Were you playing using Dragon Naturally Speaking for the controls? It took me six hours.
I honestly don’t think it’s the track they were headed down, but how they went there.
The general idea is fine. It’s not like making a balls-out action game in the NOLF universe with a gruff lead guy is a bad idea. The problem is that making a bunch of boring obstacle courses in which wave after wave of enemies burst through doors and get mowed down by you isn’t exciting action. In order to make the action exciting, they would have had to seriously change the enemy AI, mix up the types of enemies more, have a lot more set-pieces (the tornado level in NOLF2 is the kind of thing that would fit great in JACK), and make JACK’s personality come through more while you were playing. Perhaps through the occasional quip or hand gestures or something.
Contract JACK is a game that could have really benefitted from some real focus testing.
I agree, and I’d bet Monolith knows it, too. My guess is that this was simply too ambitious a plan for this expansion pack, especially if they had to meet a 2003 deadline, and so they had to keep things simpler.
Which, in the end, is a bummer, because I also agree that there’s a great full-on shooter to be made in that universe.
Sounds like a fair evaluation, Jason. Well, I’ll pass on it: sorry, Monolith, I’d love to support the franchise, but JACK sounds misguided all around.
Dominions 2, here I come.
How’d you know that one?
I kept dying, and wound up quicksaving and reloading just about every 5 minutes.
Man, you guys should bump more threads, these things are like time capsules! Contract Jack? Dungeon Siege? Tron 2.0? I haven’t thought about these games in at least a decade I bet.
I wonder what Charles thinks about the reaction to yesterday’s Doctor Who announcement…
I agree. Maybe Discourse could pull up one random old thread per week just for giggles if no one else does.
For a while, it seemed to be doing just that.
And I was fine with it. I love necros. In fact, I thought this was another one of those old threads whose final post was going to be dated '03, and which just mysteriously appeared on my home page.
What the heck happened to Charles anyway?
He posts on BF. Part of the great split from a couple of years ago.
Ah… yeah, I was out of the loop during that time.