Gaming

[Mercutio]

Short rant to follow -

Spent part of the day playing Unreal Tournament with my fiance.

It was a fun time.
Two things I noticed: 1.) I really miss co-op play in these games. As fun as it is to yell "Ha!" every time I blew up my girlfriend, what I really wanted was a game where we could work together. Camping leads to domestic tensions.
2.) UT supports surroundsound. Mostly, I've played Q3A, which is essentially has stereo sound. It was amazingly cool to hear a rocket pass behind my head. I hadn't spent much time playing UT but I found myself much more immersed in UT gameplay despite its simpler graphics.

This evening I went to an Office store with a computer games section. I didn't see anything better than UT or Q3A. No mention of coop play (although most games have network/deathmatch nowadays). Just title after title of pretty, soulless first-person titles.

That leads me to a couple of thoughts.

The first is that newer games have taken graphics and elevated them above any other aspect of development. I believe this is detrimental to the gaming experience.
The second is, why doesn't anybody make a fun coop game? Do I have to go back to Quake for a coop game?
The third is, multichannel audio is supported by just about everything. Why is UT the only game out there that actually uses it?

Here's to hoping someone makes a decent game sometime soon.

 

[i]

What's wrong with Team Fortress Classic (via Half-Life)? There're some great cooperative opportunities there. Even just two people working together on a team can have entertaining results.

 

[Handruin]

A while back Groltz and Clocker started a Serious Sam coop. I was about to join the fun but it never took off. Perhaps some time we should try to start up a coop of Serious Sam or Serious Sam II. The cost of the game is really cheap, in most cases you can find serious sam II for $14.95 USD. The best way to describe it is like Doom, but better.

Along the lines of Team Fortress classic, there is always the famous counter-strike. Counter-Strike has built in audio communication now, and I think it works fairly well. Aside from the problematic cheaters, the game can be fun to work as a team.

 

[i]

For the record, TFC includes voice communication now too ... I guess Valve added it as a component to Half-Life itself.

 

[Handruin]

That is definitely the reason. During one of their recent patches, they included the voice communication in the engine. my guess is that it was more for TFC, and TFII then for CS, but it benefited everyone.

 

[Clocker]

It's great in COunter-Strike.

 

[Groltz]

A while back Groltz and Clocker started a Serious Sam coop. I was about to join the fun but it never took off. Perhaps some time we should try to start up a coop of Serious Sam or Serious Sam II.

I would absolutely love to do that, but it won't be until I can afford broadband again. (Which may be a long time)

 

[Corvair]

. .
Hey Groltz,

I was looking at your avatar and was thinking that the image was something vaguely familiar. After a few minutes of dredging up some memories from the past, I recalled that your face image was part of the graphics from an LP from a cheezey punk-rock band that I heard a few times about 20 years ago, or so, called THE MISFITS.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . .

. .

 

[Groltz]

. .
Hey Groltz,

I was looking at your avatar and was thinking that the image was something vaguely familiar. After a few minutes of dredging up some memories from the past, I recalled that your face image was part of the graphics from an LP from a cheezey punk-rock band that I heard a few times about 20 years ago, or so, called THE MISFITS.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Good call, Gary. You're right on the money.

-Steve

 

[Mercutio]

I don't know why, but I thought "Serious Sam" was a half-joke/benchmark tool. Maybe 'cause the only place I saw a review was Old Man Murray? "The Serbian computer game" or somesuch.

Y'all are telling me there's really a "Serious Sam" game out there I can buy?

(a quick look at google show that I am, in fact, an idiot).

OK. I guess it does coop.

Looks pretty cartoonish, though. How is it for gameplay?

I never got into the half-life mods. Half Life itself was fun as a single-player game but the more successful mods (counterstrike, Team Fortress)all seem to need multiple 100MB downloads in order to function, and besides, Halflife's own deathmatch always seemed pretty lame to me.

 

[Cliptin]

Serious Sam has some steep requirements IIRC.

I mostly play (when I play) AOEII, Rainbow Six - Urban Operations, Ghost Recon.

Ghost Recon is much better than any Halflife based game/mod. You don't bounce around the screen like Mario with a gun. You can lie prone. It is half-half reflexes/strategy rather than all reflexes and net connection. It is slower paced in general and reduces the equipment list down to a longarm, a small arm and two other pieces of kit.

You can peek around corners and in GR you can lie prone. There is a WW2 mod that I am playing right now.

OTOH, the wife of my cousin likes DiabloII and Balders Gate along with most of the Civ type games. If it means anything she is a pediatrician. :wink:

 

[CougTek]

Serious Sam has some steep requirements IIRC.

It runs just fine in 800x600x16bit colors on my Athlon 500MHz + TNT2 graphic card. Like most games, you can play even on a moderate system, you'll simply miss some features.

 

[Mercutio]

The slowest windows machine in my apartment is 950MHz/512MB/Voodoo3 (and steps up to 1.2GHz, and whatever an XP1700+ actually is). I'll probably be moving the V3s in to ATI 7500s, or 8500s if the price ever drops to around $100/card, over the next 6 months.
So system requirements probably aren't a big deal.

Is Serious Sam actually 3D, or is it sprite-based, like Doom? It doesn't look 3D from the shot's I've seen.

Personally I always like strategy games like Master of Magic, Civilization and Alpha Centauri. I don't care for the frantic pacing of C&C (Blizzard's titles just suck, sorry Doug). Things like that, and games like Baldur's Gate (which was cool, and does do co-op, but it's the same as the single-player game), just take too long to play on multiplay, unfortunately.

I like the various "BattleTech" titles, too - Mechwarrior, MechCommander Those would be orgasmically cool if MS would either make the games more like the arcade simulators at Dave and Buster's (for those who don't know, Chicago, and a couple other cities, have Virtual Reality Battletech pods. The graphics are kind of dated now, but you're surrounded by screens, speakers, and you have radio communication with your "squad". Total immersion) or move to total realism with better weather and terrain, modeling of buildings and trees etc. MW4 didn't do either - it turned into "deathmatching with mechs", which I found unsatisfying. Anyway, that sort of game screams for squad-type co-op play and, well, I just haven't seen it done right (the battletech universe could handle a really thorough MMORPG, too. Wish someone would do that).

I really like Worms, too. The rules are unbelievably simple and you can be a decent player without any particular coordination or strategy in play. Amy and I play Worms2 a lot.

Another co-op game I think would be really cool would be a naval- or space-based sim with each player on a "team" representing a member of the bridge crew. The guy on "command" would be playing a game of resource allocation and strategy, while someone in engineering or EW might find a game of logic and deduction, and the guy in fire control gets a shooter. PCs used to have pretty cool submarine sims. This would be a step more. Just a random thought.

I posted something on SR a couple weeks ago about Descent. Just fired it up again for old time's sake. I love the "six degrees of freedom" thing. What a wild ride it is to do barrel-rolls through an xyz-twisty passage, blazing away, then on to a well executed slide to catch everything off guard. Make it through the first half-dozen levels of Descent, and you feel like you've accomplished something. Descent is hard enough that you really want co-op play. I don't even think it's possible to beat the end boss in the original version of descent with just one player.

There's a lot of other people's favorites I've never played. Age of Empires, nope, nor the Rogue Spear games. Never played CS or TFC, either.

Any suggestions for where to spend some money?

 

[timwhit]

Is Serious Sam actually 3D, or is it sprite-based, like Doom? It doesn't look 3D from the shot's I've seen.

It is actually 3D. It has some really good graphics also. The engine used in Serious Sam is incredible, with hundreds of enemies on the screen at the same time.

Pick up a copy it's good for at least 10 hours of gameplay, and it hardly costs anything.

 

[James]

I second the recommendation of Serious Sam... it's a return to the uncomplicated days of Doom - a great blast.

 

[Handruin]

I just saw this link over at Icrontic:

http://www.gameport.cz/r-art.asp?id=1020408815&t=gameport

It looks like there may be a sim city 4 coming our way. I've always liked the simcity series, even if it gets old quick.

 

[HellDiver]

You can peek around corners and in GR you can lie prone. There is a WW2 mod that I am playing right now.

A WW2 mod for GR or R6/UO?
Either way - were do I find it?!?

 

[Sol]

I have to agree with Mercutios initial sentiments, co-op is a sadly lacking feaure in most new games. I remember the fun of finishing Doom in a sitting with a mate and a null modem cable.

Serious Sam is probably the only FPS which still has that kind of cooperative play. And as much fun as it is to light your team mates on fire(so you can find them easily) and expend truly insane amounts of ammo, and then play toriadore with a gigantic bull and a chainsaw(cause you have no more ammo), eventually I tend to want somthing more.

For multiplayer co-op action I always quite liked the Diablo games.
Not particularly special in the graphics department, but a bit of fun none the less.
For a more modern version of the same thing I would have to recomend Microsofts Dungeon Siege. Sure its a rip off of just about every game in its genre, but by god did they rip off all the right bits.
The graphics are very pretty and it will supposedly run on a 333Mhz system.

Of course there is always the option of playing UT co-op against bots.

 

[NRG = mc²]

Try Operation Flashpoint. Its very fun but only if played multiplayer. The game is very buggy I think, I've run into problems getting it to work properly and at decent speed on several systems, random reboots (doesn't like most of the Detonator drivers though all other games play fine)...

 

[adriel]

JK2

 

[timwhit]

So Merc, did you ever get around to picking up a copy of Serious Sam?

 

[Cliptin]

You might be interested in Mindrover. It's challenging. :wink:

 

[Mercutio]

I've been playing Mechwarrior4, actually. Mechwarrior2 was by far the best in the series but Amy and I have worked through about a third of the single-player missions in network play. At least it's co-op.

I ran out to the places I normally buy games. Couldn't find Serious Sam. Billions of copies of Counter-strike and Roller Coaster Tycoon and the Sims, though. I wish Tropico would drop under $20. That's a game I wouldn't mind trying, either.

The other game I'm having a good time with is a simple little Windows game called Snood.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

The Syrian Kamikaze in Serious Sam are amazing... :lol:

 

[Sol]

JK2

Can't beat a good lightsaber fight.
Also the detail in this game is awesome, rain hitting your lightsaber makes a little flash and a hiss and there are sparks when it hits a wall very cool.

 

[flagreen]

After seeing i's new avitar, I am very glad his name is not Dick.