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| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23593 |  RedRay (462) May 21, 2011 - 12:53 am
| You can definitely throw a lot of gameplay hours at this t*tle. The overall map is huge and well worth exploring to get a good selection of henchmen, as they have different skill specialties. Another aspect of this game which can contribute to greater game length is that MBFS, at the highest settings, has a much higher difficulty level than you'll find in most RPG, or action games, or even strategy games. You WILL get one-shotted a lot early in the game and when you go down, your group's morale crumbles.
The mission/quests don't show a lot of variety, but overall there's a lot of value here given the price. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23465 | RedRay (462) Apr 17, 2011 - 03:02 am » Edited on Apr 17, 2011 - 03:22 am
| Agree with the general tone of the review. You left out however the removal of Crysis' open save game option and its replacement with an annoying console checkpoint system. Also didn't like their weapon modeling which made all the assault rifles on burst mode wildly inaccurate at anything above around 30 yards. In r/l with remedial training you can fire a full auto weapon far more accurately at three times the range.
Oh well, hopefully BF3 still ships this year... Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23460 | RedRay (462) Apr 15, 2011 - 08:48 am
| | I don't think either Sony or MSFT want to rush the intro of their next gen consoles because of cost issues. Depending on WiiHD's capabilities and price tag, they may still not need to bring out new hardware. Or they might. Time will tell. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23399 | RedRay (462) Mar 25, 2011 - 12:18 am
| I'll be over 130 hours to finish the game (all quests). I'm at 120 already. Selecting Nightmare on my first playthrough means lots of dying and reloading.
Overall I agree with the tone of the review. I do believe that at the Nightmare level proper unit positioning is key. You are constantly holding back spells and resources as you are almost finishing a wave because you don't know if another wave will spawn. The game would be a lot easier on a second playthrough. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23399 | RedRay (462) Mar 25, 2011 - 12:14 am
| | I agree with you, I like this better than DA:O. But to be honest, it's probably only because it's a longer game. The increased quant*ty overcomes the decreased quality. The reused environments are a clear concession to the consoles - the dev simply can not assume the existence of plentiful HD space in which to decompress data. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23370 | RedRay (462) Mar 15, 2011 - 02:44 am » Edited on Mar 15, 2011 - 02:51 am
| My 2 cents:
Yes, combat and skill trees are dumbed down. But you'll still be in the full grip of "just one more quest so I can level up and get a skill point" mania.
People who are reporting fast play times have to be playing on Normal or are skipping/avoiding voice dialog. On the higher difficulties, you basically have to take over manual control of your party for nearly every combat - because even when it looks easy, you can't have your toons firing off their specials and subject yourself to the possibility that a couple of lieutenants and a scad of regulars will materialize right next to you with key skills on full cool down timers. On a second play through, Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23366 | RedRay (462) Mar 07, 2011 - 03:38 pm
| | Not sure which one of these two is more impressive. But both seem to be far superior to the quality of CGI we see coming from Pixar or Dreamworks in commercial films these days. I'd say that the character models in the DICE/Frostbite/BF3 trailer are still superior to the ones in these two trailers, but it seems like there is superior support for advanced lighting models here. Good times await. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23350 | RedRay (462) Mar 02, 2011 - 01:32 pm
| | Lab (below): China's a big place and although growth is occurring across the country, there are many different income strata. Per capita income in certain provinces is already greater than that in Portugal for instance. Sure these provinces are a small % of total PRC population, but they are still a big absolute number. Toss in HK/Macau/Taiwan/Singapore with those high income provinces and you have a market with higher per capita income than Spain AND a higher population. This is why over 30% of the World of Warcraft subscriber base comes from China. And they are paying much more than US$60 for that game. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23354 | RedRay (462) Mar 02, 2011 - 07:19 am
| | The character models are far superior to any other game out there. Including anything in beta that is scheduled for release this year. The movement of the clothing, particularly when the officer is doing his table pounding almost looks dynamic, although of course it isn't. Frankly the only reason the game doesn't look pre-rendered is the crappy textures used on the cars. Very impressive from a graphical perspective. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23350 | RedRay (462) Mar 01, 2011 - 10:36 pm
| Lab (below): OK, I see what you are saying about the NPD data. But consider this - the DFC data does not include Hong Kong, Taiwan or Singapore in the market size for China, even though from a developer's standpoint it's the same addressable market, i.e. virtually no differentiating localization required for your product to be usable across those regions. For developers of lower tech games (no voice audio), even J*pan is addressable with the same localized product. For those dev's how many times larger is the China localized market than that of the US? If not eight, it's at the same magnitude from a strategic business standpoint.
And even for all the other dev's, if it's not today it's Tomorrow. It's not just that incomes in China are rising at 5x the rate in the US/EU. It's the fact that in the US/EU, increases in software purchases from rising income are split between the PC and consoles. In China (and ROK, Taiwan, etc.) all the rising income/game sales benefits flow entirely to PC gaming.
So my point remains. A lot of Western PC devs were sleeping at the wheel. The world has essentially passed them by and they haven't even realized it. And that bubble bursting? That's the sound of the business strategy of certain devs that complained about PC pirating rather than fixing their products so they generate revenue properly in a modern environment. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23341 | RedRay (462) Mar 01, 2011 - 03:33 pm » Edited on Mar 01, 2011 - 03:34 pm
| | I loved the whole Baldur's Gate/NWN series and even digested DA:Origins. But the DA2 demo frankly was disappointing. Baby step RPG elements, dialog trees that make no difference in the game no matter which tree you pick and a combat style that closely resembles J*panese b*tton mashing action games are a big step down from the strategy of the older t*tles. Seriously, try playing as an archer. All you do is mash the "R" key while watching your cooldown timer on the "Pin" attack. Once it's available you pause and target someone with it and then immediately go back to mashing "R". That's gameplay? Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23350 | RedRay (462) Feb 28, 2011 - 11:32 pm
| I've been saying this stuff for awhile. PC gaming is huge and growing faster than console gaming. Just not in the US/EU. NPD reported US PC game software revenue of $509mm in 2009, which assuming you use NPD's 19% increase figure projects to US PC game software revenue of $606mm in 2010. In other words, China's PC gaming market is already EIGHT times the size of the US' in 2010, and growing at about twice the rate.
If you are a Western PC game dev and you haven't been able to penetrate the Asian PC markets, you've frankly already lost, you just don't know it yet. Those are markets that historically were outright hostile to console gaming and for a PC dev to ignore them was from a business standpoint equivalent to fiddling while Rome was being built. By someone else. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23345 | RedRay (462) Feb 27, 2011 - 10:25 pm » Edited on Feb 27, 2011 - 10:26 pm
| In general, I'm a fan of more realism. I thought regenerating health was a travesty when it first arrived in FPS.... but then I got used to it.
The hypothetical question about having a purely open dialog with NPCs is a good benchmark by which to measure gamers att*tude's towards this issue. In theory it's a great idea. But in practice it would lengthen out a game immensely. Even more practically, I think we'd have to admit that most devs would handle such a setup poorly, with most NPC's having sparse information trees which would cause the gamer to easily miss those NPC's that had critical info - unless the gamer quizzed ALL NPC's rigerously. making the game tedious.
That's why graphical realism is the easy way out. It's only strain is on hardware, not on the gamer. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23322 | RedRay (462) Feb 18, 2011 - 09:57 pm
| | The problem with that kind of system in isolation is that for every player that is winning/growing, one is losing/shrinking. And customers don't like losing. Once in awhile is OK, but if you have 1,000,000 MMO customers and you are NOT injecting some net "feel-good" into the ecosystem, I think it will be hard to maintain your subscriber base. That's the beauty of level based character development. It let's all your customers think they are winning. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23322 | RedRay (462) Feb 17, 2011 - 10:29 am
| | Disclaimer: I liked some of the Halo games. But if it's just an online persistent FPS I don't think it can match the commercial success of the big MMORPGs. You have to have some character development/progression, not just increases in numeric levels in order to hold people's interest enough to get them to cough up money every month. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23316 | RedRay (462) Feb 16, 2011 - 06:11 pm » Edited on Feb 16, 2011 - 06:12 pm
| Reply to Trevor (below):
For a variety of reasons the Game markets in Asia have evolved differently than those in the US/EU. Look at J*pan, which doesn't even make it onto the top piracy countries, they still don't consume much in the way of US/EU developed game software. W.r.t the PRC, yes their software devs have dealt with piracy. And yes I used that verb in the past tense. For a Western dev to claim that piracy is why they haven't been successful in Asia is silly. It's like GM in the 80's claiming that they should be successful with left hand drive cars in J*pan. You have to adapt to local circ*mstances. If you don't you WILL get your *ss kicked. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23316 | RedRay (462) Feb 16, 2011 - 02:23 pm
| They (ESA) may claim that piracy stunts the growth of a gaming market in these countries, but the problem with that argument is that China is the fastest growing gaming market in the world, and its all PC based. By some measures, particularly if you look at the market cap of gaming companies, China is already the #1 gaming market in the world.
What ESA really means is that piracy hurts certain types of game devs. Namely those too stupid to have figured out how to bill their customers properly. The stupid, lazy dev that insists on billing his customers all at once at the start of the consumption process is indeed hurt by piracy. But most devs have figured out how to avoid that. That's why there are a dozen software companies in China with market caps greater than Electronic Arts. And still more in Korea. It's not a coincidence that the most successful Western dev, Blizzard is the only Western dev that has also figured this out. They make a mint in Asia. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23316 | RedRay (462) Feb 16, 2011 - 03:12 am
| LOL. This reminds me of what happened with Charlene Barshefsky in the late 90's. She was the US' top trade negotiator and pounded the table about getting an agreement to curtail Chinese counterfeiting of US luxury goods labels. Landed in Beijing on Thu, signed agreement on Sat, Sun morning was spotted in Panjiayuan Street, a huge alleyway market filled with stores selling knockoffs where she bought a couple of Prada handbags. Flew back on Sun afternoon.
So Italy/Spain/Brazil/China/France had 78mm connections. If you read the source article it states that this figure was more than 5 times the amount from the US. In other words the US would have ranked probably #4. Barshefsky, anyone? Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23303 | RedRay (462) Feb 12, 2011 - 08:54 pm
| I own a 360 and Wii as well as multiple PCs. If a t*tle comes out on multiple platforms that I want, I'll always buy it for the PC. It has better control mechanics, better graphics and better save game options. But from a business standpoint, if you are a Western developer you can't ignore the fact that the revenue stream from consoles is much higher than for PCs. So I don't begrudge them their exclusives.
But nor do I think PC gaming is dying. PC gaming revenue is in fact growing faster than console gaming revenue. Just not in the US/EU. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23293 | RedRay (462) Feb 09, 2011 - 10:19 pm
| | The genre does have problems. All the games play the same. So if you have one or two of them, there's really not a major impetus to get more. Honestly how many people really finished (completed all songs at highest difficulty) even one GH/RB game? Harmonix has its own problems as well - they're going through a major layoff. Moreover the terms of their LBO/sale from Viacom left them with about $200 mm in debt. So they don't exactly have a lot of financial flexibility with which to get new licensing rights. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23282 | RedRay (462) Feb 07, 2011 - 09:35 pm
| | The long run vitality of this industry, as with most industries, is best accomplished by allowing it do as it wishes. Such decentralized decision making may strike you as inefficient. It is. But centralized decision making is worse. So although you (and I at times) may find what we think are egregious mistakes in business strategy, in the long run it will all work out. Incompetent companies get killed off and overall the games we'll be playing 10 years from now will better than the ones we play now. And dissenters can continue to play Deus Ex. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23282 | RedRay (462) Feb 07, 2011 - 02:25 am
| | Jacob, you can't blame this industry for a characteristic that is forced upon it by society's decision to use capitalism rather than communism as its economic system. And for all of capitalism's faults, inability to develop good video games is not one of them! The USSR never would have allowed gazillions of dollars in resources to be spent on video entertainment. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23282 | RedRay (462) Feb 07, 2011 - 12:40 am
| To quote one of my favorite PC games: Art for the sake of art is an empty thing.
Asking a developer to make financial concerns a secondary issue is equivalent to asking that developer to slowly commit suicide. Asking a good developer to make financial concerns a secondary issue is equivalent to requesting a decrease in the quality of games in the long run. The business is just too compet*tive for a dev to behave that way. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23282 | RedRay (462) Feb 06, 2011 - 01:14 am
| I was more or less in agreement with the article until you dropped this: "making money should be a side effect of game development, not the reason for doing it in the first place".
Once you divorced yourself from reality and made that a premise of your argument, the article ran out of steam for me and limped its way over the finish line. Flag this | Edit this post |
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