AxTng1 on 22/2/2006 at 00:01
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
There's a surprising amount of detail packed into that little map....
Yeah, you can run around in circles clockwise OR anti-clockwise, as well as using the buggy vision aug to check out some phat placeholders!
OK, so you can deal with the actual rescue attempt in a few ways (the easiest one being assassinate her yourself then ghost out), but even that small map has possibilities... the only way in is through the sewer pipe. What about the surrounding mountains? Perfect Karkian territory. Add to these limitations the fact that is is ludicrously difficult to actually save her without extensive FPS experience and the map becomes something I would warp through if it didn't mess up the triggers.
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
Sandra didn't just vanish into thin air when she walked out on her father, she was out there in the world, doing her thing.
Except when she didn't appear for any of about 5 different reasons. I never saw her until my 4th playthrough.
demagogue on 22/2/2006 at 01:01
Well, while I agree the gas station level was very fun from a gameplay perspective ... I have to say it was the one level that broke the immersion for me, since it was just *too* tagential to what I wanted to be doing to feel like I was "making progress", too coincidental that I'd be the one to go out and rescue her and the trouble with her would start right then. And for me this level was the one level which broke the thread of a tight, self-consistent story-line that made the rest of the levels just a game (although still a very good one) after that point, and less a unified story that I was interactively a part of.
I know, I know, that thread was already seriously frayed long before that level ... the tightness of the core narrative-thread which the game so amazingly starts with probably breaks down somewhere around Hong Kong, but the gas station is where it finally hit me: come on, what am I doing here?? This is just gratuitous... they put me here and threw in this character's problem just to give me a reason to shoot this, shoot that, go in here ... Not that previous levels didn't do that, but the illusion had either been so good up until then, or the off-beat tangents were at least part of some underlying narrative-thread going in the same direction (I could always before at least give myself some credible answer to the questions "why am I here?" or "what brought me here?" or "how does *this* advance the story?"), that the constructedness of the whole thing didn't really strike me until that level (so it's a personal feeling; hopefully that disclaimer is enough to ZB-proof it). And of course, after the gas station it just breaks down into all sorts of zanyness so that the thread can never recover (so the gas station wasn't the one that broke the immersion the most, but for me it's the one that did it the first).
ps, I thought of the gas station after reading just the first post and for just this reason, before I even read any of the other posts. So I'm not just trying to be a dissenter.
Jashin on 22/2/2006 at 01:43
Quote Posted by AxTng1
Yeah, you can run around in circles clockwise OR anti-clockwise, as well as using the buggy vision aug to check out some phat placeholders!
OK, so you can deal with the actual rescue attempt in a few ways (the easiest one being assassinate her yourself then ghost out), but even that small map has possibilities... the only way in is through the sewer pipe. What about the surrounding mountains? Perfect Karkian territory. Add to these limitations the fact that is is ludicrously difficult to actually save her without extensive FPS experience and the map becomes something I would warp through if it didn't mess up the triggers.
You don't have to save her.
Regardless, it's an one hour rescue. The central california map serves the purpose contextually. Go in soft, get out loud and hard, the end. The game switches gear, I'm down with that. Besides at that point in the game anyone would have the FPS experience to extract her, it's just more fun to do it with the jump aug for me.
Quote:
Except when she didn't appear for any of about 5 different reasons. I never saw her until my 4th playthrough.
She appears/doesn't appear as a result of your actions. What's not to like?
HamburgerBoy on 22/2/2006 at 03:34
*POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD*
Aside from the Versalife missions (which were awesome), I don't really like the Hong Kong level. The Helibase was pretty boring and takes about two minutes to finish once you've played it once. The actual market area is short too. There's a lot of people to talk to and little things to do, but at the core it is very short. Steal the sword, talk to Max, talk to Gordon, then talk to Tracer and you've completed a vast majority of the level. The canals were boring and mostly empty with very few things to do. On top of all that, the Hong Kong level is very important to the storyline, despite the developers doing a pretty lame job on it.
I never really cared for the Ocean Lab either. At first it is pretty neat, with you sneaking into the base, soldiers patrolling everywhere, and you having to steal a submarine. Once you actually arrive underwater the gameplay seems to slip. To be honest, I don't really know why. Maybe it's the lack of action or the fact that you engage in only two conversations, one of which was rather short.
ZylonBane on 22/2/2006 at 03:37
Quote Posted by HamburgerBoy
*POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD*
:rolleyes:
HamburgerBoy on 22/2/2006 at 05:39
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
:rolleyes:
This isn't the spoiler forum and thus I don't want someone complaining about what little information I may have given.
Womble on 22/2/2006 at 08:52
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
Now the Gas Station, that's one of my favorites. Probably because I can load up the save game and finish it in less than 15 minutes. Makes for a nice quick DX fix.
There's a surprising amount of detail packed into that little map. You can crawl around the garage roof and rafters, loot the crashed van, bust into that maintenance shack, and approach the hostage around the back, the front, or drop in from above. Heck, it took me until the fourth or fifth playthrough to discover the cache inside that tanker truck!
Even without all that it would still be worth it just for bumping into Sandra Renton again. It was one of those little details that helped tie DX's world together into a cohesive whole. Sandra didn't just vanish into thin air when she walked out on her father, she was out there in the world, doing her thing.
I loved that level. Reminded me alot of Thief, though I guess it depends how you play it. Granted, that level doesn't really add much, it's just the level design I like about it.
Kuja on 22/2/2006 at 08:58
The canal area. Sure, it's got bits and pieces for you to do, but the whole dark, spooky atmosphere in the whole level was wasted due to the fact that there were only two enemies which pretty much forewarn you they are going to attack - also, both of them can be lead back to the two policemen for a light roasting, which makes combat ridiculously easy. If the policemen weren't there and there were a few ambushes in the dark parts or something it would've added to the atmosphere quite a bit ... :D
Dr. Dumb_lunatic on 22/2/2006 at 11:05
What about the karkians?
Anyway, it's an area in the middle of a prosperous city: is it really supposed to be swarming with bad-guys?
Rogue Keeper on 23/2/2006 at 15:30
Liberty Island.
Not that I really dislike it, it's just tedious. I usually run through it as fast as possible to more interesting levels.
