F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate versus Project Origin

Koki on 4/2/2009 at 15:06

I didn't even know there was a demo. brb

Zygoptera on 4/2/2009 at 21:20

Quote Posted by EvaUnit02

Lemme guess, bad experience with Steam due to being on Xtra's Go Large? That's Telecom's fault, not Steam's.

No. I'd make a pithy comment about not touching Xtra with a barge pole even if I could get their broadband except I actually have Telecom's mobile broadband and its superiority to the alternative Vodafone system's execrable, hapless, gibbering mess could not be greater. No use for Steam though, of course.

In any case my main beef with Steam has nothing to do with bandwidth- I downloaded The Witcher's EE over dial up- bad 28.8k max line speed if I was lucky dial up, no less.

van HellSing on 5/2/2009 at 01:16

As for me, I had to endure a week of rape with a steam-driven barge pole before I got to play Half-Life 2.

Bjossi on 5/2/2009 at 01:22

I was playing HL2 just minutes after completing the install. I wasn't affected by the overloaded servers and other annoyances because I didn't install & play it until a year after the release.

gunsmoke on 5/2/2009 at 01:29

So......what IS your beef w/Steam?

And wtf is XTRA? :confused:

Zygoptera on 5/2/2009 at 02:41

Xtra is the largest ISP in New Zealand. It has a... dubious reputation, sort of a combination of AOL or BT's (old) internet in the UK. Mass marketed and unreliable.

I don't really want to turn this into a Why I hate/ love Steam thread, it never really accomplishes much. My primary beef is that Valve effectively give themselves carte blanche to remove my right to play software without any right to appeal or need to even give a reason- for that reason alone I dislike it more than SecuROM's activation based system which can be, um, avoided with relative ease without recourse to piracy.

But yeah, I'd prefer not to start some sort of yay/ nay thing

gunsmoke on 5/2/2009 at 02:50

No probs, you brought it up, and I just wanted to see why. I like Steam, and I am curious if I am blindly missing something they practice that I would not approve of.

Gaph on 5/2/2009 at 05:20

Quote Posted by Angel Dust

I was never the biggest fan of FEAR, I liked the feel of the combat but the dull environments/enemies and, for the most part, muddled story made it a chore to finish.

The level design takes a beating but, c'mon, it works great for FEAR. Take the Armacham offices for example. Yes it's bland and the layout is sprawlingly non-linear. First of all that makes it feel like realistically navigating a giant office building, it's immersive. It also means the AI has multiple routes to surprise you from, like sometimes they sneak around in complete silence and come up behind you. And best of all it reinforces the feelings of isolation and vulnerability. Wandering around the hallways of a giant, deserted high-tech office building at night knowing you're not quite alone is what FEAR was all about for me.

Juxtapose that with FEAR 2's level design which is much more detailed and linear, which is supposedly a good thing. Unfortunately it ruins everything I liked about the original. The levels are basically boxes with an exit and an entrance with obstacles inbetween for the AI and you to use. The AI can only come head on and use cover, so there's nothing surprising about the combat. And the constant forward linear progression destroys an chance to build tension. It's just crap compared to FEAR 1.

june gloom on 5/2/2009 at 07:42

Let's not forget that what we saw was the demo and it's highly likely the rest of the game is not entirely like that.

Hell, the FEAR 1 demo was equally painfully linear save for the bit with the helicopters (the demo was kind of a mashup of different locations, all in the treatment plant but all miles away from each other in the full game.)

Angel Dust on 5/2/2009 at 07:46

I didn't like the level design in the FEAR 2 demo either and while FEAR's, fairly non-linear for an FPS now days, level design certainly worked for the combat it doesn't take away from the fact that I was bored to tears with offices and maintenance areas by halfway through.

I'm just really dissappointed that FEAR 2 has, to me, lost that punch to the combat that FEAR had. I was kind of looking forward to it since I thought Monolith would easily be able to address the repetitive environments/enemies while retaining that rock solid FPS base. I might still check it out if the buzz is good once it comes out since it's not like the demo was completely terrible.