ZylonBane on 17/7/2007 at 14:09

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Toast is made of bread.

cosmicnut on 17/7/2007 at 15:14

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The problem is money....
The games industry has gone from strength to strength. In the old days, a good game can make millions. The problem is, now, so can bad ones.

In the early days, games were programmed by enthusiasts. People who wanted to push the frontiers and see what was possible.

Today the publishers just want to push out as many games as they can.

In Ye olde days, you had say 10,000 gamers. A bad game would sell to 1% of them, i.e. 100. These days there are 1,000,000+ gamers, sell a bad game to 1% of them gives you 10000 games sold. These are pie in the sky figures of course but give you the idea. It's easy to make a bad game, even easier to sell an "Updated" game, like a sports title (game engines the same just new team rosters) and still earn millions. Why should the publishers pay for a good game when a bad game will still make them money.

You still have good ideas out there. Things like Bioshock but these are usually made by independant studios staffed by enthusiasts. The problem is that it costs so much money to make games like this that it's difficult to keep them going. One bad game / mistake can take down the company.

Personally I don't count Valve or ID as game makers anymore. They can make more money out of selling the engines than the do the games. HL2 and D3 were great visually but they seem to me to be more like engine demos (especially D3). They play well the first run through but once you've seen all the flashy cut scenes and got used to the new tricks, you may as well throw the disks away. SS1/SS2 are diffrerent. I still play them today even though I know the story by heart.

Lets hope Bioshock is a big hit and we see more games with this kind of potential

cosmicnut on 18/7/2007 at 07:37

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Actually Half Life 2 was the second game to be released using the source engine, well almost.
The game "Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines" was going to be the first, it used what was basically a beta version of the HL2 engine. Due to the slippage of HL2 it was almost release before it. However Valve realised this would be a bit embarassing for them and got activision to delay the release.
There were major problems with bloodlines though thanks to the beta engine. Ever see a strong, tough, immortal vampire that cant walk because he has a bady physiced coke can on his foot!

HL2 has a good story. I do replay it but I find myself going, "oh I hate this bit, I'll rush through it..." for most of the game. Episode 2 was better, fewer areas that looked like they were just showing off the engine

Kefren on 19/7/2007 at 13:29

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I had expected great things of HL2, but was disappointed that it was just as linear as HL1. That isn't always bad - I have played through HL1, Blue Shift, Opposing Force etc. loads of times - but no one can deny that there is no freedom. HL2 may have physics and so on, but it still had all the old-school silly touches, such as no inventory management (so you can lug around a whole stack of massive weapons - were they all strapped to Gordon's back?); lobbing a gland only for another to appear in your hand immediately etc.

I think I was most annoyed that I was full of questions, and the first time I met scientists etc I wanted to ask - 'is the whole world like this, or just this city? What happened?' But you aren't allowed to. It took away from the immersiveness that your character just acts like an autistic psychopath. And the ending was so annoyingly cheap that I wondered if I had just wasted all my time.

Give me Bloodlines any day!