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Coalition wrote:

The Yosemite Bear wrote:now if westwood would just add a cheap porn cutscene....

At that point they might as well put out the game of "Amazon Wars". Lead your nation of scantily clad women into combat against other nations of scantily clad women. Watch out for the wandering tentaclebeasts though.

Your goal is to lead your tribe from the frozen wastelands to the tropical paradises. As you get further from the poles (complete more missions) your people (and the opponents) will wear less due to the temperature. There will be meetings held before the scenarios (for campaign play) so you can get a close-up view of your leader(s) and the enemy leader(s) also. Since the enemy lives in a warmer climate, they will be wearing less.

Aryiki in a computer game, plus if you add the RTS suggestions listed here, it would be soft-core porn (especially if your side wins), with a good user Interface.

I would totally buy that game. And I NEVER buy games.

(Slightly) More on topic... Didn't one of the old Red Alerts have a secret mission that was based on THEM? Cause if they've turned up the silliness from that, it can only mean good things.

Yeah, the original Red Alert had two expansions. The second of which, Aftermath, included several secret stages dealing with fighting GIANT ANTS.

Hell, it even made it to the PSOne game. Red Alert Retaliation!

Motherfucking Giant Ants! Flamethrowers were great against 'em!

And Dinosaurs. The Chronosphere occasionally sent your dudes to fight T-Rex. Or was that a different Red Alert? I think it was the first one. I don't mind the silliness, but don't like the absurdity value layered too thick into the gameplay itself, or else the gameplay becomes too unworkable. The latter versions of DoW just got utterly insane with how poorly they were doing the unit balance and nothing was consistant anymore or made any sense. Add in the giant ants and porn commandos so long as they handle like all the other units.

Is there anyone really saying that because RA2 is too silly, they don't want to play it, or are we making a false assumption? I mean, Team Fortress 2 is sillier than sin, and yet plenty of people who are "hardcore" play that all the time.

It's just a matter of if the gameplay is solid or not. Nobody will skip a game because it isn't hardcore enough, but they would skip it if nothing made any sense and cybernetic paradropping warbears have a possibility to go very wrong in a game design sense. ;P

Hotfoot wrote:Is there anyone really saying that because RA2 is too silly, they don't want to play it, or are we making a false assumption? I mean, Team Fortress 2 is sillier than sin, and yet plenty of people who are "hardcore" play that all the time.

No, people are saying that all the silly in the world might not be able to save it if the gameplay is as bland as C&C3.

I dunno. It doesn't really feel like C&C 3. Unit roles are a bit more forced than in C&C 3. e.g. Tanks no longer slaughter infantry like no tomorrow.

Outside of their given role (or roles, if you're playing the Empire of the Rising Sun) tend to do very badly.

And the special abilities are fun. :S

The T-Rex battles where in Yuri's Revenge first soviet mission

There was also a set of four dinosaur missions on the first C&C expansion pack (only worked with the DOS version of the game, not C&C95).

I dunno. It doesn't really feel like C&C 3.

Is the overall game structure still the same? You build your one base and have no incentive to expand beyond it and considerable disincentive because the thing that would let you do so is so late game and so prohibitively time and resource expensive that building one means you're about half an army short, there's little to no reason to expand to exploit resources because your surest income source is right next to you, and the game generally gets won by whoever built the most Mammoth Tanks?

Is it really fair to bash RA 3 for all story and poor gameplay ? I mean people play bad games with good stories all the time. Most of the best selling games of past 5 years had been purely story based with poor gameplay that lends to very little or no replayability whatsoever. Yet no one pans them for being interactive movies.

Sarevok wrote:Is it really fair to bash RA 3 for all story and poor gameplay ? I mean people play bad games with good stories all the time. Most of the best selling games of past 5 years had been purely story based with poor gameplay that lends to very little or no replayability whatsoever. Yet no one pans them for being interactive movies.

Yes.

Long answer, I'm sure I pan them for it too, but I am a gaming misanthrope. It's a fair criticism because what they're doing is trying to sell me a game, not a miniseries. The reason I agree to give them 50 bucks for a game is that I want to have some kind of a specific experience, that's why I choose an RTS and so forth, I want that RTS experience. If they pull a fast one on me and deliver a shoddy RTS with nice packaging then I have a legitimate complaint, I specifically purchases a game and if the gameplay is bad, then the game is bad. I might like the packaging but it still means I've got a legitimate reason to be unhappy with my purchase. If you buy a car and then realize that the engine is terrible, having nice seats and dashboard doesn't make the car beyond criticism, it just makes the lemon ride smooth.

Also, it's very simple to have good gameplay. If it wasn't so simple I wouldn't be able to mod these things and make them better in, like, a week's work solo. It's not like the developers have a big decision between good gameplay and porny actresses, you can do both. The staffers involved don't overlap much, they'll have time to do it.

So I'm not giving them a free pass just because it may be profitable to use cutscenes to trick people into thinking their game is well made, all that does is say you can exploit a buyer, and that's not hard nor legitimate. If it's a bad game on it's own, then it's a bad game, end of story. A bad game can be a good business decision and a fine product, but I can criticize something for being bad if it is bad. You don't always need to choose the most generous metric. You need to use a basis of comparison to other games of the similar type, like SupCom, CoH, Warcraft III, etc. Not all of those games are very good, so I'm sure RA3 does a fine job, I just want it to man up and show me after C&C3's suprising lack of depth. I really, really liked that first week or two of C&C3 until I realized how easy it was to rush through and dumb the gameplay down, so I'm no carrying a grude, I just want to see that their gameplay model has altered some.

It's really that basic--does the game stand on what games stand on? If not, then it's a bad game. But you can't judge a game by the numbers in terms of income, or the Sims would be the best RTS ever too. Sarah Palin may be attracting votes to the republicans, but that doesn't make her a strong candidate, it shows people are stupid. If the game sells well despite having no replayability, it just shows people are stupid, or that game purchase numbers don't include returns. :p

Sarevok wrote:Is it really fair to bash RA 3 for all story and poor gameplay ? I mean people play bad games with good stories all the time. Most of the best selling games of past 5 years had been purely story based with poor gameplay that lends to very little or no replayability whatsoever. Yet no one pans them for being interactive movies.

Prove it. Some popular games don't even HAVE a story (like Spore) and some have laughable stories there for no reason (like Gears). The most popular game in history is the Sims. Story-heavy games like Witcher are panned out on mechanics like inventory and UI. I think you're mistaking 'super-hyped games nerds don't have the balls to admit suck once they come out' for people liking flawed games with broken mechanics that people play anyway for the story. Look at Mass Effect - quite aside from the complaints around story quality or plot flexibility, it had a terrible, terrible inventory UI, but you'd never hear about that in a review.

Frankly, particularly with an RTS, it's legs come from multiplayer or skirmish. I seldom play open multi with the crazy hardcore leaderboard people, but if a game has broken mechanics that lead to repetitive, boring play (like, say, Sins or Supcom or as mentioned, CnC3) nobody will want to play it. That's a failure.

Covenant wrote:Sarah Palin may be attracting votes to the republicans, but that doesn't make her a strong candidate, it shows people are stupid. If the game sells well despite having no replayability, it just shows people are stupid, or that game purchase numbers don't include returns. :p

Is this like some new version of Godwin's Law?

For sheer silliness, does anyone remember a Syndicate Wars type game called "Gender Wars" made by a company called SCI who also did the LOTR piss take adventure called Kingdom O Magic. Those two games were just silliness personified.

Jade Falcon wrote:For sheer silliness, does anyone remember a Syndicate Wars type game called "Gender Wars" made by a company called SCI who also did the LOTR piss take adventure called Kingdom O Magic. Those two games were just silliness personified.

I've never actually played Gender Wars; everyone said it was terrible, and the comparison to Syndicate Wars supports this.

KlavoHunter wrote:

Covenant wrote:Sarah Palin may be attracting votes to the republicans, but that doesn't make her a strong candidate, it shows people are stupid. If the game sells well despite having no replayability, it just shows people are stupid, or that game purchase numbers don't include returns. :p

Is this like some new version of Godwin's Law?

Only if you want to expand it to "the longer a debate about something sucking goes on, the chance the writer will include in something they think sucks will increase towards one." It's harder to find a greater example of style over substance branding than American Politics though. No game in history has ever been as hyped up while simultanously containing less substance as some politicians.

But really, it's a jab at popularity versus quality and fun in response to a question of am I able to criticize a game because of it's gameplay problems even if it sells well. The response is that selling well is a measure of the game's popularity, not of it's substance, and the Palin swipe is dead on in regards to that, and I defy you to prove otherwise.

Covenant wrote:No game in history has ever been as hyped up while simultanously containing less substance as some politicians.

I beg to differ, sirrah. Daikatana.

That is all.

Stark wrote:

Darth Wong wrote:The computer game world needs all the silliness it can get. Way too many of the fucking people who call themselves "gamers" take their entertainment too seriously.

I'm not a "gamer"; I'm a person who occasionally plays games.

Silly... and good. I've never played an RA game, but the nothing about the craziness of rocket-firing bears or whatever puts me off (frankly, I've played games with elven motorcyclists so it's pretty ordinary). I think winning marketshare by inserting titties is just lame, however effective it might be. CnC3 wasn't a good game, and the money they wasted on nerd-service b-movie stuff might have helped that somewhat.

Anyone remember Act of War? That game was silly as hell (right from the installer video of oil company lobbyists on talkshows saying how we're not running out of oil it's all speculators etc) but that's why it was cool - the melodramatic 24-style cutscenes were a highpoint.

Are you kidding? Rocket-firing armoured bears are a fucking awesome idea. It wouldn't make up for bad unit balance or poorly designed maps, but I still love the idea.

Hotfoot wrote:

Covenant wrote:No game in history has ever been as hyped up while simultanously containing less substance as some politicians.

I beg to differ, sirrah. Daikatana.

That is all.

Goddammit.

Okay, from now on instead of referring to Sarah Palin, I will refer to Daikatana. This is my secret shame, and it will make political discussions difficult.

Darth Wong wrote:Are you kidding? Rocket-firing armoured bears are a fucking awesome idea. It wouldn't make up for bad unit balance or poorly designed maps, but I still love the idea.

Oh yeah, I'm down with it; back when RA1 came out in highschool, people used to hack even more ridiculous stuff into it (like guard dogs that pinned infantry down and instead of 'biting', fired flamethrowers) and that was the big draw for them over the more 'normal' CnC. I've got no issue at all with that stuff, and the special attack magnet gun from space sounds awesome.

i just had a funny idea for an ad for this. (whilst sitting on the toilet, strange how often that happens) You have Bush sitting there there playing (headset and all, saying whatever you want) and he's slowly losing, after a few seconds it cuts away to the other player sitting at his TV chuckling to himself, and its Putin.

Stark wrote: Oh yeah, I'm down with it; back when RA1 came out in highschool, people used to hack even more ridiculous stuff into it (like guard dogs that pinned infantry down and instead of 'biting', fired flamethrowers) and that was the big draw for them over the more 'normal' CnC. I've got no issue at all with that stuff, and the special attack magnet gun from space sounds awesome.

The Allied combat helicopter has a shrink ray. I don't know what sort of utility this would have, but it's pure mad science. Not everyone likes the cheese of RA2, but as far as I see it, even if the gameplay is inferior to Company of Heroes or World in Conflict, the chances are that it will be playable and the kooky units will be fun. Mind you, I have a lot lower standards when it comes to RTS games because I'm shit at them, but still.

Andrew_Fireborn wrote:Yeah, the original Red Alert had two expansions. The second of which, Aftermath, included several secret stages dealing with fighting GIANT ANTS.

Counterstrike had the Ant Missions. Aftermath had the other missions.

MariusRoi wrote:

Andrew_Fireborn wrote:Yeah, the original Red Alert had two expansions. The second of which, Aftermath, included several secret stages dealing with fighting GIANT ANTS.

Counterstrike had the Ant Missions. Aftermath had the other missions.

Machina Ex Deus. Where the target can take out the heaviest of tanks and vehicles, but a dog-swarm kills him dead.