Hellgate: London? Tabula Rasa? MMOFPS? Get out of town!

The mmorpg community has taken a pretty abrupt turn towards a new form of gameplay, integrating the shooter qualities of an fps into an online role playing game. While I do admit, I wasn't immediately won over by the half-and-half aspect of these games; taking a mediocre fps and mixing it together with the classic aspects of an mmorpg (Talents, spells, armor, etc) wasn't really my thing. It really depends on what you go in expecting. Are you an fps player, or not?

Hellgate: London
What a game this one was. The pre-release hype was similar to that of Crysis, very high expectations and little room for failure. But while Crysis is serving the same fps we've been playing for years on an ornate plate adorned with bells and whistles, Hellgate doesn't have much to compare itself too. (It's not as easy to poke fun at) The fps + mmo genre is a relatively new one, thus I went in playing the Hellgate: London Demo with mixed expectations. It felt like an alpha test, lots of aspects seemed missing and bugs lurked every which way. Assuming the game even felt like loading that time around. It's hard to put into words, the game is like a generic fps with some aspects of an mmo glued onto it.

Tabula Rasa:
I set the bar pretty low for this one, the Hellgate had failed me, and I didn't expect Richard Garriot's Tabula Rasa do much better. I was wrong. Ncsoft definitely knows what they are doing. I couldn't find much wrong with the "Clean Slate" of a game that Tabula Rasa is (I needed a clean slate after Hellgate wrecked the previous one) It's a good mix of fps and rpg elements that gives the new genre a fighting chance. One of the few games that is well worth the monthly subscription fee.


A picture says a million words.















-Floodge

Crysis, You make Gamers Cry.

There used to be a time, not too long ago when gaming was about just that, the gameplay. Not too long ago the gamer played games like Duke Nukem, or the legendary Doom, and didn't judge them because of the fancy graphics that they didn't have, rather how the mechanics of the game worked, and how fun each alien kill was. I find myself more and more so comparing newer complicated fps games, to things like Quake. We seemed to be so interested in the future of gaming at the time, that some gamers failed to realize they were living in the golden age of gaming. The Crysis beta seems to have neglected that in its recent beta release. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy nice looking games as much as the next guy, but Crysis takes what had the hype and prestige to be a legend, and substitutes the "fps" for fancy textures and "realistic" physics. (Not to mention lag)

How could Crytek seem to have put gameplay last? Lets see.

MAXIMUM GAME!
Crysis is only advertising to the gamer with the best hardware and biggest pocketbook. Not everyone has quad core rigs with 8800 GTX's in them, and assuming your playing Crysis to begin with, its for the quality. Sure, one might be able to get away with some lower power parts, but then your missing out on the entire point of crysis in my view. When a game only advertises to a very select group of people it is bound for failure.

Motion Blurs? Realistic? Get out of town!
After recently witnessing the power the motion blur effect had on Team Fortress 2, I has only higher expectations for what Crysis had in store. What I got was an over-exaggerated effect, where a slight turn results in a temporary screen blur. Let alone, a quick turn to face an enemy results in the entire screen blurring up and twisting around. (Needless to say I died in that encounter) But for trying to simulate a realistic visual effect, My whole vision has never blurred out from looking around, and I don't know what Crytek was smoking that led them to interpret that effect as realistic.

First Impressions
Starting up the game for the first time only started my disappointment. Expecting something similar to the high quality screenshots I have been boggling at for months, I was surprised to encounter some reflecting yellow things, and some black. I'm thinking the games broken yet sure enough, a minute or so later the game looks similar to Id software's Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, with a nice yellow sticker for everything with reflection on it. Eventually though, it ended up looking nice, and it is a beta, thus some slowness is understandable but just as soon as I actually pick up my first gun, does the game continue its plunge.

I'm confused, What exactly am I doing?
I start off with a low volume voice trying to tell me what to do (Constantly interrupted with an insane North Korean announcer dictating every capture and movement that happens in the game) A then, realize that I need to spend "points" to play a different class, meaning to play the fun classes, I need to deal with the horrible shooting mechanics and somehow capture things on the entry level "grunt" classes. This all being compounded with the motion blurs, lag, and yellow things flying around. I'm beginning to feel the urge to quit and launch up a Valve or Id fps. I settled on a Quake 3, and lost my headache. It all ended well with a few frags.

We'll see what happens when the game is released, I'm still awaiting the amazing game that I know Crysis can be, and Crytek certanly demonstrated with Farcry, that they know what "Gameplay" is. Simple is better.


-Floodge

TF2 Announcement Tuesday

In other TF2 news, stay tuned for a pretty big announcement next week. You're going to want to hold off on planning any vacations until you hear what we've got to say on Tuesday
What could it be?

-Public Beta
-Demo
-Release Dates

It seems after such a long wait, the game is finally coming together.

(A trailer for the engineer was also announced for early next week)


EDIT: We could pre-order the orange box, and starting September 17th, play the beta! This is really good news indeed.

Tourettes Guy Dead

Recently, the Tourettes Guy, idol of many died in a car accident. The site announced on August 26th though, that new, never before seen footage of Danny, in much higher quality that the flash videos formerly posted on the site, would be available to download free of charge.

RIP DANNY
August 4, 2007

A couple of days ago we received some terrible news about Danny. Late last week Danny passed away.

About a month ago Danny was involved in a bad car accident. He had been out of the hospital for a couple of days staying with a friend when he suffered some medical complications. He unexpectedly passed away in the night.

We here at TourettesGUY.com are deeply saddened by this news as we love Danny. The reality of Danny's death hasn't sunk in yet, even a few days later. It is our burden to share this news with you - the millions of fans who also love Danny.

In about a week we will be putting the videos back up. We thought about taking the site down for good, but Danny's videos are already all over the internet and we felt that we could do some good with the site. We will be releasing all the videos along with one last new video in a high quality DVD format in memory of Danny. This DVD will be free to download, but you will also be able to purchase a physical copy. All proceeds from the DVD will go to Danny's family.

When the site is completely back up, we will have a service enabling you to send your condolences. We would also like to hear how Danny has positively influenced your life. Please be respectful, and send your letters to letters@tourettesguy.com. Shortly, we will be posting a letter from the person who discovered Danny.

We will miss you Danny!!! May you finally rest in peace.

The Big Admin.

During his QuakeCon 2007 press conference id Software co-founder and programmer John Carmack revealed no less than four upcoming Quake games!

For starters there’s Quake Zero. It’s a completely free webgame AKA browser-based game.

To quote: “What we’re going to do is take the Quake III: Arena code base assets, strip it down and set it up so that its essentially a free Web application [but would still likely be a separate application]. We’d have a community-based service where the game is an accessory to the Web site rather than being a standalone thing. Chunk it up for easy, quick installs, and see what we can do with sponsorships and advertising in-game. Quake Zero for zero cost. We’d try and polish it a little, but this isn’t a flashy game.”

World In Conflict Open Beta - July

http://www.worldinconflict.com/beta/

West Germany, 1988. To avoid certain collapse, the Soviet army boldly advances into Europe. NATO responds only to be met on a second front -- a diversionary attack on the American homeland. You are a field commander, leading the era's most powerful military machines in the campaign to retake America's cities and suburbs.

World in Conflict is under development by the leading creative and technical minds at Massive Entertainment, creators of the innovative and award-winning Ground Control series.

WoWSource, Half LIfe 2 + World of Warcraft