WarlockEngineerMoreDakka

Why are you all caring so much about a score? When we should really be calling for their destruction? -_-

Kill Scores. Kill Metacritic.

ARGGHHHHH ;_;

YOU IMBECILE OP. >:(

Where's the 'I have no interest in Sim City anyway'option?!? >:(

I just want to see the results! :P

I ultimately voted no though- cause I don't think this would've been a complete deal-breaker for me if I was interested to begin with.

Probably not.

Valve's too busy with the Steam Box, Linux, and Dota 2 right now. :P

As an earlier poster said though- Half-life 3's reveal will become MUCH more likely when Valve finally reveals Source 2.

Right- this is seriously getting frustrating.

I cannot unlock a SINGLE new grazer after 20+ attempts- cause the Sika Deer sucks so hard.

The starter areas don't give you enough high ground or tall grass to hug for survival. So either the AI director will spawn a single unavoidable predator to end my run (Cause the sika deer cannot out-run them once detected), or screw me over in the food department and spawn ABSOLUTELY NO FOOD IN THE INITIAL AREAS. (I've had this happen on about a 1/3rd of my attempts- I kid you not)

The only way I've gotten anywhere close to finally making progress towards the unlock is when the game's AI director is merciful and spawns absolutely no predators in the initial area. But inevitably it will spawn an unavoidable one- and thus screw over any chance I have of unlocking the gazelle. (Especially since the woods the gazelle spawns in are even flatter than the other nearby areas- making it nearly impossible to travel through if any predators are spawned in- and by that point they always are.)

The challenge system also seems relatively poorly designed- or at least poorly programmed. Its possible to partially screw yourself out of some early challenges- or at the very least make them much more inconvenient to complete- if you claim the station too quickly, mark too many areas too quickly, or change generation too quickly. (And thus potentially doom the whole point of the run: Unlocking the Gazelle)

It just seems like the game's random generation and challenge systems are generally not balanced with grazers in mind. So is unlocking the earlier, weaker grazers purely luck based? Or am I doing something completely wrong?

@galiant said:

This^.

Brand loyalty is for suckers. :P

I don't see this affecting me too much. Outside of holiday season, I generally buy cheaper stuff or take advantage of sales. ESPECIALLY since pretty much all of my out-of-holiday season purchases are digital.

So the only time I regularly/consistently buy games at full price- retail or otherwise- is during the holiday season. And I don't think this'll change that.

Me? Getting any next-gen consoles this year? Not a chance.

..... Unless you count the Ouya or Microsoft Surface Pro? :D

:P

I'll most likely get a PS4 at some point- but not this year. MAYBE end of next year, but we'll see.

Lair... :P

But yeah, not surprising that six-axis is still gonna be around.

Oh alright, I'll bite:

Over-rated:

• Homeworld 2
  • The original Homeworld was one of my favorite RTSes of all time. I personally felt Homeworld 2 threw away a lot of Homeworld 1's unique feel in favor of being more like a traditional RTS. It had less interesting skirmish AI, a less interesting campaign, horrific formation options compared to the original's excellent formations, less interesting resourcing, etc.
  • Make no mistake- Homeworld 2 was actually not a horrible RTS in its own right. But it was nowhere near the fantastical and unique experience I had with the original.
• Empire: Total War
  • If your game's 'expert' AI is worse than the 'Normal' AI of one of your predecessors (Rome: Total War to be specific), you know there's a problem. Empire: Total War is one of the biggest examples out there of how AI can make or break your game. In the case of Empire, completely break. Thank goodness Creative Assembly at least partially redeemed themselves with Shogun 2.
  • If there's any upside to Empire- at least the Naval combat wasn't bad. :P
• Half-life 2
  • Another example of AI letting a game down. Half-life 2's Combine are some of the most boring enemies I've ever faced in the FPS genre. I won't say Half-life 2's a bad game though- because non-combine engagements are good fun. Its just a shame the Combine are the most prolific enemy in the game. :\
  • Take note- I'm only listing the original Half-life 2 here!
    • Episode 1's superb level design managed to gloss over the Combine's lackluster AI and make them kind of interesting in spurts.
    • Episode 2 gave the Combine an at least partially memorable enemy in the form of the Hunter.
      • (And I'm probably in the minority for thinking the first half of the game- the Antlion caverns- are the better part of the game. :P )

Under-rated:

• Warhammer 40,000: Squad Command
  • One of my favorite PSP games honestly. Yeah sure, its multiplayer died out very quickly and its campaign is quite short. But that campaign is pretty darned enjoyable- I've ended up replaying it on multiple occasions now. The above average enemy AI just makes it for me. :D
  • Well, the AI's above average at least until the campaign's disappointing endgame missions where Chaos Marines are largely replaced by Obliterators- which the AI is nowhere near as competent with. :(
• Wrath Unleashed
  • I rented this when I was younger- and was overjoyed to have stumbled on what is pretty much a spiritual successor/tribute to Archon. :D
  • The level of content within the game is slightly limited, as there's only so many maps and the campaigns are all very short. But again, the combat was good fun and the enemy AI is surprisingly good at the highest difficulty...
  • ..... In combat at least. On the strategic maps, Wrath Unleashed's AI can be ridiculously stupid regardless of difficulty level. :P
• Binary Domain
  • Definitely one of my surprise purchases last year- I bought it on impulse from Green Man Gaming when it had a real nice sale going. And I did not regret it.
  • Yes yes, the story was surprisingly entertaining and all... But unlike most people who remember the game for characters like Big Bo and Cain, I remember Binary Domain for the basic enemy security bots. You should know a game knows what its doing when its able to prevent its basic cannon fodder enemies from ever getting old. :D
  • (It's a pity the security bots are predominantly replaced by the baton and pistol-wielding police bots in the latter third of the game, as their AI actually isn't quite as unpredictable. But oh well. :P )

I have a Vostro 3450 Laptop with two cards I can switch between:

1. Intel HD Graphics chipset
2. Radeon 6630 HD (Mobile version)

Unfortunately, the Vostro 3450 requires a BIOS update to fully utilize the Radeon card at all- and even then it becomes very unreliable in another way.

As far as I can tell, Its drivers suck- real bad. So badly- they outright fail/crash on a pretty regular basis when in use, sometimes going so far as to blue-screen the whole system. -_- (And they can't be updated any further- so I have already exhausted my options for fixing them. >:( )

Its really weird too, cause there are a few rare demanding games that the drivers never fail with, mostly unreal engine games such as Smite and Hawken. Outside of those, with more demanding games fullscreened, it can take less than an hour to fail. Windowed, it can last up to 3 hours tops.

So I use the Intel HD card a LOT more often- and it honestly isn't as bad as you'd think. :P