SiN

Unity was going to be the game from Jeff Minter/Llamasoft. Minter says he has two passions in life : shooters and lightsynths. This was going to be the "unity" of the two. Essentially, it was a shoot-em-up, but based in a completely dynamic world. All the textures were procedural, which means that they were computer generated. Not only that, but they were created on-the-fly, and you'd be able to control how the game looked and felt using the controllers. Depending on what you did, the world would change, right then and there. It was so impressive that many people didn't even intend to play the game ... they just wanted a great lightsynth, and Unity was going to be the best. But I feel that the real problem with Unity was that nobody really knew what the gameplay was going to be like. Yak said there would be several different types of shooters in the game or something ... so you'd have your tunnel sequences, side-scrolling sequences and free-form sequences. It would be standard-fare Jeff Minter style fast paced shooting. If you need some sort of comparison, I'd say Unity would be similar to Rez, except alot more dynamic (even the enemies were created procedurally & on-the-fly!) and with alot more variety/replay value. SiN

are we talking about sam&max or unity? unity IMO, was not only creative, it was innovative too. and to top it all off, it was definitly a crowd pleaser. yak apparently took it to some raves, got it on a projector w/ wireless gamepads ... the people over there were amazing and had a blast playin around with it. wish i had seen it in real action before it got canned SiN

not innovation, but certainly creativity. SiN

sometime around last year i bought a geforce fx 5200 for C$ 90 ... excellent value IMO. the card has really got a bad wrap, it performs pretty well. i can imagine there are better cards out now for around the same price, so shop around ... u should be able to find a decent budget card. SiN

yeah, same ... and i have a decent excuse too ... ive got a bandwidth cap here at university. but u cant help but wonder what the hell they could stuff into a 4gig video ... SiN

so to get back on topic ... i was gonna post something about this but it looks like i was beat to it. i stumbled upon the alpha by some fluke of excessive net surfing, and i downloaded it to see what it was like ... am i the only one who thinks its a bit good? i quite liked the alpha in terms of level geometry. if two months in the game looked like that, id say it would have been a pretty awesome game if it was on schedule. any1 share my opinion? SiN

just got mine in the mail ... tossed the game in my drawer (its going to EB after one quick play at it) but the business card is awesome ... totally keeping it in good condition on my wall or something! it reads, "You must be exhausted ... ... you've been running through my mind all night!" SiN

cheers! im prolly gonna get the package, read the witty idle thumbs message u wrote on it, play the game for a day or so, and then trade it in to EB for cash which will be spent of HL2 ... ... so essentially, i won a good portion of HL2 ... woot! SiN

ugh, i didnt even bother reading the gamespot review ... i knew it would be dry & full of spoilers ... the pcgamer-uk review which i read (and ive got the mag ... none of that pdf garbage for me) was absolutely awesome ... was full of emotion & passion. and not a single line about the story of the game. gamespot is only good for news and nothing else. as for the hype around HL2, ive had none of that ... havent even watched the e3 videos yet. i read the previews that emerged @ e3, but not much after that. im getting rather excited about it now, but seeing as i wont be playing it until decemeber, im not getting too excited. SiN

same here, dammit! i SO wanna play hl2 2morrow, but theres this minor problem called "getting good grades in university" that i need to finish off first. ill prolly end up buying the game next weekend, but im debating whether i should wait for the winter holidays to play it or not ... i could play it while still in uni, but would it be as fun if i wasnt playing it consistently? i hardly get time for gaming now, so id be playing it on and off ... SiN

actually, sacrifice is somewhere there in the list, and that was a rather brilliant game that dave perry developed at shiny. i think the idea is pretty good, but very impractical. its a very good idea to critique games, helps when ur developing your own games. SiN

@*****ian: awesome paper! i went thru the whole thing reading quite a bit of it (especially the computer game implementation chapter ... ch4 it was) and skimming thru some (the theory stuff which i think was ch2,3) and was pretty impressed. im a relatively experienced hobbyist game coder myself, so id absolutely love to see the demo in action ... mind passing me the link to it? SiN

i think it MIGHT make it for 2006 ... the only reason i say this is because 3drealms are working on another game now ... usually when a game is close to release the developement studio start working on another title. SiN

lol ... ive been wondering about their funding myself. i understand it with id software, their engines usually premier at $500,000 a pop, and with the 7% royalties, which means they are STILL making money of half-life! they'll be set for quite some time. but 3DR? they have no engine to license, no massive hits (max payne is all that comes to mind) and havent released a game in years. does any1 kno where their bottomless barrel of money comes from? but yeah, i kinda agree with jake on all points. im not a big 3DR fan, but when a developer puts that much love into a project, 9 out of 10 times, it turns out great (diakatana of course, being the 10th game ). and u gotta respect em for not pushing the hype factor ... it would have been VERY easy to pull a halo2 (or something) but they've resisted so far. while i agree with chris that not many will have played duke3d when dnf rolls around, i think it'll sell very well. its not a particularly difficult game to sell ... it has sex & violence, the game pretty much sells itself! but anyway, im looking forward to it, but im not gonna get myself over-excited about it ... when 3DR feel like talking, ill be listening ... until then, i can wait. SiN

anyone who says the duke isnt gonna make his come back in DNF is a fool. its gonna happen, we just dont know when. all i know is that when it happens, its gonna be damn good! SiN

sure, i wouldnt mind a copy ... ... im gonna have to quote one of my faviourite cartoon characters for this chat-up line : "Hey baby, how 'bout me, you, my house, he-ha-huah" --Johhny Bravo [gets slapped] (or something to that extent anyway) failing that, id absolutely love to use one of those ridiculously corny lines that every1 seems to try, but are SO terrible, NO-ONE is gonna fall for ... ill pick ... "Hey baby, is your father a thief, because i think he stole the stars and put 'em in your eyes" [get laughed at AND slapped] err, that should do it, yeah? SiN

i dont really like the psp, but to your average joe, its looking pretty good. its at a shockingly competitive price, and is coming out at a very close date to the DS. the battery life isnt all that bad ... its quite respectable really. mind you, they did say "on average" 4-6hrs, which means the battery will most likely last 3-4 hours ... which is kinda rubbish. i dunno about the whole deal now ... about 10 minutes ago, i thought nintendo had this round won, with the psp being delayed & all. however, seeing as they have a close price & release date, i see this being a very close one to call. the only flaw i see in sony's plan is that the PSP feels a little rushed to me ... it might have its fair share of bugs. either way, im buying myself a ds SiN

Prince of Persia : Warrior Within Mini Preview "Hey Jeff, how's it goin'?" "Not bad ... been to the SLC today?" "Nope, haven't had the time really", as I looked at yet another cryptic calculus question. "You should get there, UbiSoft has some sort of promotion thing, they're showing off all their new games ... Ghost Recon 2, some boxing ga..." "WHAT ABOUT PRINCE OF PERSIA ?!?!" "Uhh, yeah, that too" It was at this point where I had to make a bit of a decision : stay in dull calculus tutorial, or go to the Student Life Center and play Warrior Within. Needless to say, me and Jeff were out of the class in no time. For the curious, this all took place in the University of Waterloo, Canada. UoW is quite famous for having a prestigious Computer Science program, which is why I assume UbiSoft decided to do some promotion here ... more gaming geeks here than in any other university. I'm taking Computer Science and this is my first year, and seeing as the only pre-released games I've ever seen have only been the ones I've programmed this was very exciting to me. So anyway, we both storm off to the SLC, and thankfully the Prince of Persia booth was free. Clutching the XBox controller in my hand, I was all ready to play. After a simple slide down a ladder, I could already see a big difference between Warrior Within and Sands of Time : combat. After landing on the ground the Prince pulled out his sword and the combat began. All the criticism's against SoT have been fixed, the enemies dont teleport from place to place, they don't respawn, and you don't need to "suck" the sand out of them, some sort of magic dust just comes flying towards you. Those three were really my only gripes with SoT, so I'm rather happy they've been fixed. The combat is simply amazing. Just as SoT revolutionized adventure part of "action/adventure", WW looks to revolutionize the action bit of it. I was able to do all the old SoT moves as well as a couple of new ones, such as jumping off (and kicking) one enemy, in order to dive onto and stab another one. The inclusion of a new "Grab" button was also quite handy. I was able to grab a character, (what looked like) snap his back, and toss him away, only to follow it up with a diving slash. There are also pressure pads which activate a bed of spikes, so another cool move was to grab an enemy, throw him onto a bed of spikes, activate the spikes by standing on the pressure pad and watch him die. Basically, UbiSoft Montreal have done with combat exactly what they did with "adventuring" in SoT ... they've made it fast, fluid and alot of fun. The graphics were also quite good. I'm a PC gamer, so the graphics looked a bit fuzzy to me, but I assume that was a television issue, not a game issue. Overall, the game has a MUCH darker/moody feel than the original, and it seems to work pretty well. The prince himself looks great, and was a good blend between "dark" and "arab" to me (I'm Middle Eastern, so I know these things). I should note that there is far more blood in this one than SoT, all just emphizizing the dark feeling of the game. The high point was definitly the boss at the end of the level. He (it?) was a massive monster who stormed in looking angry and all that jazz. He was about three times the size of the prince, intimidating to say the least. I didn't beat him, but I got the basic gist of it : hit him at his weak spot, he'll crouch in pain, hit A to climb onto his back, and repeatly stab X to smack him on the head with your sword. Eventually, he'll get pissed, pick you up, and toss you away, and you do the whole thing all over again. The game left a very lasting impression with me. Jeff would be able to tell you that my comments were all similar to "WOAH, AWESOME!", "SHIT! Did you see that?!" and (when being slaughtered by the boss) "Shit, shit, FUCK, REWIND the damn game!". The only thing that isn't right is that you might have noticed that I haven't talked about the adventure portion at all. This is mainly because there wasn't much added to the adventure parts of the game, and there arn't that many adventure parts to the level I played. UbiSoft Montreal weren't kidding when they said that the focus on this game would be combat, because if all the levels are similar to the one I played, there wont be much adventuring at all. But in my opinion, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. The combat is solid and alot of fun. The fact that it's so fluid and dynamic makes it seem like action and adventure in one. When I walked away from the XBox I felt more psyched than ever to get this game when it comes out. December can't get here soon enough, although I'm not sure what WW is going to do to my GPA. SiN

a bit of both. first, im not too impressed with the features added to SA. changing clothes wasnt a very big deal for me in VC, so changing my hair doesnt really do it for me either. like its been mentioned before, a more interactive/realistic game would be alot better. so either i wanted them to make a far more innovative version of gta, or just given it a break for a year, to work on something else & then come back to it with a fresh look on it & all. instead, they seem to want to milk all the cash out of it they can. because it takes away from the "pick-up-and-play" formula that gta has done very well. having the need to eat & excersize is gonna be a pain in the ass. my friend still plays VC, but all he does is ride the bikes around ... u kno, for fun. with all this maintanence requires, i dont think he'll like SA as much. always bothered me ... its like nobody bothered to take notice until it went all 3d. i wish they'd do something about that ... i mean, if they can optimize the crap out of the system to make the worlds bigger, surely they can do the same to give the world a better "memory" of itself. this was one of the main things that bothered me about the 2d->3d transition. SiN

my worries are similar to Walters ... Heres the thing ... i absolutely love the gta series ... i have every gta game on the pc (gta1,london,gta2,gta3,gta:vc) and i fully intend to get san andreas. but im not all that excited about it. Theres nothing more to do. IMO, rockstar have more-or-less run out of ideas and are forcing the series forward for the money. The fact that ur player can become hungry, fat, thin, etc doesnt really seem like a great feature to me. it seems like the gta concept has nowhere else to go, so they tossed in a few features, and made the game "bigger & better" than before. infact, im kinda worried about the scale. i dont actually want the place to be too big, it'd be a bitch to memorize & navigate. what im hoping will happen is the great minds at rockstar will take a break from the gta series after SA ... work on something new and equally as revolutionary. i really doubt thats gonna happen, but i can always hope ... SiN

im definitly getting HL2 the day it comes out. im gonna do all my university assignments due the week of the 16 a week in advance, so that i pretty much have the whole week for HL2. ill prolly also get a DS in december (when i get paid for some computer work i did) with a game (or two). im not sure if i'll pick anything else up ... i prolly will, but im just not quite sure what SiN

pcgamer-us is absolutely crap. it sucks so much that i actually have a pcgamer-uk subscription which costs alot more, but is well worth it. havent really taken much interest in other mags, so im not quite sure about the rest. SiN

yep, a great looking line-up ... i tell u, the world absolutely hates me. this is probably the greatest quarter in the history of gaming, and i have to start university at the same time! i hardly get time to play the few new games i do have (doom3 & evil genius) i dont know what im going to do with the next wave of games! although i dont think unity will be making it in time for christmas ... yak hasnt spoken about it for quite a while, and lionhead havent been hyping it up as much as they should have ... i say it'll be coming out early to mid 2005 SiN

heh, go figure, u get all excited about a game to find that everyone else hates it i havent tried the demo (and im not gonna either ... dont wanna spoil it for me) but i dont see why every1 thinks its this terrible ... maybe we're playing different games the way i see it, it plays exactly like SoT does, except with a bigger focus on combat. now PoP team said that they'd be focusing more on combat with this one ... if u expected anything else, u really shouldnt have d/l'ed the demo. but did no one else get the fluidity of the combat? because that was what impressed me the most. perhaps (as some have mentioned) the screwed up PC controls may have something to do with it. SiN

yep, i realized that one with the SoT splash screen ... thought it was quite awesome! the best part is that when the guys at UbiSoft had created the prototype for SoT, they had to get into contact with JM, show him the demo, ask for his permission, and only then could they proceed! its great when the developer still retains the power. SiN