tweak guides with no luck. Q4 did a very similar thing to the freezes I experienced in D3, but I was able to recover it without having to kill it.
Anyway, Q2 coop is one of my favorites. "I beat the hell out of you all by myself'; this time I have friends, muahahaha".
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Phoenix
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Q2 coop is fun, so long as you don't get a Rambo in the squad. I like having intuitive players who don't mind sharing a little ammo and actually pay attention to where everyone else is and stick together as a unit. That's when it's fun because the Strogg don't stand a chance. No fun when you get one idiot who wants to just charge and kill everything as quick as he can and not, well, cooperate with anyone else.
Now regarding Doom 3, I don't know what your hardware specs are, but I haven't experienced stuttering. For reference, my specs are:
Opteron 175 Dualcore 2.2 GHz (overclocked to 2.6 GHz)
2x BFG GeForce 7600GT OC in SLI, 256 MB per card
1 GB PC3200 DDR
Windows XP Professional SP2
Latest video drivers
I can run Doom 3 at 1280x1024 with image_anisotropy 8, no multisamples, all the effects turned on, High quality, and maintain 60 FPS with vsync enabled except in a few spots with this configuration. If your hardware's at least this good you should be able to play without any stuttering.
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fourier
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Well, like I said, I can play q4 without a problem except the same freezes. Basically what happens is the further I get into the game (regardless of whether it's a fresh boot -- which I usually have to do after playing the game for too long) the more often it freezes. When it freezes, the screen goes black and doesn't come back. I have to end the process. In Q4 it does this as well, but it only lasts for maybe 30 seconds then I hear the sound come back. So, while the screen is out, I bring down the console and carefully type in vid_restart which restores the video. I could just ALT+Enter but then I have to wait twice as long to go back into full screen. It's an irritating problem, and I don't know that there is a fix for it. I tried straight off the DVD which ever version that was, and then I tried the latest patch some time later to give it another shot. The patch definitely smoothed out some problems, but the major one still remained. The further into it I got the more often they were happening, and having to end the process (creating that wonderful computer lag) every few minutes kills any interest in wanting to play.
Q4 was definitely a big leap forward in my eyes, since the game was entirely playable with the occasional freezing (but recoverable).
I have an opteron 165 (I've tried stock and my normal overclock -- same result).
x800pro
1gb ram
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