I hate to be that jerk, but you folks playing either of these games on a console are dead to me. Dead! There's no teamwork on consoles!
Of course, I only say that because I miss you when you're not playing on the PC with me.
Isn't the 360 hardware about 17 years old already?
The bots complaints are a little silly. They're as good as the ones in L4D or L4D2, and in some ways they're better.There's this myth that bots should create this ideal playing experience where every AI-controlled player does exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment. Has that ever happened in any game with live, human players? I'm playing Brink on the 360 and loving it despite some patchable technical issues, and I have to say that the bots in many cases play _better_ than human players. "They just stand there", "they miss objectives", "they don't heal you". Whatever, all of that shit happens in any multiplayer game with a full complement of human players too. And besides, the AI medics in Brink are WAY better than the human medics in KZ3.
This game is unfortunately getting assassinated by critics and the armchair forumistas...critics that have been playing and seeing this game at E3, preview events, and so forth are disappointed that it's not more polished. The peanut gallery is locking on to the memes these critics are establishing, like the "bots suck" complaints. it's a brilliant design with some unfortunate technical issues that will hopefully be ironed out in time. For all the complaints that the big franchise shooters aren't doing anything to innovate the genre, you'd think that the same folks would be lining up to praise a game that literally throws the "FPS Design Manual 2011 edition" out the window like Brink does. With a little post-release support, it could become my favorite game of 2011.
@Tom "And, yeah, it
Well that was a waste of time. No point in spending time coming up with responses if they're going to be cut off for reasons unknown.
I played ET:QW and I loved the bots in that game. Brink? Not so much. They really don't seem to be playing the same game I am. They're okay for filling out a team, but they really don't seem as good as the ones from QW.
I'm an FPS fan but I only like to play objective games, never TDM because I'm just not that good of a twitch shooter. Objectives give me the opportunity to really help my team regardless of my KDR (usually) and shooting skills. Games like TF2 and Brink are my FPS dream games. However, since I'm only a console gamer I have been making due with the CoD and Halo games that we get.
I'm more concerned that Splash Damage is going to cut and run on the console gamers. I have been very excited about this game for a while seeing it as the console version of TF2 that we never got (since Valve let TF2 die on Xbox). After reading today's article on Ars Technica about how good the PC version is when they wrote an article yesterday about how bad the Xbox version is I'm getting that same feeling. I know releasing patches for Xbox is more of a hassle but they really need to support this game on consoles if they expect to get people to pay full retail. I hope SD comes through but I don't think they will. If a company as big as Valve gave up is there much hope for a small dev like SD?
Neuromancer, if you paste a quote mark or emdash into the text box, Word Press freaks out and goes all Kanye West on you, except without letting you finish.
I haven't played Brink yet - hilariously perfectly timed credit card issues - but I was smiling yesterday when I ran down the launch reviews. I read two within five minutes of each other - the first, paraphrased:
"The bots are useless, always piling mindlessly towards the current primary objective and never flanking or capturing secondary buffs...the challenge maps are the only worthwhile part of the game..." And the second?
"The bots are useless, constantly haring off after secondary objectives without contributing to the objective...there is a worthless challenge mode..."
I really hate to be argumentative, but the idea that all the people who are saying the bots are bad, including people who play video games for a living, just don't understand how the game works seems rather far-fetched.
There are lots of reasons people who play videogames for a living say stupid or incorrect things. Not understanding how a game works is only one of many possibilities.
But anyone who has the game can find out easily enough how the bots play. Just set yourself up as a spectator and follow a bot (ideally, you'll want to set the difficulty to hard to see bots at their best). There's no reason for any controversy when it's so easily verifiable.
Sure, but saying the same incorrect thing? In reviews that all came out at roughly the same time? I myself could see the bots running into walls, acting kind of dumb, and not shooting in the quicklook video GB put up.
I think I will follow your suggestion, though. It's a good one. No better way to find out than try it myself. Assuming Gamefly sends me Brink and not L.A. Noire (kind of hoping for Noire tbh. That game looks interesting).
1. "But in Section 8, you have multiple options at any given moment. Once the dynamic missions start appearing, your options increase dramatically."
I'd say that while DCMs aren't some sort of rail objective, woe be to the player who ignores them.
2. Re: the majority of reviewers saying the same incorrect thing -
Does anyone here remember the reviews of the original Section 8? I don't recall the complaints being "this game should be 15 bucks!" Yet, when Timegate releases damn-near the same title for a lot less caish, suddenly everyone is gooing all over it.
Could it be that a lot of people who make a living critiquing games read each other's reviews, often before writing their own? Wouldn't a lot of people in that same position? Gamers don't like divergent opinion, or at least that's what I took away from the CCGR post and the subsequent discussion. Present venue aside, I don't think there's much of a market in game opinion for significant variance. If your income depended on not being the one jackanape* who had something colorful to say about MW2, would you really want to stand out in the crowd?
*idon'treallythinkyou'reajackanapetom.com
@Tom OK thanks, I will be more careful in the future I suppose.
"Does anyone here remember the reviews of the original Section 8? I don
Dammit, now I made the copy paste mistake.
I'll just give the short version. I find KeysE2s' idea that professional game journalists are all plagiarists and liars, conspiring to all sound the same because there's no "market in game journalism for significant variance" (a statement which boggles the mind) to be offensive and absurd. It's also completely unfounded.
Besides, the first wave of reviews on a major release all come out at just about the same time. The timeline just doesn't work for his little conspiracy theory.
It's worth noting, and mentioned by Tyco at Penny Arcade that most of the media reviewers of this game recieved a completely different build than the retail release. The game they reviewed had significant differences in graphics quality, AI accuracy and control configuration. The guns have also appearantly been tuned greatly because many complaints about the game not being deadly or not allowing one-shot kills are no longer accurate. I've gotten a lot of head-shot kills with a pistol.
There are still graphics bugs that cause the game to jerk and lag and the bots are still single-minded. If you want to find the choke points on a map just play it in the single-player and watch where all of the bots gaggle-up. They always take the fastest route to the main objective. They don't however get stuck on walls or ignor enemy units or stand idle from what I've seen. I don't know if this is consistent in free-play. I've never used bots there.
A lot of critics have bashed the maps for being poorly designed and specifically they talk about chokepoints. This game isn't Halo. Your environments are heavy with terrain and surmounting it is a serious part of the game. Dominating at Brink requires you to adapt tactically to problems in real-time, rather than just hammerring through enemies. You need to find flanking positions outside of line-of-sight or get an elevated position with cover to hold a line or crush a barricade.
The game has some poorly pollished aspects. It has no women. It doesn't explain features or settings very well, wich is normally not a problem for me but there is a lot going on in the game all at once so it's hard to figure out how to use abilities on the fly. It is missing a lot of the normal sound and language settings American games come standard with like voice volume or subtitles. I haven't heard from anyone that has topped out the levels but I seem to be getting very close after only 10 hours of play so it looks like there isn't a lot of advancement.
Also I've gotten the lock-up bug often with Section 8 and not seen it with Brink, could be just my luck however.
@ A_J
The fact that you've resorted to such a ridiculous strawman argument makes me suspect that you see my point. I didn't call anyone a liar or a plagiarist. I'm saying that unless a reviewer goes out of their way to sequester themselves, exposure to other opinions will effect their critiques. And I don't think very many of them practice informational hygiene, nor do I think there is much incentive in the industry to do so. Look at the variation of reviews on Rotten Tomatos and then look at it on Metacritic. Even though they are score differently, I just don't see many reviews in the gaming world where you've got a bunch of 5s and 9s for a title.
Or are you arguing that there's a quality inherent in video games that makes them less prone to differences in opinion? Is that why all these intellectually diligent reviewers never score anything in the lower 50 percentile? Is there some non-linear grading in video games that no one ever told me about? The fact that anything below 80% is generally considered a failure should tell you that something stinks in Denmark.
Man, I was going to add something about Kane and Able, but the above pretty much makes the same sort of point.
I don't think you understand the meaning of "strawman". You implied that journalists read each others work and write similar things, making them near-plagiarists, and they don't write what they really think because "gamers don't like divergent opinion", making them liars. I was directly responding to your statements.
I look at metacritic and for most games there's a spread. Like anything in real life, there's a cluster in the middle and several outliers. What changes is where that cluster is. If a game is generally considered good, it'll be in the 80s or 90s. If it's average, in the 70s, and if it's poor, somewhere in the 50s or 60s.
They rarely grade things below 50 because 75% has become the de facto average. Not because they are writing what they think people want to hear.
You are directly responding to intentionally inflated arguments that I never made. By creating a hyperbolic set of statements on your own, then addressing them instead of the actual content of my post, you are using straw men argument.
Would care to speak to the reviews of S8 vs S8P? Again, I don't recall anyone saying that they loved it except for the price. Would you care to provide evidence to the contrary?
And if you think that big sites like IGN and Gamespot are presenting "one man's opinion" instead of their reviewers' opinions about the viability of a given title in the marketplace as a whole, then I've got some million dollar condos in Miami that I'd like you to help me finance. Those sites don't exist to present editorial about games. They are basically extensions of the publisher's marketing departments. You can't reasonably expect objectivity from sites that derive revenue from ads for the very titles they are reviewing.
Again, do some research into the original Kane and Lynch and then please stop this silly white-knighting of mainstream game reviewers.