Review: F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin 217
- Title: F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin
- Developer: Monolith Productions
- Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
- System: Windows, PS3, Xbox 360
- Reviewer: Soulskill
- Score: 7/10
The game starts out with a bang; the first act is extremely well designed. You begin in much the same manner as the first game, given little information and left to wonder what, exactly, is going on. You start in a military transport headed to pick up the president of Armachan Technology Corporation — the typical big, evil corporation developing things they really shouldn't. You're introduced to your squad-mates and then quickly separated from them while being taught some of the gameplay basics. The first serious firefight in the game is located within a room filled with antiques, ceramics, and vases stored in huge glass display cases. It's a brilliant choice in setting — priceless decorations shatter and glass flies everywhere. It's almost theatrical; like being a part of a high-budget action flick. As you shoot your way through the increasingly porous living quarters, hallucinations are induced by Alma, the deranged, telepathic, and telekinetic girl from the first game. The act ends when you witness a nuclear explosion far closer than is healthy, and shortly thereafter struggle to remain conscious as the corporation's doctors do something to you.
It's worth saying again — the first level is incredibly cool. Unfortunately, subsequent levels aren't able to match it. I suppose that's to be expected; after all, it's a horror-themed shooter rather than an epic adventure shooter, but the first level does tend to set expectations. For the next few acts, F.E.A.R. 2 treads mostly on familiar ground. You spend a great deal of time escaping an underground hospital/science facility, and wander your way through broken streets with crumbling buildings. That's not to say it's bad, or even unenjoyable ; the settings are still polished and full of detail, and the plot is continually prodded along in an interesting manner. It's just been done before, and often. If you've played a wide variety of first-person shooters, these levels will probably bring a sense of deja vu . Things pick back up after a while, though. You'll navigate your way through a school that was the site of much violence and destruction, go down into the subway, and even further into a high-tech underground tram. The less you know about any given setting, the more easily it lends itself to creepiness, so the more unique environments in F.E.A.R. 2 keep you focused on the horror aspect much better than the stereotypical science labs.
The visual effects that contribute to the horror theme are integrated quite well into the gameplay. The transition from your normal perception to hallucination is often gradual and seamless. Other times, it's sharp and distinct, using the shock of the immediate change to add an ominous vibe. Sometimes your flashlight will start to flicker in a dark area, and you'll begin to hear your character's panicked breathing and rapid heart rate. I'm on the fence about that; it's used to great effect in a few situations, but since fear in the character isn't mirrored by fear in the player, it also tends to serve as an indicator that something surprising is going to happen — thus negating the surprise. Other horror standards come in to play too. Every so often, Alma will flash into existence somewhere near you, and then disappear. Almost too often... but they find ways of keeping it interesting. The music and sound effects are very well done, laying the foundation for tense scenes, the foreshadowing of a terrible discovery, or giving your fight-or-flight reflexes a little boost.
The art team doesn't hesitate to try and scare you with gore, either. The scene I mentioned earlier where you see portions of a medical procedure being performed on yourself is interspersed with hallucinations of zombie doctors tearing out your insides, with gouts of blood flying in every direction. At one point, you sneak up behind a couple of enemy soldiers trying to decipher a huge section of wall that is covered with random words, symbols, and obscenities — all painted with blood. It really does look like something drawn by a psychotic killer, such that I wondered if they contracted the design from a local loony bin. (And presumably, your character feels no cognitive dissonance from gunning down those soldiers, which itself is kind of surreal.) Bloodstains are used liberally, as are all manner of brutal killings. This is definitely not a game for kids or people who faint at the sight of blood. Even aside from the violence and gore, the other artwork is also well done. The attention to detail is refreshing; rooms and objects are correctly proportioned to a greater extent than most shooters. A malfunctioning X-ray machine with throw a series of disjointed X-ray photographs onto a nearby computer monitor. You'll even see T.P.S. reports scattered about an office desk. Everything looks like a real environment, not just an approximation pasted onto an abstract level design.
One of the signature gameplay elements of F.E.A.R. 2 is "reflex time," an ability carried over from the first game. Press a button and, for a short duration, time slows down, giving you a massive advantage over your opponents in a fight. The intention is to make the player feel like an action hero, able to dodge and aim with supernatural speed, and it works. It also makes most fights very easy; I'd recommend going through the game on Normal if it's your first FPS, and on Hard if you have any significant experience. The weapons are another area where F.E.A.R. 2 sets itself apart. There really aren't any bad weapons. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, but you won't spend much time wishing you had a different gun. Even the basic pistol and your melee attack are powerful enough to be interesting. There are definitely some weapons that are more fun, like the missile launcher, the napalm gun, and the laser, but in the end you just wind up switching weapons fairly often as ammo runs out, which does a lot to keep the fights from getting boring.
Another instrument they use to keep the fights interesting is the AI, which, as with the first game, is better than average. Enemies are constantly shifting position, finding new cover, and ducking out from behind an obstacle to shoot at you. It forces you to remain active; camping out behind a barrel will get you killed as enemies advance on you. That's not to say it's without flaws; sometimes a soldier will decide to crawl underneath some hanging metal — a very slow maneuver — while you stand five feet away holding a machine gun. The effectiveness of the AI also varies depending on the type of enemy you fight. There are quite a few different kinds, but you wind up fighting the standard soldiers a disproportionate amount of the time, and they handle the AI better than any others. Other enemies tend to be used for dramatic effect. You'll encounter zombie-like creatures that scuttle quickly on all fours, though they are much less scary when you can slow down time. Another type is almost invisible until they attack hand-to-hand. One of the tougher creatures reanimates dead soldiers, and then finds something to hide behind. They take quite a bit of firepower to kill, so you can expect to deal with the revived grunts repeatedly.
Scattered throughout the game are a few situations where you interact with the environment, and a few QTEs. Both are underutilized to the point where they don't really add anything to the gameplay. The QTEs just involve hammering on a button until you win; it's very simple and doesn't really require any effort or brainpower. Granted, most QTEs are added as a way to keep the player connected to a few mini-cutscenes, but the end result isn't very satisfying. The times when you interact with objects are also very shallow; hold down a single button to move an obstacle out of the way, or to close a valve, or to open a set of elevator doors. The added seconds don't really have any affect on what happens to you, so why take the extra time when you can open a regular door with a single click? I'm going to lump the new part of the cover system in with this as well. You can now flip over tables and crouch behind them to shield yourself from enemy fire. It's neat, but there's really no advantage to doing that instead of hiding behind a crate or the corner of a wall. Existing cover is plentiful.
F.E.A.R. 2 infrequently offers a few different ways of fighting. The vast majority of the time, you're on foot holding a weapon of some sort, but you occasionally get to control a turret or a mech. Turrets are very much an upgrade in firepower. Far more enemies swarm than you could normally handle, but the turret cuts them down with ease. Controlling the turret is very easy; some games put silly restrictions like very slow rotation or poor accuracy, but F.E.A.R. 2 gets it right. It's quite fun, and my only complaint is that there aren't more opportunities to use them. The mechs, or "Powered Armor" units are even more powerful, but still very fun and easy to control. You get a couple of mini-guns and a set of rocket launchers, as well as a thermal imaging mode (think Predator). Aside from those two scenarios, there aren't a lot of variations in gameplay. At one point, you're riding on a speeding tram, but you're just walking around on top of it while enemies come to you. There isn't much scenery, and you wouldn't have much time to watch it anyway. The sequence is still fun, but it doesn't hold a candle to similar situations in, say, Gears of War 2.
The game's multiplayer falls into the same trap as the early single-player campaign. It's good, it's fun, and it's interesting, but there's nothing to set it apart from the multiplayer mode of half a dozen other good, fun, interesting shooters. The horror aspect is, of course, completely gone, and the signature time-slowing ability doesn't work because it'd be impossible to code. It has all the standard FPS modes of play (deathmatch, team deathmatch, CTF), and a few other team games that focus on controlling particular points of the map. Armored Front has five such points aligned in a linear manner such that only one is in conflict at a time. You either push the enemy back through successive points or get pushed back yourself. You can use turrets andmechs as well. As I mentioned earlier, all the weapons are relatively powerful in F.E.A.R. 2, and this becomes quite evident in multiplayer games. Players die very quickly without studious use of cover. It may be the case that all the weapons are tuned to be more powerful than they should be. The fights aren't always decided by the first shot, but it happens often enough to be a problem. The maps themselves are, for the most part, very good. There are perhaps a few too many intersections, and a few to many directions you need to watch for enemies, but otherwise they flow quite nicely.
F.E.A.R. 2 is an entertaining game. It's almost exactly what you'd expect out of a triple-A first-person shooter — no more, no less. If you're looking for a quality game and have no problem putting yourself in a state of mind to be creeped out, it will do the job nicely. If you're looking for a title that will push the boundaries of the genre, you're probably better off waiting for another game. There are some great parts to F.E.A.R. 2, and Monolith deserves a lot of credit for making them work as well as they did. This game had the misfortune of coming out after a wave of other, equally compelling titles. It doesn't fall behind, but it doesn't really stand out, either. The bottom line is that if you enjoy horror and first-person shooters, you'll enjoy this game. If your tastes run elsewhere.. well, there's plenty more to pick from.
No More - No Less (Score:5, Insightful)
It's almost exactly what you'd expect out of a triple-A first-person shooter -- no more, no less.
File under mediocre. I love my consoles, and I love the vast audience that have been introduced to gaming through their living room charms. But I've hated, hated, hated the way that, somehow, games like Halo have come to be seen as groundbreaking.
People - we have been here before. We have done it before. I do not wish to do it again, only this time prettier. That is not a game. That is a tech demo.
I am quite simply astounded that MOST games have not yet equalled the functionality or interactivity of Duke Nukem 3D, let alone surpassed it. The game is THIRTEEN YEARS OLD. It has been out for a number of years approaching half of my life, and we still don't see our reflections in the mirror in most games. And we still don't get blood dribbling down walls in most games. And we still don't get bloody, or slimy footprints, or shrink rays, or jet packs, or aliens sitting on fucking toilets.
It's been thirteen years and every time a new game does ONE of these things it's hailed as a goddamn miracle.
I know that, with the switch to true 3D, a lot of these things got harder to do. But it has been THIRTEEN YEARS. We've come far enough to tackle some of them.
THANK YOU (Score:5, Insightful)
I love you. I've been saying this for ages. There is absolutely no single aspect of Halo - absolutely none - that hasn't been implemented better in games that have come out years beforehand. Story, graphics, gameplay (both single player and multiplayer). Halo is 100% average in every regard.
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Suddenly, Halo comes out, it's not only the _only_ FPS at the time for X-Box, it's one of the only GAMES. So everyone who has an X-Box _has_ to play it, and they like it by default.
Re:THANK YOU (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'm glad I'm not the only one.
I've noticed that console games in general seem to be held to very different standards from PC games. I only rarely play a supposedly-great console game that would qualify as anything other than mediocre in the PC world.
Halo's a biggie. Talk about average--hell, maybe even a bit below average. Metroid Prime? Playable. An average-at-best retreading of already-covered ground. Reminded me more of The Gunman Chronicles than anything else, which would be AWESOME if it had come
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I've noticed that console games in general seem to be held to very different standards from PC games. I only rarely play a supposedly-great console game that would qualify as anything other than mediocre in the PC world.
The ones that are exceptional are the ones that have given us something new. Shadow of the Colossus - wow.
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I'm very excited to try that one. Actually bought it used a few months ago, but my wife played it, hated it, and sold it back, thinking that I'd told her I'd already played it and hadn't liked it either (I'd been talking about a different game--Metroid Prime or REIV, I can't remember). Grrrr...
She didn't like Sands of Time, either. Some times I wonder what's wrong with her. Oh well, at least she likes Left 4 Dead :)
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Halo's a biggie. Talk about average--hell, maybe even a bit below average.
I actually played Halo on PC (being allergic to joypad FPS, although I do play SW:BF2 on my Xbox) and I enjoyed it thoroughly. It had a good setting, epic feel (although some of the later parts DID have a repetitive "this level needs to be bigger so I'll just copy these other parts" feel that everyone else and their mom has already noted) and pretty tolerable voice acting. I haven't exposed myself to the sequels so I can't comment on them. I am thinking about getting an Xbox 360, but I think I'll wait for r
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God of War? Good? It's a boring version of Painkiller with a slightly better theme.
What has God of War to do with Painkiller? Those are some very different games you try to compare there.
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God of War [productappeal.com]
Painkiller [nvnews.net]
Why, I have no idea how the two could have become linked in my mind as being similar :)
Though I did remember Painkiller as being a 3rd-person-perspective game, and it appears that it wasn't. Hm, Weird.
Anyway, they're both games where you slash your way through hordes of generic enemies and fight huge battles against gigantic gods (or demons). in Painkiller you hold down the left mouse button for long periods of time, in GoW you bash X (or whatever the plain "attack" button was) a bunch
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While I generally agree with you, comparing God of War and Painkiller is a mistake. Painkiller is a first person shooter and God of War is an action game; exactly how God of War can be a "boring version of Painkiller" I'm not exactly sure. God of War is a third-person action game and a hell of a lot of fun; the storyline isn't really that deep, though it is a lot deeper and less ridiculous than most action games. What makes God of War (and its sequels) fun is the brutality and violence that you can infli
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I like mindless smash-the-minions games. My friends and I played the hell out of Guantlet: Legends on the N64. Fighting Force? Great. Those old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle arcade games? Wonderful. NARC? Loved it.
God of War didn't do it for me. I thought for a while that I should give it another try, but a couple of my friends who actually finished the game told me not to bother as it doesn't get any better. I'll probably try one of the sequels eventually.
Re:THANK YOU (Score:5, Insightful)
Hm. Either we have vastly different backgrounds in gaming, or each of us played a different Metroid Prime. Or perhaps you're using different definitions from the ones I'm familiar with for some of those words.
Haven't played either yet--I'm only up to last-generation in consoles so far. I've dug every Mario game I've played. Commander Keen is an interesting game to bring up, because it's one of the only platformers on the PC that's even remotely in the same ballpark as console platformers (I'd put Hunter Hunted and Duke Nukem 2 in that category, as well). Platformers remain the domain of the console, as do JRPGS and 3rd person adventure games, and there are some spectacular console games in those genres.
I never said there aren't good (even great) console games--I've just found that a lot of the ones that get big press and are very highly reviewed don't even come close to living up to their reputations when I actually get around to playing them. Hell, a lot of them I've even played primarily on the PC (Halo and Oblivion, for instance) and still find them to be simply average, so it's not a matter of what system I'm playing them on.
I like plenty of console games, and I don't even hate the other games I've mentioned--I just fail to see what the fuss is about. Some of the blockbuster "10 out of 10" games are, IMO, more like a 7-out-of-10, and especially don't deserve to be anywhere near the best-games-ever lists that they frequently end up on. That last bit especially is what gets me--they frequently stick an OK console game on those lists at the expense of a much, much better PC game in the same genre. I don't get all upset over it or anything--hell, not like it makes my favorite games any less good when I play them--I just find it perplexing.
Oh, another not-very-good game that got rave reviews: Resident Evil IV. I was really looking forward to it--sounded right up my alley--but damn, that thing's a mess. There's no excuse for such clumsy-ass controls in a game these days, especially not in a survival horror game where such things will ruin the immersion that's the whole damn point. Jesus christ, I haven't seen a console shooter-type game with such bad controls since some of the worst ones on the N64. Guess I'll just go replay goddamned Silent Hill instead.
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I agree with most of your rant, but what's your problem with the controls in RE4? If its the fact that you can't shoot and move at the same time, that's a feature of the game since the beginning and adds to the concept. Its not a first person shooter, its a survival horror.
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1. My main complaint? Slow, slow, slow, slow. Turning 45 degrees should not take 5 full seconds. Remember how slow aiming was on old FPS games like Goldeneye? Yeah, it's like that, except without the autoaim and without slowing all th
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I haven't played Daggerfall yet, but what I was talking about wasn't so much the size of the world (huge free-roaming world and enormous character customization possibilities in an old game? Darklands is where it's at) as how immersive it was. Before Morrowind, I don't think I'd ever seen a game that gave me that sense of being in a real place like it did. Locations felt unique and had a sense of history. I found myself taking walks in scenic areas as I might in real life. It was strange, and it was ne
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If you liked stock-Oblivion in that way, you'll love it with the Unique Landscapes [oblivionmodwiki.com] mods. They're kind of a pain because you have to download a separate one for each region, but it's we
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Oops, correction: the latest release thread for Unique Landscapes is here [bethsoft.com]
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"...hated the way that, somehow, games like Halo have come to be seen as groundbreaking."
I love you. I've been saying this for ages. There is absolutely no single aspect of Halo - absolutely none - that hasn't been implemented better in games that have come out years beforehand. Story, graphics, gameplay (both single player and multiplayer). Halo is 100% average in every regard.
It's the Quentin Tarantino effect. Us PC gamers represent a narrow slice of the gamer pie, especially when looking back all those years. Most people who game are doing so on consoles and so most gamers did not see a shooter until Doom was ported to the PSX. They were amazed by Goldeneye on the N64 while I had no idea what the fuss was. I wasn't particularly impressed by Halo but it was a revelation to all the console gamers.
This is no different than a QT film. He scarfs up all the foreign cinema he can lay
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The Beastie Boys sampled scandalously from many Zep songs, that's what I was saying. I thought those songs were entirely their own creations but they weren't. It's just as awful as when Puff Dickless sexually violated Kashmir on the Godzilla soundtrack.
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I kind of hate Halo, but there is one aspect of the original game that I consider extremely innovative, and which was ripped off in one of my favorite PC games of all time, Unreal Tournament 2004: actual vehicle integration with a first person shooter (and I don't mean every other level is a "vehicle level"). This innovation should not be ignored, because it entirely changed the design of levels and gameplay.
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You could say the same thing about every FPS that followed MIDI Maze. That still doesn't change the fact that Halo pretty much defined the console FPS as we know it today and that it had plenty of original elements that differed from your average PC FPS. Rechargeable shields, one-button grenades, only two carryable weapons, decent AI, vehicles and stuff were maybe not 100% new, but in days where most FPS followed the Doom formula and gave you a dozen carryable weapons, healthpacks and a grenade that you had
NO, THANK YOU!!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
If it's politics you wish to discuss, head to the link on the left conveniently labeled "Politics". Otherwise, go blow the attitude out of your ass and come back when you have something to contribute.
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I couldn't agree more. How long has it been since a game like Duke 3D (the multiplayer never gets credit for being damn smart), System Shock 1 and 2 and Deus Ex came out? We may have smarter physics and prettier graphics these days (enemy AI is still debatable), but gameplay mechanics are almost regressive.
Re:No More - No Less (Score:5, Insightful)
From your post, I'm inclined to think we'd like the same sorts of games. Here are a couple that have impressed the hell out of me since Deus Ex (heh, funny, I'm replaying that one for the dozenth or so time):
STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl
Within 30 minutes of firing this one up it had convinced me that an FPS-style Fallout game could work--before actually playing Fallout 3 un-convinced me. It's got problems, but it's a damn good game, and unlike anything I've seen. Some of the mods out there make it even better. Morrowind meets Fallout meets the old Delta Force FPS games. Haven't played the sequel yet, so I can't comment on it.
Max Payne 2
A film-noir novella in shooter form. Infinitely better than the not-terrible first game. Best played on the highest difficulty setting--trust me, you'll find yourself playing it so differently on that setting that it's like a whole new game. Some complained about its short play time, but in this case I'd call it "quitting while you're ahead" or perhaps "not wearing out your welcome". Damn-near flawless in its execution, IMO. If you don't mind slogging through the (again, not terrible) first game, doing so will improve your understanding of the story (or, more precisely, some of the characters) in the second.
I think HL2 is pretty great, too. That series, IMO, continues to be the perfect specimen of the pure, single-player FPS.
Oh, and Portal. Duh.
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I really liked the original Max Payne. Very few games have drawn me into their story so effectively.
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Oh, I liked it too, but the "dream" levels did get a bit annoying after a while and I was sort of sick of the game play by about 3/4 of the way through (though I wanted to see the rest of the story play out). The level design was also pretty weak in many places, IMO (especially the parking garage, which was the only section of the game that I'd call 100% bad).
Also, the first one came with a really nice, thick mouse pad--like the kind you'd pay money for, not the usual thin, plastic-covered freebie kind--in
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So, boiled down to it's essentials, your beef is that despite all the actual advances, evolvements, and improvements games have made in the past 13 years, you can't be truly innovative unless you cut and paste from a schlocky game that's almost a decade an a half old?
"I agree, this goes for movies too, I never hear anyone murmmer "Rosebud" as they die anymore, and WTF is with all this CGI crap. Claymotion was good enough for Rudolph, it should have been good enough for Shrek. Now that's innovation mother fu
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So, boiled down to it's essentials, your beef is that despite all the actual advances, evolvements, and improvements games have made in the past 13 years, you can't be truly innovative unless you cut and paste from a schlocky game that's almost a decade an a half old?
You have missed the point so completely that it must either be deliberate, or you're one of the developers of a current gen FPS.
I don't want the same again, same again, same again. That should be obvious. I don't even want the same, but better! I want NEW. I want FUN. I want the answer to the question 'Can I play with that thing?' to be 'Yes, and HOW!', not "No, it's scenery. No, it's detritus. No, it would have been hard to program'.
I want to be AMAZED by something other than graphics. I want to be ama
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I want to be AMAZED by something other than graphics. I want to be amazed by the implications of a gameplay action, again. I want to be amazed by the details - not just the details of the pixels, but the details of how one action affects another. I want a game to do something I haven't seen before, and better still, didn't even think a game could do.
Might I suggest, then that you try a puzzle game? Most of the most innovative games today are games like Echochrome; and you won't find any other genre where one action can affect another so clearly. Overall, to me, it just sounds like you're complaining; "games aren't what they used to be when I was younger", that's called nostalgia, you're wearing rose-tinted glasses when looking back at the past.
Look, I thought it was amazing when the first shooters came out too; but I also play the more modern shooter
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You need to play Killzone 2. Its not perfect by any means, but it goes a lot further down the 'wow that's a nice side-effect' alley.
My personal beef is that story-based games no longer include alternate plot arcs. The old Wing Commander series is a great example, several other games bothered too. The problem seems obvious: you have a chunk of the game that each player probably won't see due to their play style, but that's the interesting bit -- when my play style affects the outcome in a real way.
Re:No More - No Less (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope, I've pretty much pegged you exact.
Well that's a bold claim. Thank you for explaining to me what I think. Shame you still completely don't get it.
you are so focused on coding in features that actually wouldn't mean shit to the game and waste precious CPU and developer time,
You must be a dev with that attitude.
Why on earth would I give a shit about development complexity or CPU cycles? I'm after an immersive, surprising, original experience. I don't expect that to be easy for a developer, and I don't expect it not to tax my CPU. Furthermore, I don't CARE if it's hard for a dev. It's their job, and they should do it well. You start caring about how tough devs have it, and the next thing you know you're accepting mediocre games, because good enough is good enough, and Johnny did an honesy days work for his pay. Fuck that - I want to be impressed!
I don't want an on rails shooter. For me, one of the many things that indicates progress is the level of immersion. I don't need an alien sitting on a toilet, or a shrink ray, to make me happy. I need something that surprises me like those things first did, when they were new.
Yes, I'm using examples of things that were - in the past - awesome advancements in immersivity in old games.
The reason I haven't specified what EXACT NEW THINGS I'm looking for should be obvious; it's not my job to think of new things, and frankly if I did they wouldn't be a surprise any more.
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Actually, you are missing a number of points.
Mine is that just because they haven't evolved the way he dreamed up back when Duke was 'innovative' doesn't mean they haven't.
You've already provided an example, and I'm sure we both could spend all day coming up with games that have come out since Duke Nukem 3D that have advanced the genre and come up with new, innovative, ideas. Ideas which in many cases have been proven by the number of times that they've been adopted since then.
We could also spend twice as l
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Well the first FPS I played was DOOM and it was a multiplayer game in the computer lab at college. We brought down the network, and got banned from using the lab for a full semester and to top it off, I got walloped fairly hard in the game.
So, I'm guessing the best way to get that feeling again would be to go into work and piss in my bosses mug tomorrow morning.
As far as the "oh wow! new! shiny!" feeling, I tend to get that when I play a good game regardless. I got it when I played each game in the Half-Lif
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I can pretty much guarantee that we'll be getting a mall-based campaign for L4D from the community when the SDK comes out in a couple months.
Is that what you're looking for?
Re:No More - No Less (Score:5, Insightful)
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And Halo 3 introduced the "Theater" feature,
Some of us have been recording replays of interesting events back in 1991 in Indianapolis 500 on the Amiga, not exactly a new thing. Going trough the history of gaming shows up tons of cool things have seem to have been lost and forgotten.
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No one will dispute that Halo brought a lot to the console arena. To a PC gamer, though, it was underwhelming.
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That's great but the reaction has been that now every game has to be limited enough to run on a console. And then people do their best to gloss over the limitations.
Is that really a limitation any more? When you have a console that kicks the hell out of the average PC (although this varies during the lifespan of a console) and can be hooked up to an HDTV (hint: this is what my PC is hooked up to, via DVI - even though I have a HDMI port, I still seem to have no trouble playing a DVD on it, either. And the scaler is quite nice.)
The only problem seems to be in the region of controllers, and I have a feeling that as console gaming continues to dominate we're going to see
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I'm anxiously awaiting the day I read a review of a console system/game that raves about how cool it is that you can do so many things with a single press of one of its many buttons.
As soon as we get a console game with controls like X-Wing or Tie Fighter or Mechwarrior 2 (or hell, even Deus Ex) we'll have come full circle, and oh how I'll laugh...
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It's really not irony. It's just the long way around to bringing users to the realization that they don't want to run more than one program at a time on Windows. In fact, everyone can get away with three or less :D Think I'm wrong? Let me put forth my theory before you throw rocks at it. Then, you know, sling away.
Here we go: At this point the only thing anyone should ever do with Windows is play a game or watch a video. I seem to be able to get pretty much every format and codec to work properly on windows
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I am quite simply astounded that MOST games have not yet equalled the functionality or interactivity of Duke Nukem 3D, let alone surpassed it. The game is THIRTEEN YEARS OLD. It has been out for a number of years approaching half of my life, and we still don't see our reflections in the mirror in most games. And we still don't get blood dribbling down walls in most games. And we still don't get bloody, or slimy footprints, or shrink rays, or jet packs, or aliens sitting on fucking toilets.
You have very weird expectations for video games. I can probably think of about 100 things that I'd rather see in games before I'd want some gory blood effects or the ability to see my reflection.
It's been thirteen years and every time a new game does ONE of these things it's hailed as a goddamn miracle.
You've got to be fucking kidding me. The Half-Life series makes Duke Nukem seem like a joke, and it has none of the silly little gimmicks that you mention. Call me crazy, but I want a game thats fun. Shrink rays, jet packs, or aliens sitting on "fucking toilets" do nothing to guarantee that a game will be fun.
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aliens sitting on fucking toilets.
I think that would be a bit uncomfortable for the alien.
"Well, Timmy, when a toilet and a urinal really like each other...."
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F.E.A.R. 2 has some pretty good story and horror effects. They do a good job of drawing you in, its not your typical FPS fare. In fact, the shooting is not the main experience for me when playing F.E.A.R. 2.
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I understand your rant and share your opinion on many games lately but I don't think it applies to this one..
I disagree. I think my rant - and it is a rant, I recognise that - applies to the BETTER games more than it applies to the worse ones. At least the bad games are just bad, and there was never much to hope for them. No, my rant applies directly to F.E.A.R 2 and Killzone 2, and games of that quality and ilk, because these games are best-in-show examples of what we've come to expect from an FPS. They're expertly polished, and almost flawlessly presented.
And somehow that's supposed to be enough for anyone. Bu
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And instead they innovated in different ways, ones that actually improved the game rather than add pointless fluff.
And please stop acting as if the fact that they didn't invent
Re:No More - No Less (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether the parents specific innovations are of interest to 'you' or not isn't the point. What he is talking about is innovations that would increase the feel of immersion in the game. Obviously, these will differ between people.
Ultimately, Duke3D created an immersive environmental like no other game of the time and most importantly it was fun. I remember putting dozens of pipe-bombs around a laser trip mine just because it was fun. A single trip mine alone would be enough to kill an enemy, but adding some pipe bombs just so Duke says "Let God Sort Em' Out" is classic.
Blowing up an enemy in another room while watching on the security camera or giving money to the strippers when my parents weren't watching, it was great. It was innovative and entertaining.
Jet-packs, subways, earth-quakes, novel weapons, snide comments, and more it really set the bar for all games that would follow. Kicking the final boss' Cyclopes eye through the goal post is just awesome. "Game Over" enough said.
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What you are missing is that for the most part, all of the innovations you've touted so far in all these comments are about as useful as the fabled flying car and haven't been introduced in games for the same reason we don't have flying cars. I.E. They are pointless and inefficient.
Fine - you've got me there. I will try to have fun more efficiently from now on.
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The problem isn't the new layers added on, but layers that are removed for, lets face it, the console idiots. I'm not dogging those who play console games, I play them myself, but as games are designed more and more for broad appeal they tend to lose complexity and with each generation we get "dumber" games.
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I was born in 1980 and I think 95% of the music of my time was crap. I liked Rage Against the Machine, Rhamstine, and a few others but mostly I prefer music from 60's bands. (Many of them produced great stuff after the 60's, but that's when they started.)
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PsyX, Mirrors edge. And yes there's a penalty for using that feature.
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If I'm not mistaken, Bungie's new game series have always been at the forefront of physics engines in games.
Look at the Myth series. It was a break from the standard resource gathering strategy games, in addition it was one of the first RTS games to feature real physics. It was likely the inspiration for the Total War series of games.
If the story line holds true to the original.... (Score:2)
The question that now remains is whether or not the additions make up for the fact that the game's concept is no longer new and unique. Read on for the rest of my thoughts.
If the story line holds true and they continued with it; and they didn't butcher the engine, then this game will be great. The concept is still unique to this particular title. Take a look at Half-Life/2/EP1/EP2: They stuck with the story line, made some new additions as they continued with it, and were extreamly sucessful with the franchise. I for one know that the first time I played F.E.A.R., it was by far one of the only games that actually made be jump at different times throughout the gameplay. Can't
Re:If the story line holds true to the original... (Score:4, Interesting)
True...FEAR had great effects, really put you in the middle of a firefight with dust flying, bullets sparking off metal (debunked by MythBusters I believe...), strong soldier AI. But what separated FEAR from most FPSes was the story. Still creeps me out just thinking about what happened to that girl. Almost makes me want to help her.
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Almost makes me want to help her.
The way I remember it, the weakest part of the storyline of the first game was the way you didn't even get the option to try to help her.
The background gradually became clear as you progressed through the game - the girl had been imprisoned, impregnated, had her children ripped away from her etc etc. and finally, understandably insane, had managed to strike back at the company that had done this to her. Having found all this out, you track down some guy who had been instrumental in these atrocities and who
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Sadly, I won't bother with Fear 2 because it looks like a half-assed console port. The graphics look worse than the first, I'd say 2004-era polygons and jerky unrefined animation.
Part of what made the original Fear so great is the level of immersion and rather tastefully done "superhero effects". You really could get into character and feel your nerves tense up as you turned the next corner in slo-mo, hoping to catch your enemy by surprise.
This new game looks corny, repetitive and just plain cheap, feels
It's a disappointment. (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds like something I can wait for on discount (Score:2, Insightful)
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"I would LOVE another no one lives forever and another SHOGO!!!!"
I suspect the mech level was a nod towards SHOGO.
Monolith has a past man... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Blood wasn't scary, it was much more action-oriented. (YOU were the dead guy)
Nobody really knows about Blood, and as such, nobody is comparing FEAR or FEAR2 to it.
FEAR came out so much later than Blood that they are incomparable. Yes, Blood was a great fun game, with great environments, weapons, powerups, and cutscenes... but FEAR came out after Halo, and damn near HL2. AI at the time of Blood was limited to "Shoot in the player's direction." Controls were choppy and you could barely us
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Blood does a better job with the horror genre. Doesn't matter that it's not scary. They pulled off the atmosphere beautifully.
I mean spooky carnival? C'mon.
You can compare anything to anything, regardless of the time in which they were released. It just depends entirely what criteria you're judging them on. A good example is the Star Wars movies, and their atrocious prequals.
The AI in blood worked just fine. It's true it doesn't have any complex AI, but that doesn't detract from the gameplay. It is also tru
Cate Archer, man! (Score:5, Insightful)
For me, it was No One Lives Forever games (not Contract JACK).
Demo (Score:5, Interesting)
I played the demo on Steam a few weeks ago and from that it seems that they've Deus Ex'd it - that is, butchered it for the benefit of Consoles.
Unreasonable large install - Check
Implausably shiny textures, especially on enemies - Check
Weapon "quick menu" - Check
Dumbed down HUD - Check
I blame Halo really - pre-Halo FPS games were generally devloped purely for the PC and benefitted greatly from it. Now, almost every FPS has to be designed for a simultaneous release on PC & console and thus suffers from having to cater to lower resolutions, lack of a keyboard and the rather strange desire to have everything looking shiny.
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Implausably shiny textures, especially on enemies - Check
I wouldn't know, my graphics card can't handle it.
Weapon "quick menu" - Check
What do you mean? Selecting the weapons via numbers? That's been done in every FPS since Wolfenstein 3D. The scrollwheel select? That's been done since HL1. I'm not sure what you mean here.
Dumbed down HUD - Check
I really like this HUD. It looks like a mask and has just the information that you need. It offers health, armor, stamina, and slowmo bars, weapon ammo and total ammo. What more are you looking for?
I blame Halo really - pre-Halo FPS games were generally devloped purely for the PC and benefitted greatly from it. Now, almost every FPS has to be designed for a simultaneous release on PC & console and thus suffers from having to cater to lower resolutions, lack of a keyboard and the rather strange desire to have everything looking shiny.
I'm going to receive flak for this, but I also blame Piracy. The console ma
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Shiny textures? Only in slow-mo, I think it was to simmulate "sense enhancement" while in slow mo. Slow mo is pretty implausible already.
Large install? Like every other recent game with a large amount of art assets for current gen graphics?
Quick menu? Who cares? Just another interface top access weapons, it does not get in the way at all.
I mean, yeah this game is no
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they've Deus Ex'd it - that is, butchered it for the benefit of Consoles.
and any PC gamer with a 40 to 70 inch HDTV?
I'd be quite content with HDMI and 1080p -
a quiet - cool running - affordable - video card for media play and PC gaming that powers down gracefully for less demanding tasks.
Not as good... (Score:2)
I've tried the PC demo and it's not as good as the first parts. They've been messing with the UI in bad ways (some say it's consolitis, it may be true).
Cynical? Me? (Score:2)
First-person shooters comprise one of the most well-developed video game genres in existence.
Fix: First-person shooters comprise one of the most cliche ridden and boring video game genres in existence.
Well, at least it doesn't take place during World War II.
I didn't get that far in the advertis^H^H^H^H^H^H review. Does it have a multiplayer mode so I can play along with 13 year old racist homophobes with gamer tags like "BeeyotchMaster69"?
Console port confirmed.... (Score:2, Interesting)
F.E.A.R. *DID* have slo-mo in multiplayer (Score:3, Informative)
Then again it is patently clear the reviewer had not really played the original at all.
It took on the form that once activated, the other team, or all other players would have lower fire rate, and movement speed. It would feel like being stuck in treacle. Overall physics of the game was slowed down too, so the slo-mo holder would have improved aim.
The necessary drawback is while you are in possession of slow-mo you'd have a position marker (and glow brightly, and make a booming noise), and everyone would hunt you down in the 20-25 seconds for it to charge up. If you could run long enough to charge it up, you could then deliver serious pwnage for a few seconds. A very interesting gameplay dynamic and it worked well enough in deathmatch.
It worked best in team deathmatch however, and was a hell of a lot of fun - the slo-mo worked on your whole team. Only one person holding the slo-mo would be marked, so the other players could defend. For a few seconds your team could rampage and completely own (turn gore/particle settings right up for maximum results). This had the necessary effect of forcing players to work together and strategise otherwise you'd have your ass handed to you by a bunch of noobs should they have some form of organized play. It was definatley quite fun, provided your not a set-in-your ways FPS gamer like the reviewer implies he is.
Otherwise the game was mediocre when played online. Often, overpowered weapons in small maps with too many players and many choke points meant the game was just messy carnage if players treated it like run-and-gun shooters. Although it meant that you could drop your weapon and go chuck norris with unarmed attacks. Fun.
Mutliplayer made F.E.A.R. worthwhile because the SP, while good, didn't have much replay value. If F.E.A.R 2 doesn't have slo-mo in multiplayer I'm not going to buy it, because this really does sound like more of the same with a graphics upgrade and a console port. F.E.A.R. Combat is a free download and will just do fine for now.
Re:Get Psyched! (Score:4, Informative)
The FEAR2 storyline also directly follows from the original FEAR, so you might be a little bit lost if you never played it.
Re:Get Psyched! (Score:4, Interesting)
IMO it was about par with HL2.
Maybe in your opinion, but not in fact.
In HL2, you can sit in a doorway waiting for the Combine to come after you. They will. They will keep swarming through like stupid ants even after you've killed 50 of their guys in the same doorway. You can also hold up a barrel and walk right at the guy and he'll continue to shoot at the barrel until you're close enough to crowbar him (or launch the barrel at him from point-blank range.)
Not in FEAR, though. In FEAR they -will- wait for you. They'll also try and go around and flank you if there is any other way. I remember one instance I entered a room and took some cover. I waited for them to come get me. They didn't. I kept waiting. They never popped out. Just as I was about to leave, a guy shoots me in the back. He had traversed no less than four hallways, countless turns and obstacles, and climbed a ladder to reach me. THAT's good AI.
Or another example, there was no way around to reach me. I was on a doorway looking into a room. A guy sprints through the doorway, running too fast for him to shoot me, and too fast for me to shoot him. Obviously I turn and shoot him, he's now behind me and easy prey. But as I turned to shoot him, another guy stepped through the door and capped me. THAT's good AI.
The reason for this is simple: HL2 AI is written into every enemy exactly the same, location unspecific. You can plop 50 combine into a field you created and they'll function just as well as anywhere in game. FEAR2 AI is written using waypoints and maneuvers specific to every location. That one soldier knew how to get around me because there were waypoints telling him to. They knew the specific "rush through the door" maneuver for that one location only. Sure, it's probably more programming intensive, and not as scalable, but as a Player, I don't see any of that. I see only great AI and alright AI.
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Never played FEAR, but I'd like to point that an AI that uses waypoints is somewhat less independent and, in a sense, real, than otherwise. Of course, to the player there might be no difference.
In HL2E2 the hunters, aka mini-striders, do exhibit some (or most) of the traits you talked aboutt. They will corner you, they will flank you, they will pack together to get you. I found their weapons somewhat underpowered, and that is probably needed. Had they been as deadly as a run of the mill Combine it would ta
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"Not in FEAR, though. In FEAR they -will- wait for you. They'll also try and go around and flank you if there is any other way. I remember one instance I entered a room and took some cover. I waited for them to come get me. They didn't. I kept waiting. They never popped out. Just as I was about to leave, a guy shoots me in the back. He had traversed no less than four hallways, countless turns and obstacles, and climbed a ladder to reach me. THAT's good AI. "
The AI in the original Far Cry was good as well. I
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If you do, save yourself some effort and switch to FEAR 2 after playing the base FEAR 1 game. The two expansion packs (Extraction point and Perseus Mandate) were developed by a third party studio after Monolith lost the rights to the FEAR name. Monolith considers them non-canon and FEAR 2 completely ignores anything from them. And yes both are PC games.
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Be forewarned, the original FEAR doesn't support widescreen
IIRC, for a short time the developer was giving licenses for multiplayer for free. I'm sure I played it on a 3840x1024 screen. If that's not wide....
Then again, for some reason the sound didn't work.
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Well, I tried installing my old copy a few weekends ago, updated it to the latest version, and could only choose 4:3 resolutions. It didn't even support 1280x1024.
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I remember now. The Matrox TripleHead2Go support software creates a special launcher for games that enables playing it at 3840x1024. There's probably a way to alter the launcher to do 1920x1200 or other widescreen resolutions. Of course, for games not designed for that wide of field-of-view, there can be some major distortion on the peripheral screens. But that tends to make F.E.A.R. even more strange [widescreen...gforum.com].
Re:Bad tag (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that if you play the game (at least the demo), you'll notice that you're locked into a D-pad style weapon select system, an inane FOV, a HUD that interferes with vision (why is there a box in the middle of my screen?) and forced widescreen. Also, when you go to click on buttons with the mouse, you often click on the button below it, forcing you to use the keyboard to select menus.
The original F.E.A.R. nailed the interface (only showed it when I was switching weapons, similar to HL2), and was one of the most immersive shooters I've ever played (admittedly, I don't play a lot of shooters).
The demo for this was amazingly fun, and the AI seems better than the original (similar animations and communication, but better use of cover and flanking). However, I'm holding off on buying it until a patch comes out to address the HUD and FOV issues. If anyone knows how to fix these (command line options?), please post below.
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"...a HUD that interferes with vision (why is there a box in the middle of my screen?)..."
I've not played the game, but from the description and the screen shots your character is supposed to be a soldier with (presumably) a helmet and full face shield. From the curvature of the HUD it looks as though it's projected on the inside of that face shield.
BTW, I agree with the previous post regarding STEAM. If this game requires installation of the STEAM client and access to the internet just to install (much l
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It's a pair of sunglasses. In fact the first time you put them on and they "boot" you up you see "linux kernel loading..." in the upper corner of the screen before the HUD loads up. I thought that was pretty a pretty interesting addition.
Re:Bad tag (Score:5, Informative)
The graphics (which aren't mentioned at all in this review for some reason) are very dated which means they run at a great frame rate but seem obviously optimized for underpowered consoles. The screen aspect ratio is locked at 16:9 even though no such monitor exists for PC, so whether your monitor is 4:3, 5:4, or 16:10, you will always see black bars. The font size is unnecessarily huge and the HUD is simplified and also too large.
I found nothing compelling or innovative about this game, but I found it insulting that it's so obviously such a half-assed console port. This is a disappointing anticlimax after the first game which was lauded so positively for its groundbreaking game engine. The end result is a budget game on sale for full price.
P.s., there's no mouse sensitivity slider so it's lucky my laser mouse has adjustable resolution or the controls would be ridiculously sensitive.
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You forgot that no matter what you bind your keys to the "E" button always makes you exit the mech and there's no support for more than 3 mouse buttons which is really inexcusable because thumb buttons have been around since before the FIRST one came out.
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Right you are. I used both my thumb buttons in the original game (for bullet time and grenades) but apparently they couldn't be bothered this time around.
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Er, sorry about the sloppy tag. The yes/no prompt looks like:
<< YES >>
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No idea if it's maybe something they added for the UK version, but I know for a fact there's a mouse sensitivity slider in my version of the game. I had to turn it down a ways before the game felt playable, but that's normal for me.
The aspect ratio thing is, I admit, annoying. However, the font size seems absolutely fine to me (running in 1680x1050, not tried lower resolutions). The HUD's fine. It tells me everything I need to know and doesn't clutter the screen unnecessarily. To be honest, for a game like
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No. Even with the boxed version of games you still need to connect to their servers to get permission to install the software. Depending on the game, you may have to download all the updates before you are allowed to play in offline mode.
I have a computer that I use to install all the software that I do not trust. That includes games since PC copy protection can cause as much harm as a virus. This computer does not have any network access, so I can't play any game that requires activation.
Even if I did go o