toblix

Hitorc.

One of the coolest aspects of the Hitman games to me, which it shares with for example Half-Life, is that so much of the gameplay takes place in realistic locations rather than fantastical, improbable realms. It has all the other mechanics that also makes it great, of course, but I'm not sure it would be as memorable if you had to sneak in and out of futuristic military bases and not a mental institution or a children's birthday party.

I used to visit Shacknews pretty regularly, but after their redesign it's become annoying and hard to read. Also, there's Kotaku, but they seem more about everything related to games or pervy Japanese figurines. What sites/feeds do you regularly visit/follow to keep up with news about video games?

Damn you, now I'll have to buy it too. Also, this.

It was really cool, but there were never intricate puzzles on those screens, only OPEN THE AIRLOCK buttons (if I recall correctly.) A seamless transition is always preferable though, I agree, and I think maybe one of the Splinter Cell games did that, sort of focusing in on the hacking interface. I may be completely off.

I played the first game for a bit, but then it all opened up and I panicked over what to do and where to go and everything seemed so dark and hard core and depressing. I'll probably not play this game either, but from what I hear it's going to be super fun.

Witcher 2 looks like it'll be an amazing PC RPG, and I'm sure it's super great, but I wish game developers would just shut up about living communities and everyone living their daily life. This stuff hasn't changed since Lure of the Temptress, and it's almost like developers are so close to their own work they become blind to how transparent these systems always end up. I'm not saying they shouldn't do it, but watching that trailer made me doubt the quality of the rest of the game. I mean, if they're expecting me to be genuinely impressed by scripted barks and AI behavior, and intrigued that they made an NPC talk about shoes while also having shoes in their house, what standards are they really operating with for other parts of the game? I'm not trying to be all negative, and this isn't something unique to The Witcher 2; every RPG does it, it seems. I just get concerned when I watch videos like that. Also, I really dig the non-DRM deal they're doing with GOG, and I'm sure it'll be an amazing fun game.

Hopefully we'll get to a point where a free and open source cross-browser JS library can compete with the flash player, but even if someone made one (and knowing open source I'm guessing there are hundreds of isolated little projects attempting this as we speak, and even Adobe is working on it) you'll never be able to compete on the author side. It's like Photoshop or World of Warcraft – the best you can hope for is to make a dent or scratch in their market share.

I'm not sure that's actually happening, though. It's more like the world is starting to use other technologies where they're more suited. Flash is still pretty great at fast, smooth vector graphics, animation and interactivity. edit: Ah, here it is. Dragon Age 2, Crysis 2, Civilization, Fable, etc. Seems pretty popular.

This might've been going on for a while, but I've noticed a lot of games have started using Flash for their game UI. A lot of the snappy flashiness of the Assassin's Creed 2 games and their minigames, for example, is due to this. I'm guessing using this middleware allows them to design the hacking minigame in pure Flash, which is very suited for that kind of responsive 2D stuff.

"Valve has moved beyond the episodic model – "games as a platform" is a distillation of that." What worries me about this is that the TF2 model of constantly updating, changing and adding stuff seems much more suited to multiplayer games than it does single player. How can you deliver a single player experience like Half-Life or Portal, or anything like that, if you have to deliver new contents every other week, or every month?

If they decided on using USB sticks, price wouldn't at all be an issue. They would never ever decide to do that, though, because of many reasons, good and bad. I think the best we can hope for is that the next generation of consoles will allow for more digital distribution than today, and then maybe the generation after that will be all or mostly digital distribution. How cool would it be to have an optical drive be an accessory, like those external floppy disks you can buy for laptops.

It would be almost too typical if this wasn't possible.

Is there a version without the interrupting quips? I do enjoy watching religious fanatics.

I would trade the 3D for the next Phoenix Wright game in a heartbeat. Fucking Capcom assholes.

The UI and presentation does look sleek, but the game itself looks tres ordinaire. Peope are on about parkour, but all I've seen is some sliding on the floor… I'll wait and see what you all think, but if Thumbs matches end up beeing arranged, I'm buying it.

Release is coming up, and Rockstar is releasing some short stories that I'm sure ties pretty directly into whatever cases you'll be facing in the game. With all the GTA games (and RDR) having been better on the 360 than the PS3 I had already settled on getting it for the 360, but now that I've started reading about it, it's starting to seem like the PS3 version may be the way to go this time. First of all, it started off as a PS3 exclusive. Second of all, I hear they've only been showing PS3 shots so far, which might indicate it's their primary platform (or that Sony is paying them) and then there's the last thing with the 360 getting a 3-disc disc-swapping version, while the game fits neatly onto a Bluray. What do you guys think? I'd really like to make decision so I can preorder, but it looks like I'll have to wait for Digital Foundry to do their CSI thing first.

Just as a heads up, I've had only terrible experiences with OCZ SSDs. They seem to just stop working for no reason. If possible, I'd look into getting another brand, like Intel. As I said, this is based only on personal experience.

Nice, but you should really post it in Comic Sans, to give it that roleplayey feel. You know, like an old roleplaying scroll?

As I said before, if you need a guy to cover some hole in the ideal party setup, I'll roll another dude. I have no attachment to my guy whatsoever, so the pain will be minimal.

Ooh, low friction!

You just sold me on some fucking HL2 brah! Yeahh gonna load that shit up! AFTER I'm done with the fantastic Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom.

What happens then? Does the ratio go up or down? I'm guessing up?

Sounds like a lot of games to me. I've been assuming it did terribly, maybe just because it has such indie cred I somehow thought it would have to be disregarded by the mass market or something I don't know. If it did well, that's cool, and maybe FC3 will be even more awesome!* * I haven't actually played FC2, but it sounds like a huge chore.

This thread just reminded me of something. I've replayed HL2 (and the episodes) three or four times, and for the last years I've been thinking that since I still remember every little thing by heart there's no point in playing it again any time soon. But now I'm trying to remember, and I can't even recall what the weapons were! It's probably been close to ten years since I played Half-Life 2 – thanks for reminding me!