United3dArtists Archive

Don't think a thread like this has been created yet so here we go. What are your favorite games? what games are you looking forward to in 2012? Post and discuss.

Personally, the game I'm looking forward to most is Mass Effect 3. The epic conclusion to a great sci-fi trilogy.

3 of my favorites.
3rd one is one of these, AKA 'The Swear Ball' Fiendish!
Yeah, I'm old fashioned, now get off mah lawn!

That last one looks very complex indeed, should be at least just as challenging as Portal

I never got Backgammon though, just never really understood the rules I guess. I have no problem with chess though.

spacekdet wrote:Yeah, I'm old fashioned, now get off mah lawn!

Me too, bring back the original Lawn Darts.

Crysis 64
BioShock 2
FIFA Soccer and Major League Baseball
Flight Simulator X
Rome Total War
and a game almost older then lawn darts...Zork
Oldies but goodies.

Crysis is a good game, I prefer Crysis 2 myself but then again... I played the series in the wrong order, Crysis 2 - Crysis Warhead - Crysis. Silly me.

I've heard Bioshock is a "either you like it or you hate it" kind of game, which has always been my main reason for not buying it. Something you would recommend?

I remember when I played Medieval Total War on my Win 2000 many years ago, even before I actually started "gaming" for real, I loved it. Shame I couldn't get the CDs to work on my Win 7 computer.

My favorite games list would be:
Mass Effect 1 + 2 - I recently developed an addiction for this series, I never really liked RPGs (with an exception of Mount & Blade) but this really made me reconsider.
Just Cause 2
Portal + Portal 2
Halo
Crysis 2
Frets On Fire - Like Guitar Hero only for PC. This is just so much fun

And possibly Far Cry 2, Mirrors Edge and Mount & Blade.

Oh, and on the subject of normal games, my favorites are the classic Memory and Stratego(is this the international name?).

MikomDude wrote: I remember when I played Medieval Total War on my Win 2000 many years ago, even before I actually started "gaming" for real, I loved it. Shame I couldn't get the CDs to work on my Win 7 computer.
.

Your right that Total War won't work with Win 7 64 bit but if you add the expansion pack "Barbarion Invasion" it will.

mainly World of Tanks
and maybe (being in closed beta) Autoclub Revolutions
Iam also waiting for rFactor2

Steinie wrote:Your right that Total War won't work with Win 7 64 bit but if you add the expansion pack "Barbarion Invasion" it will.

Oh really? Well I don't have that expansion pack but it good to know

I have recently made a purchase for Skyrim and have been playing lit like anything for the past couple of weeks. It is funny how a lot of gamers on the net though seem to have a knack in picking which times to set their games to an easier mode so that it would be easier to penetrate and eliminate a dragon that they are up against.

Anyone interested with the same game here?

artnic wrote:I have recently made a purchase for Skyrim and have been playing lit like anything for the past couple of weeks. It is funny how a lot of gamers on the net though seem to have a knack in picking which times to set their games to an easier mode so that it would be easier to penetrate and eliminate a dragon that they are up against.

Anyone interested with the same game here?

I'll get back to you on that in oh say... a day or so. I ordered it last week and I should be getting it any day now

Also, welcome to the forum Artnic!

Well here's a little update on that last post. I got Skyrim today in the mail, and I've had a chance to give it a try. So far, the normal things like Potions, inventory systems and all the other things I always hate about fantasy RPGs keep annoying me a bit but apart from that I can see this game being a lot of fun indeed. After seeing the trailer, I sort of made the wrong assumption it was a Lord Of The Rings style fantasy story, I'm not so sure about that now though. The open world aspect of it makes the game more like a fantasy version of one of my favorite RPGs, Mount and Blade.
I like the way you can scroll in and out of first person view. Even though the animations are kinda terrible compared to another RPG I was playing when Skyrim came out (which was Mass Effect) I still find the dragons quite impressive.

Maybe I'll post some more about this game some other time when I've had a chance to play it a bit more.

F1 2011. The most addicting driving game ever

Suprised the thing can run on my machine at full chat without even chugging a little bit

I like chess and a good game of scrabble.

Wut?

Alright. Now I've had a chance to try out Skyrim properly. Personally, as with most fantasy RPGs I don't like it very much. But that's just a personal opinion. The game is quite well made, there are tons of quests just waiting to be done, sometimes they even come to you.

Good things about Skyrim are the beautiful open world you can explore, easy modding and mod support. Fairly good graphics(there is a mod that makes them look a lot better). You can indeed choose what you want to be, evil, good, mysterious, a hero, a thief, it's all up to you and I like that.

Bad things about Skyrim are in my opinion the somewhat linear and repetitive quests. You need to play it a lot to get a higher level(and this is when it becomes the most fun). It, like with all other RPGs that I've ever played (except Mass Effect 2 and 3), has a crappy inventory system. Also the voice-actors all tend to speak with a North-American accent, which doesn't suit the game at all, the acting also seem dull and simple in most cases. Oh, and some actors sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I'm not sure if I would have bought this game for the money I payed for it if I had known it would be like this. Still, it is a very good game and all people who like potions, crafting and a general game fantasy style world would love this game.
I on the other hand didn't start enjoying it fully until I started modding it with the Creation Kit kindly supplied by Bethesda for all to use. Creating an overpowered sword and hacking all the poor guards to bits was a great way for me to relieve the stress built up after playing this game without mods.
It also allowed me to customize my character a bit more.

And here are some screens for your viewing pleasure:


Fighting The Great Dragon Alduin


Negotiating A Truce


Nurn NightShadow and Kahjo


Kahjo - My faithful companion in crime and heroics.

Got my copy of the Mass Effect 3 N7 Collectors Edition today in the mail. Installed and... release date check failed, release date March 8th 00.00. Damn, now I need to wait another 10 hours... I see a long night ahead of me.

At least I got a chance to listen to the new Mass Effect 3 soundtrack, that'll keep my busy for a couple of hours.

AWESOME! I wanna play that game. Mass Effect 3! Unfortunately my personal computer is playing up annnnnnd i can't really play games at work!

Yeah... playing games at work. A trick only some can pull off successfully.

I've listened to the soundtrack a bit now and I can tell ME3 is very probably going to be more like the Shadow Broker DLC in style and music than like Mass Effect 2. This means a lot more serious gameplay and I've read elsewhere that the missions, even on easy, can be damn hard.

WOAHH, SPOILER ALERT!! Actually no, not a spoiler alert but just a general alert. (with some spoilers)

I know no other way of saying this but MASS EFFECT 3 WILL KILL YOUR LOVE FOR THE MASS EFFECT GAMES. Actually, no, that's not true either (not entirely anyway). Mass Effect 3 however is a very sad example of how a great series has been somewhat ruined for everyone who has played it all the way through to the end of ME3.

Let's start at the beginning, Mass Effect 3 started out a bit simple but the action and all the great features from Mass Effect 1 and 2 quickly returned. Even though most missions weren't as unique and individual as the missions in Mass Effect 2, they were very action packed and entertaining in that way only a Mass Effect game can get you involved with what you're doing.
It even got better, the more you play the game the less you feel you have to worry about choosing the wrong conversation options with your squad mates. You're just friends, randomly chillin out, talking and thinking of the old days. You feel more connected to your teammates than every before.
The only down-part of that is that the conversation-system where you can choose different responses seems rather useless now, or rather so I thought until I accidentally killed an important squad-mate and even an entire race by just choosing the wrong option (ooops).

Anyway, the game builds up the tension rather well and even though the threat of a reaper invasion seems less... threatening when you're chilling out in the Citadel bar, you still get reminded of it on every mission you're on.

Oddly enough, AND THIS SORT OF IS A SPOILER, you spend more time fighting Cerberus than the Reapers during the game. And even though they promise you 20 hours of constant gameplay, the game still feels rather short.

Oh, and now we come to the ending... ...yeah. I should say spoiler alert here as well but if you've played Mass Effect and seen the trailers for the 3rd game you'll probably be able to figure out what the ending(s) are like when I say there not a happy ending in this game. Sure, you save the galaxy either way, but that's not a huge surprise, fans would have torn BioWare apart if they had made another game where Shepard doesn't defeat the Reapers in some way, the bad part is that BioWare really seemed to make to want a point about not being able to make a sequel.
Yeah I get it BioWare, this was meant to be a trilogy, you don't need to shove it in my face when I get to the ending of the last game...

And it's not as much the fact that

!	WARNING MAJOR SPOILER

Shepard dies in the end that bothered me much as the fact it was the end of the whole bloody game. You don't get to see how your squadmates get on with their lives after the end, you don't get to see what happened to the fleet, or Earth or anything else for that matter.

The ending was also very confusing, there was a character there that you meet only at the very end of the game and that doesn't really explain itself very much why it's there or what its purpose is.

The largest mistake BioWare made probably happened at their very first meeting when setting up the base story for Mass Effect 3. That is the Reaper invasion of Earth in very beginning of the game. You see, being a hobby writer myself, that would have been an idea that I would have thought of as well, smiled when imagining the reaction and expressions on peoples faces when they first found out but then I would have quickly dismissed the idea as being something that just would not work.
BioWare truly made the best of this idea but in the end (as you notice when playing the end) nothing good could ever have come from this idea.
Basically, here are the flaws that makes the idea not work: One, you can't give Shepard as much freedom to explore and to take his time for sidemissions because there is a timer on how long it will take before the Reapers kill everyone on Earth and let's face it, that doesn't make any sense. So they had to remove that and by doing so they also removed one of Mass Effects greatest features. And two, as mentioned before: then ending. By using this idea as a base for the whole game the ending was unavoidable. Basically, Bioware just dug their own graves by sticking to that exiting but ultimately flawed idea of a Reaper invasion.

SO... overall, was it a bad game? No, I enjoyed it very much and it really is all you would expect Mass Effect 3 to be. However, the ending(s) ruin the Mass Effect experience for anyone who wants to play the series all over again.
If I were on Noveria in Mass Effect 1 now I would definitely be thinking about Shepard's end in ME3.
If I were doing the assault on the Collector Base in ME2, I still would be thinking of the end of Mass Effect 3.
Not only has this game given Bioware a game of nearly 0% re-playability, it also gave them thousands of angry fans and a game that due to all the bad publicity it will be receiving will not sell as good as any other Mass Effect game. *Sarcasm mode engaged* Well done BioWare!

Worst of all though, the fate of the Mass Effect series will from now on always be remembered as a game-series that focused heavily on story and eventually let everyone down because of its story, as a result we probably wont be seeing more proper story focused games for probably another decade or so...

..and that's really sad.

There has also been a lot of discussion on the internet about the "From Ashes" DLC/extra mission that already was under production before the game was released. I pre-ordered the Mass Effect 3 N/ Collectors edition so I got the mission for free. BioWare claimed it was a mission of no importance to the overall story and this is partly true, however, if this Protean character (the one in the From Ashes DLC) wasn't in the game, I would definitely notice it.
No, he is not hugely important to the story but as with the Shadow Broker DLC for Mass Effect 2, it is a hugely important character for Shepard and if not more important, also a great importance to Liara.
Oh, and though he also is the most serious character in Mass Effect 3, he also manages to have some of the funniest lines in the whole game.
When talking about the Salarians in his time, his remark "They used to eat flies" kept a smile on my face for hours after I stopped rolling in the floor with laughter.

Yeah, I used to hate the RPG genre because of crappy stories and acting, but Mass Effect changed that and completely turned me around. Now I know I will again have to stay away from the genre until there is another Mass Effect-like game out there and well... it sure isn't Skyrim, which, by the way, I now think will be the main direction RPG games will take. Just a focus on countless of simple quests and literally no story whatsoever...

2012 is a sad year for gaming, and for me, definitely the end of me calling myself a real gamer.


END NOTE (No Spoilers):
It may seem that when I was writing this piece I was depressed and sad... sad maybe, but depressed or angry, no. I've always been the most critical of gamers and I truly believe more than 99% of all games made, even today are just flawed and poorly made. Writing is always an issue, acting is another. Then there is the Hollywood complex 80% of all games tend to stick to.

No, I'm not depressed, I'm just a gamer before his time...

Deus Ex: Human Revolution
I got this game and a bunch of other games a short while ago and I felt this really deserved a review.
This game is what Crysis 2 would have been if it was an RPG. It has stealth mechanics, cloaks, weapon upgrades, Aug-upgrades and several other nice little features that make you feel like a bad-ass.
Unlike Crysis 2 however, this game seemed to make it its soul purpose to make me as annoyed and pissed of as I possibly could be. It has the stick to chest-high wall mechanics like in Mass Effect 2/3 and I don't mind that as such unless you have to press a specific button to detach yourself which this game didn't have either, so that was all OK. The biggest problem I'd say would be is that any good idea the developers originally had seems to have been screwed over by making the game seem balanced. In fact, throughout the whole game you encounter the developers obsession with making the main characters powers balanced. All but one upgrade seemed to have a hint of "overpowered" to it, everything else was... not useless... just somewhat unnecessary.

Bossfights were a pain, most people who have played the game know that. They, however, weren't the thing I hated most about this game, my biggest frustration lies with the weapons. Unlike aug-upgrades, weapon-upgrades are necessary. For example, I'm not a guy to use assault rifles much in a stealth game but when I do I expect them to work. My assault rifle in this game however wasn't much use when I needed it and unfortunately I spent all my upgrades on my hyper-stealth-magic-silenced pistol for which finding ammo was like looking for a piece of hay in a Russian needle factory.

Story wise it's actually pretty good, not very original in some aspects but good nonetheless. You play as a guy called Adam Jensen who is an augmented cyber robotic cop-dude who for some reason needs to save the world. Yes this is one of those games that feels it needs to answer every question in the universe starting with the simplest of trick questions, what is the meaning of life? Are you still human when you're Darth Vader? Is there room for improvement in a "perfect" society? That sort of stuff.

You do get to do a lot of interesting missions in interesting places and at first the game reminded me a bit of Mass Effect 2. The similarities ended fairly quickly though after I progressed and found out more about who I was up against. In the fear of slightly spoiling something about the story, the real baddies are an old secret society running the world, I thought it was a nice touch but they stay fairly anonymous apart from some smaller pawns that fill the traditional role of "let's taunt the man who cannot comprehend our greatness"-people.

Here is a screenshot that sums up the their best argument in this game perfectly:

It doesn't get much more complicated than that (until the end of the game).

Overall I do like this game, even though the game annoyed me a lot in the beginning I grew to like Adam Jensen as a character not to mention dragging unconscious guards into a ventilation shaft is a huge amount of fun. Call me a collector or perfectionist but I never felt quite satisfied until my vent held at least five guards.

So I rate this game 7/10 with a very generous seven just because I cannot say it is a bad game or even an average game. It is in its over balanced, not-always-so-fun kind of way still a very good game.

I played this game through when it was released and thought it reasonably good. I think the way the game balancing was set up had more to do with making sure we got to appreciate the genius of each perk.

I found that once I had all the stealth, hacking and boobytrap perks everything else was not really necessary.

My interest in this series and a lot of other games is the new business model.

I won't buy games built to sell DLC every other month. Nor will I buy games that ignore the modder community.

Battlefield 3 is my last fps. Both the BF and COD series continue to disappoint with their latest offerings. Both series have become vanilla and differ little from each other outside of map size and ai vs player driven vehicles and artillery.

The efforts of the BF3 team to produce a team based fps are entirely lost on the vast majority of players. Sad to think that the worst part of a game are the players.

Oh well, back to Unity and making my own game.

Hehe, yeah I has read about a lot of the hacking upgrades being useless so I never got any of those. I focused mainly on armor upgrades, they were pretty useless though, they may give you an edge if you're lucky but you couldn't really use any of the upgrades to specialize in anything specific, they were just nice little extras.

As for other first person games, I tend to prefer singleplayer game myself, partly for the same reason you mentioned about players ruining the idea of team-work. There are enough good free indie multiplayer games out there to suit my needs, so I never really bother much to look into commercial MP games. I've heard the BF3 Frostbyte engine is pretty nice though and I can't wait for Mirrors Edge 2 to come out with that engine.

It's good to hear you make games as well. Unity is simple but I've seen many games/engines that fail at doing less with more. Do you have anything you're working on now?

Too many things on the go and nothing but headaches slowing me down...

The game is a back burner project I chip away at when I have some free time.

Right now I am focussing on learning the new tools I have acquired in the last few months, a small animation project and setting up to do dev work on joomla for this site.

When I get the chance I try to pull together entries for the contests here, but sadly not too successful the last while.

Too many things on the go and nothing but headaches slowing me down...

The game is a back burner project I chip away at when I have some free time.

Right now I am focussing on learning the new tools I have acquired in the last few months, a small animation project and setting up to do dev work on joomla for this site.

When I get the chance I try to pull together entries for the contests here, but sadly not too successful the last while.

Hmm, seems like the little glitch we had today means that my three last posts here aren't here anymore.

Well here we go:

I did a couple of videos under the name "The Admiral Plays" where I do a commentary on whatever game I'm playing.

Episode One, The Admiral Plays: Half Life 2: ModDB - Youtube(HD)

Episode Two, The Admiral Plays: Left 4 Dead 2 - Part 1: ModDB - Youtube(HD)

Episode Three, The Admiral Plays: Left 4 Dead 2 - Part 2: ModDB - Youtube(HD)

I'm still enjoying Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2. I got this game a couple of months ago and is possibly now my top 2 favorite all time game. It's not a great game or a very complex one, it's just pure and simple. Does what it wants to do and nothing more.

That being said, I'm saddened to see that the new Rainbow Six Patriots will be taking a whole new direction as a game... no more fun simplicity and cool gameplay mechanics.

Why is Rainbow Six Vegas 2 such an epic game? Because it is.

Just did another recording of myself like with the Admirals Plays videos.

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 - Heavy Firefight: Link to YouTube

How to kill 20 enemies in 100 seconds (more or less).

On Realistic difficulty but with low enemy density.

Skyrim, great for modding. It's also one of those games you can make look just like a painting, in real time.



High Res (1080p)

A screenshot I took in-game of my character Kirim Darktail. On this picture I have several high-res texture mods enabled and a DOF mod. I also modded the Armor texture somewhat myself to make the colors suit my style.
Screen was taken in Solitude.

Wow, I can't believe I never posted about this here.

DayZ, it is a mod for ARMA II - Combined Operations that takes (for me) a long awaited approach to games.

For you who don't know, DayZ is a mod that came out a couple of months ago and was an instant success. It puts the player into an online zombie-infested 225 Square Kilometer game world where you will have to survive by collecting food, water, and weapons for when you meet another survivor who is after your beans (no pun intended).

The thing that sets the game apart from most other games becomes instantly apparent as you spawn with only a flashlight, bandages and some pain killers. No weapons, no food, no water. Instantly you'll have to start avoiding zombies by stealthily plotting your way into lootable buildings.

A lot of the time you'll be running for your life, and you'll really feel an adrenaline rush when doing so because this game does not give you a second chance. If you die, you die and you will have to start all over again collecting items, weapons and food.

The huge map makes it a very interesting world to explore and with the constant danger of getting killed, you'll really start valuing your (game-)life. You'll think twice before taking huge risks and most of the time you see another survivor, you will just hide in the bushes hoping he hasn't seen you.

When you get further in the game with your character, you can start setting up your base of operations which is either a tent or some kind of vehicle in which you store loot that doesn't fit into your back pack. By this time you might also have found some rare military grade equipment which will give you an edge in Player vs Player combat.
Off course, how you play the game is entirely up to yourself. You can choose to be a bandit and rob/kill other survivors (which is what most people do), or you can be a hunter who never goes near the cities and survives purely by hunting wildlife and collecting water from streams or ponds.

Personally, I believe this is one of the best games ever made when it comes to how it makes you feel. The game experience is a lot more genuine than most AAA-shooters.

On the down-side, the game is still in alpha. It also has a lot of fundamental problems, like the zombies for example, their animations are simplistic and crude, the models nearly all look the same and there are only about three different variations. Worst part about the zombies for me is that the game would have been a fantastic survival game without them, however they do add to a certain balance to the game that would be lost without them. Looting towns would be a hundred times easier and this would present a large problem for the players.

Still, even so, the greatest part about the game is the survival aspect and the player versus player experience(sometimes). Getting robbed by a guy with a microphone as if you would get robbed in real life is certainly a cool thing to watch, there are some YouTube vids of it. Though I haven't actually been robbed myself (yet?).

In the beginning I decided to keep a record of my travels:





If you have this game and are interested in teaming up, let me know. I got beans, and loads of them!

Also, here are two humorous live-action DayZ videos:

Just another day in the life of a DayZ survivor.


Camping


More Camping


Biking at the airfield

Here is a review I did of a game I've been playing for a few weeks.

YouTube (1080p)

Been doing some Minecrafting. Built myself a nice big castle/town:

Wow that's great! I love the design, and lots of time went into that, lovely. Did you do it in survival mode or free-mason kind of mode? I used to play minecraft all the time - but then I wanted the horses and the graphics mod I used (sues) wasn't compatible with it - till today.. but I haven't gotten back into it.

I love that game.

Oh I started out in survival mode but then quickly switched to creative after realizing it would take months to complete if I had to mine for all the resources.

I got the idea for the castle when I was sitting on the balcony of a house I built in survival mode, looked towards the hills and thought "hmm, would look cool if there was a castle there." That second picture basically, only in my head. So I went ahead and built it.

Unlike with games like say.. Skyrim (that you have to mod to get your moneys worth, lol), I actually prefer vanilla Minecraft. To me the graphic improvement mods just make to textures look really out of place.

I don't know if you have looked at Planetside2. The game is free and you can realistically level up with players paying premiums for weapons and vehicle upgrades. The major play enhancements are earned with experience points and the only items requiring cash are decorative embellishments.

Sony have created the player studio where independent artists can sign up and create content that will be sold through the sony store to players of the game. That's right... they pay you to create content they will sell to players. The program only operates in the US at the moment. They will add other countries as they develop the paperwork for taxes etc.

Go to the planetside2 web site for more info.....

and yes ... I believe the work can be done with TS....

@v3rd3
I've already played Planetside 2 for 400 hours. Fun yet sometimes frustrating game It was probably at its best when it came out of Beta, at that time their argument that it was a non-pay-to-win game with micro-transactions actually still held up. Later last year, through-out the summer the game suffered some horrible balance and performance issues that made it loose a great deal of its player-base, myself included.
Didn't pick the game up again until a few weeks ago actually, I'm happy to say that the game has been improved upon since but the thing I'm still looking forward to the most is their new jungle-map Hossin. It looks B.. E.. A.. U.. tiful...

As for the player studio, I remember when they started it up I considered putting in my battle rifle designs. I decided against it since I wasn't too impressed with the designs to put the effort of conversion into them.

EDIT:
I just noticed this myself, I posted my review for PlanetSide 2 just a few posts back on this very thread. How did you not notice?

Fatigue... old age.... you know.... I did see it ... just wanted to make sure everyone here was aware of the player studio.

I must have hundreds of these by now, Skyrim screenshots. There comes a point when you have modded Skyrim with countless of graphics modifications and addons that you can't help but spam that screenshot button when you are playing. It is by far the most screenshot-worthy game I have ever played.

Here is a full library of my screenshots.

The game Space Engineers now has planets you can land on and explore!

Here are some screenshots I took:

















More screenshots can be found here on my Steam profile.