I think I managed about 20 minutes or so of that game before I went “this is really shit.” The game didn’t exactly entice me with the stupid fmv at the beginning, nor the horrendous voice-acting. I loved the open island in the first level, but when I realised it wasn’t open at all and that you got blown to bits for treading off the path, and then when I found myself in the hull of a ship playing another generic linear shooter with none of the immersion of games like Half-Life, I turned off.
Mmmm, yess it most definitely would be… i’m glad you can see the appeal that bleak environments have!
Sure, the PC game has been expanded since its release. That’s simply an advantage of making a game for PC. 
But the game itself, the title of Team Fortress 2, has not expanded on TFC’s gameplay. Gimmicky awards for playing it have been added, with new fandangled achievements to unlock, but it’s very easy to miss the old complexity of nearly every class having their own grenade variety… as the obstacles of grenades have been stripped for TF2 players.
Stripped of napalm grenades, the spy’s hallucinogens, incendiary cannon salvos and caltrops, Team Fortress 2 does fall short in the concept of deploying area-denial weapons. Imagine a new HLDM (many years in the making) where you could unlock a prettier hivehand to impress your leet friends with… at the expense of being able to use tripmines and snarks.
The argument holds some validity, albeit strongly subjective.
Cool, yes, certainly visually stimulating, but not very atmospheric as first-person-shooters have long been.
(Wandering alone through a Nazi castle, fighting off an invasion from Hell, and spelunking around an an abandoned research facility - - at least in singleplayer contexts, atmosphere has been fundamental to first-person-shooters.)[/SIZE]
I suppose my comparison runs parallel to other forms of art. As beautiful as that starry Starry Night is, it would make a terrible wallpaper throughout your home. While the wonderful Team Fortress class-based gameplay will keep you for a long while, TF2’s style may eventually sicken you.
I must say, I would rather kill 100 generic soldiers than 9 distinct people over and over again, where the repetition becomes obvious. And while it’s great to see personality on your own team, but it makes it difficult to hate the same person who’s serving the enemy.
I will give TF2’s characters the appreciation that is warranted for their Meet The Class movies, as they are very creative and entertaining. 
But these remain unique characters. To see them in-game, dressed, with the same man in red and then in blue, is mildly disappointing… and I am again left with the hollow feeling that these identities exist only for the marketing warranted by such a mainstream title.
Perhaps the real solution is to allow characters to customize their own bodies to some degree. Spraypaints are interesting for that same reason… I still tag interesting kills with my avatarsake (and, screennamesake). I still remember some 1-on-1 banter, with the enemy demanding I stop insulting his spray of Andrei the Giant with my weapon marks… good times.
Ah, yes, the ship! Now I remember where I gave up playing that game :3
That game was nasty good. I think X-Wing vs. Tie Fighte, LegoSW, and SW Battlefront 1 are the best thing Lucasarts has ever pooped out.
Not counting KoTOR because that was mostly Bioware.
If by complexity you mean spam, then I can’t sympathize with you in the slightest. But I’ve heard they may bring them back at some point, if they can find a way to fix that. Possibly by limiting the number of grenades used each round or game.
For starters TF2 isn’t a single player game, and second don’t those atmospheres get boring after a while? Honestly, these days every game has to have some dark depressing generic atmosphere. I’ve played my fare share of First person Shooters, and after a while a lot of it starts to blur together. If there isn’t any contrast it just looses it’s impact.
You also can’t really mix the same dark and gritty atmosphere with something as cartoonish as Team Fortress’s gameplay where people are double-jumping, rocketing through the air and using heal-rays. Otherwise it’d just come off as indecisive.
The character designs are also important because of their silhouettes, making it easier for people to tell what class they are even from a distance.
I most love this argument you present…
While TFC was aghast with explosive forces and concussion blasts, you’re drawing too much from your TF2 experiences to define the series (as opposed to TFC). Double-jumping is a ridiculous concept that defies physics. Heal rays are a childish gameplay concept to make playing as the medic an easier job.
Now before you argue about bunnyhopping being as childish as double-juming, I hate bunnyhopping. One thing TF2 has done for the TFC community is vacuumed up those pedantic physics-exploiters who would love to double-jump. Understanding how much bunnyhopping does not belong in a more serious graphical style, it’s easy to see why this server exists:
Class profiles, heal rays, and all that are elements of TF2 designed to show up better on consoles’ blurry TV screens. I take, for example, the discernibility allotted by the following TFC still, which retains well-proportioned combatants of a more bleak graphical style:
Since FF is off, quite clearly that’s a picture of a blue, a blue, and another blue in need of more fire.
Buuut if you want to get technical, I clearly see a medic, a person, and a heavy-weapons guy engulfed in flame. Though the soldier’s pretty shrouded behind 1998’s graphics, with moving sprites his class becomes blatant.
Oh, would you give up an interesting Old vs. New debate so quickly?
I know why you’re heading Black Mesa’s HL recreation…
I know why you don’t simply play Half-Life 2 and be happy…
Nostalgia can be a beautiful thing, and that makes it worthy of debate.
Late, I know, but RTCW was a GREAT game. The story wasn’t bad at all! It’s an old game. It was good in it’s time, and it’s decent now. Not to mention the awesome multiplayer, and the free-for-all multiplayer addon, Enemy Territory! I honestly think the new one will be pretty good, I’m just not crazy about the whole “shroud” thing. At least it will be… different. Anyway…
I was VERY disappointed with Opposing Force, and Blue Shift. (Although BS wasn’t as bad, in my opinion.)
I WILL be VERY disappointed with L4D2.
Unreal 2. I Still think today’s games could learn a lot from Unreal 1’s singleplayer gameplay, ambience and story.
Fable 1 (never played 2) . For people who have played a rpg before, this was nothing special.
Deus ex 2. WHY simplify it, WHY?
GTA4. Great game, but a lot of cool features and gameplay elements from the previous game were gone.
I would like to bring up: L4D2.
I know, it’s not out yet, so you could say I can’t judge, but still… it just… doesn’t seem like L4D(1) has reached it’s full potential yet. (Perhaps I say this because I haven’t bought it/played it online for a decent amount of time yet.) Plus, they just seem to have released it way too soon. If they announced it after a few years, or at least after a serious amount of production has been put into EP3, I would be exited. Plus the new cast doesn’t look as “Charming” as the old one. Francis was some idiotic asshole, Bill was a grumpy old man, Zoey was a great character, and Louis was, er… entertaining. (PILLS HERE!)
But it still looks epic, with the the melee weapons and Daytime maps.
I almost can’t be bothered to answer any more “Baaaw, L4D2 is shit because we heard about it too early and we didn’t hear about Ep3!” comments, but I’ll just say this: you haven’t played it, it’s not released yet and it looks awesome.
Of course the characters don’t seem deep: you haven’t played it yet! When I saw the first few videos of the L4D, I thought the characters looked abysmal. I thought the game looked abysmal. But now I love the game and the characters.
Human nature may be absurd… but representing it isn’t ridiculous.
NeoTF has hoverboards, which are interesting, but I’m glad they’re only present on the server-side mod.
Call me old-fashioned, but it’s to be expected that a medic should touch his patient in order to help them. I just can’t comprehend a man intensely studying anatomy and emergency medicine in order to qualify for shooting a magic ray at his teammates - - as if he were simply not skilled enough to serve any other role! so sad…
For years, great PC games ported to consoles have been mocked by console fanboys as representing the inadequacies of games made for PC, when in fact the only problem was having ported them to the incapable controls of a console. In the name of justice this is why PC gamers should maintain vigilance in critiquing every game which caters to both platform types.
Furthermore, 90% of the time someone is “new to the game” and in need of those extra visual cues, it’s when they play it for half an hour on their friend’s console, never to return. Gamers of all systems must be vigilant in criticizing games which invite players from the casual gaming crowd, as we know those overt cues are frivolous once one actually involves themselves in playing a game.
It was never my intention to argue those particulars, but someone had to say it eventually.
Heh, sometimes discriminating between classes at a long distance is half the fun, as some mental stimulation. Ever played BF2? That game has some very “fun” class identification… Never thought of any reason one would complain about it. I’d be a little offended if the BF2 medic were indicated any more than being given a marked helmet and satchel.
An interesting argument, one that actually made me contemplate its plausibility, but I don’t think that’s so. I see the drastic departure of TF2’s approach from its predecessors, and its prior game concept, to be a sudden betrayal of its core followers for the sake of capturing a wider* audience.
*=read: blander
It went from the grim corners of Quake and Quiver to a shiny environment that shouts CGI. It took the hopes instilled by the Brotherhood of Arms promos, and abandoned them entirely in order to pursue a safer market route with a shorter attention span. In some way, Battlefield 2 was the real TF2. Perhaps that’s why Valve decided to shift its concept, as it had been beaten to the punch in most the ways it promised…
You have confessed to the Nostalgia Goggles. There is no turning back.
You obviously don’t know about the thing called HDMI
CoD: World At War was a major dissapointment to me on the multiplayer section.
Single player wasn’t especially epic but it wasn’t bad either.
Red alert 3 is the worst C&C game I have ever played, I don’t understand why they used a modified Generals engine to make the game. sad buisness.
Max Payne 2, Not a bad game but compared to the first game it was a dissapointment.
also F.E.A.R 2 was a dissapointment in terms of story. the gameplay was fun allthough the puzzle elements were slightly off for its game style…
Hell yes!
couldn’t even get that shit to play ffs, lionhead what are you doing?
As far as I know, Red Alert 3 runs on a new Engine. Tiberium Wars runs on the modified SAGE-Engine, but it looked great in my opinion.
Tikki, you could have boiled down your argument to:
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You don’t like consoles, and therefore don’t like TF2 because it caters to consoles.
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You don’t like casual gamers, and therefore don’t like TF2 because it eases new players into the game.
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You love TFC, and therefore don’t like TF2 because it is not TFC.
Honestly, I’ve read through your posts a bunch of times, and that’s all there is.
Crysis. Looked amazing but small things like shooting down trees and having barrels leak oil do not make great game. It didn’t present anything new, had boring gameplay, and it was a bitch to mod.
Left 4 dead. It was the same action over and over and over again and you couldn’t do anything interesting. Could they at least add a few traps for the players to kill zombies with or something cool that shows off source? Honestly I stopped playing after the first 3 weeks.
Tony Hawk’s Project 8 and then every other Tony Hawk game after that one. When the xbox 360 and PS3 came out, I expected the franchise to use the new power of these systems to make gameplay more interesting, have a more in-depth story, and have more customization choices but all of those aspects either stayed the same or got worse.
WoW. I loved warcraft 3 and would have much rather had a fun rts than an mmorpg. But they’re making bank on it and I’m sure Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 will more than make up for it. as long as there’s a grimdark mod for D3 
.
Every 007 game since goldeneye. money seems to be the only thing that matters now.
Twilight princess, ds zelda games. TP’s story was pretty dull, still no voice acting. overall nothing new. DS games were meh. I’d rather play a good handheld zelda game that doesn’t involve the stylus.
I dunno why Crysis gets so much hate. I actually really liked the nanosuit mechanic - it presented some interesting tradeoffs and lots of different tactical approaches to the game, depending on your playing style. The destructible physics was really fun as well, I remember the first time I blew a sniper nest apart with the RPG - it was totally unexpected (I was thinking it would do the usual ‘indestructible brush’ thing) and I thought it was a realy nice touch.
I mean, it’s no Half-Life, but I enjoyed it immensely.