If you bought the FEAR Pack during the Halloween sale on STEAM then you might as well play them since you already paid for them, but I'd wait till after you finish FEAR 2 and 3. However, I wouldn't buy them separately. They weren't developed by Monolith and only exist because of a bad contract they signed. They refused to make FEAR 2 until the loophole was removed.
That one was tough. I wound up putting together the biggest fucking tank I could, and arming it with the small rapid-fire plasma cannon, the really long back-mounted laser, and 1000 round machinegun. I think I was mostly lucky to beat him, but I did. AC3's the only one I've finished, with 92% completion (I'm still missing one mission and a few hidden parts - stupid S rank requirements).
Right now I'm at the "Defend Mirage Headquarters" mission in Silent Line, and for some reason those two little bastard ACs give me trouble. The one with the double flame-throwers mostly - he keeps to cover so much it's hard to hit him from above, so I keep running out of ammo.
I honestly didn't have any problem with Silent Line... I just imported my ACs from AC3, so I had that nice laser rifle you get as a reward for one of the missions. The black one, not the Kurasawa. That plus a Moonlight could handle most missions, with occasional additions of grenades.
In the Arena I just made the biggest fuckin' missile boat I could. The 4 shot missile back weapons + the double missile extensions + the missile firing left hand weapon on a heavy bi-pedal frame meant 7 missiles at once, which would overcome any counter-measures they had. Just dodge and fire.
In the Arena I just made the biggest fuckin' missile boat I could. The 4 shot missile back weapons + the double missile extensions + the missile firing left hand weapon on a heavy bi-pedal frame meant 7 missiles at once, which would overcome any counter-measures they had. Just dodge and fire.
Yeah. Corpse Maker in particular is super weak against missiles - he doesn't even have passive defenses against them. He's pretty tough against everything else, though. I managed to take him out with my machine-guns before learning he was weak vs missiles.
You mean the XCB/75 laser rifle? I've got that one. I imported mine, as well. Looks sort of like Optimus Prime's gun, though I guess not really. The Karasawa's a potent weapon, and it fires quickly, but the weight is atrocious. If you want to use it, you really can't use anything else.
My biggest thing in the arena is generally dealing with high fliers. Aerial combat is not my strong point. To take that out of the equation, I usually choose the parking lot battleground - any AC that relies on flight and vertical missiles is completely borked.
I'll try going with that rifle, plus my Moonlight, plus one of the grenade launchers. Couldn't hurt!
See, missiles DESTROY fliers. They can dodge a few bursts but once they run out of boost they are toast. Honestly, missiles are kinda OP... the only real balancing factor is they cost a ton of money to use.
figmentPez
Staff member
Action games are proving too stressful for my system, so I'm giving TRAUMA a shot. It makes a damn-good first impression.
Prince of Persia: sands of time.
Not totally digging the controls, but I feel like with a real controller it would feel better. Also if I have to stab all these people with the dagger to make em stay down that's going to get old, fast.
Half life 2.
Really fun so far. This guy does not get a break! And those barnacle things are terrifying. I need to get away from this water area though. They keep dumping exploding barrels on me. Who the hell left them all around in the first place?! I hope they got fired.
Are these aliens? My friends said I could skip HL one but I'm not sure what's going on other than I'm just constantly runing from the alien gestapo.
Not totally digging the controls, but I feel like with a real controller it would feel better. Also if I have to stab all these people with the dagger to make em stay down that's going to get old, fast.
Half life 2.
Really fun so far. This guy does not get a break! And those barnacle things are terrifying. I need to get away from this water area though. They keep dumping exploding barrels on me. Who the hell left them all around in the first place?! I hope they got fired.
Are these aliens? My friends said I could skip HL one but I'm not sure what's going on other than I'm just constantly runing from the alien gestapo.
Well, those aliens you can talk to are the ones you're shooting at in the first game. You accidently ripped a dimensional hole on Earth unleashing them here when you and some buds were doing some experiments at Black Mesa, a super science facility you worked at. Then, after, you're transported to their world and you kill their giant ballsack monster there, then G-Man tells you you got work to do. That's Half-Life 1.
Mostly. It's also relevant to know that Barney, one of the security guards at Black Mesa and a close friend of Gordan Freeman, manned up and defended the surviving scientists long enough for them to get their teleporter online. The scientists and Barney were then able to use it to escape Black Mesa before ether the aliens or the military could capture/kill them. These people would then go on to create the Resistance which currently fights the Combine in HL2. That's pretty much the sum of Half-Life: Blue Shift.
There is also another guy who was "recruited" by G-Man after he refused to kill civilians during the Black Mesa event, but we're not entirely sure if we'll ever see him again.
You can basically get the gist of the HL1 plot from reading Wikipedia. Though I'd suggest playing HL1 and its expansions if you ever get the chance though, since they're quite good games.
Though the canonicity of the expansions Blue Shift and Opposing Force is, I feel, a bit murky. While they were made under Valve's supervision, it was actually Gearbox Software that created the expansions, and so far Valve and Gearbox appear to be keeping the canon of their games separate. For example, while the Barney you play as in Blue Shift is probably the same Barney you later see in HL2, there's never any mention of any of the events that happen in Blue Shift. Similarly, there are some major plot points in Opposing Force, but the HL2 characters never make a single mention of them. Additionally, Barney's full name is supposed to be Barney Calhoun; in Blue Shift he's only ever referred to by his last name, and the on-screen introduction at the beginning calls him "B. Calhoun." In HL2, his last name is never mentioned, he's only ever called Barney. This contrasts with other characters, who get their first and last names mentioned constantly. (Though the HL2 credits at the end of the game does say Mike Shapiro voiced Barney Calhoun)
Nothing we've seen in the HL2 generation of games contradicts anything from the HL1 generation, but we also don't see anything that confirms any of the events from the expansions. So, right now, they're sort of in a limbo between canon and fanfiction. It's up to the player to decide what to think.
Oh, and for that reason, I don't think we're ever going to see the protagonist of Opposing Force, Adrian Shepard, ever again. Unless Gearbox make more Half Life expansions.
Though the canonicity of the expansions Blue Shift and Opposing Force is, I feel, a bit murky. While they were made under Valve's supervision, it was actually Gearbox Software that created the expansions, and so far Valve and Gearbox appear to be keeping the canon of their games separate. For example, while the Barney you play as in Blue Shift is probably the same Barney you later see in HL2, there's never any mention of any of the events that happen in Blue Shift. Similarly, there are some major plot points in Opposing Force, but the HL2 characters never make a single mention of them. Additionally, Barney's full name is supposed to be Barney Calhoun; in Blue Shift he's only ever referred to by his last name, and the on-screen introduction at the beginning calls him "B. Calhoun." In HL2, his last name is never mentioned, he's only ever called Barney. This contrasts with other characters, who get their first and last names mentioned constantly. (Though the HL2 credits at the end of the game does say Mike Shapiro voiced Barney Calhoun)
Nothing we've seen in the HL2 generation of games contradicts anything from the HL1 generation, but we also don't see anything that confirms any of the events from the expansions. So, right now, they're sort of in a limbo between canon and fanfiction. It's up to the player to decide what to think.
Oh, and for that reason, I don't think we're ever going to see the protagonist of Opposing Force, Adrian Shepard, ever again. Unless Gearbox make more Half Life expansions.
I honestly see Shepard coming back as the G-Man's trump card against Gordon... one last player to keep Gordon from screwing everything up. But that's mainly wishful thinking.
To be fair, there are two things that connect Blue Shift to Half Life 2.
-The teleporter that Dr. Kleiner made: The scientists who escaped from Black Mesa would have known how to build the damn thing, but it took them years to get it up and running because they were wanted men and had essentially steal parts from the Combine to make it work. It's really not the kind of thing you develop on your own without millions of dollars to spend on experimentation, so it's highly likely that this is indeed the course of events that happened.
- Barney himself: The only guard who had any real means of escape was the guard who protected the scientists at the teleporter. Anyone else in the facility would have died against the ENTIRE ARMY pouring out of the portal (or the military if the events of Opposing Force happened). Since we know that is was Calhoun there, it stands to reason that he was Barney, since he explicitly knew Gordon.
Honestly though, the events of Blue Shift are only important in that they point out how much a badass Barney is and how the survivors got out. If those details don't matter to you, then it's not really important. Besides... what we REALLY want is for them make Half-Life 2: Episode 3 or Half-Life 3. It's pretty clear they've been working on it in some regards... otherwise they wouldn't have bothered with the Borealis easter egg in Portal 2.
To be fair, there are two things that connect Blue Shift to Half Life 2.
-The teleporter that Dr. Kleiner made: The scientists who escaped from Black Mesa would have known how to build the damn thing, but it took them years to get it up and running because they were wanted men and had essentially steal parts from the Combine to make it work. It's really not the kind of thing you develop on your own without millions of dollars to spend on experimentation, so it's highly likely that this is indeed the course of events that happened.
- Barney himself: The only guard who had any real means of escape was the guard who protected the scientists at the teleporter. Anyone else in the facility would have died against the ENTIRE ARMY pouring out of the portal (or the military if the events of Opposing Force happened). Since we know that is was Calhoun there, it stands to reason that he was Barney, since he explicitly knew Gordon.
Honestly though, the events of Blue Shift are only important in that they point out how much a badass Barney is and how the survivors got out. If those details don't matter to you, then it's not really important. Besides... what we REALLY want is for them make Half-Life 2: Episode 3 or Half-Life 3. It's pretty clear they've been working on it in some regards... otherwise they wouldn't have bothered with the Borealis easter egg in Portal 2.
A few things.
Firstly, Blue Shift Barney's group was not the only people to survive and escape, we know that because Eli made it out too. Of course, his survival is implied to be due to intervention from the G-man, but that doesn't mean other people couldn't have escaped as well. Maybe the G-man plucked them to safety too, who knows? Oh, also, Magnusson from Episode 2.
Following from that, the teleporter technology might not have come from Blue Shift's survivors, if other people survived too. Eli, for instance, obviously knows about teleportation. We don't know where Kleiner was during the Black Mesa incident (though some people think he's the guy who operates the portal to Xen, near the end of the game), so we don't know how he survived. But there's another teleportation scientist right there.
Additionally, the scientists from Blue Shift (Rosenberg etc) have disappeared. Seems like if Valve wanted to imply the HL2 teleporter was based on the technology from Blue Shift, they could have easily used Rosenberg there, either by making him a character or dropping his name somewhere, like in the laboratory bulletin board.
Finally, I would love to see Shepard show up as the G-man's trump card against Freeman, and it would logically follow, since Shepard's the only one who's shown as much badassery as Freeman, if not more. (Barney doesn't count, he's already an NPC) But there are problems there too. If you make Shepard an antagonist, that would be pretty jarring for Opposing Force players. I, for one, don't like the idea of my old hero turning into the bad guy. This is especially relevant since Shepard was a silent protagonist like Freeman was. Barney was given a basically bland happy-go-lucky personality, so it wasn't too bad when he became an NPC, but an antagonist Shepard would need a deeper personality than that. Is he helping the G-man because he was threatened and has no choice? Was he tricked into believing the G-man's intentions are good? Is he just blindly following orders or bludgeoning his way through this dystopian future, like Freeman is? And how do you convey this in a game? Maybe have Shepard betray the G-man halfway through and join your side, that could work. Then it'd make more sense for him to infodump like some other characters have done over the course of the series.
Oh, and I know this is probably overthinking everything, but hey, I'm a Half-Life fan. This is fun.
Added at: 12:59
Oh, by the way, Phil, if you're enjoying HL2 then you might want to look at webcomic called Concerned: The Half-Life and Death of Gordon Frohman. It goes into the exploding barrel issue.
Some HL2 spoilers though, so you may want to finish the game first.
Well we can at least put on theory to bed:According to the Wiki, the manual for Blue Shift says Barney Calhoun. So it was definitely him, making Blue Shift canon.
So I have been playing CoD: MW3 and there is this one level where you storm Hamburg,Germany.My home town.
And its fucking crazy how many details they got right.You storm the beach near Fischauktionshalle which is like 10 minutes from my home.
And run through a party of the city that I am very very familiar with and I am getting some weird dejavu moments.
And its fucking crazy how many details they got right.You storm the beach near Fischauktionshalle which is like 10 minutes from my home.
And run through a party of the city that I am very very familiar with and I am getting some weird dejavu moments.
figmentPez
Staff member
Finished the game. Even collecting all the photos only takes about an hour and a half. Short, and there's not real climax, or a definitive story, but it really sparks some wonderful emotion. It's more of an art piece than a game, and I enjoyed it a lot. It's kind of like Myst got crossed with a short film. You wander in dreams and learn bits and pieces about the dreamer.
It's $7 and that's a little steep for such a short game. I got it as part of the Humble Frozen Synapse bundle, and I'm finding that $4 gamble to be well-spent, even if I never find the time to play Frozen Synapse or SpaceChem.
Last night a couple friends taught me how to play WarHammer40K - "Assault on Black Reach", I was the Space Marines, Eric was the Orks. I placed my pieces badly and my offense rolls weren't great (though my armor saves where fantastic) but it wound up essentially as a draw. I'd concentrated on moving my pieces around cover, because I didn't understand that against the weapons the Orks were using, the Marines' armor was as good or better than the cover save. So my squad of Terminators were out of play for the first two rounds out of six, and have my tactical squad was out of position to be effective for most of the game.
Son, I hope your wallet is prepared...
All in all, it's a fantastic game to get into, once you start figuring out the tactics, it's fantastic... just be prepared for those who have been playing this for a while to start throwing some stuff at you that you're not ready for. The REALLY good ones will sit you down and explain stuff to you as/after you play, and let you know what might be better ideas for you.
GasBandit
Staff member
Playin' me some Skyrim. Some things I like about it. Some glitches I ain't a fan of. But it feels like a spiritual successor to the Ultima Underworlds (and no, I've not played any other Elder Scrolls games since Daggerfall, and that for only 5 minutes), and that's a good thing. I just wish there was a less clunky way to switch shouts/weapons/spells than the "favorites" menu.
GasBandit
Staff member
Oh thank goodness.
I deny all rumors that I am currently looking for a used Space Wolves or Ultramarines army on Ebay. Especially for the listed prices.
figmentPez
Staff member
I finally started Bastion, and I'm loving it. This game is excellent. So far I'm getting a strong ¾-perspective beat-em-up vibe from the game, with a lot of modern polish and some light action-RPG elements. This is great.
The graphics are gorgeous. I love looking at this world. The narration is fantastic.
Hmm, nit-picks... So far the weapons don't feel especially powerful. The enemies go down fast enough, but it doesn't feel like you're really connecting sometimes.
The graphics are gorgeous. I love looking at this world. The narration is fantastic.
Hmm, nit-picks... So far the weapons don't feel especially powerful. The enemies go down fast enough, but it doesn't feel like you're really connecting sometimes.
I finished the main path of Armored Core: Silent Line. Now to try for 100% mission completion and finishing the Extra Arena! (I'm not going to even try and S-Rank everything).
I've found that missileboats really just aren't my thing, but they can be exactly what the situation calls for at times. I do much better with a medium-AC with a machinegun, moonlight, and the small rapid-fire plasma cannon or a tank with the chain-gun. I really wanted to like the Linear Guns because, well, railguns = awesome, but the rate of fire is too slow and they're not all that accurate in my experience.
I'm sorely tempted to post my renditions of various transformers or other giant mecha as ACs in that "things I've loved since childhood" thread.
I've found that missileboats really just aren't my thing, but they can be exactly what the situation calls for at times. I do much better with a medium-AC with a machinegun, moonlight, and the small rapid-fire plasma cannon or a tank with the chain-gun. I really wanted to like the Linear Guns because, well, railguns = awesome, but the rate of fire is too slow and they're not all that accurate in my experience.
I'm sorely tempted to post my renditions of various transformers or other giant mecha as ACs in that "things I've loved since childhood" thread.
Just starting the Ico and Shadow of the Colossus collection!! Eee, excite!
Thank you Pez!! =^^=
Thank you Pez!! =^^=
That is on my list for Christmas break as well. I've always wanted to play Shadow of the Colossus.