I was reading through some of the console reviews at GameSpy.com, and I have to compliment the staff-- every review I read was uniformly well written and entertaining to read. Who knew?
Guess I’ll add that to my “must read links from” list. Or in Erik’s case, the “must read links from in case they plagiarized my review AGAIN” list.
While I’m at it, I am siding with Tom Ham’s review of The Thing:
http://www.gamespy.com/reviews/september02/thingxbox/
Rather than Tom “editors need to learn that I shouldn’t review First Person Shooters” Chick’s review:
Good thing for Tom The Thing is a third-person shooter.
Once I was over my initial Thing buzz, I realized the “thing” transformations are all canned, regardless of whether you test people or not (do a save game test… they magically are “thing-free” until they hit some threshhold a minute later and boom, insta-thing). And no guy you’ll ever need later will ever turn into a thing. And the “trust” element, which is a great idea, is really a simply binary system. Hand someone ammo or heal them, they magically trust you. And that’s it. There’s no subtlety or granularity to the system. And the later parts of the game turn into a fairly standard shooter… blah blah blah.
Feh, what do I know? I probably have a problem with third-person games.
The “fear” system was a little goofy, too. Move close to a grisly kill, your buddy starts to do the shakes – move away, and he’s smoothed out like cake frosting. Rinse and repeat.
I agree it’s a gimmicky, mediocre shooter. And save locations suck – but I realize this point is as contentious among gamers as the console vs. PC passions.
Slightly* derailing our topic, how are the saves in Hitman 2 done on the console? No saves? Save points? Save anywhere with a limit (like PC)? Anyone know?
*completely
I only played the beta, but I thought the whole Fear thing was just a layer of complication that didn’t add anything besides potential irritation. I think the game would have been better had it been a more straightforward shooter.
I agree, Mark. Instead of showing the player how scared the NPC is, how about scaring the player? This is a horror game for the red-shirted NPCs who know their number is soon to be up. As a player, this game is as scary as the trick-or-treaters who come to my house Halloween night.
I don’t know why people criticise GameSpy. I find the site an excellent source of daily games news and reviews.
In fact I’d be more inclined to pay for GameSpy than I would GameSpot.
> don’t know why people criticise GameSpy. I find the site an excellent source of daily games news and reviews. In fact I’d be more inclined to pay for GameSpy than I would GameSpot.
Well, I don’t agree with that, but I do think GameSpy does a good job, and it’s a good thing they do too, since they’re the only real online competition for GameSpot these days. Bring back OGR!
I’m still waiting for someone to bring back NGO :)
I’d like to see more customization in gaming news sites. The reason I stopped reading Blues and Voodoo (and others) is because I get tired of reading about how some new videocard drivers have been released. Or that there are new controller files for the SpaceORB. A customized news page like CNN would be nice.
I would also kill to find a site that does decent mobile messenger news updates of the latest gaming news headlines. The stuff we have at work (vzw) is sad. I personally don’t care that Scooby Doo & The Night Of 1000 Frights came out. I thought about doing this sort of thing for DIY Games but to do it right it would have to be done from an established site like GameSpot or Gamespy.
Amen!
What about Happypuppy? :lol:
etc
What did happen to HappyPuppy?
I remember them being bought out a while ago by someone but it seems the site is still all but dead??
Whoever went to Happy Puppy? In all seriousness, I know it got decent traffic for several years, and was the very first meaningful PC gaming site, although it failed to capitalize on its early lead. But I’ve never heard anyone say anything good about this site, and even though I’ve read all the mags and most sites for years, I never went to this one. Who did it appeal to? People who liked demos early on?
Dog owners.
Unless it mysteriously changed hands again, it was purchased by TheGlobe.com, and went the way of many of their online properties. It’s still promoted on their Corporate Overview page.
It looks like no-one has updated anything on happypuppy since the end of July.
I used to have it book marked (maybe 9 mos. ago) and their updates became few and far between long ago. They had a Dead to Rights preview up for months in the PS2 section. It is probably still there.