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Richey79

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Everything posted by Richey79

  1. Richey79

    ArmA 2 site hacked

    Amidst all the white noise, two posts I can heartily agree with. The whole marketing campaign is just getting frustrating now. Yes, copy the good aspects of Valve, but this silliness is to Arma what hats are to TF2. Less ARG and more ARGH! If Bis have gone with an Nvidia gimmick, they'll be throwing away a good proportion of their customers, many, many of whom upgraded their machines specifically to run Arma 2 decently well. Come on, Bis, don't let us down with the reveal... .
  2. Richey79

    Bin Laden Is Dead

    Although it seems likely that Osama and his hangers-on would have opened fire first anyway, to avoid being taken alive, do you really think it would have been a good idea to put him on trial and let him use the court-room as his own forum, just as Milosevic did? When someone is instrumental in murdering hundreds upon hundreds of innocent people, including many of the emergency services who simply had the misfortune of trying to help their fellow human beings, I think that person loses much of their right to be regarded as human. The very ideology to which he dedicated his life was one of nihilism, of giving zero respect to any human desire to develop culture. In return, why should we respect his culture's attitude to the dead? Most people on this forum are intelligent enough to know that this barbaric, self-centred hypocrite didn't represent mainstream Muslim values. The ridicule of satire is the best way to destroy the pathetic notion that suicide-bombings and terrorism are heroic acts that will be rewarded in the afterlife. On the other hand, you could pretend that your great intellectualism means that you see through the whole conspiricy. Maybe mutter a few quotes from Orwell... make a few anti-American statements just to make sure you're being totally original in your argument. It's a good day for humanity. Especially because Osama's highly placed friends in the ISI failed utterly in keeping him safe.
  3. Awesome work! Another vote for mod of the year, and another mod that's now loaded up automatically when I start playing. Your roadmap looks very promising, too. Only thing I found a bit odd was that sprinting using 'turbo' key gives you the fastest sprint in the game. When you come to a halt, however, your reticule shows pretty much zero dispersion immediatelt, even after a long period of sprinting. This works for the combat roll, too. Not sure I mind this, since it makes the SP more fun, but might be a pretty big issue for PVPers and the realism crowd?
  4. Richey79

    VME PLA MOD for ARMA II

    No, no, no, no, no. Ace≠cba. Sweet mod: I always love having the option of using the PLA. I did find that some of the units disappeared (sometimes apart from their helmets) at certain LODs. Also, once the attack helo crashed, it didn't switch to a damaged skin and the units inside went into the base rigid animation - the whole lot then became indestructible. Is the reticule on the sniper rifle actually white in reality? Anyway, lovely models, will be good to have some Chinese voices hopefully in the future. Cheers,
  5. Have to step in in defence of Al Matthews: he voices Col. Hardaway, and just does the v/o for the inter-mission cut-scenes. These are pretty restrained, profanity-wise. SSgt. Knox is the potty-mouth.
  6. CM fighting back with a bit of their own banter? Should say 'Putting the Oh! In Bohemian' - I couldn't be bothered to do a second image capture. That is the God-awful Knox sitting in his HMMWV to the right of the image. No, it's not terribly witty, but good for them, I say. Finally got a chance to play the thing. Positives: + CQB is fun. Not particularly tactical, but fun... + Because the weapon models and movement are more fluid and improved from Dragon Rising. This was where work was really needed in the first place, so fair play to CM. The M4 and MP5 are fun to use. As is the DMR, the sight model for which (the ACOG at least) they've pinched straight from Templar's mod. + The voice work - from the guy from Aliens - in between campaign missions is top notch. The man is an exceptional voice talent, and the tone in these is the gritty but machismo-filled tone they should have aimed for with the whole thing. + I actually find myself liking the silly shaders, lens-flare and bloom they've used. I prefer the aesthetic somewhat to OA (ducks for cover). The night vision looks great. Even the sky-boxes are more bearable than they originally looked. I think it's Lenton's fault. People say Steve Jobs has a reality distortion field (positive): - Lenton has the same thing, but inverted. Everything he demonstrates looks shit. 'But there's one more thing...' no mission editor, no moddability, 60 entity limit, blah, blah, blah. + The campaign is playable enough. Compared to a good few games released these days, it wouldn't be the worst way you could spend your money. Negatives: - It's not been turned into a corridor shooter, but it's marginally less tactical than the original Brothers In Arms. Think BIA with 'turn back you are leaving the mission area' every 3 minutes, the word 'mothaluver' every minute, and you're about there. - Truly zero replayablity (playing as a different class? - Don't make me laugh). The FTEs are rubbish. They've aimed for L4D's survival mode, but in a three-foot shoe box and with none of Valve's panache or loving attention to detail. - Spending a third of the game riding in a HMMWV with Knox spouting drivel at you. - The AI. Enemy AI is pitiful; most of the time on expert mode they wait for you to start shooting before doing anything, and will only react to a threat coming from one particular direction anyway. Your own squad don't really follow you anywhere - they just teleport in behind you when you're not looking at each checkpoint save (I played on 'expert' mode. I wasn't going to play on hard-core and have to play missions through multiple times if I died). The AI driving is worse that Arma 2's at release. It's worse than DR's. - The difficulty level, on 'expert' at least, is worse than pitiful. I don't think any injury to the head killed me in the whole time I was playing. The rhythm of playing goes something like 'Rambo-charge - give order to squad to rush up the road - pause to heal for 10 seconds - LEEEEERRRROOOYYY MMJJEEEENNNKKIINNSSS!' I never bothered to heal my squad. On 'expert' difficulty they just respawned when I passed through a check point, having died earlier in the mission. - I was going to say that it comes pretty close to being a corridor shooter, but that's a bit unfair. It just doesn't allow any alternative approaches to each stage of the missions, which gives it the same level of replayability as COD. So, do I agree with %45? Probably not, but I might feel differently if I had bought the game myself or if there weren't companies like Bis around that still made games for a mature PC audience. My gut feeling is that it's a more fun experience than DR was, and it would probably provide some amusing times for a few co-op sessions. I think what I'm trying to say is that I basically agree entirely with Jeza. For a studio that isn't run by a company of the size of EA or Ubisoft, I wouldn't go as far as to say it's a 'shit' game. It certainly doesn't come across very well in Youtube videos, etc. though. So, slap me sideways and call me 'bitch-tits'; I can now happily forget that this game ever existed!
  7. Gotta love that predictive text. :cancan: Or do they call it that around your parts (since it would be the direct translation from Italian)?
  8. The day Bis have a character use the epithet 'bitch-tits' without irony to refer to his squad mate will be the day I stop gaming. What on earth does that even mean? And yes, once again, I will try the game, just as soon as I find a friend who has got hold of it and I have a couple of hours to throw away.
  9. Notice that you can't leave a user review on Metacritic for the game until the US release. Part of CM's strategy in delaying the American release? They might have got away with a bunch of insipid 70% reviews if it wasn't for those pesky kids over at PC Gamer. CM certainly know how to invest their advertising bucks wisely. It's impossible to tell what is and isn't trolling over at their forums, since the average age of users (and abilities in English) are so low.
  10. It ain't exactly Chekhov we're talking about here ("When I describe a horse thief, you want me to say that stealing horses is bad. You want me to make a judgment. But I shouldn't be doing that. I should be making you understand how a horse thief feels, how he is, and let you make the judgment, if you must."). IMO, when the character becomes two-dimensional enough, he simply becomes the vessel through which the voice of the writer speaks.
  11. Yup. However, when the CM 'embargo' on honest reviews lifts and they're left with reviews of 6/10 across the board, it will still be a shit game, and I will still be deeply offended that the homophobic morons have included words like 'fag' in the game just to garner a few extra sales. Of course, in the reality of most consumers, this score will really equate to more like 4/10.
  12. These last two videos immediately made me think of GRAW 2, but with less action and variety (and far easier). No, less action does NOT mean it's more tactical (lookee here; I can use an apostrophe properly!). You had to direct your team far more in GRAW 2: - in this, you could just tell them to follow you and then ignore them, apart from the occasional magical medi-kit patch up.
  13. I hate games that are filled with unlikable characters. It's like the whole corps is made up of Kane and Lynch. Look at Robo from Harvest Red: I probably wouldn't want to have a drink with the man, but he was a rounded and believable character. Someone you would be fairly happy to rely on to perform his job properly. Plus, so many protocol and factual errors it's pretty much an achievment in itself.
  14. I work in an environment where virtually everyone turns the air blue for much of the day, even when discussing professional matters. I have nothing against swearing in games, but when it's done in a contrived or embarrassing way, it totally kills the atmosphere. Yes, some of Bis' stuff easily falls into this category. Mind you, in one of the recent Red River videos, you could clearly hear the phrase 'camel jockeys' being used to describe the insurgents. Some idiots certainly do use such racist terms in real life, but I just don't want to hear it in a video game. This isn't a high-level piece of art that's going to prompt a subtle consideration of the overlap between jingoism and unthinking anti-Muslim sentiment. They really are at risk of tipping over from 'America, fuck yeah!' to 'Nick Griffin, fuck yeah!' All to get a few more sales from the retard demographic.
  15. 'Ja - STAFF SERGEANT!!1!' More Tommy Wiseau than Uwe Boll. Notice the handy explanation as to why there are no civilians in the village. They should have broken the fourth-wall and made a meta-joke about their budget for the game being too small. Perhaps the next seven-minute cut scene will explain why it never rains in TakiTajikistan. Also, the choice of music is clearly aimed at 13 year olds.
  16. Richey79

    IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover

    Have you tried the new 'beta' patch? - Some people are saying it fixes the frame-rate issues. Most of them seem to have pretty high-end machines, though. Patch should roll out to Steam on Monday. I'm still waiting on a fix for SLI / Crossfire before I even start to consider whether there's enough content (relative to '46) to justify a purchase :( Shame, as it was a game I was really just looking for any excuse to buy. Can't just throw away money, though. *Reports of patch* *First video that's made me think there might be something interesting here* Edit: 4/10 Gamespot review. Oh dear. Sounds like they got someone who's played a few sims in his time to review it, too.
  17. Nice to wake up to! Seriously, this kind of mod built on a fully-developed game engine gets me far more excited than a new game release these days. Thanks for the hard work. Great trailer, too!
  18. Richey79

    IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover

    I'm still using Kegetys' 6dof TrackIR mod for '46. Makes the experience so much more up to date. It will really take something special to make me move to the new release. Honestly, from screenshots and videos I have to think that the CoD team have upped the polygon and detail counts massively, but the result has been quite a small improvement in the general visual feel of the game. The cockpits look great, but the English countryside just looks really 'off'. When you look at Wings of Prey and how well optimised it is, it really makes you start to think. I've stopped buying games that don't use multi-threaded CPU cores and multi-gpus out of the box (of course, excepting those where Nvidia / ATI simply haven't had a chance to update their drivers for release). How long have we been using at least dual-core CPUs for now? It really makes you worry that they just took the IL2 engine and bolted lots of extra features onto the flight model, ground unit behaviour etc. At least if devs make a console version of the game they are forced to make use of multi-threading from the ground up when building their engine.
  19. Why waste your time? Does it really matter if a few people like the game, or even want to look forward to it pre-release? It's not as if you'll be warning people of CM's shoddy business practices, as these are made clear by 2/3 of comments under every video they release on the 'net. It's more effective when criticism comes from CM's target audience: your average console gamer who isn't aware of Bis' existence.
  20. Richey79

    IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover

    I read in one guy's review that the devs said the filter could be turned off with a .cfg command. He'd tried it and said he thought it was just a placebo effect.
  21. Just wait 'til 5 hours after release. We'll start seeing the topics of 'I've finished every mode in RR, what's left for me to do?' very quickly indeed.
  22. Richey79

    IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover

    I remember the frustrating hours spent trying to 'fix' something about my system so that Arma 2 would run at a consistently playable frame-rate for the first six months after release. Well, I think I've got my figure of how long after release I'll be considering buying Battle of Britain: Storm of War. Hope they get it sorted and the reviews saying 'buggy piece of alpha-software' don't sink on-going development.
  23. CM don't keep one dev team together even throughout the production cycle of one game. They treat people badly and force them to compromise so much that people become jaded and leave as soon as they can. Thus, a revolving door of developers who aren't properly motivated led by middle-management bean counters. That's the total opposite of the indie developer philosophy, and they only have themselves to blame if they never learn from the mistakes they make. Oh, and, Either you need to learn clarity of expression, or you're merely being flippant.
  24. Stupid people trick themselves into thinking that the advertising campaign is the same thing as the game itself. They'll actually continue to con themselves while they're playing for the first day or so that the reality of the software released is the same thing as the zeitgeist built up by the pre-release advertising. Why else would companies continue to spend so much on advertising, if it didn't work? Why else would people pre-order games without waiting for reliable reviews from friends or independent online sources? This is why PC gamers are anathama to the rich publishers: the demographic is older and less easily trickable. We have the patience to wait, and the experience to know to trust the opinions of our peers, rather than the dodgy patter of a smoke and mirrors salesman. This, along with the cheaper price of PC games, is the reason why we get shitty console ports or, increasingly, no PC version at all. But, of course, the publishers can always claim that the real reason is piracy... .
  25. For me, it's incredibly important that the AI are able to act in a somewhat believable fashion without lots of prompting through scripting etc. IMO, Bis' AI is fine out of the box (the infantry, anyway). These days they use grenade launchers, flares, search-lights etc. in a credible fashion and move in formation at a sensible rate whilst in 'danger' mode. Very often, I don't feel like depending upon the whims of other mission designers. Some people like to make stealth missions, some arcade-style ones, some where you're just a cog in the military machine, others are obsessed with story-line and lengthy cut-scenes. Everyone's idea of the right balance of forces is different. Of course, I often don't feel like taking a gamble that a designer's highly sophisticated system of triggers and scripts won't turn out to be broken after 45 minutes of play (this isn't a complaint against community designers - it's as likely to happen in a professionally written campaign). For this reason, I find it really important that in the editor I can throw down ten groups of units, a few medical modules and the high command one, and all that's left is to set up a few waypoints before you have a very playable mission. So, in the space of twenty minutes I can have decided what balance of units, what map and what style of mission I want to play for the evening, and then spend the rest of the hour playing. Because the AI doesn't need babying or scripted gimmicks to work well enough, I can throw in a dose of WICT or DAC if I want that real warzone feeling with minimal effort. If that was DR, I'd have to decide on the Monday night what I wanted to play and then script the AI's behaviours, on top of scripting them to pop in and out of existence as I move around the map to beat the daft entity limit. It'll probably be Thursday before I get to play the mission and *oh shit!*, I no longer feel like a stealthy, cerebral mission; I just want to get crazy with an armoured division to get the horror of my co-workers out of my system. It's also really important that I don't have to script zones where the AI will start to react to my forces, otherwise no mission that I've designed myself will be playable for me, as everything will be far too predictable.
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