Thrik

I didn't say it looked ugly, I said it isn't impressive. As in, I don't go "Dude." when I look at it anymore. To be honest, the old movie that was posted in like E3 2003 made it look a lot better than it really was, due to the slightly blurred low quality nature of the video. Seeing it as a full-screen bink executable (sounds like we're on about the same video) as if I were playing it myself allowed me to see that it isn't really as super detailed and incredibly radical as it initially looked. But with that said, people have done some incredible stuff on the Half-Life 1 engine, so I'd imagine that the HL2 engine will to be stretched to its absolute limits with some stunning maps. It's mainly those open city maps in HL2 that bother me, the buildings look flat and fake to a degree that it really irritates me. Hopefully they've got some rock-solid architecture that hasn't displayed in the trailers. It's not like I don;t want this game to look and be awesome.

Downloading the Fable one, shall comment later. ;-* Is the HL2 one the video that was released on Fileplanet within the past week? I got that one, it's such a shame that it didn't come out a year ago. After playing Doom 3 and all that, it totally doesn't look that hot anymore. Although I am looking forward to getting my Grim Fandango map onto the engine so it can be all pretty.

Hehe, yar. BGAE has some of the finest music around, very nice to see others appreciating it too. I totally agree that pretty much the only game to surpass it is Grim Fandango's soundtrack. You can also get the same music above as the OST from suprnova as a torrent, of which I won't give the url since there's lots of software on there too. ¬

Despite the poor sales, the close community around Beyond Good and Evil is getting rather excited about various websites recently announcing not one, but two sequels in the works. http://www.nintendojo.com/infocus/view_item.php?1091126082 http://www.cube-europe.com/news.php?nid=6795 I will remain speculative at the moment, since the lack of concrete news on any major websites is currently very concerning. If this turns out to be true though, then I shall become more happy than anyone ever.

Yarr, I refused to get excited because I knew the chances of it being bollocks here high. Pity I was right, though. :-/

http://money.cnn.com/2004/06/21/technology/vugames/index.htm "The closing of the Bellevue offices mark the end of an era in the gaming world. In the early 90s, those offices were the home to one of the industry's pioneering publishers. Going under the name Sierra, developers in Bellevue created and sold top-selling franchises, such as "Kings Quest" and "Leisure Suit Larry". In 1996, the company was sold to CUC International, the first of a string of owners. Despite the closing, VU Games still plans to use the Sierra name, much like Infogrames Entertainment changed its name to Atari (ATAR: Research, Estimates) in 2003 to capitalize on its name recognition value."

To jump back on topic for a second, it depends on the game I suppose. Enemy respawning isn't always the worst thing ever - Metal Gear Solid for example would become very boring if the enemies you killed stayed gone forever, due to the very nature of the game. But in an FPS is pretty sucky, as nobody wants to kill the same guy in the same place in the same way - a plethora of bullets in the face. At least in, say, MGS you get to do it in a fairly different way each time. And I should have played NOLF.

GTA is a really bad example though, since the music is just a random bunch of songs and its music isn't really linked to any specific event, mood or time in the game at all. It has little relation to the actual gameplay other than plugging up the silence. I think toblix was referring to games with a more specific soundtrack - such as, say, Beyond Good and Evil. I cannot really imagine the dramatic moments when you discover something dodgy and such being quite so dramatic if you've got (as he exampled) Metallica blasting all the way through it. Quite why anybody would want to do that is beyond me. But yeah, that's probably why a lot of single player games don't have an mp3 player - they want the music they created specifically for that part of the game to play to keep with the mood they intended to set. I'm all for an mp3 player in games which don't really use the soundtrack in specific situations though - primarily, multiplayer games.

I totally agree. Skippable cutscenes are a total crime, but thankfully most games include this feature. Pausable cutscenes, however, haven't really caught on at all - which is a real pain. It's particularly irritating in Metal Gear Solid. Whilst the cutscenes are beautiful and interesting to watch, they can drag on for freakin' ages. We're talking ten minutes here - not ideal if your favourite tv show is about to start. I have to choose between watching the entire cutscene (which I really do want to do, and missing it in MGS results in major plot confusion) or skipping it and having to revert to a (usually, much earlier) saved game. Agh.

I have to agree - watch it in motion before commenting. When I first saw screenshots of Wind Waker, I was not impressed by its graphics at all. It looked like very cheap 3D. However, when it is in motion and all of the blurring effects, particle effects, brilliant lighting, and everything else all come together, it really is a whole different experience. It really does feel like you're playing a cartoon, contrary to what the screenshots show. It's the little touches that really make it. For example, when you roll around, bits of the surface will all flick up in a really awesome cartoony fashion. When you're in water, cartoony ripples and such will flow behind you. When the cartoony smoke effects and such flow in, you cannot help but be impressed. So, yeah. Don't judge a cell-shaded game on its screenshots alone - you must play them and see them in motion.

It is pretty irritating at times, although I do like it when there's a couple of different endings like in Metal Gear Solid. The fact that you get a different special item to play with the next time around (such as a stealth suit, or tuxedo if you do both endings) gives some incentive other than a different cutscene to actually do it. 715 endings though? Jeeeeeeesus christ that is excessive.

Just as a side note, you can listen to a lot of Dune music here, as well as plenty of the C&C soundtrack.

I'd say the obvious, Half-Life, but since a HL2 engine rerelease of that is on the way I wouldn't bother. Grim Fandango is double-recommended by me, as well as the Monkey Island series - obviously. The Broken Sword series is great too.

www.gamespot.com/news/2004/06/04/news_6100019.html

Yes. To make it truly worth subscribing to, they would need to offer more things which cannot be found elsewhere. At the moment, practically anything they have can be found on one of their competing "global gaming" websites, or the specific fan-sites of the games in question. It just takes a little searching. If they were to get exclusive footage of lots of new interesting games then I probably would consider subscribing. For example, at E3 there was an MGS3 trailer which hasn't been released in a high-res form by Konami and every gaming site only seems to have terrible low-res shakycam versions of it. If Gamespot to were to pull some strings or something to get a high-res version of things like that then I'd be inclined to subscribe. But as it is, Gamespot's MGS3 trailer is the worst quality of all those I've seen.

I'm very pleased that engines are pushing themselves ahead like this. Before long, the graphics race will be over and developers will be forced to focus more on gameplay and non-realistic stuff in order to impress us. I can't wait until that happens. ;

It's quite good. Valve didn't make it though, they just bought it off the two guys that made it in their spare time at the last minute.

Heh, it's no surprise the website died considering that the link was being posted practically everywhere ever. Luckily though, I foresaw such a problem and mirrored it. As for the series, I'd assume that GTA4 would be the next step for the next generation of consoles. I severely doubt that they'll continue with the current generation for any longer after this. They'd have to aim big to top this though - perhaps an entire country? A country based on the UK would provide a very interesting game.

This game looks great. Visually, it's nothing huge - but I suppose an xbox/pc port (which will probably exist at some point) will provide prettier graphics, like they did with GTA3 and Vice City. With regards to gameplay though, it looks brilliant - much larger than the previous games, and there's many smaller things which impact the general play - such as having to eat to stay fit, yet if you overeat you become fat and slow, complete with people on the street calling you a fat bastard. Brilliance. Also.. "San Andreas is not a city - it's a state." declares Houser. "Probably the most interesting thing you (need to) think about for a second is that we're not setting the game in a version of Los Angeles or San Fransisco or Las Vegas, but in all three - and with the countryside in between." Article

Visually, Half-Life 2 totally fails to excite me now. Its graphics are already dated, when put alongside recent releases such as Painkiller and Far Cry. And when I look at the technical demo of the third incarnation of ye olde Unreal Engine, I could almost cry for Valve. Of course, gameplay always counts for more than graphics. The E3 2004 interview seemed to show that they are very keen to deliver an awesome playing experience with regards to fun and atmosphere. It just won't look as pretty as other games that're doing the rounds. As for Half-Life 1's graphics, yes it's ugly - when looking back. At the time, it was perfectly suited to the general level of graphics in games. And let's not forget that modifications like Natural Selection really pushed the engine and delivered some very pretty graphics indeed.