Bulletstorm

[Obiwanshinobi]

Was there really no thread about it yet?
So I don't like the graphics that much (judging from the vid I saw) and I'm not going to play it for a while (most likely not until I get myself a new PC since I want to play it with a mouse and keyboard at good framerate), BUT:
- it's by People Can Fly of Painkiller fame, so it should be an enjoyable FPS with fun weapons
- reportedly it's all about playing for the score.
What I just saw on YouTube could use faster pacing, but maybe the player just wasn't very good at the game. All things considered, looks like a lot of silly fun.

[renardqueenston]

i'm primarily excited for the mode that allows you to just play without the cutscenes and stories attached that widdles it down to the best parts of the action, along with the multiplayer score attack stuff

[E. Randy Dupre]

Yeah, the console demo features that mode.

It's a blast - to a large extent, it's what The Club should have been. The gunplay is decent,. the environmental kills are amusing and there's a lot of pleasure to be gained from obtaining a new type of kill (with each being displayed in large, bright letters directly above the victim).

My only slight concern is longevity. I enjoyed it a lot the first night I played it. I then left it a few days and had a few more goes, but found that the thrill had already worn off slightly. That said, the demo is just a single level and is hampered by loading times which aren't enormous, but do damage a score-attack game, where you want (and need) to be jumping into the action asap. The demo also puts a strict limit on the weapons you can select.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Painkiller was great for a quick blast rather than long sessions.
Those gaudy captions look good indeed. You can tell the game is making a point, which is important if you want to get people hooked on the scoring. Some games with fairly accomplished score systems under the skin just don't pimp them explicitly enough (Shinobi on the PS2).

[exquisite_torture]

I loved the demo. I think I pumped about 12 hours into the demo. I managed to crack 18,000.

[whoozwah]

I'm loving this game. I finished the campaign and I'm going to hop into Echoes mode tomorrow. There's not a directly competitive multiplayer mode at all. There's Anarchy (co-op horde mode) and Echoes (score attack).

[Obiwanshinobi]

Eurogamer made a thorough comparison of all three versions (nothing really surprising about the outcome, but I like to know such things). Good to read it's not too bad on the PC, but girl, what's wrong with the UT3 engine? It seems that no matter how much effort developers put in details, they just can't make up a GREAT looking game of it all.
Most recent 3D games I found graphically outstanding would be Drakensang: The Dark Eye and Rune Factory Frontier (and A Shadow's Tale/Lost in Shadow alright, derivative as it looks). Does it really take a relatively low tech engine these days to make something that stands out in a good way or at least doesn't reek of "computer graphics"?
Don't get me wrong, I like the looks of explosions and smoke in those big boys' games, softened shadows don't hurt either and so on, but most screenshots and gameplay footage out there evokes some kind of embarrasment within me, like seeing stuff I'd rather not see (somebody's guts, that sort of things).
Assassin's Creed II looks okay I guess (there is something about imaginative architecture in games that moves me; it's one of things games are good at). When I watched my pal play the latest Splinter Cell on his 360, though, it looked nowhere near as impressive as the PS2 demo of the first one back in the day (I'm not even bitching about downgraded framerate, although that affects the aesthetics too).
It's as if people who make games have forgotten that merely well done graphics are not remarkable anymore if they don't have something impactful in store, such as soft light and architecture in Ico, the night thing and character animations in Splinter Cell etc. Yes, memorable presentation is always more than a sum of its parts, but it's not that difficult to put your finger on its selling points.

[Strider77]

huh?

[EU03]

When I watched my pal play the latest Splinter Cell on his 360, though, it looked nowhere near as impressive as the PS2 demo of the first one back in the day (I'm not even bitching about downgraded framerate, although that affects the aesthetics too).

Minor quibble, but that game ran on UT2.5, since the game was in development for a stupid long time, where then they decided to throw out nearly everything they worked on and start over. Except not changing the engine.

[worstplayer]

Warning: all 3 versions have massive input lag.

[dcharlie]

Bulletstorm (and Killzone 3) arrived tonight... hubba hubba.

Demo was awesome, can't wait to give it a whirl.

[Teufel_in_Blau]

Warning: all 3 versions have massive input lag.

I'm not into FPS but are 133 ms really that much? I mean that's 0,133 seconds...

[worstplayer]

I mean that's 0,133 seconds...

Go play Mars Matrix
First in vanilla MAME and then in ShmupMAME. Quite a difference, isn't it? And that's just 64ms.
Now, this is twice laggier than MM. And that's best possible case (if your TV doesn't have gaming mode it could be as bad as 190ms, but that's not game's fault).

Of course, BS doesn't require nearly as much precision as MM, but it's still quite noticeable.