dropship

[Wamdue]

just traded me two new games, Dropship and Kessen, so far ive only played Dropship, quite a good game if youre into action/simulators.. the mission variety is good and some missions feel kind of Halo´ish.. like one of the first missions when you steer the machine guns of a jeep whos driver is crazy, going up and down sandbanks and shooting hinds.. quite fun indeed! well, this isnt a game for everyone, but i like and for those intrested in the genre i just thought id give ya a tip :wink: back to dropship.. (no, i still love wipeout.. wipeout will played later hehe)

[science]

with any luck, you should beat kessen through and through in an evening.
i rented it, and i never lost a battle, and then, all of the sudden the game was over...
it was a fairly neat game, it just wasnt at all difficult, and it wasnt nearly long enough. id like to pick up kessen 2 and see if it is any better. its supposed to be built up on an improved engine or something like that that allows 4 or 10 (i forget which) times as many characters to be shown up close on the battlefield, which would be pretty cool.

[BurnHead]

Yeah, it supports up to 500 units (or something like that) on the battlefield!
I was never really interested in Kessen - but I definitely have to see the amount of units in Kessen 2 for myself. So I guess I'll at least have to rent it somewhere :smile:

[Wamdue]

yeah, far too many text pop-ups for me in Kessen, but, its way better than the game I traded in for it , Orphen. So Kessen will prolly be good entertainment on a sunday or something, just til MGS2 arrives.

[BurnHead]

Yeah, MGS2 looks arse cool and got very high ratings and I'm very interested in this game.
BUT: I haven't played the first one... and everyone keeps telling me that I wouldn't understand the story of MGS2 without having played MGS1!
So I guess I'll have to buy MGS1, play it through, and then buy MGS2 *sigh*

Story - who needs a story? :grin:

[Hyper Shadow]

I'm sorry but I found MGS wayyyyy too easy, I completed it in a weekend, and on the PS2 you can't truely complete it cos it freezes on the last screen of the credits.

MGS2 looks good, plays good too (got the demo off OPS2) but I'm afraid that all of the FMV and not enough gameplay will sour it (for me)

I'm just wating for Shadow Man 2econd Coming next Friday (Oh and the new F1 season)

[Zebula77]

I'm afraid of that, too. The first one was over too soon(although it was excellent), and I didn't really feel like playing through it again.

I hope MGS2 lasts longer.

[xEik]

I have to agree, MGS1 was way too short.

[AmishRobot]

Personally, I didn't care for MGS2 at all. I took it back after a couple days.

I'm sure you've read by now that the story is the worded equivalent of free-form jazz; it's just all over the place. I keep reading how it gives you so much freedom and so many ways to do things, and that is such a load. You're given a task or a place to go, you usually have one way to get there, and at best a couple solutions to any problem you come across. It's nowhere near the level of freedom in GTA3. Shooting an ice cube in a thousand different ways is not freedom, it's the programming equivalent to masturbation.

But maybe you'll see something I didn't. :roll:

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: AmishRobot on 2002-02-22 15:04 ]</font>

[Wamdue]

Its not a matter of too short or too long.

Wip3out could be completed in one day if you wanted. Most of Wipeout Fusions tracks and teams can be explored very quick. Still, youve been playing Wip3out for years. The same goes with the mgs-games. Mgs creator Hideo Kojima has stated in many mags, that MGS2 isnt supposed to be longer than 11-12 hours.
I belive he said something like this "Id rather create a short but very good game than a big and boring game" or whatever.
And if its too easy for you, dont play on Easy-Medium difficulties, set the game on Hard or Very Hard and youll see that the game isnt far too easy anymore.
MGS1´s difficulty was good. Took me 2 days to complete, but so does 85% of any other game I buy. Still, I could pick up MGS1 today just to play the sequense with Psycho Mantis or similar, because its just so brilliant in gameplay aspects and details.
Also, shooting an ice cube in a million ways isnt freedom, its detail. Freedom is that you can rob guards, take one as hostage, shoot their radio equipment before they make the back-up call, put a bullet between their eyes or knock them unconcious , or strangle them, or throw them or etc etc etc. Such big amount of the ps2 processing power is given to MGS2´s guard-AI that a lot of different situations can occour.

final word, my oppinion is that, Id buy quality before quantity. Wouldnt you?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Wamdue on 2002-02-22 15:07 ]</font>

[Hyper Shadow]

That is true but only to a certain extent. For instance, PS2 games cost roughly £39.99, now that is quite a bit of cash to fork out, so if a game is really short but it is excellence in every way I wouldn't buy it cos I want my games to last for a while, to make me think that I have value for money.

In the case of MGS2, I feel that you can play it for a while until shooting the guards a multitude of ways becomes a novelty or gimmick rather than innovation, who wants to sit through, at most, 20 mins of FMV at one time, if you want a computer graphic movie, go buy Fianl Fantasy:TSW. But to be brutally honest I'd rather play than watch.

Anyway, why is so much emphasis being put on shooting guards when the whole point of the game is to go undetected, i.e. not shoot guards ???

[Lance]

i've noticed that almost all of the wipeout pilots but me try to finish a game as soon as possible. i've played WO3 seriously for mm.. a bit less than a year, but i've still not completed it! i've got about 12 golds on phantom, but i have hardly even bothered with the challenges. is there something wrong with me? :wink:

and it's my favourite game ever. what i seem to enjoy is bettering my performance. even if it's just in vector class, getting a personal best time or setting a new record on the times tables is what really gives me satisfaction. recently i went for about 3 months virtually not playing the game at all until the last couple of weeks. now i'm improving my times again, and enjoying it as much as always.

[why am i still so far behind at porto kora?! dammit!]

anyway, the only game i've ever completed is Soul Calibur. three times. but that was because the memory cards got mucked up. twice!

i guess the goal for me is just to experience all the visual and sonic sensations that i can't get in real life, and to have huge loads of fun, and to have the personal satisfaction of doing something well. or at least to do it better than i ever have before.

[Hyper Shadow]

Its not the case of completing the game as quickly as possible, its the fact that (in my case) if a game is good I want to play it a lot more than an average game. Therefore I find that I will complete that game sooner and if there is only 10-12 hours of gameplay where most of it is shooting guards in different places i'm going to mightyly annoyed (was that a word?).
A prime case is Soul Reaver, the first game took me ages to complete and was quite challenging, yet the sequel took ages to be released á la Fusion but was only a quarter of the length of the prequel, that is annoying!

[Wamdue]

well, we both got different styles of play then, I found Soul Reaver 2 not very good because of some major flaws, like, pressing the attack button repeatedly at any demon would give them no chance to attack back and sooner or later you would kill them. I might be biased because I think of MGS and what Ive so far experienced of MGS2 to be the best gaming experience to find right now.
Maybe MGS seems longer to me because I wanted to finish every VR mission in the expansion disc, complete the game on most difficulty settings and get all the bonuses MIGHT BE A SPOILER like the stealth camo and unlimited ammo bandana, and the bond-suit. Also it is possible to complete MGS by just killing 12-13 guards, and in MGS2 you dont have to kill one of them if you dont want to. ( here i go again with my fanboy hideo kojima stuff) but Hideo did say that the goal of creating the MGS games was to get that same feeling from when you were playing hide-n-seek as a child, I think it conveys that feeling very good.

[Lance]

yeah, it's a word, usually spelled 'mightily'.

one of the cool things about some of the japanese designers is that they have a strong concept of what the whole experience should be like. even when they are dealing with all the details of individual character and object design, they always keep in mind the total feeling they want people to get from the game. in an earlier time, they might have been Masters of Tea designing gardens for meditation.

[Hyper Shadow]

Don't get me wrong over not liking MGS, I think it is a good game, but lacks that certain something to make it great.
Hideo Kajima has some great ideas, I mean I brought ZOE (without the MGS2 demo for £10) and it was a really good game, it was short but fun and the cut scenes wern't overly long but still told a reasonable story well.
I just wish that games would stop trying to be 'interactive movies' and just be computer games with a light plot to justify the means.
Shadow Man, Soul Reaver, Sonic Adventures 1&2 and even the Resident Evil series were all excellent games with a great story, lifespan and gameplay. That is what I look for in a game rather than what MGS2 has to offer.

Although I may buy MGS2, but not now, maybe later.

[Wamdue]

yes, but Soul Reaver and such are far from light when it comes to cut-scenes and story telling. A good story is needed for most game genres, like adventures-action and etc, like mgs, soul reaver, and I havent played Shadowman yet, but I got a feeling its got a strong story element too from what Ive seen from trailers.
For me, mgs had that special feeling of a great game, but I guess its all about if you like games like that more than others.

oh well, we all got our own oppinions and theres no wrong in that :smile:

[Hyper Shadow]

I hate to say this, but there is nothing you can say to make me believe that anything is better than Sonic the Hedgehog :wink::D I believe that that is the best game ever, better than MGS
If it wasn't for zone mode, WipEout Fusion could be up there aswell :reddevil

[Wamdue]

hehe, Sonic wouldnt stand a chance against Starwing FX / Starfox (not the crappy n64 version)

[infoxicated]

Hey Wamdue - I got Dropship today - looks good, but I've only played the tutorial. Sadly it's kind of dropped down the list as I also got State of Emergency, Ace Combat 4, Airblade and Jack & Daxter.

Ace Combat 4 is wicked - man, I should order my blow up Kelly McGillis now, 'cos I've been Top Gun so far! :smile:

SoE is pretty decent too - if a little frantic, and due to that the camera issues that were minor in GTA3 are a bit more annoying in this.

Jack & Daxter seems pretty polished, although it's kind of hard to disguise a "collect the items like Crash did" in a pretty storyline. Collecting items is collecting items no matter how you dress it up. Hopefully it'll get better.

Airblade hasn't made it out of the cellophane yet, as I played it at E3 last year and found it a bit weak compared to THPS.

Keep me informed as to how you get on in Dropship, hints on the mad control system would be a plus! :smile:

[science]

back to MGS and MGS2... dont let the demo disc of MGS2 fool you. the plot of mgs2 is so bad that it just makes you want to turn the game off, especially after how good mgs1's plot was.
you can do alot of cool stuff in 2 that you couldnt do in the first one, but there is basically no variety in the actual gaming envoronment. the ship in the demo is just about the coolest place on the game; after that, you run around in this octagonal (or was it hexagonal?) complex where every section is a different kind of room, but still really not that cool. i believe thats where the entire rest of the game takes place. im not for sure though, i got bored with it and didnt finish the game.
i couldnt put the controller down for the first one, and mgs2 is, well, pretty goofy.

[Wiseman]

Coming from an MGS fan, I would have to say I was pretty disapointed with MGS2.

Graphically, of course, it kicks ass. (but then everyone already knows that).

Control mechanics wise, it kicks ass. All the new items/weapons/moves you have at your disposal are totally sweet, and make one wish they could have done all this in MGS.


But it's the storyline and everything around it (characters, etc.) that just doesn't cut the cake.

The new "bosses" are all stupid looking and uninteresting(fat guy on rollerblades, gay vampire, etc.), the storyline is high one the "wacked-o-meter".

Man, it's hard writing about MGS2 without spoiling anything..... erm, let's just say that a lot of the moments you encounter in MGS2 are going to be VERY similar to the things you did in MGS.

Yes, I know why it's this way, but to me it just seems that Kojima just got lazy.

Too many pointless things happen (much like that "X" movie), for absolutely no reason whatsoever other than the fact that "he could, so he did".

It's utterly lame.

And I guess it's just that I'll never be able to look at (the original) MGS the same again thanks to the direction he's taken the story, it's just totally bogus now, I look at MGS and think "Dude, that it so not cool what he did to this."


Yeah, sure, some of the codec conversations were funny as hell (it pays in MGS2 to constantly call someone on the codec, some of the sh!t you'll hear is just too f@#king funny to miss), and all of the secrets in there are great.

And like I said, the game itself (minus the storyline and the characters) is great, the interaction you can now have with guards is insane, chances are if you think you can do something in MGS2, you probably can.


Soley looking at the game elements themselves (A.I., interaction, moves, graphics, sound, etc.) it a huge leap over MGS, but if you're looking for someone who is as cool as Psycho Mantis, Sniper Wolf, and the Ninja, or a storyline that even remotely makes sense, then you'll have better luck elsewhere.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Wiseman on 2002-02-23 06:36 ]</font>

[Wamdue]

wow, yoiu bought em all at once?! hehe, i got airblade, jak n daxter , gta3 and all of those with like atleast 3 weeks playing time between hehe. Airblade doesnt quite deliver what you expect , youll prolly get bored of it fast. Jak n Daxter is fun tho, the concept of the whole game world accessable(right word?) without loading times is nice, and the design on levels is pretty cool too. Hm, hints for Dropship... it gets real hard on the 2nd to 3rd campaign.. im stuck in the 3rd campaign now.. As for the controls, hmm.. just keep practising switching from flight to hover mode real fast without crashing, because smooth landings are essential later. You gotta love the mission structure, like one of the early missions, you get shot down while trying to pick up a recon team, so you have to drive the recon teams jeep and escape the terrorists and when youve driven a while ( pretty hectic) youll take control of the gun turret while the 2nd pilot drives the jeep..soo fun, hehe, i shot down chopper and my brother just said "that chopper is going to hit something now, watch out" and i said like " hey, i know what im doing" next second i hear the sound of a chopper engine failing and then from nowhere at all the thing just crashed and burned right on my jeep hehe, thats what I like about dropship..good details on crash animations and stuff like that. oh and yeah, use the strategic map in-game a lot.. itll help.(press the down arrow on your pad)

[infoxicated]

Airblade is the only one of the lot that doesn't really float my boat. Ace Combat 4 is as slick as anything I've seen - very nicely done, I love the "ribbon" breakdown of what you did in the debrief - seeing yourself make all these mad turns and twists in a dogfight is excellent. The replays are cool too, but they're a bit GT3 after a while - nice to look at, but you'd rather get on with it!

Jack and Daxter is a cold winter night job - as I don't think it's one to be rushed, it's so wonderfully presented. I can imagine all the Crash style precision leaps will get frustrating, though, but there are lots of nice comic touches that had me laughing.

The only one I bought was State of Emergency - the rest were freebies - it looks like I'll probably trade in Airblade without even removing the celophane... although that's not exactly going to get me any more cash back for it, so I suppose I should at least give it a whirl.

[Wamdue]

freebies ey? sounds nice. Well, If you get more games that you dont like and I might like, just drop me a line, Im trying to find cheap solutions to get games, because I dont want to get a mod-chip and Ive blown a lot of money on games already :wink:

[G-Hob]

If you mean getting a gold medal on every track on every class including prototypes and challenges, then Wip3out can not be completed within one day of playing it. That's the main reason I think 3 is better than 2097, the long term challenge it provides.

[xEik]

Many people won't agree but I enjoyed Tenchu much more than MGS and I bought them the same day. One of the best things it had was the three different layouts for the enemies, making it very difficult to remember where would they be every time you played a stage.
Even more, you could end Tenchu in a few hours if you didn't mind 'stealth' just by crossing every stage as fast as you could but if you wanted to get the special weapons it was necessary to achieve the 'Grand Master' rank which meant not being discovered or killing by stealth many people. It forced me to play it hard and I enjoyed it a lot since one can see how well he has done in every stage and doesn't need to wait to finish the whole game to see if he did a good job.
Maybe you'll say that it had almost no storyline but I loved the feudal Japanese film look that it had.

Minister Kataoka, you have brought great shame on yoursef. Kill yourself and show me you still have some honour. I will assist you

[science]

i dont know where its been released yet, but theres a game out here in the states called Drakkon, and it kicks ass. theres another one out that looks alot the same and even has a similar title, but it has a younger rating on it and its made by 3DO...so there ya go.

[AmishRobot]

xEik, I agree with you 100%. Tenchu rocked over MGS1&2. The story was a bit lame with the honor of the characters being emphasised too much, and the graphics weren't as good, but nothing in any of the Metal Gear games topped hiding behind a bush, waiting for a guard to turn around, and then rolling out and running up behind him to slice his head off... all in complete silence. :smile:

Maybe it was the setting, but I know I would often sit on a rooftop for up to five minutes waiting for the right moment to strike. The whole time visualizing the moment in a zen state, and loving every minute of it.

Plus, you got to kill cats. :lol:

[Lance]

hey! i liKe cats! :smile:

it sounds like Tenchu has a cooler atmosphere [for my taste] than MGS. when reading about MGS online and checking the visuals, it just never seemed compelling enough for me to want it.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Lance on 2002-02-25 18:50 ]</font>

[xEik]

I agree with you, I could spend minutes just waiting for an enemy to make a bad move and then his head is no more over his shoulders :reddevil

Unfortunately the second part of Tenchu lacks something, it has better graphics and a level editor but it didn't feel the same (no different layout for every character :sad:)

BTW in PAL version you can't kill the cats but they don't warn guards either. However it has 10 missions while NTSC Japanese had 7 or 8. Is it that in NTSC USA?