• ScruffyDucky@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Half-life 2 will turn 20 in November so I guess the third one is coming out any day now (opens a new can of copium and grips the favourite spork)

    • neidu2@feddit.nl
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      7 months ago

      It wouldn’t surprise me if Portal 3 is released at some point. I’m skeptical, but I’m not outruling it. The game is whacky enough that there are probably a lot of interesting and cool things that can be implemented into a worthy successor.

      I am, on the other hand, utterly convinced that HL3 is not going to happen. The previous two were groundbreaking, stretching limits of what one can do with a physics engine. I’m having a hard time imagining that it can be pulled off a 3rd time, simply because I am unable to imagine any sory of content that would all: a) fit with the series so that it still feels like a HL game
      b) interesting enough to allow for the innovation that the previous two games had
      c) good enough to justify a new game rather than just a tech demo

      I sincerely hope that my opinion on the matter is simply a matter of failure of imagine, and that a good HL successor is released at some point, but sadly I think I’m right on this one.

      • GoodbyeBlueMonday@startrek.website
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        7 months ago

        Half-Life: Alyx is mostly what I hoped we’d get from HL3, inasmuch as it hits your points a & b for sure, and IMHO c (though I know that’s not agreed on by everyone). It had great action and expository setpieces (avoiding spoilers), and the (albeit relatively simple) puzzles definitely added something to Half-Life that really worked for me.

        Unfortunately it didn’t solve all VR issues (melee being an obvious one), and not least of which the cost. I played it on a cheap (~$100), janky old WMR headset, but not everyone can do that without vomiting, so a great PC and good headset are a hefty price, which is probably the biggest hurdle for a full-scale 3 in VR. Especially considering there just aren’t many other games worth making that investment in, IMHO. I played the hell out of Alyx, a little of a few other games…but Alyx was the pinnacle of what VR could do for me.

        • CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Alyx did what most Valve games do, it advanced the industry. It is absolutely a half life game and it fits but it isn’t HL3. It isn’t that grandiose.

          For people who accuse it of being a glorified tech demo, well, that’s exactly what Half Life 1 and 2 are. The sole reason for the existence of HL2 is just to sell the source engine to devs and to push Steam forward. It is a tech demo. Its puzzles are tech demos.

          What Alyx did is implement proper gunplay and looting mechanics and really showcased how possible it is to tell a story in VR without taking your POV from you. I’d argue that there still isn’t a single VR game that nails one of the foundational pillars of Alyx as much as Valve did.

        • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          IIRC, Valve pretty much admitted that they really have no interest in making games anymore, unless they have a interesting technology to play with and learn, and the game is an excuse for that.

          Thats why Alyx got made, cause they wanted to play with VR.

  • AbsentBird@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    Some games that came out 16 years ago:

    • GTA IV
    • Super Smash Bros Brawl
    • Fallout 3
    • Left 4 Dead
    • Persona 4
    • BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I just finished my Windows XP build, and have been enjoying FO3 again the way it was meant to be played.

      • AbsentBird@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        I knew we were in a golden age when The Orange Box came out. A red letter day in gaming.

      • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        The golden age of gaming was the late SNES/early playstation era.

        Graphics were beautiful, games were long and generally had incredible, immersive, and even heart wrenching stories.

        Unlike today, where the focus on hyperrealism, generally at the expense of story and definitely performance. but hey, its only 6 hours long and you get to pay 80 dollars for it, so thats great, right?

        • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          7 months ago

          The golden era depends on your personal preferences. What you said is true, but golden era for MMOs was early 2000s to early 2010s, and for me personally it was during that period

    • ADTJ@feddit.uk
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      7 months ago

      I remember me and my friends being so hyped for Brawl, and then gutted when it got delayed for another year

  • BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    1999 was such an amazing year in my gaming life. Rollercoaster Tycoon, Mechwarrior 3, Battlezone II, and Unreal Tournament. So, so many hours of my life spent in those. That was like, 5 years ago, right?

    • HopingForBetter@lemmy.today
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      7 months ago

      No one, I mean no one mentions Battlezone or Battlezone II, ever. I love that series. I still have the BZ II box and everything.

      • BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Do you really? Dang, I’m so jealous. I still have my original discs for I and II, at least. Yeah, my brother and I loved those as well. My dad worked in IT for EDS at the time, and got some old laptops on the cheap. So, I remember my brother and I laying on the living room floor, playing BZ facing each other over the IR ports. We started implementing gentleman’s agreements, like no killing scavengers and no attacking your opponent’s base for 30 minutes. It became a cold war game, where we would max out our units, and just spy on each other. Maybe send a single fighter over to poke at defenses. Then, I’d send over the mass of APCs I was hiding away from my base, and just annihilate everything.

        And BZII had such a great mod scene! We loved XMod. We’d always say no nukes, but we always made them anyway.

        • HopingForBetter@lemmy.today
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          7 months ago

          I remember my first foray into online in BZ II. I didn’t realize turrets could be glitched to not deploy, so my strategy of high-armor turret run lasted about 10 minutes…

          My friend’s strategy was very similar to yours when we played BZ I. He’d go silent, then the next thing everyone knew, he had a fleet of bombers wipe the map clean.

    • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      MechCommander came out in 99, too, didnt it?

      That was my introduction to battletech. Fuck I loved that game, I played it SO much.

      • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I know MechWarrior gets all the praise and hype, but I genuinely love this specific title. It’s peak isometric turn-based strategy and I love it.

        Although that may have something to do with scoring that MadCat in the first or second level. I think it’s supposed to give your Commando mechs a bad time, but I lit up the oil refinery next to it and lucked into getting the pilot to eject. The thing was completely salvageable and I absolutely dominated the first half of the game with it. Good times.

        • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          That MadCat was such a gamebreaker if you could capture it. I had all my mechs just do cockpit aims since blowing the oil tanks carried a solid risk of outright destroying the mech.

          and it was not nearly as easy as I’m making it sound, it involved lots of running my lance around in circles and whiffed shots (And some reloads) before i ever landed a shot on its cockpit.

          Honestly Yakety Sax should have been playing the entire time while i was doing it, lol.

  • Tropper@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    This made me remember that NFS Underground 2 is 20 years old now, and it’s still the peak for the series.

    • XEAL@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      Unpopular opinion: I fucking hate the open world premise of NFSU2 and I just quitted playing after a while, but I’ve completed NSFU several times.

  • MrJameGumb@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    This made me curious so I looked up my favorite game from childhood that I still play sometimes now… Super Metroid just turned 30 years old 💀

      • MrJameGumb@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I only ever beat it back in the day by using the game guide lol! That was long enough ago that the game guide was an actual paper book I had to find at a store and pay real money for! Well, my mom paid for it anyway lol

          • MrJameGumb@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            My mom liked playing Nintendo games as much as I did so if there was a game she wanted to see the end of we would end up getting a Nintendo Power or a standalone game guide that was supposedly purchased for me lol

        • samus12345@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          I didn’t have a guide, but got stuck for days at the part where you have to super bomb the glass tube. I just did it out of desperation and couldn’t believe it worked! A similar thing happened 5 years earlier in Simon’s Quest when you have to hold crouch while holding the blue crystal. Come to think of it, Super Metroid might just be the last game in which I got stuck like that before I had access to the internet to look these things up.

      • Syrc@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        The fact you couldn’t go back after saving in the last area was horrible.

        But if it didn’t have that I might agree, definitely one of the best games I’ve played.

  • Son_of_dad@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Wanna feel old? This September marks the 28th anniversary of the release of the N64

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I was well into adulthood when that came out. If you want to make me feel old, remind me that the Atari 5200 came out 42 years ago. And almost no one bought it. And the people who did regretted it. And now it’s only old people like me who remember it even existed.

  • egeres@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    What… call of duty modern warfare 2 still has active servers, it came like 3 or 4 years ago… right?

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    7 months ago

    Went into CEX the other week, and saw PS1 games I’d bought when I was already an adult with a job, being sold second hand for more than I’d originally bought them for.

    • BluesF@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      You can emulate a PS2 on your phone these days. Bluetooth controller with a phone clip and you have a hell of a catalogue available to you.

    • IcePee@lemmy.beru.co
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      7 months ago

      Forget Shadow, I was there when ICO was first released. Probably even within a month (if not week) of it’s official release. At the time it looked like no other game. Very atmospheric and contemplative.