Played through the demo a couple of times now and I must say I like it. In some ways it's a standard FPS and it's very similar to Far Cry, but it still has something I thoroughly enjoy.

I especially love how you can play the game in different ways depending on mood. If you want to go John Rambo on their asses you can, but I've also gone through the entire demo without even firing my gun. Sneaking around without being spotted is highly enjoyable. Especially when speeding through a checkpoint 2 inches from their faces and you hear them go "did you see that?" behind you as they start looking around.

Quote from Shotglass :

weve all been spoiled by the brilliant storytelling in portal

But why don't more games have worthwhile narrative? Why do nearly all high-budget titles deliver dialogue that wouldn't even make the cut in a Schwarzenegger movie? Is it because the majority of gamers are ****ing thick and actually enjoy all that garbage?

It's embarrassing.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

But why don't more games have worthwhile narrative?

The same reason most Hollywood movies are horrible. Doing something new = taking a risk and when millions upon millions are at stake the bean counters just won't allow it. "This made money the last time, do more of that!"

The only reason Portal is this new and refreshing is because Valve hired the guys that were developing the game as a school project. They already knew it was good. I doubt the same game would have been given the OK if the idea came from inside Valve.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

But why don't more games have worthwhile narrative? Why do nearly all high-budget titles deliver dialogue that wouldn't even make the cut in a Schwarzenegger movie? Is it because the majority of gamers are ****ing thick and actually enjoy all that garbage?

It's embarrassing.

i guess its welcome to the bright new world ... quite literally considering most games insist on blinding you with bloom these days
i suppose it boils down to 3 things:
1) technical billiance is easy to achieve talent and creativity are rare hereditary traits
additionally it costs money to hire writers that have the talent to do more than pulling movie cliches even hollywood would be embarassed to use out of their arse ... money you cant spend on adding more bloom
2) creativity often costs money as the stupid masses would rather buy the 3rd installment of halo which is almost exactly like the first one except that its got more bloom in it (yeah i know by now im really beating a dead horse by now) whereas so called critically acclaimed games often bomb on the market which in many cases comes from the inverse argument of point 1 that states that most talented people are genetically unable to code a functional control interface as anyone who played narbacular drop can attest
therefore it follows that portal was only able to be successful from being bundled with the 4th installment of a successful franchise that came with the additional advantage of having a functional engine
3) most importantly as yahtzee put it "to dumb it down for the console tards"

has any of you ever tried playing portal with the commentary on ? theres on interesting bit about a level that was designed with the sole purpose of teaching players that portals arent a one way street that always goes from blue to orange
to sum it up people are the problem to be more precise guns and hunters are or rather were the problem as most of todays population (the bits that usually carry a master of business something or other) wouldnt be here today if we hadnt shot all the wolves and bears years ago
heck back in those good old days when computers were something for people who werent completely dumbstruck by cables that arent colour coded some game ideas were brilliant enough to stay fresh though 7 installments but nowerdays as the media seems to be more concerend with dumbing kids down from the get go with boring action and superhero movies the percentage of the population that is able to see the humour in portal or even keen is apparently dwindling rapidly

</rant>

I have just thought af a game franchise, based loosely on the Harry Potter series. The new games?

Shotglass and the Lost Punctuation!




(Sorry Shotty...couldn't resist )

Quote from Bladerunner :

I have just thought af a game franchise, based loosely on the Harry Potter series. The new games?

Shotglass and the Lost Punctuation!




(Sorry Shotty...couldn't resist )

as you might be able to tell from the writing style most of that was a case of wui (writing under the influence) of zero punctuation
so its partly intentional mostly lazy

I have to agree, Portal most likely wouldn't have shifted many units had it not rode into town on the back of one of the biggest franchises in gaming. It's sad that Portal is almost universally loved by those who've played it (even that elusive and lucrative non-gamer crowd that Nintendo is busy milking - my girlfriend loves Portal and she hates games), and yet it's unlikely that any big publisher would've touched it with a shitty stick.

I also think it's odd that after a breakthrough demonstration like Black & White more than five years ago, with that crazy creature AI they had, we've now reverted back to the dark old days of AI being a predictable lump of A* pathfinding, scripting used as sticky-tape and **** all else, presumably to save enough cash to bung a few more buckets of bloom at everything.

I can't help thinking that some fiendishly difficult computing problems may have been solved by now if only someone had touted them as a premise for a new kind of game and they'd had several squillion dollars thrown in their direction. But sadly, all that money has gone on fancy lighting.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

It's sad that Portal is almost universally loved by those who've played it (even that elusive and lucrative non-gamer crowd that Nintendo is busy milking - my girlfriend loves Portal and she hates games), and yet it's unlikely that any big publisher would've touched it with a shitty stick.

all we can do is pray that publishers will see the success portal had as a reason for a paradigm shift

Quote :

I can't help thinking that some fiendishly difficult computing problems may have been solved by now if only someone had touted them as a premise for a new kind of game and they'd had several squillion dollars thrown in their direction. But sadly, all that money has gone on fancy lighting.

i find that the xkcd approach of throwing np complete problems at waiters works best
if they come up with a solution quickly you can ask them how they did it and maybe get a paper out of it if their idea is good and fresh ... dont try it in a uni town though if youre unlucky the waiter will see what youre up to and claim that nobel prize for himself

There's always going to be amazing games and god-awful games, just like in any medium. The trick is to avoid the latter and play the former.

Although to be perfectly honest, there are only two kinds of games - games you like and games you don't. Whether you need a degree in psychology to 'get' them is neither here nor there.

Agree.

Halo X might really appeal to people who've never played Halo before, whereas those that grew up with the 9 other Halos might become physically ill at the mere thought of another sequel.

I like to remember that once in the world of gaming, the major options you had as far as gameplay was concerned was the option of shooting things in a vertical direction, or shooting things in a horizontal direction! Today were just mainly shooting things in 3D :zombie:

As far as plot in games is concerned, I don't think it's the mediums strong point. I tend to believe if you want a decent plot, go read a book. There are good games around with good stories, but there are real designs hurdles to jump if the intention is to deliver a game with both a strong degree of player freedom and a fleshy plot-line. People want everything in a game these days, so it's becoming harder, more expensive and more time consuming than ever before to keep people entertained for more than 5 minutes.

Regarding the above, I just found this hilarious little animated youtube vid which goes through the Half Life story up until Ep 1. It's pretty spot on, and reveals how shallow the plots of even the most painstakingly scripted games can be (and usually are).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slRsexrhbG8

Hey guys,there is a snow mod for the demo!U can fly with the apach heli,and drive big military vehicles awesome stuff,but watch out! performance will drop.. a LOT
http://www.crymod.com/thread.php?threadid=9616

Looks cool

Hmm I am playing Crysis full right now and I still really like it!
I use Cloak>Run>Hide in bush for energy recharge> and again...

Quote from Eleanor SpeedGT :

Hmm I am playing Crysis full right now and I still really like it!
I use Cloak>Run>Hide in bush for energy recharge> and again...

An illegal torrent i say, well i am doing that to but no to fussed to get it finished dling tbh because i don't want to spoil the game for when it comes out, plus should a 8800gt by then or a new mobo.

Crysis has been released in Australia. Just like the demo, you can tweak the config settings in DX9 to look basically exactly like very high settings in DX10, while retaining better performance.

This seems a huge blow for Vista, and DX10. Crysis was going to be the DX10 poster child, and now that people are playing with DX10 graphics in DX9 with better performance, it means DX10/Vista doesn't make any sense. Atleast not yet. Again.

Remember, Crysis was supposedly coded from scratch to take advantage of all the new DX10 features and optimisations, it was going to change the way everyone experienced their games. Not the case, apparently.

Driver improvements??

D3D10 doesn't make much sense right now, that's true, and yeah this is more or less due to drivers I think. Both Nvidia and ATI have a lot of work to do before they have it all figured out, and I expect a lot of improvements there as time goes by. Their drivers as of right now have a lot of "D3D9 baggage" keeping them from exploiting the full potential of D3D10. This is simply because it doesn't make sense for the IHVs to use too much resources on their D3D10 drivers as few people actually have Vista and a D3D10-capable card (around 2.3% according to Steam).

Also all the hype about Crysis being the D3D10 poster-child is more or less all marketing. Despite what they've been saying, there is nothing in Crysis that can't be done fairly easily in D3D9 (Which is presumably entirely by design). Thus the D3D10 features are only used to provide performance increases, which doesn't really work due to the poor drivers.

If you want to see examples where D3D10 really kicks D3D9's buttocks you need to look at recent tech-demos and similar that use entirely new techniques to really take advantage of the new API. (Like these from ATI/Humus) You won't see these in games right away though as you need a functional fallback for systems without D3D10 support.

Personally I have high hopes for OpenGL 3 and (eventually 3.1). The spec for 3.0 is supposed to be released fairly soon, with drivers to hopefully follow not far behind. OpenGL 3 is a complete API rewrite similar to D3D10 (but without geometry shaders and SM4, those come in 3.1), and it's expected to provide the same sort performance benefits touted by MS for D3D10. It will also run on Vista/XP/OSX/*nix and support cards as far back as GeForce FX and Radeon 9500, making it less of a risk for developers to take.

With Vista uptake being less than ideal, and DX10 performing below expectations this just might be OpenGL's time to take back some market share.

Like someone on the other board said, DX10 isn't revolutionary because there are new 1337-effects, but because it offers better performance by rerouting processes to the GPU... Besides, Crysis started as a DX9-game which then was ported to DX10...

If you want to see really impressive DX10-stuff, take a look at "World in Conflict", an RTS game like "Act of War"... The level of detail is astounding when you bear in mind you won't ever see so much stuff in (the ego-perspective of) a shooter... You can download a trailer here or from XFire, if you like...

Quote from bbman :

Like someone on the other board said, DX10 isn't revolutionary because there are new 1337-effects, but because it offers better performance by rerouting processes to the GPU... Besides, Crysis started as a DX9-game which then was ported to DX10...

name one game where the freamerate doesnt decrease with dx10 despite not looking any different than dx9

Name one that's based entirely on DX10...

Just brought the game at argos (got lucky, they had only 1 in store), installing now but the thing that shocked me the most was the hdd space is wanted... 12 gigs:jawdrop: fook me thats allot, will post back later with better info.

Completely forgot it was out today. Just bashed through my order on amazon with next day delivery.

Been playing for what seems like hours today...just had squad leader snatched by big mean alien looking thingy...now all on my own surrounded by millions of Koreans and God-knows-whats out there...
And I thought HL2Ep2 was hard??? Jeez, this game roXXors....Hardly any time to admire pretty grafix, too bloody busy staying alive!

Quote from Bladerunner :

Been playing for what seems like hours today...just had squad leader snatched by big mean alien looking thingy...now all on my own surrounded by millions of Koreans and God-knows-whats out there...
And I thought HL2Ep2 was hard??? Jeez, this game roXXors....Hardly any time to admire pretty grafix, too bloody busy staying alive!

I am upto where you are... it's not easy tbh, All i am doing is going into sleath and shooting each guy in the head at a time then duck behind an object to get the bar backup to 100%, it's not the fastest way or the most enjoyable but it gets the job done nice and easy instead of going rambo style and getting killed in 2 mintues.

Quote from spankmeyer :

My five bucks says 'candy graphics but shit gameplay'.

Call me a cynic but Bioshock and HL2 already showed that it's very easy to go from from the top of the world to trash bin.

Kinda awkward to admit but... I went and bought the retail version last Friday. Short review from a cynic:

Crysis is a damn solid game after all and pretty much destroys any other 3D shooter at the moment.

(Excluding Armed Assault's Evolution MP coop.)

I can run the game smoothly everything on medium (my GFX card is shit) and it still looks quite stunning. It's almost like a bluff as the scenery looks more real than simply 'great graphics' as shaders and post processing is used more wisely than in other ass-lubed shooters where even dust shines.

Sound production is top notch too and the POV pseudo-cinematics/cutscenes work surprisingly well.

So far (clocking around 15 hours of gameplay at the moment, approaching the mountain...) Crysis has evaded most of the pits of the genre.

Playing on the hardcore 'delta' difficulty, deaths are plenty, ammo is running low, it's wise to plan first and use melee combat when possible. Guns feel powerful enough and action is very much action indeed. You get to see a lot of memorable scenes and never-seen-before-in-games that are mostly MIA from other shooters. I strongly advice to use the hardest difficulty or you'll lose plenty of adrenaline rushes.

Replay value is surprisingly high too as there are many ways, some more violent and sneaky than others, to wreck havoc in raids to enemy outposts.

Looking forward to the finale (hopefully they won't cut the story short or anti-climax the ending) but honestly speaking the 50 euros spent on Crysis has payed itself back already.

Crysis' a kick ass game. Rating 90/100, but ending will tell whether it'll be +/- 5 points in the final score.