The PC Thread (Games, Viruses, BSOD etc).....................

[fog]

lmao  Quality review Eric 

not sure if it's any good, but here's what I found:
http://www.customplaygames.com/

Thanks.  I'd actually seen that while searching Amazon and really fancied it until I read the slating reviews which made Eric's efforts sound mild

After much searching and reading various forums, it appears there are no recent golf games with editors which are any good.

Annoyingly the new Tiger Woods has the same number of courses as last years effort which is more than a bit crap IMO.  Especially when you know they'll soon be releasing more through DLC that you'll have to pay for.  The evil face of DLC 

[EricT]

Well... Spore leaked. And I am enjoying it. Glad I preordered it now, was starting to have my worries about it.

[EricT]

Getting happier with this every bit more I play...

Spoilers:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Essentially, the while you evolve, the game sort of goes through these different stages of gameplay style. The first stage is like a 2d style arcadish thing, then it goes to a more RPG styled gameplay when you get on land for the first time, then after that stage, you hit the tribal stage, which I am on, which is an RTS of some sort. Your creatures now have adapted, they have buildings and shit like that, you can build buildings and other stuff... create a new unit, etc. All throughout the stages you have the choice to do things however you want. Me, I'm a kill em all style of player. I sees it, I kill it. Especially babies.

I can't wait to see what happens in the farther stages of the game.

[fog]

Ah good call mate.  I didn't even realise Spore was out this week. 

Your spoiler is the first I've read about how the game evolves and it's not quite what I was expecting.  Rather than distinct different game styles I'd assumed your creatures just gained different abilities as you went along.  I'll be interested to see how that all hangs together or whether it actually feels like several seperate disjointed games.

[EricT]

Ah good call mate.  I didn't even realise Spore was out this week. 

Your spoiler is the first I've read about how the game evolves and it's not quite what I was expecting.  Rather than distinct different game styles I'd assumed your creatures just gained different abilities as you went along.  I'll be interested to see how that all hangs together or whether it actually feels like several seperate disjointed games.

It's not out till next week... early leak.

Well:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The first 2 stages of the game is where you're dealing with the evolution and abilities of the creatue. The 3rd stage has some of this, but through the use of more apparel like objects. 4th stage is where things become less about the creature itself, and more about it's civilzation. You start designing buildings and vehicles instead. and Either completely destroying and taking over other cities that develop, or allying, or a mix of both. I am now on the space stage, the world is mine and I am moving out to space. Colonization of planets with your creatures, terra-forming, etc. Everything you'd expect from Will Wright, essentially.

The reason I'm putting those in spoiler tags is, of course, that a lot of people want to experience this game for themselves, and have been waiting, so I don't want to spoil their experience.

[TheKhakinator]

Did it leak? It's on sale in EB here.

[fog]

Did it leak? It's on sale in EB here.

Yeah it's out already in a couple of places.

In other not exactly surprising news, it's already been cracked and people who have bought the proper game are complaining about problems getting theirs to run because of the copy protection (Securerom IIRC).  Ha, Good job EA.

[EricT]

Yep... more classic securom bullshit. I'll use the crack when my actual copy comes in. EA can go do something almost unmentionable to themselves... listen to Katy Perry.

[EricT]

So, I take back a lot of the good I said about spore. Space section? SNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE. It was fun for the first hour or so, but after that? It's unreasonably confusing to find missions that you're given. Go to this star system, which is 20 parceks from Blarnibob... "ok, so where the f**k is Blarnibob?". No notification of where it is. And this is what your map looks like:


.. ............ l................. ..........
 .         ..
....            .     ........ .................
.

Just a bunch of dots. And don't think you're jumping from a dot you are to something more than 2 "parceks"... No, you have to click on each little dot on the way. EACH AND EVERY ONE. So when you finally find your destination in the map, you have to sit for 20 f**king minutes clicking on little f**king dots. f**king UGH.

So after an hour of looking and another 30 minutes of clicking, you finally find Blarnibob, and then find the star system... and your mission is to scan all life forms. Somehow, I always end up missing a lifeform. Can't get them all. Spend an hour circling over the system, and I just can't figure it out. Give up on that... go try something else, and it's more of the same.

Just UGH. This is REALLY bad design on Will Wrights part.

Total 180 this game took.

And then the battles in space section. UGH... bad targetting, bad controls of the space ship... Just, UGH.

This game would have been a great one had it not been for this section. Of course, it's the longest section with the most (needless) goals to complete it. I honestly have no will to do it.

[fog]

Wow.  I guess the more different ideas you cram into a game the more chance there is that one of them will turn out to be shit and detract from all the good ones.

In other news I finally got around to trying the Titan Quest demo and really enjoyed it.  Again though there was one tiny thing that started to grind on me almost immediately and it's something a lot of RPG's suffer from.  I soon got bloody sick of collecting every item I found, spending ages rearranging my inventory so everything would fit (what a really shit idea) and then trecking all the way back to the merchant to sell them.  I assume you either get a bigger inventory or collecting stuff for cash soon becomes unnecessary as otherwise that's a game killer for me.  Otherwise the combat which I had concerns about was borderline repetitive, but the different types of weapons and magic look like they will stop that getting too boring.

[las6]

Wow.  I guess the more different ideas you cram into a game the more chance there is that one of them will turn out to be shit and detract from all the good ones.

In other news I finally got around to trying the Titan Quest demo and really enjoyed it.  Again though there was one tiny thing that started to grind on me almost immediately and it's something a lot of RPG's suffer from.  I soon got bloody sick of collecting every item I found, spending ages rearranging my inventory so everything would fit (what a really shit idea) and then trecking all the way back to the merchant to sell them.  I assume you either get a bigger inventory or collecting stuff for cash soon becomes unnecessary as otherwise that's a game killer for me.  Otherwise the combat which I had concerns about was borderline repetitive, but the different types of weapons and magic look like they will stop that getting too boring.

Well, collecting stuff for cash does get unnecessary the moment you'd actually have enough money to buy the stuff that all the vendors try to sell you. Good news is that a) you can use portals (I think the shorcut key was 'L') to travel to cities and back. Saves quite a bit of time. And b) there are multiple keys for "filtering" items that lie on the ground based on their value - so you can simply pick up all the good stuff. (It was either 'x' or 'alt') ...

[fog]

Wow.  I guess the more different ideas you cram into a game the more chance there is that one of them will turn out to be shit and detract from all the good ones.

In other news I finally got around to trying the Titan Quest demo and really enjoyed it.  Again though there was one tiny thing that started to grind on me almost immediately and it's something a lot of RPG's suffer from.  I soon got bloody sick of collecting every item I found, spending ages rearranging my inventory so everything would fit (what a really shit idea) and then trecking all the way back to the merchant to sell them.  I assume you either get a bigger inventory or collecting stuff for cash soon becomes unnecessary as otherwise that's a game killer for me.  Otherwise the combat which I had concerns about was borderline repetitive, but the different types of weapons and magic look like they will stop that getting too boring.

Well, collecting stuff for cash does get unnecessary the moment you'd actually have enough money to buy the stuff that all the vendors try to sell you. Good news is that a) you can use portals (I think the shorcut key was 'L') to travel to cities and back. Saves quite a bit of time. And b) there are multiple keys for "filtering" items that lie on the ground based on their value - so you can simply pick up all the good stuff. (It was either 'x' or 'alt') ...

Cheers for that.  I guess the inventory juggling thing is a bit like Oblivion in that you start off picking up everything as you scrape together as much money as you can, but you soon end up with more cash than you can possibly spend.

Anyway I checked the instructions for those keypresses and now my head is spinning.  How can a game where the combat is about as complicated as continually pressing the mouse button possibly use so many keys?  I know some people complain about modern console joypads have too many buttons, but it appears PC game designers panic if they haven't mapped something to every key on the keyboard.  Is it any wonder the PC gaming market is in decline?  How they ever attract new gamers is beyond me.

[las6]

How can a game where the combat is about as complicated as continually pressing the mouse button possibly use so many keys?

You might try running into a group of enemies holding shift and then just holding the mouse button down. (You might need to click each enemy once)

and I know what you mean about the controls, but there's another side to it - customization. PC gamers are used to being able to have shortcut keys to just about everything and having at least 3 ways to do the same thing. And then being able to change those 3 ways to something completely different.

[fog]

How can a game where the combat is about as complicated as continually pressing the mouse button possibly use so many keys?

You might try running into a group of enemies holding shift and then just holding the mouse button down. (You might need to click each enemy once)

and I know what you mean about the controls, but there's another side to it - customization. PC gamers are used to being able to have shortcut keys to just about everything and having at least 3 ways to do the same thing. And then being able to change those 3 ways to something completely different.

lol.  Yeah customization is a good thing.

It's just that with very limited gaming time ATM I just look at a long list of controls and think "can I really be bothered?"  I probably don't even need to know what most of the keys do, but it's enough to put me off.

[EricT]

Once you know which functions are useful and which aren't, it gets pretty simple. Most Action-RPG's have that sorta "holy shit, buttons!" approach, but half of the functions are shit only the really hardcore players use.