I nothinged Quake III. It's like there were a bunch of good games that used the engine but the first game itself blew. Same with Doom 3 engine (iD tech 4?) games. Even if I'm one of the 6 people on Earth who liked Prey.

THE GREATEST FPS IN THE HISTORY OF EXISTENCE: Blood

I liked Prey.

Super Mario Bros 2 > *

You all know this to be true.

Strongly disagree

Half-Life 2 had a fantastic introduction. It gives you this amazing orwellian setting that would be amazing for a game to take place in... and I have a feeling that's all anyone really judges the game by, because once the game gives you a gun, it pretty much discards any pretense of having an interesting, involved storyline and just assaults you with repetitive, tedious, disposable action scene after action scene. Any time the plot seems to progress, it's for no reason other than to introduce the next weapon/gimmick. It has a few really good moments, but if you ignore its introduction, the game is middling at best. It's definitely a flawed game. It isn't /bad/, it's just middling.

Also, Super Mario Brothers 3 is way better than Super Mario World.

Say what you will about HL2, I will always think Source is the best engine ever. It spawned Garrys Mod.

One of the things I loved about HL2 is the cryptic storyline. If you played through most of the game thinking the plot doesn't progress or is only doing so for guns, then you've missed a lot.
The main thing about this game is most of the storyline is in clues and things, you can play through the entire game and not see any of it if you don't explore and keep your eyes open.

I also didnt' find the gameplay that repetitive, hell I loved it so much that I finished the game in almost one sitting, and then immediately began playing through it again.
Got sucked right into the atmosphere, the gameplay, the hidden story, loved everything about it. If you don't like it, that's fine, but don't tell me I'm judging it by the intro because that's not true at all.

Simple things...

Entertain complex minds? >_>

I thought the Orwellian bits in HL2 were a bit overdone if anything. It was like they were screaming LOOK IT'S A BIT LIKE 1984 ISN'T THAT FASHIONABLE?!

Not that it detracted from the formula of set pieces and action that we all know and love.

Worst part of half life 2: the neverending air boat level.

After replaying HL2 and its episodes over again, I'm replaying a mod called "Minerva" that uses relatively the same parts and pieces the valve team had to work with. While the Valve products are more polished and the level design is more interesting, dynamic and cinematic, Minerva had interesting level mechanics, good enemy placement and places for a shootout.

On hard, HL2 is just stupid and tedious, but in Minerva there's lots of cover and a chance to run and flank the enemy. I've actually outran some of those flying cutting robots and avoided fighting them, having my own emergent cinematic moment.

I think HL2 is one of my favorite games, but I also think that the size of teams and the scope of projects makes them kind of ****ty. I got really sick of the gravity gun even this time around. It's just not all that fun, and ends up being more work than it's worth. I used "e" more often because I didn't have to switch weapons, and could use it as a shield while shooting. Which leads me to my next gripe:

I think PC games like HL2 need to simplify weapons like consoles do, to two or three, have a grenade slot/key, maybe a temp pickup for launchers, and if the enemy has melee give the player an auto-melee button instead of a crowbar. It's annoying to have three enemy types that require different types of damage, yet they can simultaneously deal out different types of damage, but I've got to manage minimal ammo without knowing how much of what I have until I switch to it mid-battle? Why don't they ever run out of ammo or stamina to punch me with their gun?

I played both games, I like both games. Doom 3 was just a different experience than HL2.

I like games that make it impossible to lose, too.

I love Half-Life 2, but, then, I tend to think Steam craps rainbows, so take that for what it's worth. I bought Portal, Half-Life 2, and its two episodes on Steam and then I got it again for the 360.

Prey was a mediocre shooter that I could have beaten by chewing on the controller. There were boss fights where died on purpose just to recharge my spirit meter.

But, the puzzle parts were awesome. With the gravity. And the portals. Unfortunately, they made the mistake of putting all the really cool stuff in the ****ing demo.

Prey had some of the best content I've ever seen in a video game - art direction, textures, level design, writing, voice acting.... If you can't get over the difficulty you're a spaz.

I haven't played Prey, but I gotta say that games without challenge tend to get boring pretty quickly for me.

I don't know if I agree with you entirely on that, Deadman. Sometimes I like to fly through a game laying waste to everything in my path without ever even being concerned about the possibility of death.

e.g., Red Faction: Guerilla

Regarding the content of Prey, it was okay. To say it had some of the best content...ehhh. As an example, I think Assassin's Creed 1 and 2 were much better-looking (not just straight graphics, but the extent of the content and the detail of the environments), had just as good voice acting, and was a heck of a lot more fun to play.

Yeah.., I play a game to have fun and if it's so difficult that I have to try more than 3-4 times to get through a certain area, it gets annoying and the fun factor goes away.

A game needs to provide challenge to those who want it, and a sense of 'laying waste to everything' to those who don't. This is why Morrowind was a good game and Oblivion was bad.

I don't know, I laid waste in Oblivion pretty easily.

Or are you saying there was no challenge for the people who wanted it?

There was a difficulty slider.

Oblivion scaled all challenges and opponents to your current level, with some fiddling from the difficulty slider. Skilled and unskilled players faced the exact same challenges at the exact same time, with the game never becoming relatively more challenging or more rewarding. Even worse, Oblivion's level scaling system punished players for improving non-combat abilities.

I think difficulty settings are the dumbest thing imaginable in an RPG, but it's even worse when you can control it at-will during the game. It's a question of economics: there's no reward for cranking the difficulty, and there's always a strong temptation to reduce the difficulty any time the game becomes challenging.

Morrowind did not scale with your level. Players who wanted a challenge could explore high-level areas earlier, but unskilled players were never expected to.

Ironically (Because like everyone hates realism in their games), I believe they call that "making it more realistic".

Yeah it's kind of refreshing to know that there aren't any super enemies in Arma II. A shot to the face with any weapon will kill anyone.

Unless they are in a tank.

I think if someone shot you in the face inside a tank you would still be dead. You'd just be dead inside a tank.

Yeah but being dead inside a tank is only one step behind invincible, IMO

Sounds like a fairly large step behind to me.
Unless it's me...

enjoyed both D3 and HL2, but I'de pick HL2 if i was stuck on an island for the rest of my days probably

Shooting someone in the face while they're inside a tank is not outside the realm of possibility in Arma II... you'd just have to be really good at aiming.

I know, I used in response to Tibby/Bob's too-literal conversation

I read D3 as Diablo 3 and was about to debate >_>

With the addition of Operation Arrowhead, the Abrams can both see and shoot through walls. I was playing the demo and watched as an Abrams shredded a bunch of enemies in a town...then upon examining the situation more closely discovered bodies in places that should've been safe...then I remembered "Oh wait, they added thermal imagers! :downs:"

Oh man that's awesome. I was just driving through a town in a hmmwv with a browning M2 on top. My team member just started unleashing in the middle of a field to my left. Turns out there was a enemy rifleman out there... There also happened to be about 15 sheep out there.

There were no survivors.

I hated this. Rats in the first level were just as hard to kill as demons with daedric armor. There was no feeling of progression at all. It got more ridiculous when enemies dropped more powerful items the higher level you were. So forest bandits who once had leather armor now had elven mail or whatever. It didn't make sense at all.

haha, reminds me of a passage in Generation Kill. "Dog, I was ****ing hallucinating. When those camels showed up we thought it was the Hajis coming over the wire. We lit those mother****ers up. Dog, it was raining camel meat," or something like that.