Halo for the PC: Two years late and unimproved.

God, don't get me started on HALO, I fucking hate that game.

"Welcome to a world where assault rifles are inaccurate outside of melee range, frag grenades might as well have fruit filling for all the damage they do, and pistols come equipped with scopes standard issue! Please note that the proper way to defeat an opponent in multiplayer is to either punch him in the back of the head or spin a Jeep on his spawn point. Please refrain from firing actual ammunition at him, because that is stupid. Thank you for playing!"

Frag grenades should have fruit filling.

~J

Man, you must really hate playing FPS's then.

Yeah.

But with how "good" the multiplayer was, I am inclined to discount it.

They also added the Fuel Rod Gun, and the fraggin Banshee. HALO may not have come to us when we wanted it, back when it was a bungie multi OS FPS in developement, but it IS a damn fine console port. Not unlike "Knights of the Old Republic". I'm no console monkey, my prefered platform is the PC, but a good game is a good game, and HALO is just that.


Btw, this is not a hoop kissing pro MS post. I still have my diffrences with microsoft's gaming decisions, namely thier decision to end the Mechwarrior game series.

With the horrible, horrible things that microsoft has done to the Mechwarrior franchise, I'm delighted they ended it.

And it's their fault that HL2 is delayed, curse them! *shakes fist*

Now that this is COMPLETELY off topic...

What didnt you like about the mechwarrior franchise. I loved mech 4 and all the expansions and add-ons there after.

And how exactly is Billy responsible the fate of HL2?

to get back on the topic...

Microsoft has a lot of great talent working for them in the game department, (FASA Interactive, Bungie, etc.). And they have partnered with people like Sigil, and bioware. If/When Microsoft decides to make a Shadowrun game, there will be some very good people and some very big money behind it.

Among other things, they didn't release anything but Mechwarrior II for the Mac.

~J the zealot

That is niether here nor there as far as I'm concerned. I understand however how it would grate on Mac people. And who knows, once all this microsoft DRM, Palladium, Secure Computing Nexus stuff catches on.. I might just become a Mac head myself.

But I don't see how non cross platform availability is a legitimate reason why people are glad they ended the Mech franchise.

Side note: Deus Ex 2 is the perfect example of a console port gone bad. THe first Deus Ex was brilliant, and it was PC only. The sequel is an X-box/PC title. As I mentioned before, with games like Halo and KoTOR, some times this is a good thing. But in the case of Deus Ex 2, you can smell the console dumb-downs all over it. It really detracts from the game in general and makes the PC experience miserable.

Example: Why do my STUN BATON and my SHOTGUN use the SAME AMMO?!?!

Back to the Shadowrun game....

IMO, they should make it like EA's Freedom Fighters. Controlling your main guys, but giving commands to the rest of the runners. FF's a very cool squad based game that's simple enough to pick up and play, yet offers strategy to those that desire it. Great game!

yeah, FF and KOTOR are both good examples to draw from. personally, i'm a big fan of the massively-detailed mechanics in Jagged Alliance 2. i'm not such a huge fan of the bugs, though.

I would love a KOTOR type SR game, but I really think it would need co-op multiplayer. Rigger with drones rolling in, mage in the astral with a spell ready and a spirit, Sammys making the actual incursion, and a decker on overwatch. They could set it up like Baldur's gate where you can also play the game solo, and there are a myriad of well developed specialized NPCs.

No, Halo for the XBox has not received an "updated" version that includes the stuff from the PC. I wouldn;t be terrbly surprised to see something like that in another 6 months or so, but right now there's not.

Morrowind did something similar, releasing a "Game of the Year" edition that has both expansions on it as well as the base game.

Bull

Yeah, I played both versions, and the Genesis one kicked ass hands down. In the SNES version, you couldn't even shoot while moving. How dumb is that?

Well, technically, you can't shoot while running in the Genesis version, since you stop moving as soon as you press the 'shoot' button.. But I digress..

The SNES version had a much better story (though without the option to take on jobs, it kind of sucked for improving your character), better graphics, and a grittier feel to it..

But the Genesis version was hands down the better Shadowrun game, simply because it actually adhered to the Shadowrun (2nd edition) rules..

I mean, in the SNES version you were a Dog Shaman/Decker/Sammy? What? Talk about screwed up.. And you couldn't even upgrade your NPCs, not that it was worth it, since they cost a fortune, and didn't hang out for long..

Oh, and you could have, at most, 5 pieces of cyberware? What the fuck? And why did the game act like Boosted Reflexes and Wired Reflexes are the same thing?

Note: I've never actually been able to get the Dermal Armor.. Every time I try, no matter what walkthrough I use, no matter if I'm on a cart or ROM, it just never shows up.. Does anyone know what's up with that?

I would have seriously purchased an X-Box for a Shadowrun game. I've seen games like Hunter-The Reckoning for it, and IMHO, that alone would have been worth purchase. I take into account graphics, the programming, the driver engines and most of the reviews.

Hunter: The Reckoning is ok.. But the XBOX sequel, Redeemer, is much better.

come one overwatch, you think that had to dumb DE 2 down that much for xbox? Thats not the consoles fault, thats the company. Everything everybody complains about.... the universal ammo, no skills, etc could ALL have been done on xbox. Hell, they did it with the first one on ps2; xbox handled morrowind just fine. Its the developers fault, not the xbox.

And also, hunter the reckoning had a better story, but redeemer is more fun to play. Its an absolute blast with a couple of friends.

How about an SR game in more of a Phantasy Star Online sort of vein? You could set up various places in Seattle (or wherever), have Johnsons doling out runs for groups of runners, that sort of thing. Out of the MMOs Ive played, I think I saw the most teamwork between teams of people in PSO, stupid PKers and rampent item duping aside. The basic style of gameplay would work pretty well, if you could put it into more of an interactive world.

I wouldnt object to a deus-ex style FPS on the box, tho. As long as you had the freedom to develop your character how you saw fit (exchange biomods with cyberware or magic), an action game would work just fine for me. As long as they put in a system link/split screen co-op game, Id forgive liberties taken with the P&P game mechanics. In fact, a 4 person co-op FPS might be the order of the day, and still capture the teamwork feel of a SR run, packaged in a way that the norms could understand (and hopefully buy the game).

If its a fun game and captures the feel and atmosphere of SR, Im not going to grok too hard about it not being "true to the game". I like Hunter:The Reckoning in its P&P incarnite. Even tho the video game had very little to do with roleplaying, the fun of four supernaturally charged people slaughtering the undead cant be denied

Sega SR is far superior to it's counterpart on SNES. Both in machanics, and atmosphere.
It's atmosphere has the tripple D's of success that are found in SR and many other great works in media (Batman, Punisher, Bladerunner to name a few): Dark, Dirty, and Depressing.
SNES was mostly blue in color scheme...blue...uh...hmm...blue? Where's the grey, and black? And why is everything so damn clean? Where's the damn janitor so I can shoot him?!

Mechanics wise, Snes was just simply annoying to play. It was like pulling teeth to enjoy any aspect of the mechanics, whereas the sega version was so very customizable in it's character stats, and it's combat was pretty much simmilar to what we now find in KOTOR today.
Matrix running was a breeze and was so much nicer than even the table top version of the matrix in SR.

All in all...they needent change too much from the sega version, a few things here and there, mostly character generation and adding in the rest of the game to the equasion.

I'm pretty much apt to agree with a KOTOR style of SR, but with better character gen and more room for other classes than the fighter to use their abilities.
KOTOR is pretty much geared towards the fighter.

Maybe to make sure that the thousands of us, who have been waiting for a new video game version of SR to come out, won't be disapointed we should just start writing letters in mass quantity expressing our concerns and sharing our desires and wishes.
I mean...if there is any group that I wouldn't want to upset other than the Batman fans (*cough*Joel Schumacher) if I was producing something, is the SR fans.
Screw it up and you'll have endless hate mail for a very long long time and lose some fan base.
Just look at Dumpshock members for an example...we're picky as hell.

I'll cross my fingers

Is it just me or is anyone else sensing yet another linear 3rd person shooter, where the only 'role playing' takes place in pre-written cinematics that occur between each run which involves shooting all the guards with progressively more powerful weapons?

I saw that in game informer and i was extremely happy, if it did come out just for pc i'd have to save some money for a while to get a new pc, if it came out for xbox i would buy xbox live if it was live enabled, i just hope i find out early enough so that i can save money cuz it'll take a while with my car payments o.O