My comments as far as HL2 are concerned are this I was never a large fan of the original. It got all the hype and I personally thought it was too linear and predictable. It had a decent storyline but then, so did the 2nd. I liked both of the games and I don't really have a preference, neither game held me that well... I quit playing both and didn't finish them until about a year later.
Deus Ex > Half-Life
Half-Life > Deus Ex: Invisible War
Oh egad yeah, Deus Ex was flawed in that department. Also they hadn't done their homework about the political philosophy; it's wrong right from the intro sequence.
I think my major obstacle to a Deus Ex review, though, is that I don't quite remember the details of it well enough. I remember what irritated me about it, though, was the way I would sneak up on someone, smash them full strength over the head with the baton, only to have them twirl around and shoot me. Compare Thief, where a decent sneaking gave you a guaranteed knockdown. It really just encouraged an all-guns approach. The learning curve was also broken- because you felt almost paraplegic at first, but acquired new skills quickly, the game was actually hardest at the start and easiest at the end. Don't get me wrong though, it was more good than bad. Not 100% my sort of game though, which is also why I start off with a bad attitude to Oblivion, just as with Morrowind before it.
Someone was working on a co-op conversion for DE. Never finished- shame, would have been great! System Shock II did it right in that department.
Originally posted by SmasandianHow was the combat flawed?
I liked Dues Ex alot, but one thing I have to say about that game, it didnt age very well. Im not talking from an graphics standpoint, I'm talking about the horrible combat it had.Great game, but not even close to Half Life.
It's by far my favourite FPS though. Storyline was amazing and it was far less linear than titles like Half Life... And I've never really noticed that a covert approach doesn't work.... But that's because I never use one. Probably why Thief just pissed me off, especially on levels where you can't kill anyone.
Yeah, headshoots are brutal in Deus Ex. I just recently played it and I would hit the guy in the head with an sniper bullet, and he would turn around run around in different directions.
Also, the combat is boring. The AI is brutal to a point where you just kill a guy and they start running around and then stop, and just sit there for a couple of minutes.
Deus Ex is considered a great game because of its exploration, depth of gameplay in terms of how you can accomplish missions, and overall good storyline. What makes an good game, but not great, and never considered to be HL equal is the horrible AI, and awful combat, both in melee and weapons. Those two catergories are huge to an FPS.
Originally posted by Smasandian
Yeah, headshoots are brutal in Deus Ex. I just recently played it and I would hit the guy in the head with an sniper bullet, and he would turn around run around in different directions.Also, the combat is boring. The AI is brutal to a point where you just kill a guy and they start running around and then stop, and just sit there for a couple of minutes.
Deus Ex is considered a great game because of its exploration, depth of gameplay in terms of how you can accomplish missions, and overall good storyline. What makes an good game, but not great, and never considered to be HL equal is the horrible AI, and awful combat, both in melee and weapons. Those two catergories are huge to an FPS.
Yeah, I see where you're going from now.... The game held me, I enjoy it to this day, so I still prefer it to HL. It had an awesome Mass_Spawn cheat as well.
CLASSIC REVIEW- FINAL FANTASY TACTICS (1997)
I actually played through this game a year ago at the tail end of my Final Fantasy review thread. I shall try my best to remember things as much as possible.
I came across this game more or less by mistake. No-one had told me it existed, and when I found out that it did and asked others about it, their main connection with the franchise was the GBA ‘sequel’, generally considered to be a much inferior game, so it was hard to get much feedback.
Well, let’s put any remaining ignorance to rest. Final Fantasy Tactics is a Final Fantasy game roughly contemporary with Final Fantasy VII. In many ways, it is a full on FF game, with all the epic plotting and what-not you would expect from one, and stuff like a party group and chocobos and what-not. It is also full of RPing elements and the equipment list familiar to players of FFs IV-VI and, for that matter, IX. So why is this not a ‘full’ Final Fantasy game, with numbers and what not?
It is because the battle sequences are squad-level tactical fights complete with grid-based character movement- in many ways a mini-wargame. It will be a vibe familiar to any players of the X-COM (UFO in America) games, or the ancient game Laser Squad… or even board games like Space Hulk…
The other difference is presentational. Whilst there are CGI intros and outros, FFT is far more similar in presentation to a SNES game than anything else (although the map are presented an a quasi 3-d perspective rather than top down), with no sweeping film-style connecting CGI sequences, all fitting on one CD where VII had to be squeezed into three (and indeed, the size of VII being the primary reason why Square jumped ship from Nintendo to Sony). Actually, there is quite a nice retro vibe in seeing the old sprite-based FF animations, similar to the entertainment gotten from seeing more ‘old-fashioned’ style games on handheld systems.
So, what to make of this Final Fantasy spin-off? Well, in short, I was mostly highly impressed.
The plot… actually, all FF plots have their complexities, but this one is really bad to remember after a year away from playing. But something should be made clear- the complexity of this plot is the complexity of a well-realised world with rather well defined political and religious motivations, not the complexity of simple innane babble like FFVIII.. The world is that of Ivalice, created for FFT but more recently seen again in FFXII, a game that I am not going to play for a long time! I don’t know how much it had changed in the latest FF, but here, although there are the inevitable touches of Magic and summonable beings and what-not, what we see is a medieval world (with the traditional FF hint of technology) which is essentially similar to Medieval Europe- rival countries, orders of Knights, Kings, rebels, many wars, and the overarching power of the church, a subject that the game has much to say about.
Difficult to talk about a ‘you’ in this game, as it is a much more party orientated game- you can hire new hands for your group in any town, and train them up as time goes by. Your favourite characters can easily have nothing to do with the plot, and many people that are essential to the plot are not really controlled by you at all, though they help you out in battle. But there is a central character, whose name is Ramza, who is the youngest son of a great and noble (and unfortunately by the start of the game very dead) Knight, starting off the game as a Squire determined to prove himself and emerge from the shadow of his elder brothers, who are already caught up in the deep political complexities we see in the game. Assigned to guard duties as part of his training, he spends the early part of the game twinned up with a much more arrogant trainee Knight who he becomes kind of friends with. He ends up having to fight the Rebels but is soon asking questions about whose side he should be on, leading in the end to a split with his best friend, and having to draw arms against the arrogant Knight who had been his other companion. Small wars become great wars become greater still... and it is difficult to remember the details but the conflict eventually becomes about the church and certain factors involving ‘demons’ and what-not. That’s not important though; the important bit is the emotional maturity of the plot which absolutely does not take sides- this is not a matter of “Knight realises he is fighting for the wrong side and joins the Rebels” because it soon becomes clear that the Rebels aren’t exactly good guys either. Nor are any of the other countries, or the Church, and it seems not even Ramza’s brothers. Ramza- and, presumably, his party- alone are trying to live up to the noble ideals of his father, but even this is presented as almost silly idealism in a world where only the practical succeed and good intentions alone won’t keep a populace safe.
This is pretty impressive stuff for Final Fantasy. I must say. It’s not that Final Fantasy has ever been short on plot detail, but it is normally ‘high’ drama, sweeping epics of amazing powers in vast godly backdrops… a similar kind of style to Star Wars. By comparison, FFT is exceptionally gritty and down to Earth. Much is made of Aeris’ death in FFVII, and very fairly for it was done with great drama. In FFT, the trick is to try and find anyone who is still alive by the end! Indeed, the set-up for the game is that it is a re-discovery of history, a person many centuries later on discovering the role Ramza played in the war of those times, and how the credit had been taken by someone else. As a final kicker in the game, the one person who does actually know the truth at the end of the game, and whose diaries form the basis for this centuries later re-discovery is, according to the game’s coda, put to death by the Church after the game because, basically, he knows too much. This is where most FF games end with enormous triumphant celebrations.
It’s not that all games have to be harsh and evil, because that can very quickly become tiresomely adolescent. But every approach has its place and the right and wrong way to do it, and it seems as if when making this game the makers thought “Can we get away with taking Final Fantasy in a different direction than we are used to?” And because this was a spin-off they had the freedom to do that, and to my mind they did it very well. Perhaps it is best that I cannot remember too much of the plot, because I would encourage any of you to give it a go and play through it yourself. It’s worth the effort.