Metro 2033 is pretty slick. It's an FPS in the Half Life/Modern Warfare style, where you walk down a predetermined path with lots of scripted sequences and interesting setpieces. Unlike Modern Warfare the single player doesn't feel like a glorified shooting gallery, and every level City 17 times a million in terms of atmosphere and attention to detail. I wouldn't call it a step forward for the genre, but it updates some of the things I like about this sort of game to modern standards. It also happens to be Russian and post-apocalyptic, which is my kryptonite, so you may want to take my praise with a grain of salt.
I've also been trying to play Silent Hunter 4 on %100 realism. Yikes.
Over the years I've started Half Life three or four times, but never got more than a few hours in. This time I set the difficulty to hard, and I guess I'm somewhere near the very end. Because the difficulty level, each new part is like a puzzle, that I try numerous ways to get through without losing a single bit of health. In this way, the weapon I'm using most is the humble pistol, which I find quite amusing.
By the way, being able to play games on my laptop while on a cruise ship is fucking awesome. At this rate I'll make it through HL2 in no time.
In this way, the weapon I'm using most is the humble pistol, which I find quite amusing.
This is a big problem I have with the HL series. They give you umpteen different weapons but the SMG pretty much fills in for anything except specialized/explosive weapons and is then filled in for by the shotgun when you run out of SMG ammo.
The two-weapons-plus-grenades thing Halo 1 made popular adds a lot to weapon variety by actually making you actually vary your weapons. It's a shame playing Halo on anything but easy is boring. Someone should mod it so that the harder modes make the enemies faster as opposed to just damage sponges.
In this way, the weapon I'm using most is the humble pistol, which I find quite amusing.
This is a big problem I have with the HL series. They give you umpteen different weapons but the SMG pretty much fills in for anything except specialized/explosive weapons.
I remember when the gravity gun was hot shit.
I gotta say, that's one area where games like MW2 do quite well - You have the option of a whole hell of a lot of weapons, and even in a given level, you have your starting kit, the various weapons the enemies have and friends have, the stuff you find just lying about, and you get to pick two. It saves the problem of having 15 different weapons, and only using three total, except for special needs. Also, you chew through ammo surprisingly fast(You don't carry around ludicrous amounts of ammo, you generally get a half-magazine and a spare, if you pick up a weapon, and your starting weapons usually have full ammo, which is still only a few hundred rounds, which goes surprisingly quick with the automatic weapons. Sniper rifles, you get less, and shotguns, you get about 70 shots), and you have to make them work in whatever combination you have with you.
That really comes into it's own when playing in teams, ala L4D. Though Valve still makes everyone having machine guns pretty viable.
HL2's difficulty settings are really uneven, going to hard mode makes the normal enemies fun and challenging but things like hunters and ant-lion guardians become crazy spongy.
The moral of the story: Harder should mean harder. Not just take longer.
Also, we are beyond the point of non-regenerating/degenerating low health in games.
That video pretty much summed up what I liked about playing Half Life on hard. I couldn't rely on running past and shotgunning enemies in the face, because if I ever got that close I'd be dead. It made me figure out each area, as I said, like a puzzle, and I explored so many more options than before.
Trust me, it gets really annoying. Also, this may resonate with you:
What's always intruiged me is that a lot of people say things like "Oh, yeah, my screen goes wavy and red for a few seconds and then I'm fine, that's bullshit and not realistic" - but it's no more or less realistic than finding some gee-gaw (usually a white box with a red cross on it) and suddenly having your health back.
Oddly enough, difficulty is something that the Call of duty series handles reasonably well - The enemies don't get tougher, you just get brought down to their level. They can move and aim only a little slower and less accurately than you can(as the average player the highest difficulty), you die as easily as they do, and they get the re-gen health as well - an enemy, if wounded, but not killed, will take cover and wait for a little bit, then pop out and start shooting, seemingly at full health. It's something I think other games could learn from - they before somewhat more exciting, no matter what the health system is, if the player is on a level playing field with the enemy, rather than a towering, invincible juggernaut.
What's always intruiged me is that a lot of people say things like "Oh, yeah, my screen goes wavy and red for a few seconds and then I'm fine, that's bullshit and not realistic" - but it's no more or less realistic than finding some gee-gaw (usually a white box with a red cross on it) and suddenly having your health back.
Wasn't there a game called full Spectrum Warrior, where, if your guy got shot, you had to get him back to a med-evac helicopter, either with one guy carrying him and two covering, or, if you screwed up really badly, you had one guy covering and two carrying a stretcher.
Also, Luke, that style really stops working when static checkpoints are introduced and you auto-save with five health left. It would work better if the game saved dynamically, taking into account nearby enemies and remaining health and ammo. Or just upped you to half health when you died.
What's always intruiged me is that a lot of people say things like "Oh, yeah, my screen goes wavy and red for a few seconds and then I'm fine, that's bullshit and not realistic" - but it's no more or less realistic than finding some gee-gaw (usually a white box with a red cross on it) and suddenly having your health back.
Wasn't there a game called full Spectrum Warrior, where, if your guy got shot, you had to get him back to a med-evac helicopter, either with one guy carrying him and two covering, or, if you screwed up really badly, you had one guy covering and two carrying a stretcher.
Also, Luke, that style really stops working when static checkpoints are introduced and you auto-save with five health left. It would work better if the game saved dynamically, taking into account nearby enemies and remaining health and ammo. Or just upped you to half health when you died.
I save all the time myself, and don't rely on the autosave points too much. Also, I only ever save when I've defeated an enemy, or area of enemies, and still have a decent amount of health. If it dropped below 70% in any encounter, I played it again. This way I found really sneaky ways to kill enemies at a distance. Dropping the satchel bombs, then triggering them as enemies ran past was really good fun. Especially as if you learn the timing, you don't even have to look. If I replayed the entire game in some kind of movie mode, but only taking the saved games, it would make me look like some kind of Half Life god. However, I'm sure people are as good as this, without even relying on multiple tries and saving after every area.a
Had to be in the city almost every day last week, which means a 40 min train ride best spent playing DS, so I am now completely sucked into Professor Layton & the Diabolical Box.
I don't know what you people are talking about with HL2 weapons. They are all so freakin' useful. I pretty much only use the SMG or pistol when I don't have ammo for something better. The crossbow comes out any time there are bad guys far away who can't see me, the magnum if they're a little closer. The pulse rifle is always my first choice if there are military opponents, shotgun for aliens or antlions, explosives for any of the big things. The SMG only gets used because I have no ammo for anything else except the pistol.
I'm talking about Half Life, not Half Life 2. I'm not saying anything about the usefulness of the other weapons, only that the pistol is surprisingly more useful than the other, more powerful weapons far more often than I'd expect, mainly due to the accuracy. I'm using it most, but every one of the other weapons come in handy.
@Apreche: They may be better, but the SMG fills is always fine on medium, and hard makes the enemies too un-even. Plus, keeping track of all your guns ammo is a pain in the balls.
Also, fuck shotgun soldiers creeping up behind you in the prison.
Actually, HL2 doesn't have many standard boss sequences so much as scenes like the Prison Lock-in, the generator defence and anywhere else where playing consists of being stuck in an area with either a boss creature or waves of enemies.
Speaking on the 'harder should mean harder, not longer" point, I think that there is also an upper limit of how difficult a game can be before having it just turn into torture. COD:MW and MW2 both suffer from this a little bit at the highest difficulty levels where some enemies go from being good shots and tough to fire back it, to being downright psychic and creating literally impossible situations. The examples that come to my mind are as follows: COD:MW on Veteran - The sniper level's final moments were simply not doable. Enemies could hit you with assault rifles with ludicrous accuracy a split second after rounding a corner even though you could be prone, in camouflage, behind cover. They also had a magic ability to shoot at you when they weren't even facing you. Additionally, any time you took a hit at all in Veteran mode, your cross-hair jerked all over the place making it impossible to fire back, even with a grenade launcher. This was particularly obnoxious during the missile silo level where you have a "T" shaped hall, with enemies waiting at both sides of the top of the T. If you shot left, you got shot in the back from the right, and vice-versa. The enemies were SO fast and accurate that even attempting to shoot a grenade down either corridor resulted in you dying from insta-headshot. The above factors went beyond 'difficult/challenging' and into 'ludicrous bullshit' territory. They got much better about it in MW2, making the levels at least POSSIBLE, but the fact that it took me an hour to get down the hill at the end of the estate level, mostly because they computer would re-spawn me and then kill me IMMEDIATELY, showed some poor planning on their end.
I agree that a game should be a challenge (despite what my friends say. ;P) but I don't feel that I should have to eat, sleep, breathe, and live the game in order to accomplish something in it. Additionally, AI that cheats, goes way, way beyond even the best human, or puts you into insta-death-no-matter-what-you-do situations in levels that need to be passable are things I find unacceptable in a game.
Adam, you always complain about games going into ludicrous bullshit territory. There are indeed some games that are, in fact, bullshit. However, you make this claim about every single game that you personally have a hard time with. The fact is that in most of those cases, it's just too hard for you, or you are unwilling to put in the effort to learn and build your skills.
For example, Super Street Fighter IV. Nothing in the game is bullshit except for fighting against Seth on the hardest difficulty, where the computer does in fact cheat. Even so, I was able to beat it after many tries. Even games like Ninja Gaiden or Mega Man 9, which are among the hardest out there, are fairly beatable. The only games that are absolute complete bullshit are games that are broken, the likes of which the AVGN puts on display.
Think about a game like Battle Balls. If you play the single player mode and get to the bosses, they cheat. They drop 5 or 6 different colored balls on you, while you drop the same four colors on them. Is this bullshit? I'm sure you could beat it easily, but only because you have skills from spending many hours on the game. You probably wouldn't call it bullshit because it wouldn't frustrate you. Yet, you play a new game that you haven't spent many hours on, and the same sort of things happens, and you get angry at the game.
There's no change in the games. They're the same as they always have been. It's you that has changed. You're no longer willing to put in the hours necessary to play and beat a game that is legitimately difficult. Remember, any game that isn't multiplayer is at a severe disadvantage because it lacks a human brain. Therefore to pose any challenge to you whatsoever, it must cheat in one way or another. Even with cheating, it is still at a severe disadvantage, because all, and I mean ALL, video game AI follow some pattern that you can exploit, even at the hardest difficulty levels.
If a game is multiplayer, it is impossible for there to be bullshit because all players are following the same exact rules. even if those rules are bad rules or secret rules, they apply equally to everyone. If someone has cheap bullshit to exploit, you can do the same exact thing. If they still beat you when you try to do that, they're obviously doing something better than you, and you have to figure that out.
Or maybe hard games just aren't your kind of game anymore. Maybe you have changed, and no longer enjoy these kinds of games. Maybe you should just stop playing FPS and play JRPGs instead.
You're no longer willing to put in the hours necessary to play and beat a game that is legitimately difficult.
Could also be written as:
You have better things to do with your time than put in hours of boredom and frustration to complete a game which is just the next in a line of games who's aim is to take a basic aim and make it increasingly technical and difficult just to make players who do feel satisfied.
So you want to play JRPGs where ability to endure tedium is replaced with honing muscle memory for no real purpose?
Speaking on the 'harder should mean harder, not longer" point, I think that there is also an upper limit of how difficult a game can be before having it just turn into torture. COD:MW and MW2 both suffer from this a little bit at the highest difficulty levels where some enemies go from being good shots and tough to fire back it, to being downright psychic and creating literally impossible situations. The examples that come to my mind are as follows: COD:MW on Veteran- The sniper level's final moments were simply not doable. Enemies could hit you with assault rifles with ludicrous accuracy a split second after rounding a corner even though you could be prone, in camouflage, behind cover. They also had a magic ability to shoot at you when they weren't even facing you. Additionally, any time you took a hit at all in Veteran mode, your cross-hair jerked all over the place making it impossible to fire back, even with a grenade launcher. This was particularly obnoxious during the missile silo level where you have a "T" shaped hall, with enemies waiting at both sides of the top of the T. If you shot left, you got shot in the back from the right, and vice-versa. The enemies were SO fast and accurate that even attempting to shoot a grenade down either corridor resulted in you dying from insta-headshot. The above factors went beyond 'difficult/challenging' and into 'ludicrous bullshit' territory. They got much better about it inMW2, making the levels at least POSSIBLE, but the fact that it took me an hour to get down the hill at the end of the estate level, mostly because they computer would re-spawn me and then kill me IMMEDIATELY, showed some poor planning on their end.
Actually, I'll go with Mr Macross on this one - The enemies in MW2 on the hardest difficulty were actually just about outright cheating. They were hardly effected by stun grenades, were more accurate with some weapons that was actually possible within the game for the player, didn't seem to be effected by recoil, had damn near psychic ability to detect you from any range, could hit you if they saw even the tiniest bit of your model, and when they reloaded, they reloaded faster than the player actually could - and there were times where the game would send infinite waves of them at you till you advanced past certain points, which often did little more than change where they were infinitely spawning from.
They were not as bad in MW2 - but in MW1, they really were bullshit difficult.
I'm just confused why someone would complain that a video game on it's hardest level would be too difficult. It's not like they didn't provide other level's of difficulty, if you don't have the reflexes and time of a 12 year old maybe you should drop it down to Pretty darn difficult or Normal.
I'm just confused why someone would complain that a video game on it's hardest level would be too difficult. It's not like they didn't provide other level's of difficulty, if you don't have the reflexes and time of a 12 year old maybe you should drop it down to Pretty darn difficult or Normal.
Metro 2033 is pretty slick. It's an FPS in the Half Life/Modern Warfare style, where you walk down a predetermined path with lots of scripted sequences and interesting setpieces. Unlike Modern Warfare the single player doesn't feel like a glorified shooting gallery, and every level City 17 times a million in terms of atmosphere and attention to detail. I wouldn't call it a step forward for the genre, but it updates some of the things I like about this sort of game to modern standards. It also happens to be Russian and post-apocalyptic, which is my kryptonite, so you may want to take my praise with a grain of salt.
I've also been trying to play Silent Hunter 4 on %100 realism. Yikes.
Metro 2033 is not without its problems. For starters there is only about 6 hours of gameplay. Yes, from start to finish the game is over in about 6 hours. For a $60 game that is $10 per hour.
The game is also extremely linear. You have zero options on how to get from point A to point B. The only level that even gives you the option is the Reds vs. Nazi one and even there the choice is 'crawl with your mask on' or 'kill all sons of bitches'.
I am just about done with Red Dead. The single player was awesome and I'm having some fun with multiplayer.
I picked up Assassins Creed on the discount rack and I love it! Don't know why i didn't play this one sooner.
It's not about how difficult a game is but in what way. That and few games these days really nail difficulty, which adds a lot to replay value.
Agreed - MW2 is as difficult on the hardest mode as MW1, but it's not in a bullshit way, it's in a way that make sense, and if the computer is cheating, it's minorly enough that it's not an issue. It's like the difference between playing a game against Someone who is genuinely good, or someone who is using aimbots and wallhacks - The former is fun, the other is just frustrating and annoying. The only way I made it through MW1's campaign on the hardest difficulty is by dying a heap of times in every encounter, getting a little further each time, till I'd just memorised where all the enemies were coming from, and trying to take them out in groups with grenades, or often just leaping out for a second, spraying bullets at them, and then either diving behind cover or dying, depending on how my luck went.
Comments
Also, read Lovecraft's Dreamlands Cycle while you do.
I've also been trying to play Silent Hunter 4 on %100 realism. Yikes.
By the way, being able to play games on my laptop while on a cruise ship is fucking awesome. At this rate I'll make it through HL2 in no time.
The two-weapons-plus-grenades thing Halo 1 made popular adds a lot to weapon variety by actually making you actually vary your weapons. It's a shame playing Halo on anything but easy is boring. Someone should mod it so that the harder modes make the enemies faster as opposed to just damage sponges.
I remember when the gravity gun was hot shit.
HL2's difficulty settings are really uneven, going to hard mode makes the normal enemies fun and challenging but things like hunters and ant-lion guardians become crazy spongy.
The moral of the story: Harder should mean harder. Not just take longer.
Also, we are beyond the point of non-regenerating/degenerating low health in games.
Oddly enough, difficulty is something that the Call of duty series handles reasonably well - The enemies don't get tougher, you just get brought down to their level. They can move and aim only a little slower and less accurately than you can(as the average player the highest difficulty), you die as easily as they do, and they get the re-gen health as well - an enemy, if wounded, but not killed, will take cover and wait for a little bit, then pop out and start shooting, seemingly at full health.
It's something I think other games could learn from - they before somewhat more exciting, no matter what the health system is, if the player is on a level playing field with the enemy, rather than a towering, invincible juggernaut.
Also, Luke, that style really stops working when static checkpoints are introduced and you auto-save with five health left. It would work better if the game saved dynamically, taking into account nearby enemies and remaining health and ammo. Or just upped you to half health when you died.
Medium: SMG fine for everything. Mooks = easy. Bosses = Fun.
Hard: Weapon variation. Mooks = Fun. Bosses = Sitting around.
Also, fuck shotgun soldiers creeping up behind you in the prison.
Actually, HL2 doesn't have many standard boss sequences so much as scenes like the Prison Lock-in, the generator defence and anywhere else where playing consists of being stuck in an area with either a boss creature or waves of enemies.
COD:MW on Veteran - The sniper level's final moments were simply not doable. Enemies could hit you with assault rifles with ludicrous accuracy a split second after rounding a corner even though you could be prone, in camouflage, behind cover. They also had a magic ability to shoot at you when they weren't even facing you. Additionally, any time you took a hit at all in Veteran mode, your cross-hair jerked all over the place making it impossible to fire back, even with a grenade launcher. This was particularly obnoxious during the missile silo level where you have a "T" shaped hall, with enemies waiting at both sides of the top of the T. If you shot left, you got shot in the back from the right, and vice-versa. The enemies were SO fast and accurate that even attempting to shoot a grenade down either corridor resulted in you dying from insta-headshot.
The above factors went beyond 'difficult/challenging' and into 'ludicrous bullshit' territory. They got much better about it in MW2, making the levels at least POSSIBLE, but the fact that it took me an hour to get down the hill at the end of the estate level, mostly because they computer would re-spawn me and then kill me IMMEDIATELY, showed some poor planning on their end.
I agree that a game should be a challenge (despite what my friends say. ;P) but I don't feel that I should have to eat, sleep, breathe, and live the game in order to accomplish something in it. Additionally, AI that cheats, goes way, way beyond even the best human, or puts you into insta-death-no-matter-what-you-do situations in levels that need to be passable are things I find unacceptable in a game.
For example, Super Street Fighter IV. Nothing in the game is bullshit except for fighting against Seth on the hardest difficulty, where the computer does in fact cheat. Even so, I was able to beat it after many tries. Even games like Ninja Gaiden or Mega Man 9, which are among the hardest out there, are fairly beatable. The only games that are absolute complete bullshit are games that are broken, the likes of which the AVGN puts on display.
Think about a game like Battle Balls. If you play the single player mode and get to the bosses, they cheat. They drop 5 or 6 different colored balls on you, while you drop the same four colors on them. Is this bullshit? I'm sure you could beat it easily, but only because you have skills from spending many hours on the game. You probably wouldn't call it bullshit because it wouldn't frustrate you. Yet, you play a new game that you haven't spent many hours on, and the same sort of things happens, and you get angry at the game.
There's no change in the games. They're the same as they always have been. It's you that has changed. You're no longer willing to put in the hours necessary to play and beat a game that is legitimately difficult. Remember, any game that isn't multiplayer is at a severe disadvantage because it lacks a human brain. Therefore to pose any challenge to you whatsoever, it must cheat in one way or another. Even with cheating, it is still at a severe disadvantage, because all, and I mean ALL, video game AI follow some pattern that you can exploit, even at the hardest difficulty levels.
If a game is multiplayer, it is impossible for there to be bullshit because all players are following the same exact rules. even if those rules are bad rules or secret rules, they apply equally to everyone. If someone has cheap bullshit to exploit, you can do the same exact thing. If they still beat you when you try to do that, they're obviously doing something better than you, and you have to figure that out.
Or maybe hard games just aren't your kind of game anymore. Maybe you have changed, and no longer enjoy these kinds of games. Maybe you should just stop playing FPS and play JRPGs instead.
I wish they'd bring back fun platformers.
They were not as bad in MW2 - but in MW1, they really were bullshit difficult.
The game is also extremely linear. You have zero options on how to get from point A to point B. The only level that even gives you the option is the Reds vs. Nazi one and even there the choice is 'crawl with your mask on' or 'kill all sons of bitches'.
I am just about done with Red Dead. The single player was awesome and I'm having some fun with multiplayer.
I picked up Assassins Creed on the discount rack and I love it! Don't know why i didn't play this one sooner.