How Many More PC Sequels Can They Ruin!!

Rybo89 · 3 Jan 2009 at 14:49

AWPC said:
Tomb Raider: Underworld-im finding this game a lot of fun!

NFS Undercover- This game is nearly as pathetic as spore! they need to do a remake of need for speed underground 2!!! updated cars and mods n that! and open world online experience would be a lot better

Far Cry2-got it but not bothered to play it yet

Silent Hill5- not played

Red Alert3- yet again just pathetic! they should go back to red alert 2/yuri's revenge and take some tips from them

Rainbow Six Vegas2- boring and repetitive

Limenote · 3 Jan 2009 at 14:55

tomb raider underworld wasnt bad at all! not as good as the other 2 games from Crystal dynamics though, Farcry 2 is very average but not a terrible game but i agree on everything else!

Gears of war 2 was amazing as are many sequels, I wish they would hurry up with the next splinter cell game

Lil old me · 3 Jan 2009 at 15:02

While I agree Farcry 2 was a....far cry from its predecessor I thought it was a good game all in all. Havent played any of the others though.

Saying that sequels have always been a feature...doom 2, quake 2, RA 2 all improved on their predecessors. So its not so much that sequels are inherently awful its just that game designers havent been doing a good job lately.

DireEmblem · 3 Jan 2009 at 15:14

Cmon Stargate worlds!

Gotta be one hell of a lot better than the above lot...

spirity · 3 Jan 2009 at 16:05

Pea0n said:
As long as Diablo 3 and DoW2 aren't ruined then I'm not too bothered.

A lucky few got to try a Diablo 3 demo at the last Blizzcon and were absolutely blown away. I wouldn't worry about D3, it's right on target to be everything people expect and more.

GhostlyPea · 3 Jan 2009 at 16:18

spirity said:
A lucky few got to try a Diablo 3 demo at the last Blizzcon and were absolutely blown away. I wouldn't worry about D3, it's right on target to be everything people expect and more.

Just the news I wanted to hear, but there is still time for it to go wrong. I trust Blizzard not to balls it up, but hey, anything can happen. So far that's good news though.

- Pea0n

spirity · 3 Jan 2009 at 16:36

Yeah I hear you. There's still a long time before release.

Here's a mini-review (not mine) to whet your whistle. I've had to edit a few words and there's no spoilers, so enjoy.

So, I played through the demo 5-6 times this weekend at Blizzcon. For those of you who are wondering if Diablo 3 is in the spirit of the prior 2 games, you can stop worrying; the answer is a resounding yes, in 84 point blinking red caps with a MIDI hallelujah playing in the background. The core gameplay of clicking on a ridiciulous number of monsters to blow them up for a ridiculous number of fancy items is completely intact. If that's all you needed to know you can go back to cutting yourself while you wait, because I don't expect the game, as fun and polished as the part we saw was, to be on sale til probably 2010.

A few important points:

- The game is <OOPSIE> gorgeous. Complaints about the lack of darkness are unfounded; the dungeon we were able to play through was plenty dark. I would say in fact that had it been much darker it would have been annoying to play.

- The amount of destructible objects has been ramped way up; it isn't just barrels and jars anymore; now there's all kinds of blow-up-able dungeon dressing, including stuff that you can drop on monsters (or fellow adventurers) when you hit it with an attack. Once you get the hang of recognizing which things are destructible it is very easy and fun to do this.

- The inventory and looting system has been completely revamped. You no longer have the 'fit differently sized objects into your inventory' minigame; instead you now just have regular old inventory slots like in WoW. Bag items drop that you can use to upgrade the amount of space you have. All in all inventory management seems to be much easier, especially with the amount of potions much lower. In addition, loot that drops, drops for you only. There's no more mad click spazzing to vaccuum up that unique ring drop before the other guy does; he has his own drops to get. Yes, you can still trade, drop items for other people, etc. Works very nicely.

- The character customization is better than D2, but not yet totally implemented. In D2, you often could spend like 80 points on one ability. That doesn't appear to be possible in D3. You'll have a few abilities you can swap between, and the little 4 button taskbar is a million times better than the old F key binding system for using different abilities. The rune system is the best thing they've ever thought of. It was only implemented for the wizard, but what I was able to experiment with from it was great. Take the wizard's disintegrate ray. The basic spell is, you hold down mouse, it shoots out a big long beam that does increasing damage to anything hit by it. Put a striking rune into it, now it does 5% more damage. Put a power rune in, now it does 10% more damage but stops when it hits a creature. Put a multistrike rune into it, now it ups itself by 20% damage each time it passes through a creature. There were also visual differences between each of these, and other spells were affected differently by the different runes (multistrike made magic missile shoot out multiple missiles, for example.) All in all it was pretty darn cool.

- There's more story/depth to the world but the story appears to still be completely optional. I know Schild doesn't want any spoilers here, but really there aren't any spoilers to be given in terms of the story. The section we played was really just one little section of what I assume is the main quest, and is of the "leave the village of X to go into the dungeon Y to kill evil boss X" variety, but it is loaded with Diablo history/flavor. There are 'lore' drops you can get in the dungeon that give you audio clips of lore, so you don't have to stop killing stuff while you listen to them. Also the random adventures interspersed through the dungeon make repeated playthroughs a little more interesting.

- The game is <OOPSIE> gorgeous. I cannot stress that enough.

Some notes about the classes:

Barbarian: I never really could get into these guys in D2. They're more interesting in D3, and they have a semi-rage-like mechanic instead of energy like the other 2 classes we know about. Some of their abilities don't cost rage (I don't remember if it was actually called rage, but that's what it is), like cleave (cleave is awesome); they build it up, then there are other abilities that you can use that spend it. I only played the barbarian once so I didn't get a chance to really get a feel for how that worked, but it seemed like it built up pretty slow so your bread and butter will be the non-rage attacks, with the rage pool used for popping big buffs and fancy moves on tougher creatures. The feeling of being a badass who hits things and sends them flying is much more noticeable than the D2 barbarian and I think people will really like these.

Witch Doctor: This to me was by far the most fun class. I was a big fan of the necromancer in D2, and this guy splits the difference between a minion specced necromancer and a poison caster pretty well. There are a ton of fun interactions between the zombie dog pets and the other spells you cast, and I think this class had the most depth to its gameplay really. The dogs are really resilient, much more so than the D2 necromancer pets, and setting them on fire with your thrown skull explosion is awesome.

Wizard: The wizard is the sorceress with a visual upgrade and a different selection of spells. It plays more or less the same as a sorc, but the spells are a bit more varied.

I can try to answer whatever questions you all might have about the game, there's a lot of stuff I could expand on given some more time to reflect.

In Summation: Diablo 3 is Robot Jesus.

Devil_Spawn · 3 Jan 2009 at 16:48

i'm yet to be dissapointed by a valve game - sequel or not

XiS111 · 3 Jan 2009 at 17:00

yup Diablo 3 for me is the only game to look forward to... i liked playing NFS:Undercover on the PS3 except yes it jerked a lot and it was as easy as scratching your butt... havent played Most Wanted but will look into it now

Dougsnake · 3 Jan 2009 at 18:58

XiS111 said:
... i liked playing NFS:Undercover on the PS3 except yes it jerked a lot and it was as easy as scratching your butt... havent played Most Wanted but will look into it now

The game itself is not that bad its just the poor coding/frame rates issue that totally ruins it

it was never gonna be a 10/10 game but if they fixed the frame rates issue it could have been a 6+/10 game at least.
Been playing it last few days on PS3 as i got it for a xmas present,how the developers couldnt see the major gfx fps problems i`ll never know :confused:

because when you get away from the built up areas it drives half decent and almost fools you into thinking its better than it is.
Have to agree about farcry2 being a big let down as well after an hour i gave up and pretty much the same for rainbow6 vegas 1 and 2 was a huge fan of originals but they seem to have lost their way now

At least the cod series hasnt totally fallen on its ass,RA3 was ok but wasnt the massive leap we all wished for.
Lets hope the sequels for 09 will be better...

mame · 3 Jan 2009 at 19:24

Half life 3 !! I hope they don't mess that one up ...... but I doubt they will

HangTime · 3 Jan 2009 at 19:50

Personally I thought the graphics in R6:V2 weren't too bad, the textures were a bit bland but the character models/animations are excellent.

Gashman · 3 Jan 2009 at 21:45

Swi1ch said:
Fixed.

Last year and a half has been nothing but sequels. Far Cry 2, Halo 3, CoD4, CoD5, Gears of War 2, Tomb Raider 145, Need For Speed 263, Mario 10,472 etc.

Need more new ideas!

shame Halo 3, COD4 and Gears of War 2 are all absolutely stonking games huh? :rolleyes:

but i do agree with the others and i haven't played COD5 so i can't comment, but Tomb Raider should be left to die (sorry but it should) and Mario is the worse game ever concieved, infact most of the child orientated crap for the Nintendo is rubbish. but there are a couple of decent sequels on the horizon (more than likely) starcraft 2 for example, looks like it has kept all the original gameplay elements, great balance but also added some new stuff, new abilities, new units and the graphics engine looks shockingly pretty! halo: ODST, any game where you get to play as helljumper that is made by the people who brought us all the other halo games can't be a bad thing?

Swi1ch · 4 Jan 2009 at 06:33

Gashman said:
shame Halo 3, COD4 and Gears of War 2 are all absolutely stonking games huh? but i do agree with the others and i haven't played COD5 so i can't comment, but Tomb Raider should be left to die (sorry but it should) and Mario is the worse game ever concieved, infact most of the child orientated crap for the Nintendo is rubbish. but there are a couple of decent sequels on the horizon (more than likely) starcraft 2 for example, looks like it has kept all the original gameplay elements, great balance but also added some new stuff, new abilities, new units and the graphics engine looks shockingly pretty! halo: ODST, any game where you get to play as helljumper that is made by the people who brought us all the other halo games can't be a bad thing?

CoD4 was great yeah (Mainly because of Infinity Ward's hiatus whilst Treyarch wiped themselves and drooled all over the series), but I though Gears 2 was a joke and almost a step backwards from the original, and Halo 3 was nothing but hype.

Something funny I saw on this thread though, general opinion seems to be that EA milk series' 'till they die and whilst that is true to an extent, they did release the one of the most innovative games of last year, Mirror's Edge. Love it or hate it, you can't deny it's unique and a step forward.

utajoker · 4 Jan 2009 at 10:35

i thought need for speed undercover was alright, i didnt expect anything from it going of previous games, its just another arcade racer.

yes it does have some slow down when there are 8+ cars on the screen but appart from that i didnt have any real complaints about it.

the police chases are the most fun part off it.

Limenote · 4 Jan 2009 at 14:23

Swi1ch said:
Gears 2 was a joke and almost a step backwards from the original,

what are you even talking about?! all the features from the first game where intact with massive improvements in other areas, the pallete was much richer in colour, the new weapons fit perfectly into the game and the whole scale was made much bigger, the new enemies where varied and fun to play againt and the new horde mode was a blast.

you sir, dont have a clue

Margaret · 4 Jan 2009 at 14:41

Far Cry 2 was **** but it wasn't a sequel.

All they did was use the Far Cry name in order to sell their **** game. (wasn't even remotely like Far Cry nor was it from the same developer)

thevet · 4 Jan 2009 at 14:50

re

there is only so much you can do...its the same room with a new lick of paint ,it will be like this for a long long time,until the input changes...anybody for the nintendo wii?
personally i dont like the wii ...but good for nintendo for trying to change the input...just like they did with the n64 analogue

Margaret · 4 Jan 2009 at 14:51

thevet said:
there is only so much you can do...its the same room with a new lick of paint ,it will be like this for a long long time,until the input changes...anybody for the nintendo wii?
personally i dont like the wii ...but good for nintendo for trying to change the input...just like they did with the n64 analogue

Nothing to do with the input, just less of the bad games already.

XiS111 · 4 Jan 2009 at 14:57

Dougsnake said:
The game itself is not that bad its just the poor coding/frame rates issue that totally ruins it it was never gonna be a 10/10 game but if they fixed the frame rates issue it could have been a 6+/10 game at least.
Been playing it last few days on PS3 as i got it for a xmas present,how the developers couldnt see the major gfx fps problems i`ll never know because when you get away from the built up areas it drives half decent and almost fools you into thinking its better than it is.
.

ermm what i think is that they didnt test it, because the frame rate problem appears in nearly every car chase i've been in. I always assumed every game released on consoles were tuned to make it run smoothly.. but these days im seeing more bugs and issues with games than actual playability