Looking for a good modern FPS, also wondering about Prey.

[Yegolev]

Is that a screenshot or a photo from your last vacation?

Vacation version!

I loled.  Gratz.

[tazelbain]

Contract mercenary work is the newest extreme sport.

[Furiously]

Contract mercenary work is the newest extreme sport.

You're pretty close to the truth.

[Azazel]

Looks very nice, visually. I also just checked and the place that's 15 minutes away and sells on eBay has it pretty cheap. For Australia anyway. (I use their eBay store as an online catalogue, then just drop past and pick up whatever.

Two things scare me though...

1) It looks like it will hurt my PC, so I'd have to buy it after getting a new gaming rig.

2) More pertinent:

Unlike the majority of shooters - tactical or otherwise - Armed Assault doesn't cast you as a lone hero who can single-handedly win the war. Instead, you play as a soldier within a squad, who must work alongside AI teammates to outfight and outmanoeuvre the enemy on some of the largest and most freeform levels ever to grace a videogame.

I hate games that force you to micromanage a team of retarded-stupid AI teammates. I realise it's more realistic than the lone Rambo, but unless they're scripted/near invulnerable like the ones in CoD, they're just a massive, massive pain in the arse.

[NowhereMan]

I don't know I thought they managed it tolerably in Flashpoint, hell I actually quite liked being able to order the AI to do some of the killing for me every now and again.

Except of course for the fantastic second to last mission that involved stealthing with a squad. That fucker meant that I either tried to take them with me and got caught because 1)they got seen or 2)they opened fire on the enemy or I went solo and died from lack of covering fire and decoys.

[Azazel]

I just read the full review from IGN.uk.. dodgy interface choices, long and tedious travel times. Harsh death. It sounds a little Vanguard-ish. Or to be less flippant, it sounds like it's a little "realistic" yet unweildy for what I'm after in a FPS. Combine that with retarded teammates (they're always retarded, you know it as well as I do), and I'm thinking a little more Meh..

 

[bhodi]

I third or fourth Riddick. It's one of the best FPS I have ever played. Go for it. As a bonus, it'll run like silk on mediocre hardware and still look decent.

[Phred]

Can't believe no one has mentioned Stalker. I don't usually like fps games, but I loved System Shock 1,2 and Deus Ex and I am hooked on Stalker big time. Other than a very short thread on new releases this title has got very little attention on this board compared to others I read.

[Trippy]

What's so good about it?

[schild]

Stalker is very Deus Exy from what I played. Unfortunately, it wrecked my computer. I now can't run half the programs on my machine - including mIRC. This isn't actually Stalker's fault. It's just the straw that broke the camel's back. I could pretty easily recommend this game to people even having only played an hour though. It's pretty damn solid.

Edit: Oh, right. Why? Solid dialogue, solid action, and a robust character development system. Oh, and a setting that rocks more ass than a porn star.

[Azazel]

It's got a middling, and limited response here.

I'm also wondering, WTF happened with Stalker and your PC? I don't want to give my machine the AIDS.

[schild]

My PC was dogshit before. Now it's Totally Dogshit.

[Azazel]

Still not following you. Installing the game fucked your PC even more? WTF?

[Strazos]

Maybe it pushed his clunker over the edge. Perhaps it was in no condition to be stressed, and Stalker did?

[schild]

Correct. It was like my tires were being held on by string and I decided to do 90 over some speed bumps.

[Fabricated]

Correct. It was like my tires were being held on by string and I decided to do 90 over some speed bumps.

I never did get why you hold on to that PC of yours like you do.

I build PCs on newegg wishlists when I get particularly bored and you can build a needlessly good system for ~$1400-1500 right now (ASUS mobo, E6600 Core 2 Duo, 2GB of RAM with decent timings, 8800GTX, X-Fi, 250+GB HD, DL DVD Burner, Nice Case). If you went with the GeForce 8800GTS model with the 640MB of RAM (and not the "uber" version with 720MB, or the even cheaper one with 320MB), stuck with on-board sound, and yanked HDs out of previous systems you can get it down to like $1100 or so.  Not bad for a system that will bend over any game released before this date.

And this is just newegg. They got some good deals but I bet with some shopping around you could maybe shave another $100 or so off that.

[Strazos]

Holy hell, they make 640MB video cards now? Or 720?

This is getting nuts. I can just imagine some day in the future where you have your Main PC, and then your Video Processing PC, and you have to run them in parallel to get good performance and shit.

Though I'm sure some of this ballooning of VRAM is due to the overhead inflicted by Vista.

[Fabricated]

Holy hell, they make 640MB video cards now? Or 720?

This is getting nuts. I can just imagine some day in the future where you have your Main PC, and then your Video Processing PC, and you have to run them in parallel to get good performance and shit.

Though I'm sure some of this ballooning of VRAM is due to the overhead inflicted by Vista.

Eh, it's NVidia. They tend to go a bit over the top whenever they move to a new chipset.

To be honest I don't think it's a good idea to grab an 8000-series anything right now since the first string of cards to any new series they make are incredibly power inefficient and generate too much heat. The first 6000-series ubercard was the 6800 Ultra, which required 2 dedicated rails and was a heat cannon with a half pound heatsink. I have a last-gen 6800GT OC'd to Ultra levels in an old rig, and it uses one dedicated rail, has a much smaller HSF, and generates very little heat.

[Sky]

768MB

[Azazel]

OK, since my new box is gong to be ready for pickup in either 15 hours from now (YAY), or after the weekend (BOO, HISS, CRY), I've Necro'ed this thread. (despite there being another FPS thread ~ that one is about team-based MP/PVP shooters to play with the wife. This one is about SP mode.

Based on the suggestions above, with my next pay I'll pick up: Prey, HL2: Ep1, SiN Episodes: 1. I've picked up Riddick, FEAR in the interim, and will be working my way through NOLF2, AVP1/2, etc as well, but I also want to get something with lots of shiny which there's no way my current box could have run.


That screenshot of ARMA calls to me whenever I look at it, but the reviews of it make it look like a painful, grindy game.
Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter also seems like a beautiful-looking, but unfortunately AI-tarded with the typical suicidal squadmates who fail you the mission when they kamikaze. I herd cats for a living at work without having to do the same at home for fun.
STALKER seems to be pretty good. Very purty, and potentially fun with a bit of creepy. Definately considering getting this next week - any thoughts beyond those given so far or in the quite-old weekly-releases thread?

But I love that realistic-feeling outdoors in the sun feel which that ARMA and many GR:AW screenies have. BF2 also has a bit of it. Maybe it's the bloom, but I like the feel it gives.


Also, someone mentioned the Cthulhu game - this one? And what are our thoughts on it?

[penfold]

Cthluhu game was an Xbox port, right down to the complete lack of configuration and the basic menus. The viewbob was so severe it gave me motion sickness and couldn't play much further than the first level. Pity though, it had the right atmosphere, and good reviews.

STALKER I have just finished, what a superb game. Toughest AI I've come across yet.

[schild]

Heh, I felt the STALKER AI just cheated a lot.

As for Cthulhu - it's more fun on the PC solely due to the WASD movement for the Inn Chase Scene (you know the one) and man, is it hectic. It's possibly the single best set piece in a game. Ever. It's really fucking well done. It's more nerve wracking than some of the horror in the game. Cthulhu brings with the horror though. There are some parts where you totally expect something utterly disturbed to happen - and then nothing. It's evil like that. Fuck man, that game was good. It's going to be one of the first things installed on my new PC.

[Yegolev]

I liked FarCry a lot until the mutants showed up.  The Japanese ship still impresses me.

[Sky]

I used godmode in Far Cry when the trigens show up. It's actually a well done godmode, all shooters should do it that way. Rather then be invulnerable, you take damage to armor and health as normal. You just don't die, rather instead of dying, you increment a death counter (so you can keep track of how much you'd have been pwned) and reset your health/armor. So you can play normally, finding armor and healing up, trying to stay alive, you just don't get punished with the reload dance every time they ambush you. Loved it, made the game way more fun. I did a lot of reloads just to attempt taking bases different ways or using different weapons and whatnot. Hey, let's try running everyone over this time. Etc. Whatnot.

The controls in the Cthulhu game really turned me off, I need to go back and finish it at some point...

 Someone mentioned playing Stalker with a bunch of mods and it sounds pretty cool. GRAW came with my cpu (?) but I have no urge to install it, I hate the cat-herding stupidity. Not gonna do it. Got Dark Messiah with the gpu, still not installed, either. Definitely want to check out ARMA, too, I love OpFlash. I sucked at OpFlash, but it was such a great game to just keep trying different tactics in. Hey, let's steal this transport truck and try to run everyone over.

There may be a pattern to my love of freeform games.

If you want to see shiny graphics that'll make your brand new computers fall to its knees, load up EQ2 and crank up textures, lighting and shadows. Looks great...can kill modern computers.

[Yegolev]

Anyone play Red Orchestra, that thing I keep seeing on Steam?

[Fabricated]

Anyone play Red Orchestra, that thing I keep seeing on Steam?

When it was a UT2k4 mod it was a shitty WWII mod that focused exclusively on the Russian front. It was boring, had bad hitboxes, and proved that too much realism is a terrible thing in FPS titles.

Then it won the "make something unreal" contest over the absolutely brilliant Alien Swarm and other better mods. Blech.

[Azazel]

I used godmode in Far Cry when the trigens show up.

Someone mentioned playing Stalker with a bunch of mods and it sounds pretty cool. GRAW came with my cpu (?) but I have no urge to install it, I hate the cat-herding stupidity. Not gonna do it. Got Dark Messiah with the gpu, still not installed, either. Definitely want to check out ARMA, too, I love OpFlash. I sucked at OpFlash, but it was such a great game to just keep trying different tactics in. Hey, let's steal this transport truck and try to run everyone over.

There may be a pattern to my love of freeform games.

If you want to see shiny graphics that'll make your brand new computers fall to its knees, load up EQ2 and crank up textures, lighting and shadows. Looks great...can kill modern computers.

Yeah, Far Cry was a great game to play, even on the current box. I used godmode for that sector after the cold reset, when you're dumped on the mountaintop and need to run through the jungle towards the ship or whatever it was, stopping in a crashed blackhawk just before the river. The rest of the game I played through normally. I am considering installing FC on the new box just to see how it looks and maybe give it one more go for old times' sake.

I picked up Dark Messiah CE a few weeks ago (it was cheap) in anticipation of the new box so I'll check it soonish I guess. Check the reviews of ARMA before you buy though, to me the interface, Vanguard-Travel and cat-herding issues sound like they'll outweigh the shiny.

And EQ2, heh. I'd have to want to play it to do that.   

[HaemishM]

Heh, I felt the STALKER AI just cheated a lot.

As for Cthulhu - it's more fun on the PC solely due to the WASD movement for the Inn Chase Scene (you know the one) and man, is it hectic. It's possibly the single best set piece in a game. Ever. It's really fucking well done. It's more nerve wracking than some of the horror in the game. Cthulhu brings with the horror though. There are some parts where you totally expect something utterly disturbed to happen - and then nothing. It's evil like that. Fuck man, that game was good. It's going to be one of the first things installed on my new PC.

QFT

I played it on the X-Box and it was great. Buggy a bit, but great. I'd say it would be good on the PC. I only took about 10 tries to get through that Inn Chase Scene on the gamepad, but there were a few FAQ hints I had to take just to know which damn way to go. I'd recommend that game, though it's really not what I'd consider a shooter. It's full of shooty but I don't consider it a run-n-gun type of shooter. Lack of ammo and assloads of creepy make it much more of a sneaky shooter, IMO.