quakegod667 wrote:So, I made the mistake of buying Doom 3: BFG Edition on sale. As much as I love Doom 3 (and that is an awful lot), id really screwed the pooch on this one. I can see how it can be good for people who have never played a Doom game (casuals), but the gameplay changes to Doom 3 do too much to simplify the game or make it easier (casuals), and the graphics changes are too miniscule to appeal to longtime players, and the entire thing just screams "We developed this for consoles where we can charge more money with less effort overall, so here, PC gamers, have a shitty port".
CASUALS. I'm only partially kidding on the casuals stuff.
After that, I decided to reinstall my original discs and load it up with mods (Sikkmod, some hi-res textures, the original Trent Reznor sound effects), and after a lengthy struggle with AMD and their worthless Catalyst AI (which I solved by renaming the .exe, of all things) I got it running and looking better than the BFG Edition ever would have, as well as some kickass gameplay additions. Why more survival horror FPSs don't have Random Encounters is beyond me. It does wonders for the game's atmosphere.
don't forget that the BFG Edition has been cencored for the international market. Thanks to.....us! Yes, us Germans screwed it up again for the world! There you go! I assume id/Bethesda wanted to make sure they get a rating for the entire package this time witout any probs in Germany. So yeah, sorry world!
also in other news...
I finished quite a few games over the course of the past few months. Played through Mass Effect 1-3 (well, mostly...didn't finish ME3 yet), Transformers Fall of Cybertron, Silent Hill: Homecoming and Silent Hill Downpour.
I'll post my final thoughts on the ME trilogy once I finished ME3 after all DLC has been released. But damn, Fall of Cybertron was really fun. I already really enjoyed War for Cybertron but loved FOC. The campaign is fun, better story telling due to them leaving out the coop mode this time and gameplay that is even more fun than the first time around. And it's much more varied too. There's a stealth level, hack and slay type levels (with freakin' Grimlock), plenty of vehicle action on the ground and in the air. It's just a fun game. I had a blast.
Then, since it's Halloween marathon month I decided to play a few Horror games. The first one was Silent Hill Homecoming. I will admit I played it before when it originally was released back in 2008 and I SUCKED at it. Couldn't figure out how the controls worked at all. It was also one of the first games I played again after a 7 year break from video gaming. So back then I was like "OK, fuck this...this game doesn't work, the controls suck."
Well, to be honest, it wasn't the controls. I sucked, heh. I decided to give the game another chance and this time practiced a little bit before I tried to tackle the game and once you figure out how combat works, the game is almost too easy! And I ended up finishing the game with a ton of unused first aid kits etc., heh. But it's a good game. Although it might just be a little too linear for its own good and just borrows too many ideas from the movie. But I enjoyed the game anyways.
So after that I figured I should give the latest Silent Hill game a chance too and ordered Downpour. Now I was quite sceptical after I read many negative reviews but was just as surprised when I ended up enjoying the game much more than I thought. I in fact liked it quite it bit more than Homecoming. Yes, Downpour has its fair share of technical issues which include a sometimes embarrassing frame rate but that did not bother me at all. After all Mass Effect 1 has frame rate problems too and I still enjoyed playing that game a few weeks back.
Downpour is much more open which often leaves you running around for ages finding the right path but that's fine with me. It allows you to actually explore the world and discover plenty of sidequests. Yup, there's sidequests in this one and they are actually quite fun.
That's not the only thing Downpour does differently than other Silent Hill games. I'd say it does not try to scare you as much as previous titles but instead tries to fuck with your mind a lot more. There are lots of bizarre and surreal events that will make you go "WTF was that??". And the story was quite good too. Much less simplistic than Homecoming's story. As a matter of fact I'd say that this is the game that Alan Wake could have been.
