[LeChimp]

Originally Posted by Mares

NOLF2 was awesome. I thought the story of that Supersoldier was very touching. I can still hear him shouting "Abigail!" A must play.

And the tricycle chase scene, one of the funniest parts in a game ever. The NOLF series is NOT overrated (and I don't see what's wrong with Contract Jack, it's a decent kill everything shooter, it's a spinoff of NOLF, not a direct sequel)

[Maquisard]

Haven't played Contract Jack though.

[remixor]

Originally Posted by Sly Boots

When I play a game, I'm looking for ... varied gameplay.

Then I'm surprised you like Syberia, since the gameplay consists of just combining mechanical things again and again in a very linear fashion.

Halo ... the gameplay is more than repetitive. I mean, this game suffers from a lack of imagination... it's just BORING.

Gameplay is by its nature repetitive. Games like WarioWare have non-repetitive gameplay but that is unusual and part of the gimmick of the game. Halo is a first person shooter, which means the player expects to walk around and shoot things. That's how it is. It does that extremely well. Later in the game, the single-player level design gets a bit repetitive, but since, as you say, the story is nothing to speak of, you don't have to bother playing those bits. Halo is all about the multiplayer.

But for those seeking a simple game, and living a dull, uncomplicated life, by all means - play Halo! Fill Microsoft's pockets!

Gladly! 8-)

[LeChimp]

That's probably why I think Halo is over rated, I've never really played deathmatch in the game, just the meh single player. I really don't care for the single player because the game really only has 3 different monsters and most of the weapons are your standard FPS guns. Althought the use of vehicles was cool.

[remixor]

Single player is a whole lot more fun if you're playing cooperatively with a buddy. Deathmatch isn't particularly awesome, though. It's all about the cRaZy multiplayer modes like Oddball and Phantoms and Accumulation and Crazy King (and the always buckets of fun Team Crazy King) as well as the stuff you expect like CTF and Rockets and all that jazz. There are a ton of multiplayer modes, and you can define your own as well.

[Sly Boots]

I'm sorry, varied gameplay wasn't exactly a good choice of words (I was thinking of Anachronox - adventure/action/RPG + minigames), although some games in the FPS genre require more than shooting, like Deus Ex, you could finish it without killing anyone.
I have to tell you, I liked the first two hours of Halo, I liked the vehicles, but the cut/paste corridors, the small number of monsters, and the lack of an inspired story determined me to stop playing it, and in the end, it really didn't seem like an elite game.
The graphics weren't special
The gameplay was good, but it didn't offer anything else BUT shooting, and I got tired of it eventually
The sound was ok
The level design was terrible, personally I think Serious Sam had much more interesting(and varied) leveles
The story was that of an uninspired Star Trek episode
The multiplayer... didn't get a chance to try it but my uncle owns a Internt Cafe and I suggested this game for multiplayer, but, though advertised, nobody played it, they preferred Counter-Strike

Overall, I'm not saying it's a bad game, but it's not what Microsoft makes us believe it to be, and I think it won't be remembered in the gaming history as a milestone.
I think the FPS milestones are:
Wolfenstein-> Doom-> Quake-> Unreal-> Half-Life -> Deus Ex
Right now, I'm not sure if Doom 3, HL2 or Far Cry is the next step.

[Jackal]

As I pointed out earlier, it's the Xbox version of Halo that established itself as a milestone and drew all the accolades, and rightly so. Xbox Halo had no peers. Console shooters have always lagged far behind the PC, and Halo set all kinds of standards at the time. The PC version was nothing but a port two years after the fact, long after other games had surpassed it. Of course the graphics and gameplay were nothing special by then. Comparisons need to be made in the right context.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Originally Posted by Sly Boots

I have to tell you, I liked the first two hours of Halo, I liked the vehicles, but the cut/paste corridors, the small number of monsters, and the lack of an inspired story determined me to stop playing it, and in the end, it really didn't seem like an elite game.

...Overall, I'm not saying it's a bad game, but it's not what Microsoft makes us believe it to be, and I think it won't be remembered in the gaming history as a milestone.

It'll be remembered as a progressive console game. Remember, it was seen as an important game at the time it was being made for PC (with all its cool features), but it switched to console, with its limitations, and for a console to receive it was quite new.

I think the FPS milestones are:
Wolfenstein-> Doom-> Quake-> Unreal-> Half-Life -> Deus Ex
Right now, I'm not sure if Doom 3, HL2 or Far Cry is the next step.

I think S.T.A.L.K.E.R. will be the next step.

[oerhört]

Ah, just have to get this out:

I absolutely frickin' love:

Half-Life. T'was brilliant then, it's brilliant now - what FPS has brought a more consistent, varied action experience to the table? Love the headcrabs, love the Xen levels, love the game.

Deus Ex. Character development choices, varied, big missions and more freedom than ever before in a FPS.

Morrowind. Thin characters, of course, but the music, the graphics, the scale and the experience are all very good.

Day of the Tentacle. Both fun, charming and absolutely hilarious.

The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery. Of course. Brilliant flow, with very little "use-this-on-that" and more logical investigative gameplay.

Myst. Excellent puzzles, fine story, exciting flow.

GTA, GTA3 and GTA: Vice City. Pure gameplay fun, even if the original GTA's was even more immediate and accessible than the later versions.

Thief: The Dark Project. Excellent, excellent, mind-blowingly excellent.

System Shock 2. More brilliance. Exactly what that should be wrong with this game, I do not understand.

And as for the Blizzard titles: if you're not a RTS gamer, I do not believe you are qualified to speak. As I understand it, the games' brilliance lies in their balancing, which is world class. Of course, the rest of the games are standard RTS fare. It doesn't matter when you are able to play the games again for hundred of hours because of good design.

Of course those also have their problems. But all of them really are magnificent examples of gaming art. People really should be out to enjoy their games, not nitpick about insignificant failures. For those of you that dislike for example Half-Life, are there any other FPSs out there that you do enjoy? If you dislike Myst, are ther actually any other puzzle adventures which you enjoy? Those really are very good examples of "how to do it", even if they're not perfect.

Now, for some games that really are not worth the 9/10 praise they have gotten:

Syberia, but even more Syberia 2: Too uninteresting in the long run. Good production values, but far less interesting than TLJ and even the Black Mirror. Rule #1 for adventure games: make a story that keeps the player interested, and make sure it's intertwined with the gameplay so that the gamer doesn't feel he/she is just doing generic adventure game tasks. Syberia was actually quite good until I realised the whole game was about stopping at "yet another station" and having to go through "yet some puzzles" to proceed. All in all, OK games, but not at all 7, 8 or 9/10.

Spider-Man 2 (the console-versions). It's ridiculous.

The Longest Journey (at these forums) - very good game, but it lacks the gameplay flow at times, slowing down with unnecessary puzzles. In general gaming media, however, it's oftenly underrated. I'd give it a 8/10 for its music, entertaining story and fine art direction, but the experience is worse because 1.) It feels like a mix-it-all of adventure conventions, and 2.) because the flow still is not as good as other games, such as The Beast Within, Grim Fandango or The Last Express. Enough of that, this game still is a good one.

And one final quote:
"Spend hours fiddling with the cars suspension to get that extra 0.5 mph out of it. Sounds like fun<sarcasm>"
Huh? So you do say you don't like Gran Turismo, but at the same time you implicitly admit that you actually don't like driving games at all? That makes the statement pretty much irrelevant, doesn't it? The fun in good driving games is of course in the challenge they offer.

[Phantom]

Originally Posted by Jackal

As I pointed out earlier, it's the Xbox version of Halo that established itself as a milestone and drew all the accolades, and rightly so. Xbox Halo had no peers. Console shooters have always lagged far behind the PC, and Halo set all kinds of standards at the time. The PC version was nothing but a port two years after the fact, long after other games had surpassed it. Of course the graphics and gameplay were nothing special by then. Comparisons need to be made in the right context.

No, Goldeneye 007 was the real console shooter milestone. Halo wasn't really that much of a leap forward from Goldeneye.

[Jackal]

Originally Posted by Phantom

No, Goldeneye 007 was the real console shooter milestone. Halo wasn't really that much of a leap forward from Goldeneye.

That's debatable, but it's a valid comparison, at least.

Everything I've read about Goldeneye suggests it certainly was a milestone. Then again, pretty much everything I've read about Halo said the same, often referencing the two games together. What you mean by "the real milestone", I'm not sure. There can be more than one. I didn't play Goldeneye, so I can't really comment personally, but that wasn't my main point anyway. My point was that Halo's reputation was built on its console impact, not PC.

[pleto4_ryan]

Ok, about Halo.

They just took every piece of FPS that existed and made a hybrid that cleverly had the most best things of the rest...

Halo wasn't a step forwards nor a step backwards, it was just a copy that gave to the gamers a new game to play for hours and to the industry another cow...

As for Goldeneye...a whole another story...

[Jackal]

... a whole other story that would probably make your criticism of Halo fall to pieces. By all means, tell us what features Goldeneye had that had never been done in an FPS to that point (since that's your argument).

I'm not knocking Goldeneye, and I'm really not praising Halo. I just think it's become fashionable to rip Halo for no good reason, which seems incredibly silly to me.

[Phantom]

Originally Posted by Jackal

That's debatable, but it's a valid comparison, at least.

Everything I've read about Goldeneye suggests it certainly was a milestone. Then again, pretty much everything I've read about Halo said the same, often referencing the two games together. What you mean by "the real milestone", I'm not sure. There can be more than one. I didn't play Goldeneye, so I can't really comment personally, but that wasn't my main point anyway. My point was that Halo's reputation was built on its console impact, not PC.

I meant that Halo wasn't really such a big leap forward compared to Goldeneye. Goldeneye really revolutionized the console shooter genre. Halo just upped the standard a bit.

[ConcreteRancor]

Originally Posted by LeChimp

And the tricycle chase scene, one of the funniest parts in a game ever. The NOLF series is NOT overrated (and I don't see what's wrong with Contract Jack, it's a decent kill everything shooter, it's a spinoff of NOLF, not a direct sequel)

Once I got beyond the inherent humor in the level, which took me about 20 seconds, the tricycle chase scene was actually my least favorite level in the game. Firstly, it's a rail-shooter level, which I never like anyway. (The only one which I really admit to enjoying was the car chase level in Call of Duty.) Secondly, it comes right after a point where I you had to defend Haggis McMutt- I mean Magnus Armstrong from a ton of mimes, and when I finished that, I was pretty low on health. So of course I started off the tricycle chase level with the smallest sliver of health, and there's no way to get it back. So I had to replay the last level again. That annoyed me.

That level was the only sore point for me in an otherwise brilliant game, which sadly did not get the sales it deserved. And I agree that the super-soldier story was extremely touching.

Spoiler:

I shed a tear when he turned around, saw Cate, said one final "Abigail..." and fell of the cliff. Then I realized... he's with her now.

I'm ahuge Warcraft junkie, but for some reason, I didn't like Starcraft. It just didn't do anything for me.

[Jony]

I would say Sam and Max as the most overated adventure game ever.

[Sly Boots]

Well, if Warcraft & Starcraft are overrated, then name one good strategy !
Starcraft was the only strategy (besides Battlezone) that I played for more than a month.

I didn't say Warcraft was overrated. I said I'm a Warcraft junkie. Meaning I really like the game and am a huge collector of the series.

Anyway, another overrated game is Metal Gear Solid 2: Son of Liberty. It Sucked you stupid fanboys!. There was no challenge. The game was so freakin' easy, and really damn boring. Also, I'm going to say it had the worst storyline in any game I've ever played.

[Eddy]

Originally Posted by SamNMax

Anyway, another overrated game is Metal Gear Solid 2: Son of Liberty. It Sucked you stupid fanboys!. There was no challenge. The game was so freakin' easy, and really damn boring. Also, I'm going to say it had the worst storyline in any game I've ever played.

That game wasn't overrated it was hated.
Every magzine said it was nothing compared too splintercel.
And ye can chose how easy you want the game.