Comments on: Blizzard Announce That Tom Francis Is Right

By: muffin

muffin — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 11:16:25 +0000

The best 1st person shooter ever.......

Half life 2...this is the most amazing game ever...
it has the perfect balence of great graphics, physics, and ragdoll animations.....
The guns are well ballenced making the game hard but not impossible...the story is gripping and interesting.

there is a wide range of enemies...antlions, zombies and combine....
and each 'species' needs to be delt with in a different way.
It is not the most scary game...but it doesnt need to be...

Most importantly...its a hell of a lot of fun!!!

By: Azzen

Azzen — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 19:52:22 +0000

A MIGHTY WARRIOR, WEARING QUILTED PANTS.

By: Pentadact

Pentadact — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:37:08 +0000

INFERIOR QUILTED PANTS.

By: Tentaculat

Tentaculat — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:21:29 +0000

QUILTED PANTS.

By: Dante

Dante — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:52:30 +0000

Since you bring it up, I think you undersold the male Shepard in your Mass Effect review Pentadact.

The voice acting is very good, specifically they've done well to pick a voice that nearly always feels natural coming from your character, regardless of the look or ethnicity of him. Except when I created a Ming the Merciless clone, then it didn't work at all.

And you certainly aren't restricted to them all looking like 'vacant', shaven headed Calvin Klein models'. I'd put up a picture to illustrate my point, but unfortunately I played it on the Xbox.

By: Pentadact

Pentadact — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:21:38 +0000

You should counter-act this by posting about TF2 on 1Fort - that aborted post makes it feel all sad over there now, like a dead fetus. Okay, not that sad.

By: Chris Livingston

Chris Livingston — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:53:42 +0000

This does not appear to be about Team Fortress 2, and thus, I do not comprehend.

By: Pentadact

Pentadact — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 13:19:01 +0000

Especially true in Mass Effect: Jennifer Hale gives one of the few compelling game protagonist performances I've heard, despite having sounded rather like a damp cloth as Bastila in KOTOR.

Interestingly, Chet at Valve was saying that the opposite phenomenon is more generally true: you can write bitchy, griping, arrogant dialogue for male characters and players take it in their stride and sometimes even find it charming. But if you have a female character say the same lines, they loathe her and complain bitterly about the constant nagging. So there's a grouchy old man in Left 4 Dead, but the girl is all sweetness and light.

Broadly, men suck.

By: Jason L

Jason L — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:21:42 +0000

Another facet - in voiced situations I tend to find female characters less annoying. I don't know whether it's just the Bitching Betty/Natasha effect, or whether it's just more difficult to give a female voice actor a two-word stereotype to assume (gruff marine, sociopathic murderer, whiny coward...)

By: Captain Bland

Captain Bland — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:31:03 +0000

"And KOTOR 2, because the Handmaiden is way cooler than the other guy."

It's strange that you didn't mention Kreia, a character i found so interesting i unintentionally ended up doing exactly what she said in every situation.

By: Grill

Grill — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:14:37 +0000

This is the best Diablo 3 merchandise I can find out there:
http://www.amazon.co... ...038;sr=8-3

I am lose.

By: Rob

Rob — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:19:34 +0000

..it's a good thing I think before hitting Submit, too, what would that be like if I didn't! "Thomas Lawrence: [...]Subversion of gender roles, see? It does, however, suck that in general, the options for female character romances aren't as interesting as the male ones (I'm thinking mostly of BG2 here, and haven't yet played Mass Effect)." The trouble is, whilst ideally it would be as interesting as Deus Ex's option to play as black-JC (and as amusing, with the religious debate connotations and all that), I think that there's very little progressive role-play options in terms of gender (far less than race), and it mostly amounts to fan-service at worst, and at best, a brief exploration of 'women in a man's world'. I'm trying to remember how games like N.O.L.F. handled it - I think I'm right in saying it was an ironic response to Lara Croft, and played up the whole gender thing for laughs. Games like KOTOR and Mass Effect (the latter of which I don't have much time for) make gender-swapping more a case of male players getting kicks out of playing through straight (hetero) storylines from a female perspective (ie, a straight-male-lesbian approach), which aren't entirely helpful. There's something to be said about online play and male players 'losing themself' in female characters - but that's a bit of a complicated issue.

By: Rob

Rob — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:12:50 +0000

I get more excited about the scroll-wheel action than the gender choices, I don't know what kind of geek that makes me.

RE: gender bending in games, I don't know whether the games development community has really progressed beyond 'nice ass to look at' Croftian Syndrome.

By: Pod

Pod — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 15:01:30 +0000

The guy made a big deal out of using the scrollwheel....but you can do that (or at least: that's how mine is set up?) in D2 anyway... It's a bit of a pain, actually, as there's always crap skills in between the one you're on and the one you're scrolling to. Fkeys for the win.

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 14:14:40 +0000

It's a good thing that I think before I hit "Submit".

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 14:03:56 +0000

Red Herring, gotta love it.

By: Thomas Lawrence

Thomas Lawrence — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 12:08:51 +0000

Dante: it's precisely because there isn't much actual difference in what happens that the woman's story is often more interesting - i.e. that the woman does exactly what the equivalent man would have done. Subversion of gender roles, see? It does, however, suck that in general, the options for female character romances aren't as interesting as the male ones (I'm thinking mostly of BG2 here, and haven't yet played Mass Effect).

By: Sentry Gun

Sentry Gun — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 08:14:16 +0000

I figure that Battle.net will be free as before, but it's still a major worry in the back of my mind... It'd be more than a major turnoff to have to pay for online play, it'd be a complete turnoff.

By: Dante

Dante — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 01:51:03 +0000

Hmmn, I'm not sold on the woman's story being more interesting, I've never really noticed a massive difference either way. Well that's except for KOTOR, because romancing Bastilla is much more interesting in relation to the plot. And KOTOR 2, because the Handmaiden is way cooler than the other guy. Or Baldur's Gate 2, because women only get one romance option, and he's a prick. Huh, maybe it's more slanted towards men than I realised, although on the other hand women have a way more interesting decisions on the romance track in Mass Effect (I assume) because Kaiden's actually a nice guy, rather than a giant bigot like Ashley. But mostly I suppose I avoid the gender bend because my natural instinct in games, given the choice, is to shag everything that moves and I'd rather my conquests be female. However once again, all my characters are black and I'm white, and that has zero impact on the gameplay (although wouldn't it be interesting if it did?) so who am I to judge?

By: Alex Hopkinson

Alex Hopkinson — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 23:09:43 +0000

I have to say that it's totally Titan Quest's (+expansion) fault that I have any interest in Diablo 3.