November 2024 General Gaming Discussion Thread

[Johnway]

Did anyone here jump into Half-Life 2 after the new update and the game being free this weekend? I highly recommend picking it up.

Gabe Newell ponders the future in new Half-Life 2 documentary: 'I think that Half-Life represents a tool we have and promises made to customers'

Newell wants Valve to "capitalize on innovation and opportunities to build game experiences that haven't been involved previously."

www.pcgamer.com

The biggest thing i love about this update is that they added a "commentary mode" to the game where they added bubbles for you to click on and listen to the original Half-Life 2 crew talk about making the game. Its actually cool and something id love to see other games do. I emailed gabe like it said and told him so lol.

I say grab it, even if you dont play FPS

i got Half life 2 with the orange box so probably not relevant to me. its aged, but god damn it was a fantastic game back in its day. First to introduce physics puzzles and pretty much made them defacto gaming royalty after steam was set up.


I echo the same opinion. if you haven't got or played Half life 2, get it for free. NOW.

 

[Frindis]

I tried a couple of hours in HL2 yesterday with all the settings on max. Visually, the game is still good looking and I am not joking when I say that some of the facial animation in that game looks better than games made today. Then there is the physics. Still amazing and super advanced for its time. I have not gotten the gravity gun yet, so I am not sure if you could rotate the object back then in real time. I vaguely remember Oblivion being one of the first games where you could rotate the object you picked up in real-time, instead of having a still frame where you could rotate the object like you could in older puzzle games for example.

The dev commentary so far has been good. They go quite in-depth into the different areas of the game. Just in one small square, there could be more than 6-7 question markers for you to interact with. If the whole game is like this, it is quite an impressive job! I appreciate the way they go into different aspects of storytelling and character development and how they bring up the different testers' reactions to the environment in the game. How some testers might do something that would break the game and how they had to balance what needed to be fixed and what to be ignored.

I will say this though, the one thing I do miss from the dev commentary is an interaction between the devs. In Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Director's Cut, most of the time the commentaries would be between two or more developers, laughing, arguing a bit, and having a good time. In HL2, It is one person (at least so far two hours in) reading from a script/anecdote. So while it is still very interesting to learn more about HL2, I wish there could be banter between the devs, preventing some of the commentaries from feeling a bit monotone.

 

[BeardyHat]

Did anyone here jump into Half-Life 2 after the new update and the game being free this weekend? I highly recommend picking it up.

Gabe Newell ponders the future in new Half-Life 2 documentary: 'I think that Half-Life represents a tool we have and promises made to customers'

Newell wants Valve to "capitalize on innovation and opportunities to build game experiences that haven't been involved previously."

www.pcgamer.com

The biggest thing i love about this update is that they added a "commentary mode" to the game where they added bubbles for you to click on and listen to the original Half-Life 2 crew talk about making the game. Its actually cool and something id love to see other games do. I emailed gabe like it said and told him so lol.

I say grab it, even if you dont play FPS

I want to!

Actually wouldn't mind replaying the entire series again, but I'm not sure that'll happen.

But, with the added commentary, it might be a good excuse for my wife and I to go through 2 again and listen to all of it.

A couple of weeks ago, Call to Arms: Gates of Hell - Ostfront released a new DLC, the US Airborne, which I ended-up picking up immediately, if only to support the developers. It adds US Airborne (duh) and a campaign based on Band of Brothers, which I only recently watched (around April this year). The missions have been quite fun so far and fairly challenging, though I've made it through most of them so far playing on Normal with minimal save scumming.

If I have one complaint, it's that it doesn't set the difficulty of the campaign overall, but instead, each mission defaults to Easy. I just beat a mission this morning, only to realize at the very end that it was actually on Easy. I find this to be somewhat annoying, as I need to quit out of every new mission and then start a "new" campaign on the new map at the correct difficulty.

That said, it's given me a renewed thirst for my World War 2 wargame I love. Due to it, I finally ordered my new rulebook I needed (first rules update in about 8 years or so) and am now feeling eager to start my repainting project on my US Infantry, which are far from the standard I painted my British 8th army to. That said, I have a couple other painting projects standing in the way that need to be finished first, unfortunately.

 

[Johnway]

I want to!

Actually wouldn't mind replaying the entire series again, but I'm not sure that'll happen.

But, with the added commentary, it might be a good excuse for my wife and I to go through 2 again and listen to all of it.

A couple of weeks ago, Call to Arms: Gates of Hell - Ostfront released a new DLC, the US Airborne, which I ended-up picking up immediately, if only to support the developers. It adds US Airborne (duh) and a campaign based on Band of Brothers, which I only recently watched (around April this year). The missions have been quite fun so far and fairly challenging, though I've made it through most of them so far playing on Normal with minimal save scumming.

If I have one complaint, it's that it doesn't set the difficulty of the campaign overall, but instead, each mission defaults to Easy. I just beat a mission this morning, only to realize at the very end that it was actually on Easy. I find this to be somewhat annoying, as I need to quit out of every new mission and then start a "new" campaign on the new map at the correct difficulty.

That said, it's given me a renewed thirst for my World War 2 wargame I love. Due to it, I finally ordered my new rulebook I needed (first rules update in about 8 years or so) and am now feeling eager to start my repainting project on my US Infantry, which are far from the standard I painted my British 8th army to. That said, I have a couple other painting projects standing in the way that need to be finished first, unfortunately.

I've had my eye on the series but i wasn't entirely about it tbh. It looks interesting, but at the time it was sitting on mixed opinions and the small campaign didn't seem worth it. A demo would have been nice to taste the quality of the game.

 

[Pifanjr]

I was going to try the versus mode of Vermintide 2 this evening, but I hadn't downloaded the 25 GB patch yet and by the time it was done I didn't have the energy to play any more.

I really need to have an opportunity to catch up on sleep, but I've been finding it really difficult to fall asleep on time and to stay asleep.

 

[ZedClampet]

I was going to try the versus mode of Vermintide 2 this evening, but I hadn't downloaded the 25 GB patch yet and by the time it was done I didn't have the energy to play any more.

I really need to have an opportunity to catch up on sleep, but I've been finding it really difficult to fall asleep on time and to stay asleep.

I meant to check that out, too. I'm not really into PvP, but I'd like to play a few rounds and see what it's like.

I'll hand it to Fatshark. They may release broken, half-completed games, but they keep working on them for years and years.

 

[ZedClampet]

I want to!

Actually wouldn't mind replaying the entire series again, but I'm not sure that'll happen.

But, with the added commentary, it might be a good excuse for my wife and I to go through 2 again and listen to all of it.

A couple of weeks ago, Call to Arms: Gates of Hell - Ostfront released a new DLC, the US Airborne, which I ended-up picking up immediately, if only to support the developers. It adds US Airborne (duh) and a campaign based on Band of Brothers, which I only recently watched (around April this year). The missions have been quite fun so far and fairly challenging, though I've made it through most of them so far playing on Normal with minimal save scumming.

If I have one complaint, it's that it doesn't set the difficulty of the campaign overall, but instead, each mission defaults to Easy. I just beat a mission this morning, only to realize at the very end that it was actually on Easy. I find this to be somewhat annoying, as I need to quit out of every new mission and then start a "new" campaign on the new map at the correct difficulty.

That said, it's given me a renewed thirst for my World War 2 wargame I love. Due to it, I finally ordered my new rulebook I needed (first rules update in about 8 years or so) and am now feeling eager to start my repainting project on my US Infantry, which are far from the standard I painted my British 8th army to. That said, I have a couple other painting projects standing in the way that need to be finished first, unfortunately.

Call to Arms looks really interesting. I'm going to keep an eye out for it in the Winter sale. I just bought Last Train Home (50 percent off), and I'm hoping it will help me get used to RTS a little more. I've never played them much (Total War doesn't count to me), but all of them look so good. There's one based on Alien I wouldn't mind having either.