Go check it out!

[DDB]
Right off the bat Half Life 2 is immersive, atmospheric, and engaging. The graphics and Havoc physics-engine implementations are both industry leading, and unlike Doom 3, they go well beyond standard room rendering and create a gameworld that’s a much more lively and enjoyable for a romp around in.

You start the game on a train that arrives at the fictitious City 17, an eastern european styled city that’s under under martial law by an unknown paramiltary police force. After meeting up with friends from the Half Life gang, you find your arrival was unannounced and meant to be covert. As you must make your way through the city you must circumvent checkpoints, run through tenements, and hide in back alleys. Unfortunately the city’s overseers soon learn of your arrival (and for some reason they’re not not happy about it). Since their city-land security checkpoints prove useless in catching you they begin a more proactive search amongst the city’s residential sections. Through a series of extremely well scripted events the policing force soon flushes you out and chases you across rooftops and through the sewers, beneath armed guards and .. other things. Eventually you reach the various offices of an underground organization of freedom fighters, and from there the action only escalates further.

Throughout my 3 hours of playing I’ve had an ongoing question of “What the hell is going on here at city 17?”. It doesn’t take long to realize the paramilitary organization uses technology not entirely of human origin. Has there been mutual pact between the policing force and the other-dimension critters from Black Mesa? Why are the citizens living in such poor conditions… and is the military presence meant to police or occupy? What’s up with that giant living building in the center of the city?

The plot unfolds through the dialog of various friendly characters (the dynamic facial expressions and lip syncing is nothing short of amazing). Though I haven’t yet determined exactly what’s going on each segment does provide interesting information, and then throws a monkey wrench to open up even more questions. The scope of the game is huge - don’t expect levels to be self contained or the plot to be distinctly episodic . After almost three hours I’ve travelled _miles_ and I’m still frenetically heading towards my original destination.

The physics engine is used remarkably well and the level design ebraces it fully. There are environmental puzzles to solve while you’re taking fire in gun fights, and then there are also more involved mechanical puzzles that force you stop, catch your breath, and use some constructive thought to solve. Most puzzles involve moving objects to take advantage of their weight or buoyancy. Almost every object in the game can be picked up or moved, thrown, rolled or dropped. Boards, barrels, boxes, swing sets, everything from cinder blocks to baby dolls can be picked up and used as tools in getting to new areas of the game. In some ways these puzzles are slightly reminiscent of the mini Myst puzzles, though thankfully they’re not nearly as complex or obtuse. I often find myself taking breaks admist solving them simply to take in the scenery. This is one absolutely gorgeous game (running on an x800 pro) and though the ambient sounds aren’t Myst quality (but yet very very good) I have easily lost myself studying a flowing river, smoke stacks in the distance, or anything that makes me appreciate the quality of art and graphic design. This game looks just about as real as anything Ive ever played.

One of the major sequences early-on takes place in a winding river bed. Various forms of vehicles adorn the banks and open fire at your approach. You’re forced to push your way through as quickly as you can in hopes to reach the safety of sewers, tunnels, and the like, which creates an extremely frantic chase scene. In its essence (IMHO) this plays like those arcade/early console shooter games I grew up loving. Missiles track you till the very last second, letting you effectively “double-jump” ( or in this case, juke your vehicle) out of the way just in time. Meanwhile you must aim for ramps that launch you over roadblocks, mines, machine gun nests, etc. There is also a “boss” near the end of this sequence that has two major modes of attack: dropping bombs or spraying you with bullets. As I dodged fire and hid behind cover to escape particular attacks, my mind was thrown back to playing Rambo III and Contra on the Gensis/NES -. This time around, though, the battle takes place in a realistic 3D environment with incredible sounds ( turn up your headphones for the explosions). The arcade mechanics and the realistic gameworld meld perfectly for me and this has become one of gaming’s more scenic confrontations that I’m sure I’ll remember for years.

And this three hour action-fest is effectively the game’s first level. I’m very much into Half-Life 2 right now - the scifi theme and explosive combat sucked me in from the start. The game doesn’t seem short, either - my friend literally played game for two days straight now. Ina ll it’s taken him more than thirty hours before he finaly finished the game. The exciting thing is - he says it gets even better from where I am.

There are few things that I’m a bit disappointed with. Explosions send soldiers flying through the air to land in a tangle of limbs - all very impressive stuff. However, the soldiers go limp immediately when the explosion occurs. I would have liked to see some flailing arms (ala A-Team) or hear a shout of anguish during these sequences. On the lighter side you can hear their comm-link go dead in the soldiers helmet, and then listen as the operator on the other side tries to restablish contact with the dead marine.

Also - you cant harm allied soldiers. I realize that dead allies would make gameplay difficult for the developers, but I enjoy going ballastic on AI friends just to see the “Brutus..??” look in their eyes. Oh well… I’m sure they’ll be a mod at somepoint.

Preliminary opinion - HL2 is the most impressive sequel amongst the big three this year (the other two being Doom3 and Halo 2 ) and it’s sure the win game of the year awards from many magazines, (and in one of the biggest years ever in PC Gaming history, too) .. but uh, that opinion is just preliminary. So far it’s easily worthy sequel to the original.

PS. The biologic weapondry used by the city on the citizens is fantastic and ingenious.

Believe it or not - elements of classic shooters like Rambo and Contra are in Half Life 2

This article is quite interesting, though it unfortunately is ended abruptly with some missing files around page 7. Besides that, its quite enlightening about the AI processes in Halo 2.

In order to create even more realism in how AI interacts with objects in the world, the team uses animation to smooth out the look of the pathfinding. “We also tag objects with animation points,” Chris explains. “A crate may have a tag that tells the AI, ‘You can jump on top of this if you want to.’ So when pathfinding the AI can decide to make a path over tagged objects. In combat, if the AI knows an enemy is hiding behind that tagged object, they may choose to jump on top of it and say something scary, or if they have lost sight of the enemy they may decide to jump up on an object to get a better look.”

Wired has an article about how Marvel is suing NCSoft for copywrite infringment. OMG.. I hate giant corporations. I seriously hope NCSoft wins.

Next we’ll have Sony and Blizzard being sued by the Wizards of the Coast (current owners of D&D), or all of them being sued by J.R.R. Tolkein’s family.

From the article:

The complaint says that the “defendants have created, marketed, distributed and provided a host environment for a game that ‘brings the world of comic books alive,’ not by the creation of new or original characters but, instead, by directly, contributorily and vicariously infringing upon Marvel copyrights and trademarks.”
…
“Asking City of Heroes to police their users to ensure that they don’t replicate Marvel characters is like asking a school to police its students to make sure none of them show up for Halloween in a homemade Spider-Man costume,” said Cory Doctorow, a renowned writer and advocate for free speech and fair use. “It’s unreasonable bullying, and it is bad corporate citizenship.”
…
“It might have a fundamental effect on the shape of video games and virtual worlds,” Noveck said, “and whether they’re places that are closed platforms or whether they’re open platforms that allow for players’ content creation.”

How very very sad.

This friend of mine (call him “Steam”) wakes me up this morning and says, “psst, buddy… I wanna show you something”. Looking skeptical, I follow him through some strange lights and end up in a creepy place called “City 17″.

Damn, it looks amazing here — maybe the ATI card pays off after all I think to myself… next thing you know I’m being told to pick up trash by some rather brutish looking thugs with masks on.–

I’m still trying to figure out where exactly city 17 is… but (oh great) they’re after me now — shooting. I end up meeting a friendly scientist with glasses that actually refract (must be far sighted from the looks of things)… “sorry dude, I didn’t hear what you said… I was too busy looking at all the refracting surfaces in this place”…

Then all of the sudden!!! ACKKK!!!!! arrgggsh~! I’m yanked back through the portal by a horrible creeping monster named “work”.

Maybe I’ll go back to city 17 tonight when I beat this “level”.

It seems I was a total sucker. Maybe it was the high I was riding coming off of my first Halo 2 game.. but rest assured. I was high.

After 2 more days of EQ2, I can say.. I wont be paying for any monthly subscription. It sucks. It blows. Frankly.. its just not fun. Sure.. that first isle has promise… then the housing is cool. Yes it has some damn nice feautres. But before you know it, your stuck in cramped zones that you cannot render without the best machine on earth. Your spawn camping the same 5 sewer slimes as everyone else, and every damn monster you click on is in a group of 5.

IT SUCKS!

I am so sorry to you all for having such a positive outlook at first. I feel cheated. I feel I cheated you. If you bought it.. dont open it. Take it back. If you did buy it.. re-sell it. And dont pay any monthly charge.. Or..

burn it.

This will be the scene in a week or two.

Ok.. so what went right:
Looting is improved. Auto lotto rules.

The world does have real nice water.

The opening quest/intro is cool.

Housing IS really cool (thanks so much for giving EVERYONE a real house)

It doe shave that nostalgia flavor.

The UI is very nice.

Letterbox rules.

I never did crafting.. so I will be nice and assume its fun.

What went wrong:
Spawn camping… already at lvl 7 (and climbing). They try to mitigate it with instanced zones.. but this just makes it more confusing to meet up with your group.

Plastic world. The world graphics look like plastic. There is no detail. There is no “life”. Its all just crap.

Trains. They are alive and well. WTF. FIX IT SONY!

Death. ok.. they make you go to your spirit. You dont have to, but without it you lose some stats for a long while. Now lets say your recovering your body, and you die again. And perhaps a third time. By then you are so low on str.. that you are BURDENED!! NOW I CANNOT WALK QUICKLY TO MY FUCKING BODY!!! That is not fun.
The waypoint system.. nice try.. but in a windy zone, the path leads straight into walls. Ummm.. no.

The graphics. Besides being plastic.. they wanted to make an engine that will last several years. And they probably did. THe problem is, the game looks like shit on a NICE box. I made my wifes rig just for this game.. not top of the line.. but good stuff.. and she can barely play it. My machine is a bit better and even I have trouble in cities. I am forced to drop all quality to shit levels to play. And then it looks so bad.. why bother. WoW is always beautiful. Polygons and high res textures do not an awesome game make. (see: Doom 3 V. Half Life 2 … yeah.. ballsy prediction. but I know HL2 will blow away doom3 in my mind already ;p )

Dead world. I figure maybe its just the zones im in. Sewers, graveyard, ruins.. whatever. So I head to an open zone… the Commonlands. And there is nothing there but the wandering group of monsters. (sure its a desert, but its got no detail). No cactii. No rocks. No shrubs. Nothing. The mobs just wander about like in EQ1. Have they learned nothing? WoW has detail.. alwasy some interesting landmark around.. or a little campfire.. or nest.. or something to give the barest reason for why a mob might be in the world living its life.

Summary
In the end.. as I was playing EQ2. I was not having fun. I found that by lvl 10, I was already starting to think about finding a spot.. and lvl grinding my way up. GRINDING! IN WoW. I NEVER did that.. not once.. and I was high 20s. I was always finding a new place.. workign on a cool quest.. Discovering and interacting with the rich and beautiful world. EQ2 is dead, plastic, and all in all NOT FUN.

Fuck that game. It fooled me. And I tried so hard to like it.

Kiddos. I’m going WoW… I’m going WoW so hard that my fingers will bleed.. and so will every human and good elf I see. EQ2 can rot. I bet you it will be Sony’s biggest flop. Then again.. galaxys is still alive. Just goes to show you there are people out ther who will play anything (see: Russell)

p.s. I’m sorry again for my previous post. Oh and EQ2…

Well she-yit. Maybe the XBox Next WILL have a hard drive! JOY! Course it looks like we’ll have to pony up some for it.

Then again.. this could all be some evil rumor.

Ok so every once and a while (although lately it seems to happen more often…Ratchet and Clank 3) I put on my QA hat when I start playing a game. This usually happens when I start seeing problems, Halo 2 while a good game is not perfect and to me feels rushed.
Some of us have been going back and forth about what is good and in my case what I do not like about Halo 2; here are my impressions thus far.

AI of Enemies: (tested on all difficulty levels)

Almost from the Start of Halo 2 I have noticed that the AI just is not as good as in Halo.
Example(s): Elite soldiers in the first and second levels would every once hide behind some type of cover, while this is cool, I was able to strafe around the cover look them in the eye, polish the barrel of my assault rifle then shoot them. The whole time they were just standing there.
In the City level many of the Enemies have a tendency to walk into me more often than take a shot, and in the “Sewer” the patterns of ghost pilots is just out right formulaic.
While I do not see this problem often I expect more from harder difficulty levels other than shots taking off more shields.

Graphics:

While Halo 2 has made improvements on textures used on vehicles, and Chars the over all feeling on each level is that of “muddy”. Everything outside of you reticule seems flat and lifeless. While many levels have moving parts to give them life, I do not feel the sense of immersion I did in halo.
On multi player maps this is most apparent that was probably due to the amount of stuff going on when you factor in poss. 16 players on 1 map with effects. I just get a stale feeling in Halo 2.
The games frame rate is consistent, but I have noticed some slowdown.

Cut Scenes:
This is just a quick point, the cut scenes seem rushed. I am not saying they are bad or horrid looking, but they just look strange from time to time.

Honestly those are my only major faults with Halo 2. I still think it is a very good game, and I am having fun. I am a little disappointed because it feels like MSFT rushed this game out the door. Halo to me was just about perfect, but I keep telling myself that if you factor in the original Mac Dev time and the time spent porting to the Xbox, then fine tuning some more Bungie had close to 5yrs to work on Halo.
there is a good post from /. that goes into some of the issues in Halo 2. I wish Halo 2 had been given just a little more time; I will still probably play through Halo 2 5 times as I did in the past with Halo, Bungie did a good job but there are just a bunch of little things that keep it from great.

I’ve played the original Halo up the ying-yang. For over a year at our office the Xbox was turned on and Halo co-op was our lunchtime activity. We had another stint of it in the afternoon/evening to blow off steam. I heart Halo.

Last night I played through the first two levels of Halo 2, and a ton on Xbox live to boot. There are quite a few things that I loved about Halo that have gone missing in it’s sequel. However, Halo 2 comes to the table with enough new and wonderful things to offset any of my disappointment for what’s missing. Here are my first impressions and any differences I’ve noticed between the two games after playing for 5 or so hours.

General Impressions

Warthog - AI Soldiers can drive the Warthog but they don’t seem all that adept at it. I manned the turret once and let the AI drive, but he hit a box and wasn’t smart enough to back up to clear the obstacle. Despite their stupidity - you can take a ghost and let the marines drive a Warthog alongside which makes a very deadly combo. The Warthog can also be damaged and destroyed! +++

Still gloat when they kill you. Sometimes they run up to your corpse and rapidly shoot you in the head. I guess I pissed a few off. +

Well the gamegasm has finally arrived, and ye-haw!

We have previously heard from Dave about EQ2. I had it pre-ordered and was glad to see it arrive yesterday with Halo 2. I played Halo 2 for a couple hours (JOY!) then I settled in to play EQ2.

First… installation. This bad boy has 10 discs. YEOW. The requirements on the side of the box said that it would need 7 gigs Luckily it seems the truth is closer to 4.5, but still DAMN. Looks like games these days are just gluttons.

Character creation is for visuals only. It appears that only your base attribs that accompany your race matter, you don’t assign any extra points. This was probably aimed at the more new player. A less complicated creation process gets you into the world. Also your base stats are auto adjusted based on class selection, so this helps to cut down on people being mad that a class isnt working since a mage with only 5 int really wont exist.

After your character is created, you are treated to a nice opening story that sets the stage for the game and the world in it. The gods have abandoned Norrath, Luclin is exploded, and a massive Orc horde seeks to destroy both Freeport and Qeynos, the last two major cities. And while they both have different ways, and in the end different goals, in the short term, they are both trying to survive, and push back this horde (they have another name for them.. but i cannot recall).

Norrath has been shattered into several small continents. And refugees from the cataclysm are all around. Enter me. A Dark Elf named Aranae. Apparently I was plucked from the Ocean and taken aboard a ship known as the Far Journey. The captain is taking me to the Ile of Refuge to train be up so that I can join one of the two cities.

The people who run the Far Seas Trading Company (of which the Far Journey is a part of the fleet) get paid money for bringing refugees to the cities. The cities get new productive members, and the refugees get a new life. How nice. But in order to be worthy of joiningn one of the cities, we first have to be trained in some basic skills.

As soon as I land, I am greeted by some guy,and he allows me to pick my class archetype. I chose mage. (I think I’m going Enchanter). I am quickly granted a couple spells, (very pretty lightning ones in fact). He tells me my first job is to go stop the goblin invasion on the island.. and kill some goblins. So off I go on the isle to kill goblins, and follow a few quests, but something far greater was awaiting me. Seashells. So as I’m heading out I found a seashell on the beach. This pretty shell when I examined it, offered a quest to add it to my collection. I did. And then I had to find more shells. So I looked for a while. After I had about half of my collection, I finally remembered I was there to kill. So Kill I did.

After wandering about the island, I killed more goblins. I found a quest or five. I slayed skeleton pirates, I finished my shell collection, I got in a group, and I met the ambassador to freeport. I was level 6 or so by then. Adn I was ready to be off. The ambassador gave me the skinny on how to get to freeport, and I chose it as my home. I mean c’mon.. they promised me power

After choosing freeport, I got permission to head out and By ringing a bell at the docks, I summoned the ship to head to freeport. Yay!

When I arrived in freeport I was treated to a very nice and evil woman who was an overseer. She told me that every refugee is given a room, and that I was to report to it immediately and meet my slumlord er.. landlord, and get acquainted. I met him, entered my lovely little inn room, got a free table, and learned that my slumlord hates me. Ahh freeport. It had been a long day, so i decided to log right in my house. Oh.. and lest I think it a gift, I have to pay 5 silver within 7 days to keep my house. Fucking Freeport. Thus ended my first several hours in EQ2.

Now.. some info on gameplay.

#1) Overall impression is that it really is everquest 2. Not Everquest 1+ and not “SOME NEW MMORPG”. It is everquest, with the rich story, and environements, and all of the fun (and sometimes pain) that was but updated, in a richer world, with more to do, with a WAYYYYYY simpler interface, and generally a much better package.

It even has.. dare i say.. some polish. WoW it ain’t, but nobody polishes like them. My biggest peeve thus far was that fish can chase you out of the water.. but meh..

#2) Here are some really cool things that I liked:

– The voice acting is in fact very cool. It helps to get you into the world, and makes it far more interesting.

– The interface is actually quite easy to use. Letterbox makes it pretty, and puts some UI crap in places that aren’t in your way.

– There are helpful quest guides that keep you on your task when you have a quest selected (choose the quest you want the task list on in your journal where they all are)

– Looting is frickin awesome. If the leader has loot on lotto, then when someone loots something, everyone sees a loot box. If they choose to loot, they are all entered into a lotto, the winner gets it. Its that simple. If people dont want it, they decline and aren’t in the lotto. WAY TO GO! That feature rocks.

– Some quests have a light trail to follow. For example, getting to my apartment the first time would have been impossible… but I just followed the little lights and poof.. I was there.

– Heroic Acts.. These are cool chains that can be done by people in a group. For example.. I can click an abliilty to start a heroic act. THen someone else in the group shoudl try to do an ability that maches a certain class of abilities (they have icons to denote the class). If everyone in the chain does them, then good things happen, like really high damage, or a quick buff or something (I didnt catch just what it was.. because my fights were kinda fast, but it was neat, and adds more to combat).

– Macros.. These are so damn easy. Hit the ‘o’ key, and a macro window appears. You simpley type in the name, then the macro, then choose an icon, and you can drag it to your hotbar. Just as simple as can be. Assist anyone?

– No Kill Stealing!! When you engage in combat with a mob, a little icon appears next to you and the mob that shows a lock. This means noone can interfere with your fight, and steal your kill. The only way they can is if you yell for help. At that point you relinquish all your EXP from the monster, and the locks are broken. Then people can save your ass. Nice feautre.

– Treasure Chests. Some kills they drop chests. These are usually trapped (and they could kill you if you were weak after a fight..) so finally a reason for rogues! They are usualy indicative of a nicer loot drop.

– Some visual cues. When you select a person, or a mob, there is a light blue arrow that shows who the player or mob is attacking. Nice touch to help in a fight. You still need the assist button, but its cool.

– Gorgeous effects. No doubt about it, the spell effects are gorgeous.

– underwater slightly blurry vision, and it hangs for a second when you go back above water. I bet that iksar don’t have it, but my Dark elf does. Its cool.

–Mobs are moving around at different speeds that make more sense. RUnning, walking.. all kinds. It somehow is much better than in other games I’ve seen. It feels more.. dynamic. Maybe it was just the anims.. but it felt a bit more scary.

– Interactive environments. Harvest wood from the ground, rocks from the ground, find seashells, all kinds of things. It seems that EQ2 is using the new industry standard of stuff in the environmen to gather the basic resources. At one point I even got stung for a swarm of bees near a beehive. Cool.

–My apartment is way bigger and cooler than i imagined it would be. And placing items in it is easy and frikin awesome. I am very happy with my little shit pad.

– The stupid game launcher is even better. It has news and info (and ads unfortunately) right on the launcher.. so you can read shit while you download.

#3) Some things I didnt like.
– I saw fish chase me out of the water. tsk tsk

– Even though I am certain that MY isle of refuge was an instance of some kind, I was not alone on it (there were some other people on it with me) At one point, a particular spawn was a little busy. So i suspect while Spawn camping has been mitigated, it probably is not gone completely.

– Some things like “/assist” I still had to learn from a person in game. That should have been a button to start with. Though it is VERY easy to do once you do it.

Conclusion:
In the end I think EQ2 is a good game. I wont give it great until I get further into the content. A level 6 does not an MMORPG experience make. It is a different game than WoW is, and I think it should be treated that way. EQ seems to have a less polished, but certainly deeper and richer flavor to it. Both are fun, and I think you should play them both One thing is for sure. If you liked everquest for the way it sucked you into its world. And made you stay up late promising yourself just one more kill then you’d stop. Then let me tell you…

The Crack is Back.