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Gears of War

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ajay Joined: 29 Oct 2004 Posts: 295 Location: Swindon, UK |

Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 7:03 pm Post subject: Gears of War |

Hi chaps, long time no post. Anyway life and games (Oblivion, Dead Rising, Doom on xbox live arcade), though mostly life, have kept me away from Quake for a while. Soon Gears of War is getting released, I'm kinda keen on it, anyone else? Plus, as id have said they're releasing more games on live arcade after the success of Doom, I was wondering whether, there might be a chance that (apart from the obvious Wolfenstien) Quake might get the lvie arcade treatment. Each arcade game needs to be a 50mb max download, but Quake could just creep under that I reckon.
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leileilol Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 1321 |

Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 9:47 pm Post subject: |

So far the only thing Gears of War brings is just another pretty game. I'm sick of "pretty" games. _________________

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Quake Matt Joined: 05 Jun 2005 Posts: 129 |

Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 10:14 pm Post subject: |

Yeah, I'm seriously hyped about Gears. Partly because it's the first SP game from Epic for a while, and I loved Unreal almost as much as Quake, and because it's running on UE3, which I'm terribly interested in. Also, we're yet to get a good futuristic shooter on the 360! The latest trailer's almost convinced me to make a preorder - something I've never done before...

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Plus, as id have said they're releasing more games on live arcade after the success of Doom, I was wondering whether, there might be a chance that (apart from the obvious Wolfenstien) Quake might get the lvie arcade treatment. Each arcade game needs to be a 50mb max download, but Quake could just creep under that I reckon.

Yeah, I've been wondering about this too. It'd fit the 50mb easily enough with a bit of squishing, and I'd much rather see Quake than something like Doom 2 or Wolfenstein. At first I thought it might be too fast to be played with a pad, but Doom works well enough, so it shouldn't be a problem.

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leileilol Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 1321 |

Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2006 12:27 am Post subject: |

Quake can probably be pre-compressed to 35mb without trouble. They need to put up Doom 2 first though _________________

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scar3crow Inside3D Staff Joined: 18 Jan 2005 Posts: 837 Location: Las Vegas, NV

Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2006 4:06 am Post subject: |

iirc LordHavoc said that Quake can go down to the 35meg range if it uses pk3s rather than paks. I too am sick of pretty games. Gears of War could be fun fairly fun however, its shotgun and machineguns seem to have good feels and the world reacts well to such - the question is whether or not its actually a railshooter.
They speak of Quake and Doom as mindless... I dont think games were mindless for the most part until now. Linearity has championed the cause of the low standard player who merely wants to be distracted.

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ajay Joined: 29 Oct 2004 Posts: 295 Location: Swindon, UK |

Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2006 8:11 pm Post subject: |

CheapAlert wrote:
So far the only thing Gears of War brings is just another pretty game. I'm sick of "pretty" games.

My opinion on "prettiness" in games is this: visuals are important to video games as they are a visual medium, although sound, etc plays a part in creating the mood, realism and story, the visuals are just as important in games as they are in films.
To renounce increasing "prettiness" as unimportant is a short-sighted as renouncing old games as crap beacuse they're 2d. Visuals are important, prettiness is nice and to say whether or not Gears is a vacuous or prettiness-only piece of work is impossible until you've played it. I think it's definitely promising and a slightly new take on shooters, nothing outstandingly original, 3rd person position similar to Resi4 for instance but crafted together well and it looks extremely entertaining. I could be wrong, but I won't dismiss it out of hand just becasue it's as pretty as anything to be released thus far in video gaming.
As for it being on rails, well I don't expect it to be up there with Far Cry or GTA for sandboxness (TM me) but I also don't expect it to be unentertaining as a result.
Surely at the end of the day it doesn't matter how linear or on rails a game is, whether it's 3d or 2d, or 3rd person or 1st person, bumpmapped or flat texured - it's whether it's fun. Graphic splender can't make it fun, but it can draw you into an atmosphere and an environment while you have it. Fun, that is. "Prettiness" surely doesn't stop it being fun.
Remember many people denounced Quake at the time for having all 3d monsters losing the Doom feel and numbers of sprites. Didn't make Quake a bad game.
All that I've seen about Gears makes me feel positive, that we've apparently not seen a huge amount of the single-player content, monsters, story arcs etc, is encouraging.
On the subject of Quake I've been chatting to some 360 users, all were extremely positive about having it, we even got into a discussion about using mods, but didn't feel it'd be facilitated.
One even said he had "Insider Information" that it would be coming, and was planned. I dismissed this as BS, but it would be cool. Easy achievements for me!
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leileilol Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 1321 |

Posted: Sun Oct 29, 2006 12:42 am Post subject: |

Visuals aren't important if under the hood plays like another unimaginary, uninspired cookie cutter. See: Just Cause, Half-Life 2, etc. _________________

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scar3crow Inside3D Staff Joined: 18 Jan 2005 Posts: 837 Location: Las Vegas, NV

Posted: Sun Oct 29, 2006 6:07 pm Post subject: |

Ajay - I think youre confusing 2 things, cutting edge graphics, and art design. Games looks good and communicate through the visual medium well for their art design. Art design is why Quake still looks good in its own way, its why Blood still looks good at 320x240 and its why old Castlevania games in their own right still look good. Because the artwork is there. It has nothing to do with depth of field, HDR, fragment shaders or even colored lighting.
I myself am not dismissing Gears of War, but only because Ive seen gameplay footage and it looks potentially fun - but I wasnt interested in it before when all they advertised was graphical features. The simple fact is that most developers are more excited about their rendering features than they are about the games themselves. Watch the video for Crysis or however theyre spelling it, it is a demo of them putting physics on more things, not on the gameplay. "Look we can blow up this house" "Well kind of, youre not breaking any pieces, but I want to see you do that in gameplay somehow, not just show me your physics engine." Game developers have stopped proselytizing the public with what makes their game fun and have switched to seduction via buzzwords of graphical features.
I dont consider FarCry to be non-linear. There is still for the most part just one way to finish a level, a path they want you to take. Then they fill the surrounding area with random trees and terrain, and stick 2 guys out of the way to make it feel like something else. And if you dare adventure beyond the tiny island, mystery helicopters teleport in and nuke you. No, it's on rails, theyre just a little less visible.

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Surely at the end of the day it doesn't matter how linear or on rails a game is, ..... it's whether it's fun.

Depends on whether you want to have fun more than once, or different fun for trying something new. Im not going to pay $50 for a movie, because it is going to be the same thing, I will pay $20 if I really like it, but more than likely I will wait for it to go to $10. After beating Half Life, there is very little reason to play it again. Hell in Quake you could replay the same level different ways, because the cool moments werent reliant upon scripted events, but simply happened as a consequence of the game logic and good level design (something that has been lost, level design is now a technical skill, not an art). It was also before they filled the maps with clip brushes preventing any alternative routes because they couldnt plan an actual level flow that wasnt entirely arbitrary.

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"Prettiness" surely doesn't stop it being fun.

Right you are. But understand that a lot of us are getting tired of the graphics game being played, and would simply like to play something fun again. Im waiting for Hellgate London, those guys intentionally didnt use the latest rendering because they dont want to have framerates compromised by some silly effect when it could be better spent rendering a group of enemies, also a lot of them worked on Diablo/2, a team that understands consistent artwork and creative artwork that jives well works a lot better.
That is the reason there is no point in playing a Valve game more than once, and also why it now looks terrible on top of not being fun anymore.
Pushing the graphics envelope is fine, and Gears of War could be a fun game, but the industry as a whole should really give gameplay another chance, it worked for 20 years before hand... Why not make use of it now?

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ajay Joined: 29 Oct 2004 Posts: 295 Location: Swindon, UK |

Posted: Sun Oct 29, 2006 8:36 pm Post subject: |

I don't believe I am confusing them. I've looked at an awful lot of media for Gears of War, and feel it has both "cutting edge gfx" and great art design. Video games are a visual medium and both are benefical to the end user, no they should never be instead of gameplay, but they, in my opinion can enhance an already good game.
My beef with CheapAlert's first post was that it was dismissive of the game merely because of it's prettiness - which I think is as narrow-minded as people dismissing games like Quake, Blood etc because they're not.
Yes, Gears could be lacking in gameplay, so dump on it when it comes out and people have played, don't look at it's bumpmapped everything, HDR and depth of field and then dismiss it without knowing how well (or not) it plays.
I agree with all your points about gameplay+fun <-> gfx, I just don't think they're mutually exclusive. The two games I'm playing at the moment; Oblivion and Doom (live arcade version) are proofyou can, in the first instance, have both gfx and gameplay and in the second, that you can, by today's "standards" have poor gfx and great gaming
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scar3crow Inside3D Staff Joined: 18 Jan 2005 Posts: 837 Location: Las Vegas, NV

Posted: Sun Oct 29, 2006 8:43 pm Post subject: |

Sorry, your response just gave me the impression that you were. My contention is not with Gears of War, simply because the gameplay footage for it does actually look fun (grenades, shotguns, chainsaws, machineguns with good feedback are a way to my heart).
They can enhance a good game, very true. I just dont see many of those these days and in fact see good gameplay sacrificed to push graphics - it has hit the point that if one of the opening statements about a game is how good it looks, I do tend to approach it more carefully because it communicates "they dont have much to say about the actual game".
Beef away, like I said, I actually think GoW looks kind of neat - but not because of the graphics.
Poor graphics is relative, in 5 years Crysis and Oblivion will be "ugly" and the only thing that can possibly save them is the art design in making the world look good outside of resolution and features. Doom to me is proof that a game can look good, regardless of technology, and have great gameplay. Doom's graphics arent bad, they never were bad, in fact they were once amazing and great. Graphics arent bad, theyre merely on a timeline. It's the art that does it for me.

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