This was awesome, the audio restoration was absolutely top notch and despite including both presentations and the audience reactions it all felt completely seamless.
It’s also just incredible watching the footage and thinking about what an insane leap HL2 was in its day. Hell, many current games struggle to produce as expressive facial animations as it did 20 years ago! And that’s not even getting into the interactivity of the engine and level design combining.
Not really for what I was envisioning I think: I want an actual remake where the second half of the game would be rewritten, along with new scripting and voice acting and cutscenes etc etc.
For stuff like upgrading assets and adding ray traced lighting etc the Nvidia RTX Remix stuff is great, though. So you could use it for more of a remaster, like they are doing with Half-Life 2.
At least that’s how I understand it.
Since the dream of a true sequel is dead, getting Mitsoda et al involved in a proper remake would be the next dream. Imagine the setting and locations with modern ray traced lighting and having Mitsoda rewrite the weak second half of the game into something better?
The gameplay is janky at best and pretty bad at worst - partly because they really went for including all facets of the tabletop and maybe bit off more than they could chew: they wanted FPS gun shooting, third person melee combat, stealth with takedowns and a magic system. As such all those are fairly clunky and unpolished as a result.
Baldurs Gate is weird combat wise with its Real Time With Pause system and you really kind of have to like that slower tactical aspect to get into those games. Bloodlines is still action combat - though not exactly smooth.
Picking Tremere and relying on blood magic to get through combat might be the best bet if you’re unwilling to engage in the unbelievably clunky melee.
If all this talk of Bloodlines and Bloodlines 2 is inspiring you to go try out the original, please remember to install the unofficial patch. Seriously. You’re more or less incapable of finishing the game otherwise due to multiple potential hard locking bugs. Plus it fixes a ton of other minor stuff.
The game itself is great though and worth your time. It devolves a bit in the second half as you get into the parts that were thrown together by the rushed production, but the writing, OST and atmosphere alone are worth experiencing.
Back in like middle school or whatever it was around that time we had a portable drive (or was it just on a CD?) with an installed folder of UT99 we used to bring to school. During recess we’d go and copy paste it to the PCs in the computer room and play little LAN tournaments until a teacher would find us and chase us out. Instagib only or course, and I think we also played 120% speed.
Good times indeed.
Yes, the reply above you is exactly what I meant.
Is that release date too late for a possible GOTY claim? I know I’m high on wishful thinking but I’m coconut pilled right now and letting myself dream. After all they’ve been through I really really wish this game comes out as a slam dunk GOTY game-of-the-decade type thing.
I wish they didn’t go with simplified ammo. I know it’s a small thing but I loved having to weigh the pros and cons of weapons based on the ammo they use, and I’ll die a little inside every time I unload my M16 and shove those rounds into the AK-47 I just picked up. And seeing generic “pistol ammo” and “assault rifle ammo” is so immersion breaking - and this is a series that lives and dies off immersion.
But who knows. I might be dead wrong here and the slight dumbening down might help them attract a wider audience, in which case I’m happy for them. No matter what in the end I just wish them huge success after all they’ve gone through.
Sounds like a solid step up, and I’ll probably try to pick it up on sale. I enjoyed last year’s game but I was really hoping they’d improve the tyre temperature mechanics, which continue to be the series biggest flaw it looks like. Having to manage an operational window for a tyre is such a huge part of modern F1 that the poor representation in game does it a disservice. You had no downside to running a tyre too cold last year apart from reduced pace (while in reality you’d experience graining and slipping) and you’d have no downside to running too hot apart from faster loss of tyre life (while in reality you’d get thermal degradation - which is the real killer).
There is a separate timeline out there where Bernie beat Trump in 2016 and we didn’t have to go through any of this shit. I hope the me in that timeline realizes how lucky he is.
Does this mod actually look better in the side-by-sides? I’m not sure the RTX produces a better effect than the baked lighting and it also seems to remove the permanently rain slicked wet roads, which is a shame since they were so iconic for Underground.
Improved textures are nice though.
You love to see it. Great stuff and I hope this is the way forward for more parts of the Fediverse.
I know it’s not going to happen, but a Witcher 4 where you’re playing as Letho out in the eastern lands is my absolute dream. He’s a great character with strong main character energy, and he’s also CDPR original content so doing it that way lets them play looser with story and characters without having to trample over the lore.
I remember the good old days of being super excited every time a new PCGamer magazine arrived in the mailbox and you’d get a fresh CD with it stuffed full of the hottest demos to try. Good times.
I was moreso upset at the outdated pearl clutching of the olympic committee and the complete lack of engagement with actual esports, instead trying to… find mobile games tangentially related to existing olympic sports…?
I didn’t know it existed so I had to read up on it real quick. Honestly makes my blood boil a little bit, especially stuff like blanket excluding FPS games because they’re “too violent”. Are we still in the nineties?
Honestly, the Larian writing style and humour would have probably been a better fit for Fallout.
I also dislike it, but it’s easy to see why. Once something is both this widespread and user friendly it will become increasingly more popular in a positive feedback loop. Easier onboarding is so valuable compared to having to teach people your in-house engine.
I’m afraid we’ll only see more Unreal games in the future.
Was it worse than last year? I haven’t played this year’s edition but F1 Manager 2023 was a pretty fun game, albeit lacking the depth of something like Football Manager or Motorsport Manager.