Quote: "facial expression muscles - pure animation, hardly new and hardly impressive. Final Fantasy X has the best in the industry if you ask me. - Still looks cool, still bloody awsome."
sorry but actually to me, it doesn't. if they'd done more with the animation and actually made it realistic movements and little idiocies like FFXI (and FFXII will) have then i'd be more impressed, but the facial animations in there are actually pretty second rate - infact almost all of the animations in HL2 are too clunky and don't compliment the phsyics at all.
Quote: "- physics - Havok physics is being used, which means anyone who gets this Physics Engine can achieve the exact same things for the same £50,000 per title per platform pricetag. And it isn't exactly complex to use ... Max has been using it in Reactor since r3 - And now it's in a game!!!"
I suppose Racket & Clank isn't a game, nor is Angel of Darkness or Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator?
Sorry but it isn't the first game title to ever use Havok
Quote: "- heat wave - again this is a very simple and they're implimentation of it was virging on offensively basic. Even Angel of Darkness' poorly programmed version was better - Oh, so should they scrap it altogether because it isn't the best?"
no, but perhaps they could spend more than 5minutes on it so that perhaps it is as impressive as some of you feel it is.
you want an impressive version of Heat Wave and Shader use in a game... Buy Moto GP 2 for the XBox or FFXI, or even NFS Underground.
Sorry but the shaders and shader engine in HL2 to me is about as impressive as hanging a spoon from my nose. It isn't the most beautiful game on the market, sorry but if you've played FFXI on the PS2 or High-End PC that undoubtably is THE best looking title there is on the PC.
Quote: "- interactivity (with the environment) - again, not a very novel or particularly impressive feature. Havok allowed more than usual to become interactive and the new event scripts allow better events to interact with each other. But on the whole it doesn't particularly improve on most FPS games nor does it even get as close to interactivity as alot of platformers. - No, of course shooting a plank of wood and letting the barrels ontop roll down and off realistically isn't impressive. I agree, I'd much rather have a bullet hole textured onto the wall instead, makes for much better gameplay that way. Oh and you're absolutely right Raven, and I'd really love to not be able to move tables to block doors (as demonstrated in the video), I'd much rather have it so the table just obstructs my path."
yeah these are new (but not by alot actually) to the FPS genre of game ... but platformers have been doing such things for years even before physics engines were even considered for mainstream.
again is a nice touch, but isn't impressive.
even more so when that and a few other areas of the game, suchas the car being blow away by the flying alien were actually 100% scripted events. They claim that it will be in the final version, but hell they claimed a September 30th release date too ... i believe what comes out of Valve almost as much as i believe what a politician says right now.
Quote: "- heat wave, church glass, and other type of fx - again, alot of thier effects seem nice at high resolutions... but you'll need a beast of a machine to run it at such and to be honest alot of them are out of the box effects that have simply been optimised. And thier Materials System is hardly impressive either, and is overly used. - Still looks cool, still makes for a bloody awesome looking game."
But it isn't even CLOSE to the best looking game, there are better titles currently out ... and even more on the way.
Graphics don't make the game, the gameplay does. And thats something that Valve haven't improved upon and quite frankly it is the actual area of the game i had the most problem with as it was very very nasty to control compared to the Quake games.
It's why i'm not a fan of Unreal either ... because it feels so detached from the gameplay.
Quote: "Sounds like Raven was just flamebaiting. I mean really, how can a materials system be overused?"
go look at the screenshots of it, or the video... don't look at the action. Stop the video or take a look at the pipes, or larger areas of wall or other such things.
Yeah the GI style lighting makes the levels look nice, but quite frankly shader cards are not yet powerful enough to create entire materials on the fly. You want to sit here and argue that "oh yeah the Radeon is capable of RT Materials" ... but it isn't and the worlds STILL need detailed textures to make up the atmosphere and depth to a scene. If you look at how ridiculously bland the HL2 levels are which are ONLY being made look good by the ridiculous overuse of Shaders which put more toll on the need for speed of the graphics card than is truely needed.
Look at Doom3, the lighting, the texture depth ... although i'd personally soften and make the depth of the normalised textures different and put in a but more per-px-light - that game has the ability to create atmosphere. What the hell is the point in special effects if they DON'T add to the games feel?
I'm not flamebaiting here, and i'm not saying that HL2 is crap.
I'm simply saying that it just isn't AS impressive as people seem to think. And it is hardly a contender for Game of the Year 2004, it will no doubt win on name alone really - which is sad, because i've seen ALOT of bloody fantastic and indepth games that deserve such a title far more.
Look below at the adverts, there is a game called TrueCrime - but it and try not to be impressed. It's GTA meets Tekken meets Tomb Raider ... in all one HELL of an impressive game.
Or Tony Hawks Underground, which quite frankly is an EPIC game with some stunning levels and freedom that really blows most games out of the water.
HL2 is good, but it isn't impressive.
To Survive You Must Evolve... This Time Van Will Not Escape His Fate!
900mhz | 256mb | FX5200Ti 52.16 | Dx9 | WXP-Pro
