Win some lose Some, UT3 got better ratings than it deserved so I think Epic shouldn't be crying so loudly that their year old port (that was enjoyable enough) did not take the pc world by storm. I guess they will be moaning again in a couple of years when GOW2 isn't flavour of the month either.
Mike Capps Upset About Lower Gears PC Scores
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How exactly was it special? ok, attaching a chainsaw to an Assault Rifle is pretty interesting, but apart from that, what does it really do that tons of action games before and since has not also done? i just don't think it stands out from the crowd, and offers something that would make me buy it instead of any number of other action packed titles for the PC, infact i'd sooner considder many others out there just because they don't use Live.
On the PC market at least, i don't really see what the fuss is all about, it looks pretty run of the mill to me, nothing about it screams "Oi! Grobut! you should totally get this game instead of that other one" at me, its story line is nothing that really grabs me, and its gameplay is nothing i haven't done a hundred times over.
There's nothing wrong with making a game that's just "entertainment", but then you must also accept that your game will just be another face in the crowd, and that sales and reviews will be pretty standard, and on the PC market, GoW is just that, standard, a competent action shooter, but nothing special.
Its fair enough you like the game, i'm not about to tell you you shoulden't, but on the PC market, can you really say it is revolutionary? that it has exciting new features? that it stands head and shoulders above the crowd? i for one cannot, it's competent, but so are many other PC games out there.
Go have a beer and calm down mate, i haven't declared myself Emperor of the world just yet, it's just common knowlege that action games on the PC have traditionally been 1'st person and on Consoles they have more often been 3'rd person, and PC gamers tend to lean to 1'st person more, if you where to start a poll on a bunch of forums, for both Console and PC games, asking "What do you prefer, 1'st or 3'rd person view?" with the options "1'st, 3'rd, Either", i feel confident saying you will see a difference in what the two groups vote.
More like does not equal exactly like, now does it?
We can instantly agree that Consoles are becoming more PC like, but it's not a PC yet, there are still differences, and alot of people, like myself, still prefer the PC because of thouse differences, and because we enjoy PC titles like Stalker for instance, some of us like the added complexity you often find in PC titles, whereas the Console market (whilst it does have some titles that stand out) tends to be more mainstream, a bit more casual if you will, tons of people enjoy that, some of us do not, it's not rocket surgery..
So you're saying that Stalker/Crysis is better than Gears of War on the PC?
Name me one incredible shooter recently, other than CoD4.
The wall sticking of GoW was quite special, not a lot of games where you could properly hide behind objects. Actually, don't know a single game before GoW that had that feature.
An other thing that made GoW special is that it was pretty much non-stop action. Hardly any interruptions. It's not new, but not a lot of game do this. So it make GoW special.
Well, that's a completely subjective thing. You either like it or not. For example there are a lot of people who claim the star wars movie have a brilliant story, but it's quite shallow.
I like the whole setting of GoW, I also like the original Predator movie. I think they are much alike.
You lost points by mentioning the term "revolutionary". I'll let you think a bit about that, maybe you'll figure out what's wrong with using terms like "revolutionary" or "innovative" for that matter.
Traditionally PC games were also 3rd person. It's only recently that there have been a lot of 1st person action games. I don't feel like doing the grunt work because I'm not claiming most action games on the PC were orignally in 3rd person, so I'll leave that up to someone else.
Catalog all PC action games from the era 1990-1995 and tell me the percentage of action games that were 3rd person and 1st person.
so.. what are the differences?
Well there are a bunch of games that have both and are left to the choice of the player. I wonder what happened to that idea of including both perspectives...
And also pretty pointless in my opinion, i really don't get the need for thease "Cover systems", it's not like we coulden't figure out how to use the surroundings for cover in the past, i don't think there is anything wrong with the old way, or any benifit to this new one, atleast, not in a PC game played with mouse and Kb.
And having non-stop action is not special, and some would say it is not even a good thing, depends on what you want really.
Well duh.. it's my opinion, and like everyone elses, it's subjective.
Rubbish, if you want to stand out from the crowd, you have to offer something different, something new or something extra, do things in a better way than the competition, anything really, but if you want to stand out people will have to notice you for something, wont they?
No, traditionally PC games where isometric view, or side scrollers, just like all other 8 bit games really, but that was quite a while ago, Since Wolf3D and Doom hit, the FPS genre really took the PC market by storm, and it really hasen't been challenged untill now, where this new wave of Multi-platform development has brought alot more 3'rd person titles to the PC, however, i for one still preferr my PC games 1'st person, and i get the feeling that i am not alone.
Sure i can think of alot of "PC" games that where 3'rd person, but incidentally, most of them where also on the PS1 and 2, lots of them where ports.
But again, alot of ports to the PC added a 1'st person view, especially apparent in racing titles, just look at the NFS series for instance, PS1 version had no dash view (only bumper), PC version did.
Sure, and whilst i'm doing Herculean and neigh Sisyphusian tasks, why don't i make pigs fly too? just for larfs and all..
And why exactly stop at 1995? i belive PC gaming has existed past that date.. infact, i think you will find something interesting happened in 1994 that has been with PC gaming ever since.
Honestly now, you cannot think of a single thing that PC's and Consoles do differently? they are identical in all ways?
I don't do strawmen mate.
Yes, games like Vampire Bloodlines for instance, and i too would like to see more of that.
Is he really that surprised?
Crysis? That one's a close call. They're both pretty crappy. Hmm...
Stalker is, by a mile. It actually plays like it wasn't designed by a bunch of teenagers who have only been gaming since the 360 came out. (do you see what i did there?)So you're saying that Stalker/Crysis is better than Gears of War on the PC?
Crysis? That one's a close call. They're both pretty crappy. Hmm...
Just because you can do something one way doesn't make another way uncool. Could you also spray and pray and peek around corners in these other games that you could hide behind properly?
Anyway, I think this is an extremely silly point to make, as 99% of what is "revolutionary" (as you would call it) in the game industry right now is just taking something you could already do and improving it in some way. The cover system is obviously just improving the "crouch behind random boxes" gameplay of several older games.
Yes, it is. In fact, off the top of my head I can only think of three games that do that remotely properly. Half Life, Bioshock and Gears of War. Part of maintaining atmosphere in a game is not having too many breaks. Part of that comes from cinema. If you don't like cinematic games, that is your own prerogative, however I personally love cinematic games and Gears (as well as Bioshock and a few other games) took many pages out of Hollywood's handbook. I suggest taking a film making course if that doesn't make sense to you or you can't see why the game industry would be shooting for that.
I was under the impression it averaged out at something like 84%. 65%-70% is where I would put it even now.
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If the game has propper movement, then yes, absolutely, you need features like leaning, different stances, and a good control over your speed, basically any tactical shooter worthy of the title has thease things, and it's catching on in other games too, games like Far-Cry and Stalker used more refined movement like this, even though they can hardly be called tactical shooters.
A movement system like that would be harder to pull off on a controller though, there's only X amount of buttons, and you woulden't want to waste too many of them on the same thing, so a cover system does make sense here, as you go into a different mode of control when covering, you can make better use of what's there, but on the PC? it just takes away some freedom of play i feel.
And i just don't think it is a step forward in a PC game, i think we have seen much better for the PC.
And i for one hate that with a passion, if i want a cinematic experiance i'll watch a movie, i want something different when i play a game, i want to call the shots, not be held by the hand and lead through a movie like experiance.
That's my view, you are welcome to differ.
But i don't feel GoW was a first in delivering that kind of cinematic experiance and paceing, i'd have to say most SP games released thease days, and since around aprox 2002, have taken that route, some more than others, obviously, but it seems the norm now.
It's amazing how out of touch this guy is with the PC market.
I've been saying it for awhile now, but it seems like Epic lost their PC knowledge when this guy joined their team...
Why didn't it score good? Well first you have to ask why did it score so high on the 360, and I think it's not unfair to say that marketing hype had a lot to do with why GoW was successful on the 360. Run melodramatic commercials on MTV 24/7 for a month, pay off a bunch of reviewers (don't pretend this doesn't happen), and it's not hard to see why MS's flagship game for the 360 launch got such high praise.
PC users don't fall for that type of marketing hype. When we got to the game the graphics weren't anything special, the story is shallow and one-dimensional, and the characters are like a group of WCW rejects. Top that off with show stopping bugs like the old save game eating bug, no support for AA, and numerous crashbugs, and you have the recipe for a mediocre game for the PC.
As for the multiplayer. It uses MS Live to handle all multiplayer, and at the time of its release you had to buy a Live Gold account to even create your own games. Not only that but Live on Windows functions exactly the same way as it does on Xbox Live. It's all Peer 2 Peer networking. No dedicated servers, and you're at the mercy of everyone's internet connections. Now tell me this. In 2007 what PC gamer in their right mind is going to pay money for a service that gives them LESS than what PC games have had for a decade? I think we all know the answer to that question.
I think Mike Capps has been the downfall of Epic. He doesn't "get it" at all. Has he honestly not thought of any of these points?
I've been saying it for awhile now, but it seems like Epic lost their PC knowledge when this guy joined their team...
Why didn't it score good? Well first you have to ask why did it score so high on the 360, and I think it's not unfair to say that marketing hype had a lot to do with why GoW was successful on the 360. Run melodramatic commercials on MTV 24/7 for a month, pay off a bunch of reviewers (don't pretend this doesn't happen), and it's not hard to see why MS's flagship game for the 360 launch got such high praise.
PC users don't fall for that type of marketing hype. When we got to the game the graphics weren't anything special, the story is shallow and one-dimensional, and the characters are like a group of WCW rejects. Top that off with show stopping bugs like the old save game eating bug, no support for AA, and numerous crashbugs, and you have the recipe for a mediocre game for the PC.
As for the multiplayer. It uses MS Live to handle all multiplayer, and at the time of its release you had to buy a Live Gold account to even create your own games. Not only that but Live on Windows functions exactly the same way as it does on Xbox Live. It's all Peer 2 Peer networking. No dedicated servers, and you're at the mercy of everyone's internet connections. Now tell me this. In 2007 what PC gamer in their right mind is going to pay money for a service that gives them LESS than what PC games have had for a decade? I think we all know the answer to that question.
I think Mike Capps has been the downfall of Epic. He doesn't "get it" at all. Has he honestly not thought of any of these points?
I don't like how technicalities get brought into this. I couldn't tell you what makes GoW so fun to me, it just is. I think it may be routed in how comfortable and simple it is like pacman or something. Also it's stylization is just gorgeous. That cover thing isn't anything new. It feels almost identical to Kill.switch's system (which was also fun) but Gears's delivery had some magical substance to it that made it better. Might be the controls..?
I don't have a console other than my lamecube and a bunch of older gen systems, but even I had to run out and grab a 360 controller for this game. The whole keyboard + mouse system just felt so stiff and honestly, just unnecessary for anything other than FPS's. It all felt like so much work playing with it where GoW is more of a casual sit down and have some fun kinda game. With the controller it feels a whole lot more casual and less tense. I mean this isn't a twitch shooter you can take your time with stuff and hide behind things.
I think Crysis has that fun factor too, but in a GTA kinda sandbox way. I never got tired of going off road, circling around and ramping pickups onto enemy shacks as a means for killing everybody for instance.
I don't even know where I was going with this post anymore. I shoulda been a cool kid and quoted somebody first.
P.S. Stalker was boring. Oh snap.
I don't have a console other than my lamecube and a bunch of older gen systems, but even I had to run out and grab a 360 controller for this game. The whole keyboard + mouse system just felt so stiff and honestly, just unnecessary for anything other than FPS's. It all felt like so much work playing with it where GoW is more of a casual sit down and have some fun kinda game. With the controller it feels a whole lot more casual and less tense. I mean this isn't a twitch shooter you can take your time with stuff and hide behind things.
I think Crysis has that fun factor too, but in a GTA kinda sandbox way. I never got tired of going off road, circling around and ramping pickups onto enemy shacks as a means for killing everybody for instance.
I don't even know where I was going with this post anymore. I shoulda been a cool kid and quoted somebody first.
P.S. Stalker was boring. Oh snap.
Capps makes it sound like a major effort to convert the game to PC. It had to be designed and developed on a PC to begin with. He's just pissed because everyone knows Epic is giving PC gamers the bums rush. UT3 is a console port even if it was released to PC first. Selling out to consoles was a business decision. I get that. But, why pretend that they aren't giving the PC market second best.
Name 3 games that had the same level of non-stop action as GoW had.
I didn't meant it like that. You want games to be promoted as "we're the best, screw the rest". I don't care for that stuff. It's not an neutral point for discussion of why GoW is less of a game for PC.
And that's why I wanted you to check you facts. First of all, sidescrollers and isometric views are 3rd person. Maybe you meant to say "chase cam". But a chase cam is a special form of 3rd person views.
As for Wolf3D, in the exact same year Alone in the Dark was released. It featured real time 3D rendered character, viewed from fixed 3rd person camera points. In 1992 Novalogic released a game with true 3D outdoor environments called Comance: Maximum Overkill. Even before 1992 there have been games with 3D rendered worlds or parts thereof. The whole bif thing about Wolf3D was that they translated the sidescrolling platform awesomeness to a first person 3D-like environment. Because there were FPS games before Wolf3D, they were just 2D (side scrolling like Mad Dog McCree)
Ports? Yes, quite some of them were ports, from PC to the PlayStation. For example: MDK, Tomb Raider
Because that's a period in which PC gaming has changed a lot. Really matured in it's various formats.
To a large extend I don't see much differences between PC and Consoles. One major difference is the ability for user created content.
Sorry, but that's not "maintaining" the atmosphere of any game or movie, but making it linear, repetitive and most of all - BORING. A quick example would be the Star Wars movies. They have everything a movie needs and respectively the games. Why not ask yourself why the average action flicks aren't getting any good scores? That's a bit off topic so I don't think comparison should continue.Breed, all Doom Games, all Duke Nukem games, Halo, Heavy Metal F.A.K.K. 2, Unreal series.... Should I add more?
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The problem is, you're wrong. Leaning is not the same thing as spray and pray or peeking because in every FPS that has leaning, the top half of you is fully exposed while leaning around a corner.
And it's not like the movement and cover system in Gears is unique, it's just done very well.
And I don't think we've ever seen a game like this on PC with the same level of quality.
Frankly, most 3rd person games on PC have been more comic-like and less serious. Plus they are done so rarely that you could probably count on one hand the number of games that are styled like Gears is.
In addition, storytelling has been a difficult arena for 3rd person games to approach because the player is disconnected from the "star". Gears does a very good job of storytelling compared to other games in it's genre.
I disagree, but I'd wager you don't pay much attention to it because you don't like it.
I'm not talking about hand holding, that doesn't really happen in games that often. Still, story games are designed to *gasp* tell a story. STALKER is the perfect example of where non-linearity gets in the way of storytelling - if your userbase is too bored to figure out how to finish the game, then you have failed at telling a story.
I love games that tell a story in an entertaining way. That's really all there is to it. I think Halo is a terrible game with awful gameplay mechanics, but I still enjoy it for it's storytelling, soundtrack, and co-op.
In closing, I guess I'll just say that we obviously disagree about what kinds of games are fun. Which makes no difference in the scheme of things. I simply think it's silly to call Gears old hat when it was the first game of it's type to be made so well.
All three Serious Sam games just to start with. I could come up with a lot more but I think I'll just stick with what you asked.
Why are you sticking to the gaming years prior to 1995. You do realize that this is not proving your point as you seem to be ignoring the 13 years that came after. You know, that time frame the completely disproves your point?
Stop for a second Brizz... You said...
You spoke of peaking around corners. Leaning is peaking around corners and was PC's way of adding in a semi realistic way of doing it while maintaining first person perspective. The spray and pray I'll give you. But you asked if we could peak around corners. The answer is yes.... But hell, in third person there is no peak around corners. Above the action you can see everything for the most part. One could argue that that perspective takes away from the challenge
Gods eye view for the advantage.
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Even those aren't quite what he is talking about, since each level is broken up into separate "maps" with lengthy loading screens in between.
Peeking around corners is one thing I mentioned, yes. Personally, I think that having half of your body exposed while "peeking" isn't really peaking at all, it's leaning out from behind a corner.You spoke of peaking around corners. Leaning is peaking around corners and was PC's way of adding in a semi realistic way of doing it while maintaining first person perspective. The spray and pray I'll give you. But you asked if we could peak around corners. The answer is yes.... But hell, in third person there is no peak around corners. Above the action you can see everything for the most part. One could argue that that perspective takes away from the challenge
Do thi exercise. Walk to a carner of the wall in your house. stand facing the wall with the rest of the hallway or whatever just to your side (like you would in this instance. Now, move your head slightly toward the hallway. How much of your body do you suppose is exposed? A portion of your head and maybe your shoulder? I don't think there is any more reason to point out that peeking in most FPS's is not peeking at all.
I'll admit that it is just as ungraceful in Gears as well. However, the comparison was between an FPS (where those things are literally not possible to do) and a third person game (where those things exist partially because of the point of view) is no comparison at all. Apples, oranges, straw, kool aid.
I guess what I'm getting at is that it is retarded to say "Why do we need this? We can already do it in FPSes!" when that couldn't be farther from the truth. Talk about a strawman argument!