Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Demophobe]

Great game indeed! Stealth-action from a first or third-person view.

Not yet in Korea, but it's on Overnet. The "razor 911.bin" versions on the network works well. 3 CDs...a worthy download.

I do plan to buy the full version, just to support the devs...as I did with UT2004, CoD and Splinter Cell. Gotta support the industry so they can continue to make great games.

Anyways, be prepared to lose a weekend to this game...good story, DeusEx2 engine-powered game, with reasonable framerates and cool environments. Think of Splinter Cell with arrows and knives set in the middle ages. (I think...half the lighting in the game is electric, half torches.) The guards will kill you very quickly..."Garrett" is no kind of fighter.

More stealthy than Splinter Cell, as you don't have a lot of arrows, few chances to use lethal force, and sometimes getting more arrows is a problem. Hint: Collect water arrows...they are paramount! Electric lights cannot be extinguished, but torches can...so you have to be more careful than Splinter Cell. The AI is a bit dodgy...the charcters move in predictable patterns and seem really dumb.

I popped out into a brightly-lit hallway, right in front of a guard...I mean almost on top of him, and he didn't react at all. Other times, you get seen in the darkest corner of the room. Then, I used a flashbomb, which blinds the opponent temporarily, and then went to knock him out, but hit him on the side of the head, not the back, and thus was an unsuccessful knockout. He immediatly regained his sight and started beating me. Odd...usually a flashbomb will render them helpless for a ten second period allowing a smack or getaway, but I guess the fear of being knocked out brings sight back quickly?!?

The coolest part is collecting money. You can take many things from many cool places to get cash. Some of the places are really heart-stopping: trying to get a bag of gold off of a guard's belt in a brightly-lit courtyard, with lots of other people milling about. Really fun stuff.

The environments are coolthough a tad repetitive in coor pallette (it is all stone and brick), weapons and gadgets are neat, and as I said, the story is good.

I play at 1280x1024 on a P43.2 @ 3.5, 9800xt, 1 GB of RAM. The DeusEx engine is crappy (a re-worked Unreal engine), but it plays well enough...better than the terrible DeusEx2. I tried to play at 1600x1200, but got some slowdowns in critical moments. Sound is really cool...ambient sounds are great, lighting is the best...real-time shadows are very convincing. A DX9 graphic card is recommended, though a DX8 card will play well.

Anyways, I think that this is a cool game, so get it when (if?) it comes, but if you can't wait until you buy a copy, get it on Overnet.

Anyone else tried this game?

[barrybrown]

Finally, Demophobe you posted something we both have in common!

I play Tetris (original).

I play at 1280x1024 on a AMD 3000 64 Bit @ Nvidia 5600 XT, 2 GB of 400 RAM. The Tetris engine is simple but it plays well enough...Now only if I could get past level 2. Got any cheat codes?

[Demophobe]

Har, har!!

Yep...that post was totally with you in mind, mate!

[barrybrown]

No offense meant really, sort of joshing around cuz nobody else replyed!
I can kick butt at RedAlert2, Condition Zero, hell even most of the Mario brothers games, but Tetris...I suck...

[Bulsajo]

It's getting decent enough reviews...

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/thiefdeadlyshadows/

...but I haven't tried the first 2 in the series, haven't played Pandora Tomorrow yet, and a Splinter Cell 2 demo was unveiled at E3...

And of course HalfLife2 and Doom3 are finally going to get released, so it's doubtful I'll ever get around to playing Thief3 until it hits the bargain bin.

Too many games, not enough time!

[Demophobe]

Pandora Tomorrow: finished in a weekend, cool, but more like an add-on pack than a new game. 7.5/10

Painkiller: Blah. Nice graphics, but a waste. 3/10

Far Cry: Rocks. Took me forever to finish. The last 2 levels are impossible! 9.5/10 (-.5 for those last levels...silly hard)

Thief 3: Very cool. So far, 8.5/10

Doom3 : Not until August, but will be too cool. Better get a rockin' system though...it's gonna have everyone's comp on it's knees.

HL2: No release date yet. I have a free ticket from my buddy's ATI card, but I want to sell it for $10 and download the game just to spite Valve...

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. : This will be a great game...maybe it will overshadow HL2.

Games are now just a weekend affair. Haven't found a game besides Far Cry and Hitman 2 that couldn't be finished in under 10 hours.

Thief, however, is making me slow down and really get into it. Trying to "ghost" through it....no killing, no detection...total "ghosting". http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30310

Far Cry did the same...made me slow down really enjoy the effort put into the game. Almost don't want these kind of games to end.

Lately, the console has been the mote in the PC gamer's eye...all of these ho-hum ports to the PC really hurt. Devs are going for the money first, the PC second...actually, there are a number of reasons why the console is more advantageous for developers, but that's a whole other thread.

Yes, I agree to a point Bulsajo....but too many mediocre games for the PC, so little time for the good ones.

One thing to keep in mind if you are thinking of upgrading/buying a gaming PC: Doom3 engine (Doom3), Source engine (HL2), Unreal Warfare engine (Unreal Tourn.), Cry engine (Far Cry), and the X-Ray engine (S.T.A.L.K.E.R.) will be powering the next year to two years of games. So if your comp can play these at good framerates, you have a good, reasonably future-proof machine.

barrybrown: a "graphics engine" refers to the graphic code written and used for a certain game by that company. This code is created specifically by certain companies for certain games, and is often licensed to other developers for other games. Ex: Call of Duty; Quake 3 engine, DeusEx2; Unreal Engine, Thief 3 : Unreal (DeusEx2) engine, Counter-strike; Source engine (half-life). Succesful engines become the standard for developers who aren't interested in coding as much as making a game. Creating a successful engine is really hard work and not everyone has the skill, time or money, so they buy a license to use the work of others. The engines I listed will be the next standard, and thus will be the underlying component of the next generation of games.

This "future-proofing" thing is debateable, as there is a lot of new talent coming out of eastern Europe these days. Let's see what John Carmack has up his sleeve. These relatively unknown European coders are putting together some really amazing things...the bar is indeed quite high.

Wait until Christmas for the buy/upgrade. Sorry for the long post.

[Bulsajo]

[barrybrown]

[quoteHL2: No release date yet. I have a free ticket from my buddy's ATI card, but I want to sell it for $10 and download the game just to spite Valve...[/quote]

Do you mean Condition Zero?
It's out !

[Bulsajo]

Not Condition Zero, but the next Half Life.
(Where have you been?!? Under a rock? )

[Demophobe]

Pandora Tomorrow was not an add-on pack at all...it was a 4-CD, stand-alone game...you dodn't need the first SC to play it. Indeed, there was a tfree-mission add-on pack released for the original SC, but that was not called Pandora Tomorrow.

As for the release date of HL2....believe it when it's on the shelves. Valve has already delayed this since Oct.'2003, when they were "one week from completion".

As for scalability, yes, Doom3 is said to be scalable, as are most games. Honestly, I really think it's like listening to Bach on an AM radio...scaling back games just doesn't do them justice.

I play games not only as one who likes games, but I really appreciate the programming that goes into a good engine.I spend as much time in a game just walking around and looking at the textures, physics and details as I do playing. I have 2 computers...one at my weekday apartment, and my behemoth at my weekend place.

The weekday computer isn't so powerful...it is comprised of old parts that were put out of service on my weekend 'gaming' system. A P4 1.8A @ 2.4, P4T533 mainboard, 512MB of RIMM4200 (32-bit RDRAM), a GeForce3Ti500...a fairly weak system for gaming...the GeForce is definately showing it's age.

On this system, I play some games in the evening, and I have to scale back on the resolution and details...then I go to my 'gaming' system and play the same game at full res, with everything maxed out. The difference is incredible. Scaling back really takes away from the game...immersiveness (Thief3 scaled back looks terrible...hard to get into when everything is washed-out and blurry), gameplay (Far Cry scaled back lacks a lot of the jungle foliage, which actually undermines gameplay..hard to hide when there are no plants or trees!) and realism is seriously affected, which is a real bummer, seeing as this is where graphics is trying to go...higher levels of realism.

I still think that if graphics are not important, then the original Wolfenstein is as good as anything these days. Anyways, it's just my opinion...it's a really costly endeavor to have a system that can turn everything up....however, at 1600x1200 resolution, Anti-Aliasing (reducing the jagged lines) becomes somewhat redundant, and that saves a lot of horse power for the graphics card. Although ATI and nVidia's algorithms for AA are getting to the point where no (or very small) penalty is incurred for their employment.

Heck, even now I can't game at full-blast on a P4 3.2 @ 3.5, P4C800-D, 9800XT, 1 GB PC3500.....Thief3 is at 1280x1024 because it was also going to be ported to the XBox, and the devs can save a lot of time in the port by reducing the quality on the PC version, SC:Pandora Tomorrow was another port from XBox, again 1600x1200 with no AA and some slowdowns...the only new game that I can play on full (1600x1200, 2xAA and 8xAF) is UT2004.

As I said, the console is becoming the bane of a PC gamer's existance. Devs find it much easier to code for the console because the hardware inside every same-name console is the same. All XBoxes have the same feature set, so it's easy to write code for it, and there will be few or no hardware issues. Coding for the PC is harder, because no 2 systems are alike. Even if the hardware is the same, the computers will not behave the same. All manner of issues arise on the PC that don't on a console, so devs are going there for ease of coding, less "patch" issues, compatability and of course, profit.

Games that were specifically written for the PC are getting fewer and farther between...and this is having a great effect on hardware and PC gaming overall. There is some speculation that with the power coming in the console (check out the specs for XBox2), the PC is not the only answer to great, powerful gaming machines. Now TV tech has to catch up...then the console will be a truly viable alternative. I don't use a console bacause I don't like the "TV"ishness of the picture...grainy and kind of....well....pixel-y...low resolution. A good apples-toapples...play UT2004 maxed out on a PC, them play "Unreal Championship" on XBox. Night and day. Heck, even Splinter Cell on a PC vs. console. Looks ok on the console, but on the PC it looks really tight and crisp. I hate the controllers for the console too. Can't beat the old keyboard/mouse combo.

I'm rambling....

My next upgrade will be at Christmas, when the weekday system will be donated to the church, my 'gaming' system will replace it, and I will do a total overhaul into PCI express mainboard and graphics, DDR2 memory and (by then hopefully) an 64-bit Intel CPU. If Intel hasn't got their 64-bit desktop processor out by then, I will go AMD.

EDIT: I too enjoy the tactical shooters, Bulsajo...such as Rainbow 6: Raven shield. The problem here is that the single player is so marred by horrible AI, it's almost unplayable. The bots walk in front of your fire, don't take cover, open doors sometimes without command....they are like stupid sheep. The Run'n'Gun games are good for a 15-minute romp or an online blast, but not for extended periods and yes, they do get tiresome in their similarity. UT2004 has some pretty cool gametypes, though...makes a nice break from Deathmatch. Onslaught rocks....