Is the Weighted Companion Cube a "character"?

[Llama Juice]

I got in a silly argument with someone over this and so I wanted an outside opinion on it.

What do you guys think? Would you consider it to be a character?

[klange]

If you considered Portal in the same way you would consider a piece of literature, the weighted companion cube represents an inanimate object personified through the words of GLaDOS. Through the psychotic nature of both GLaDOS and, supposedly, through the main character, we can see the companion cube as a living being even though it really isn't. Basically, from a literary standpoint, yes, the cube is a character in the overall plot.

[Zeph]

Companion Cube was given a personality.
It is an untraditional character.

[ultama121]

Zeph said it pretty well.

[Boba]

The hell is a weighted companion cube?

[Zeph]

The hell is a weighted companion cube?

Thread moved to Portal General Discussion.

[Agamemnon]

The hell is a weighted companion cube?
An inanimate object an already-obscure plot of a game tries to establish that has some sort of feelings to make you feel bad when you toss it into the incinerator.

[Llama Juice]

Thanks for the move, forgot about this board....

[Botolf]

What Zeph said.

Although I'll add I have no idea why so many people love the thing, sure, the dialogue about it was well-written and hilarious, but I didn't feel all that guilty for incinerating it. I didn't know I had the option of not destroying the cube, so I felt I was tricked the first time through :p

[Zeph]

What Zeph said.

Although I'll add I have no idea why so many people love the thing, sure, the dialogue about it was well-written and hilarious, but I didn't feel all that guilty for incinerating it. I didn't know I had the option of not destroying the cube, so I felt I was tricked the first time through :p

wtf you inhuman beast.
I cried.

[Botolf]

wtf you inhuman beast.
I cried.
More cake for me that the cube can't have :cool:

[n00b1n8R]

An inanimate object an already-obscure plot of a game tries to establish that has some sort of feelings to make you feel bad when you toss it into the incinerator.
Take your portal bashing LIEZ out of here. <:mad:>

If you don't get it, the game wasn't made for people like you.

[ima_from_America]

How do you even know that the cube is a she?
...On second thought, I really don't want to know the answer to that.

[Bodzilla]

Because she's the only one that really knows how to please me.
<3

[JunkfoodMan]

The thing that made me sad to incinerate it was the realization that I will never have a better friend.

[Bodzilla]

he will always live on in our hearts <3

[Agamemnon]

Take your portal bashing speaking LIEZ truths out of here. <:mad:>

If you don't get it, the game wasn't made for people like you. It was made for people who enjoy mediocre, recycled, long-awaited, over-priced, short, plot-hole-filled demos.
ftfy :-3

[Pooky]

:S

I didn't find portal as mind blowingly great as some people did but I think that's being a bit harsh aggy.

[n00b1n8R]

It was made for people who enjoy mediocre excelent, recycled origional, long-awaited, over-priced, short, plot-hole-filled demos puzzle games.
FTFY.
How was it over priced? L2 Orange Box.
How was it recycled?
What plot holes?

[Pooky]

Eh, the same sort of plot holes Half Life had. Plot holes that were intentionally put there to make the story ambiguous and allow you to fill in the blanks.

[n00b1n8R]

Oh, that explains Aggy's whole issue with the game then.
L2imagination.

[Agamemnon]

FTFY.
How was it over priced? L2 Orange Box.
How was it recycled?
What plot holes?
I didn't buy the Orange Box. I refused to buy Episode 2 (also known as "a cop out to making a true sequel by recycling the old engine, old graphics, old soundsets and making millions by virtually putting in zero effort) and I don't want Pokemon-fied Team Fortress (TFC4ever yo). I was going to buy it back when it was called the Black Box and the price tag wasn't $50 because you weren't worthlessly buying HL2 and Ep 1 all over again, but since Valve decided against to market two different versions and con people into buying the game again, I decided against it. So, $20 off of Steam for a tech demo? Yeah, that's overpriced.

Recycled: Sounds, graphics, engine, ideas, and concept. For something that is a copy and paste from Half-Life 2 it's a wonder how it took three years to develop this 4-hour tech demo.

Plot holes: When you fool the fanbase to think it's "utterly original" to not bother with a story, add in a few ambiguous clips of a "story," and then have them have a circle-jerkfest of creating thousands of pages of theories and ideas. I didn't buy a game to finish it for them, I bought a game to be entertained. This isn't abstract modern art; I'm buying a product here.


Eh, the same sort of plot holes Half Life had. Plot holes that were intentionally put there to make the story ambiguous and allow you to fill in the blanks.
Plot holes that were intentionally put there so Valve wouldn't have to be bothered to make sense out of a retarded setting in which the main character doesn't speak, doesn't seem to care that no one seems to remember the Black Mesa incident or how he's been missing for an elongated amount of time, or how no one notices the Gman. Valve has been pulling the blanket over people's heads since 1998 by coping out to not make their story any sort of intelligible and thriving off of making millions by having the fans do the job for them.


Oh, that explains Aggy's whole issue with the game then.
L2imagination.
L2getwithmarketstandards. I'll be sure to have you buy my product when I don't put a story in it and make a few useless quips towards something as vague as a plot direction and you'll eat it up like cookie dough and "l2imagination."

The fact is that the hype generated from this recycle-fest has led so many people to turn blind eyes to how absolutely shitty the recent set of products Valve has released. They did good with Half-Life 2; they fucked up when they said, "Hey, let's spend the next eight years dragging out 'sequels' to Half-Life 2 that are actually just Half-Life 3's storyline, but this time we'll just recycle the shit out of the old engine/graphics/sound set so we don't have to do anything but copy + paste while we waste away years sitting around the bbq stuffing our fat faces while our fans eat anything we shit out of our bums." Oh, and how about that, it's working.

[Botolf]

:lol:

Damn, I hope I don't ever become that bitter/cynical. Seriously, who the hell cares if the episodes recycle concepts from HL2? We're getting more of a universe we love, and it's being improved and refined with every iteration. But hurrhurrhurr, that's completely worthless when we can't play with some new guns! Omg!

L2enjoythedamnthingforwhatitisandnotwhatyouwantitt obe

[Agamemnon]

:lol:

Damn, I hope I don't ever become that bitter/cynical. Seriously, who the hell cares if the episodes recycle concepts from HL2? We're getting more of a universe we love, and it's being improved and refined with every iteration. But hurrhurrhurr, that's completely worthless when we can't play with some new guns! Omg!

L2enjoythedamnthingforwhatitisandnotwhatyouwantitt obe
You might start to care when you start to buy things with your own money and not mommy and daddy's. It's called consumer education. Go get one.

[Botolf]

You might start to care when you start to buy things with your own money and not mommy and daddy's. It's called consumer education. Go get one.
Correct, those 50 dollars in my bank account didn't actually belong to me.

No, wait, you're just an idiot for making blind assumptions of people. Bravo.

[Agamemnon]

Correct, those 50 dollars in my bank account didn't actually belong to me.

No, wait, you're just an idiot for making blind assumptions of people. Bravo.
When (or if) you get to college, I'd suggest for you to take a class called Philosophy. The first course is an introduction to logic. You're in dire need of it. Until then, your weak ad hominem attacks? They continue to be weak. Come back to me when you have something relevant to the argument I presented.

[Botolf]

When you get to college, I'd suggest for you to take a class called Philosophy. The first course is an introduction to logic. You're in dire need of it. Until then, your weak ad hominem attacks? They continue to be weak. Come back to me when you have something relevant to the argument I presented.
Your assumption seemed pretty blind to me.

"You might start to care when you start to buy things with your own money and not mommy and daddy's. It's called consumer education. Go get one."

A: You don't me.
B: You don't know my spending habits
C: You don't know why I buy these things

Given these facts, how is what you said anything but a blind assumption of me? I deem such assumptions idiotic, because they didn't even touch on truth. I didn't say what I said in an effort to attack you (But that's no doubt how it sounded, which is entirely my fault).

Anyways, if you're implying I don't care, that's untrue. You're implying I buy these things with the money of people other than myself, that's untrue. I disagree with you for my own reasons, not because I'm a drone who follows the hype (I can articulate these reasons further, if you want). Am I making myself more clear here? (Honest question)


(or if)
Unnecessary.

[Agamemnon]

Your assumption seemed pretty blind to me.

"You might start to care when you start to buy things with your own money and not mommy and daddy's. It's called consumer education. Go get one."

A: You don't me.
B: You don't know my spending habits
C: You don't know why I buy these things

Given these facts, how is what you said anything but a blind assumption of me? I deem such assumptions idiotic, because they didn't even touch on truth. I didn't say what I said in an effort to attack you (But that's no doubt how it sounded, which is entirely my fault).

Anyways, if you're implying I don't care, that's untrue. You're implying I buy these things with the money of people other than myself, that's untrue. I disagree with you for my own reasons, not because I'm a drone who follows the hype (I can articulate these reasons further, if you want). Am I making myself more clear here? (Honest question)


Unnecessary.
I don't get it. Why didn't you just say this first? Notice how we're making progress now?

Also, the "if" is necessary. Not everyone goes to college.

[Botolf]

I don't get it. Why didn't you just say this first? Notice how we're making progress now?
I blame my occasional tendency to dump my thoughts through the gates before they're fleshed out :p


Also, the "if" is necessary. Not everyone goes to college.
Oh, figured it was a jab ;)

[Bodzilla]

or how no one notices the Gman.
Spoken like a person that hasnt played Ep 2.
Bravo.

[n00b1n8R]

Ugh, I had a fully written repply to this at school, but when I'd finished h2v decided I'd logged out. :(


1. I didn't buy the Orange Box. I refused to buy Episode 2 (2. also known as "a cop out to making a true sequel by recycling the old engine, old graphics, old soundsets and making millions by virtually putting in zero effort) and I don't want 3. Pokemon-fied Team Fortress (TFC4ever yo).
How can you criticize something you've never played?
The source engine is great, graphics are irrelevant, the sounds aren't going to miraculously change for no reason and I'd love to see you make something on par to Ep2.
How does pokemon relate to TF2? If you prefer nade spam and classes that don't do what their meant to, then sure, go TFC. I for one, love TF2 along with thousands of other people (including long-time TFC players who've moved over to the new game).
I was going to buy it back when it was called the Black Box and the price tag wasn't $50 because 1 .you weren't worthlessly buying HL2 and Ep 1 all over again, but since Valve decided against to market two different versions and con people into buying the game again, I decided against it. So, 2. $20 off of Steam for a tech demo? Yeah, that's overpriced.
It's only worthless if you allready owned the previous games (and if you did, you got an easy high-quality gift).
$50 for the whole orange box? You poor pooor didums.
Recycled: 1. Sounds, 2. graphics, 3. engine, 4. ideas, and 5. concept. For something that is 6. a copy and paste from Half-Life 2 it's a wonder how 7. it took three years to develop this 4-hour tech demo.
What? (see 1.2)
What? (see 1.2)
What? (see 1.2)
What?
What?
What the hell??
I do agree that it took a dis-proportionate amount of time to make though :p
Plot holes: When you fool the fanbase to think it's "utterly original" to not bother with a story, add in a few ambiguous clips of a "story," and then have them have a circle-jerkfest of creating thousands of pages of theories and ideas. I didn't buy a game to finish it for them, I bought a game to be entertained. This isn't abstract modern art; I'm buying a product here.
The plot in Portal is just a device to drive the game along. Nothing more.
Also, the reason people fill thousands of pages with theory's on this shit is because they find it entertaining. :downsgun:


L2getwithmarketstandards. I'll be sure to have you buy my product when I don't put a story in it and make a few useless quips towards something as vague as a plot direction and you'll eat it up like cookie dough and "l2imagination."
Depends on the gameplay.


1. The fact is that the hype generated from this recycle-fest has led so many people to turn blind eyes to how 2. absolutely shitty the recent set of products Valve has released. They did good with Half-Life 2; they fucked up when they said, 3. "Hey, let's spend the next eight years dragging out 'sequels' to Half-Life 2 that are actually just Half-Life 3's storyline, but this time we'll just recycle the shit out of the 4. old engine/graphics/sound set so we don't have to do anything but copy + paste while we waste away years sitting around the bbq stuffing our fat faces while 5. our fans eat anything we shit out of our bums." Oh, and how about that, it's working.
What hype? I haven't seen anything in the media for HL2 related games in ages.
The worst game Valve has released in recent years is CSS.
Yes it recycles some of the old plot devices, but it puts them into new situations that give them a fresh and interesting twist. Go play ep2 ffs. (TBH, I didn't find ep1 that interesting at all)
Again, refer to 1 and 2
I happen to like this flavor of shit.There, that'll do.

[Pooky]

doesn't seem to care that no one seems to remember the Black Mesa incident or how he's been missing for an elongated amount of time, or how no one notices the Gman

First off, who the fuck is Chell going to talk to. There's NO ONE ELSE THERE. Second, if she's been locked up in this place for a long time she probably has no idea about Black Mesa, something thats heavily implied in the game "When I look out there it makes me glad I'm not you". Finally, other people do notice the gman (Eli Vance for one).

And TFC is shit compared to TF2.

If you're going to insult something, at least know what you're talking about.

[Bodzilla]

Having Gordon not talk is just another way to make you connect with the character more, so that your not just playing him and following a storyline, it's to draw you in. Essentially you are Gordon Freeman.

It's the same deal in halo. Wonder why MC never shows his face?
Cause theres a little MC in all of us.

[Llama Juice]

I hadn't beaten any of the HL games before buying the orange box. $50 for all of that was DAMN well worth spent.

I'd pa $20 for portal easy. That game was so hilarious and (although not entirely %100 ORIGINAL) very innovative. I haven't played a game at all like this, save for the tech demo for portal ages back (Narbacular Drop) which I had mad fun with too.

When they made portal they knew that they really couldn't make a crazy in depth story so they just made it humorous. It's been working well for Mario FOREVER and it worked well here.

Oh and HL2:EP1 was shit compared to HL2:EP2. Although I half heartedly agree with agamemnon with how they reused resources, it didn't bother me at all while actually playing. The graphics were passable, and when buying the game you knew what to expect out of them, to get upset over them reusing the resources is just stupid though.

Oh and just so ya know Agememnon... I am in college, rent is due tomorrow and that game came from my pocket.

[Wakeboy1337]

Our good friend Agamemnon, Ah I remember when he did this about H2V back on b.net.

The game may have pretty much sucked, but people still found it enjoyable.


All this crap made me nearly forget what the topic was about.......

I think Companion Cube is just an object used to add humour to the story, nothing more really, sorry fellas D:

[Agamemnon]

Spoken like a person that hasnt played Ep 2.
Bravo.
The days for Valve to convince me that they were doing something differently have come and gone. I refuse to play Half-Life 3's storyline in a recycled environment, though I'd be plenty of happy to pirate a copy, seeing as that is the only way I will ever play material I already have and not get suckered into buying it again.


How can you criticize something you've never played?
It's very simple. You do this little thing called "independent research." You then take all the examples of the shit Valve has pulled from their ass in the past. You then apply, "let sleeping dogs lie." Portal was a chance for me to see if they changed the formula. They didn't. I now expect to see 12 sequels to that tech demo and people will end up eating each one up. Rinse, lather, repeat (sort of like all the HL1 expansion packs--oops, did I say that?). Frankly I'm rather tired of this bullshit excuse of, "You can't criticize the game if you haven't played it." If that's the case then I would kindly tell you to keep your comments about Hellgate to yourself, despite how the game speaks for itself in the department of absolute shittiness.


The source engine is great, graphics are irrelevant, the sounds aren't going to miraculously change for no reason and I'd love to see you make something on par to Ep2.
What's this, the weak, "let's see you do it" argument? Oh, how nice of you to show up. Yeah, because I'm glad that is so relevant to the argument, right? :rolleyes:

The source engine is four years old. Yes, it's wonderful that it's been abused to hell and back for tons of modders, but what, are you honestly going to tell me that in 2011 or 2012, or when ever Episode 3 comes out, that you're going to be perfectly content that all the other market standard video games will have a graphics engine equal to that of Crysis/UT and you're going to be alright with recycled shit from 2004? While graphics don't make the game, they do, however, play a necessary role and part in the aesthetic pleasure of the game. I know I can remember the days when I thought Quake III Arena's graphics were AMAZING, and now when I play Crysis and fire up Q3A, I feel like I'm playing Doom95. The novelty expired sooner then this here carton of milk. While you lot are fooling yourself to pay the same admission price (or one that is jacked up) for the same lights and pony show, other developers are actually looking for bigger and better attractions--ones that involve effort too.


How does pokemon relate to TF2? If you prefer nade spam and classes that don't do what their meant to, then sure, go TFC. I for one, love TF2 along with thousands of other people (including long-time TFC players who've moved over to the new game).
The game looks like a cartoon, hence the whole "pokemon-fied" statement. It's like WoW marketing. You make everything with nice bright, shiny colors and you attract all the kiddies who are dazzled and easily amused by explosions and bright colors. It's like crack for your eyes. The only problem is that you can be perfectly content without crack, it's just that it wouldn't attract the droves of kiddies.

I also don't see how your personal preference is relevant to this argument when all I was calling it out on were its graphics and soundsets.


It's only worthless if you allready owned the previous games (and if you did, you got an easy high-quality gift).
Nope, sorry, I don't buy into that whole "gift" shit. I didn't want extra copies to "give away." The Black Box was not going to have a $50 price tag, but considering Valve spent too much time making a tech demo and a pokemon deathmatch game, they decided, well, what the hell, let's just up it up to industry standards! The only problem is that the people who didn't want to buy Half-Life 2 and Episode 1 (which are included in the price) didn't want to have to pay extra. Why? Because it would seem rather stupid to buy the same product. Instead you had this whole "gift" bullshit excuse circulated. And, oh, how about that, people actually believed it.


$50 for the whole orange box? You poor pooor didums.
Was there an actual argument there? Oh, what's that? There wasn't? Of course not. :haw:




What? (see 1.2)
What? (see 1.2)
What? (see 1.2)
What?
What?
What the hell??
I do agree that it took a dis-proportionate amount of time to make though :pStop acting like Dole and refute the points like a human being.


The plot in Portal is just a device to drive the game along. Nothing more.
Also, the reason people fill thousands of pages with theory's on this shit is because they find it entertaining. :downsgun:
The reason people fill thousands of pages with theories is because they need something to tell their tiny brains that there is a story in Portal, it's just "hidden," or you need to "delve deeper" into it. Hell, you just admitted there is no plot in Portal; it's just there to "drive the game along." So, I mean, what, you're into mediocre crap that doesn't even try to make a decent attempt to pass itself off as a market standard video game? If so, I've got a collector's edition Hellgate: London you might be interested in then.


Depends on the gameplay.
Uh huh. What ever helps you sleep at night.


What hype? I haven't seen anything in the media for HL2 related games in ages.
Oh, you haven't seen on EVERY SINGLE GAMING FORUM some kid go, "The cake is a lie!" or quote some useless, unfunny quote from Portal? You haven't seen tons circulated drawings of TF2 "teh funniez?" Valve doesn't have to market the game; the community does a bang up job of doing it for them.


The worst game Valve has released in recent years is CSS.
And Episode 1. And Lost Coast (i.e. another tech demo). And Portal. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say I won't say Episode 2 or TF2 is shitty; however, I will say they look quite shitty (and rightfully so).


Yes it recycles some of the old plot devices, but it puts them into new situations that give them a fresh and interesting twist. Go play ep2 ffs. (TBH, I didn't find ep1 that interesting at all)
Someone point me in the direction of a pirated copy and I will, because that's the only way I'll ever play another Valve product again (unless I'm actually surprised with something new). I don't really see what a "new situation" can be if it just ends in mystery and the characters in the previous game just act like nothing has happened at all. There is no depth, there is no character development, and there is no clear direction; it's a cluster fuck mess of a story. It's like someone tossed the script in a bag and then chucked in three or four cats into that bag as well, and then after emptying the contents of the bag, they sent a PA around to piece random pieces of the script together and called it a "story."


Again, refer to 1 and 2
Needs less Dole.


I happen to like this flavor of shit.There, that'll do.
What can I say, lots of people enjoy being ignorant and convincing themselves that shit is good. You'll always find someone willing to polish a turd.


First off, who the fuck is Chell going to talk to. There's NO ONE ELSE THERE. Second, if she's been locked up in this place for a long time she probably has no idea about Black Mesa, something thats heavily implied in the game "When I look out there it makes me glad I'm not you". Finally, other people do notice the gman (Eli Vance for one).

And TFC is shit compared to TF2.

If you're going to insult something, at least know what you're talking about.
I wasn't talking about Portal there. Nice inductive reasoning skills there. If you're going to refute something, at least make sure you know what you're talking about. :downs:


Having Gordon not talk is just another way to make you connect with the character more, so that your not just playing him and following a storyline, it's to draw you in. Essentially you are Gordon Freeman.
No, it's a rather bullshit cop out to character development. If they essentially wanted us to be Gordon Freemen, then we would never see or know what the character looks like and they would have never personalized the character with an actual name, they would've just said, "Sir" or, "Hey dude," or something rather inconspicuous. This stems from the original Half-Life, which was very much likened to other generic run-and-gun FPS games of the time. Why? Because the main character was generic, faceless, and didn't have a shred of dialogue. Are you going to tell me Doom95 was built with the idea in mind that your main character was a total mute because "oh, they wanted you to think you were the character"? I mean, do you actually hear yourself?

This isn't our story. This isn't a fill-in-the-blanks situation. This is a cop out to a real story. We aren't Gordon Freeman and never will be. We are playing a character--one who seems to be quite proficient at being a total mute. And that's how the cookie crumbles.


It's the same deal in halo. Wonder why MC never shows his face?
Cause theres a little MC in all of us.
No. It is not the same deal in Halo. For one, the character you play actually has dialogue. Second, why would we see his face? Or why would we even need to? It was that mystery that made the character. That was always the concept built around the Master Chief. It was never about making him friendly or personal. It was about just giving you enough to chew on so you could say, "Hey, he's just not a cyborg killer soldier who was kidnapped in the middle of the night and cloned. He's actually got a soft spot here and there."

There are no such assessments with Gordon Freeman. He's faceless, nameless, and speechless. He's an MIT graduate who is magically proficient in weapon combat. Oh, and for some strange reason, it seems as if Alyx has a crush on a man who doesn't speak a word.

You want a true example of choices in your own character to make it seem like you're in control? Then I suggest you go play Deus Ex.


I hadn't beaten any of the HL games before buying the orange box. $50 for all of that was DAMN well worth spent.
For you it is. For me it isn't.


I'd pa $20 for portal easy. That game was so hilarious and (although not entirely %100 ORIGINAL) very innovative. I haven't played a game at all like this, save for the tech demo for portal ages back (Narbacular Drop) which I had mad fun with too.
What does this have to do with the points I brought up?


When they made portal they knew that they really couldn't make a crazy in depth story so they just made it humorous. It's been working well for Mario FOREVER and it worked well here.
Mario has been working forever because Nintendo has proved to us that they can get away with recycling people's childhoods and making tons of money off of it. He's an icon, one that many can never seem to shake of the novelty factor from. Conditioning is such a sad thing, after all. I mean, well, except to the people that are conditioned. They don't have a clue.


Oh and HL2:EP1 was shit compared to HL2:EP2. Although I half heartedly agree with agamemnon with how they reused resources, it didn't bother me at all while actually playing. The graphics were passable, and when buying the game you knew what to expect out of them, to get upset over them reusing the resources is just stupid though.
How is it stupid? I'm literally buying material that was found in a game I bought years ago. It's like buying Windows Vista and then saying, "Wow, this is so different from XP!" You upgrade, you make a few little changes, you give it a new environment setting, and viola, you've made people think you've done something new when they actually haven't, and what's more is that they charge the full price for something that should be new. This is usually called a con. Why on Earth you people can't see past this con is beyond me, especially if you call yourself "logical."


Oh and just so ya know Agememnon... I am in college, rent is due tomorrow and that game came from my pocket.
That's nice. I don't remember calling you out on this subject, did I? Again, relevance?


Our good friend Agamemnon, Ah I remember when he did this about H2V back on b.net.

The game may have pretty much sucked, but people still found it enjoyable.
Yes, and as history has shown us, people are perfectly content with bending over and getting reamed and saying it's all "okay." But what am I saying. Let's do away with the consecutive two term limit! Bush! Another four more years! :rolleyes:

[thehoodedsmack]

I never really saw the Cube as a character. It wasn't around long enough for me to consider it one. If the developers had done more with it, ie. Make it appear more often, maybe with a knife near it (callback to Glados quote), or in strange locations, to help the character more often, I might reconsider. Really, people hold it far too highly for the small part it played.

[Botolf]

No, it's a rather bullshit cop out to character development. If they essentially wanted us to be Gordon Freemen, then we would never see or know what the character looks like and they would have never personalized the character with an actual name, they would've just said, "Sir" or, "Hey dude," or something rather inconspicuous. This stems from the original Half-Life, which was very much likened to other generic run-and-gun FPS games of the time. Why? Because the main character was generic, faceless, and didn't have a shred of dialogue. Are you going to tell me Doom95 was built with the idea in mind that your main character was a total mute because "oh, they wanted you to think you were the character"? I mean, do you actually hear yourself?

This isn't our story. This isn't a fill-in-the-blanks situation. This is a cop out to a real story. We aren't Gordon Freeman and never will be. We are playing a character--one who seems to be quite proficient at being a total mute. And that's how the cookie crumbles.
A writer on Valve's team commented to the effect that Gordon Freeman was written into the game as an entrance by the player into the world, not a character to speak and interact with other NPCs on his own (His external appearance in other instances would then be a compromise, fortunately it doesn't actively destroy immersion, at least from my experiences). Valve could have just dropped us into the world and have everyone call us "sir", but it's a little bogus to plod along and have no-one at all refer to you by a name. It may not be my story at all, but I can honestly say I feel totally fine with "being" this character, silent as he is. It has only strengthened my reactions to the world and its characters, which is a positive thing.

Although the total-mute Gordon does strain credulity, I wouldn't prefer having the good 'ol conventions of third person cameras and voice actors suddenly take over the body I've been inhabiting. Valve's system isn't perfect by any means, and it feels weird at times to be so silent and withdrawn, but it's enough for me to feel at home inside this physicist's head, to assume his character. No, I can't control the grand flow of the plot or reach out to other characters in big ways, but I at the very least feel like a part of this universe, and not a participant-meets-observer in many of our other games.

Yes, in the end Valve had to "cop out" on a truly immersive story. We're still feeling out many of the rules and boundaries in games, it's not beyond the bounds of reason to suggest that game devs simply don't hold all the answers and solutions at this point in time. They're trying, but they have to compromise. The solutions in Half-Life are far from perfect, but I find they're attempts that enhance the games nonetheless.

Anyways, it'll be interesting to see what Valve does with Source and new IPs in the ways of character interaction. So I read Source now supports dynamic lip-synching, that's just the thing to pair with a convincing digital voice to go with it. These two together could mean a character that could be truly dynamic. Granted, you're now reading from lines of text stored in the game versus an actor's performance playing back on an audio file, but strings lend themselves to manipulation and rearranging far better. Then we can look forward to fun stuff like NPCs altering their own dialogue or conversations, and perhaps even initiating dialogue with players and other characters where it isn't expected. That's in the future, though, and I can't see it coming in time for Gordon to get a name-change (that brings in an additional difficulty of NPCs emulating the original voice actors, too, as you'd want them to be able to say the player's custom name).


Yes, and as history has shown us, people are perfectly content with bending over and getting reamed and saying it's all "okay." But what am I saying. Let's do away with the consecutive two term limit! Bush! Another four more years! :rolleyes:You see shit, I see treasure. You have your reasons for this perception, I have mine. Just a few are written above, but ugh, it would take a while to go over them all (Identifying what I like and dislike in games is a favourite subject of thought of mine, so any complete posts I'd try to write would get stupidly long as a result).

[Pooky]

I wasn't talking about Portal there. Nice inductive reasoning skills there. If you're going to refute something, at least make sure you know what you're talking about. :downs:

Nice grammar skills there, that you made it so abundantly clear you were changing the game you were talking about in the middle of your sentence.


Eh, [Portal had] the same sort of plot holes Half Life had. Plot holes that were intentionally put there to make the story ambiguous and allow you to fill in the blanks.
My post, replying to you and referring to Portal.

Plot holes that were intentionally put there so Valve wouldn't have to be bothered to make sense out of a retarded setting in which the main character doesn't speak, doesn't seem to care that no one seems to remember the Black Mesa incident or how he's been missing for an elongated amount of time, or how no one notices the Gman. Valve has been pulling the blanket over people's heads since 1998 by coping out to not make their story any sort of intelligible and thriving off of making millions by having the fans do the job for them.
Your response, where you made no indication you were switching over to talking about HL2.

I've always thought you were pretty cool aggy, but honestly all I see is you bashing the orange box simply because it's popular, and you want a good reason to argue.

Besides, this recycled content nonsense you keep blathering about doesn't even really hold true for Episode 2. So the weapons (and not even the entire weapons, most of them have new sounds) are recycled. You, as the self important intellectual, are seriously going to sit there at your computer and tell me brilliant level design and movie caliber voice acting don't hold a candle to some new fucking weapons?

And it's not like you can even pull the recycled environments bit here. Episode 1 may have done that, but there's not a hint of city gameplay anywhere in Episode 2. You start in a forest, and end in a missile silo.

As for the package's price, boo fucking hoo? US 50 dollars is the standard price for ONE game these days, and you're going to bitch because you have to pay that for 5? So what if you already own 2 of the games, you're still getting 3 games for the price of one, or 2 games if you refuse to count Portal. And you've got some awesome gifts. I simply don't see where you're getting off bitching about the price.

Good job outlining the superiority of TFC, by the way.

[Agamemnon]

Nice grammar skills there, that you made it so abundantly clear you were changing the game you were talking about in the middle of your sentence.
So you're blaming me because you were the only one who wasn't able to make the distinction? Again, did you not have your Cheerio's this morning? Inductive reasoning just not your strong suit?


I've always thought you were pretty cool aggy, but honestly all I see is you bashing the orange box simply because it's popular, and you want a good reason to argue. If that's what you see then get out of this thread because you haven't bothered to read what I've said at all.


Besides, this recycled content nonsense you keep blathering about doesn't even really hold true for Episode 2. So the weapons (and not even the entire weapons, most of them have new sounds) are recycled. You, as the self important intellectual, are seriously going to sit there at your computer and tell me brilliant level design and movie caliber voice acting don't hold a candle to some new fucking weapons? You know, I don't remember attacking your persona, so keep your ad hominem crap to yourself.

I see the same graphics, the same characters, the sound effects being recycled over and over in different recipes from a game that originally came out in 2004. I honestly believe those sounds were great--the graphics, the voice acting, etc. They were great when they were original. Now, though, that they've been passed around like a cheap whore? No, not so much.

I hope you're joking about "brilliant level design" as well. Half-Life 2's level are as linear as a rat maze. Sorry, voice actors don't make up for the rest of the game.


And it's not like you can even pull the recycled environments bit here. Episode 1 may have done that, but there's not a hint of city gameplay anywhere in Episode 2. You start in a forest, and end in a missile silo.That's nice, so they changed things up a bit in the environment department. I'm still not convinced. Like I said, if anyone wants to find me a pirated copy of the game, I'd love to take a stab at it and delve deeper into this argument.


As for the package's price, boo fucking hoo? US 50 dollars is the standard price for ONE game these days, and you're going to bitch because you have to pay that for 5? So what if you already own 2 of the games, you're still getting 3 games for the price of one, or 2 games if you refuse to count Portal. And you've got some awesome gifts. I simply don't see where you're getting off bitching about the price.Then get out if you don't.


Good job outlining the superiority of TFC, by the way.Yeah, because I clearly said TFC was superior. :rolleyes:

Who's blind here again? The person who isn't doing what the rest of everyone else is doing or the people that are polishing a turd?

e: @ Botolf: I guess that's your perception on the take of things. When I think of a game trying to put me into a situation where I am slightly in control of and can make of a wide array of decisions, I think of an RPG, not a run-and-gun FPS where everything happens around you regardless of the actions you take (which can only be followed by a linear path). They've effectively tried to add in a feature to a genre of game that didn't work out in their favor (again, Deus Ex, however, was able to pull it off).

[Pooky]

I don't want Pokemon-fied Team Fortress (TFC4ever yo).

I believe right there is where you said it.

Also, repeatedly attacking my reasoning skills counts as attacking my persona.

[thehoodedsmack]

Sounds like he's talking about the art style.

[Botolf]

e: @ Botolf: I guess that's your perception on the take of things. When I think of a game trying to put me into a situation where I am slightly in control of and can make of a wide array of decisions, I think of an RPG, not a run-and-gun FPS where everything happens around you regardless of the actions you take (which can only be followed by a linear path). They've effectively tried to add in a feature to a genre of game that didn't work out in their favor (again, Deus Ex, however, was able to pull it off).
I love the first-person perspective, it has the most potential for immersion, imo. I love Valve's approach to FPSes partly because they do this, I can feel like the character and not like a temporary indwelling that subsides in cutscenes. I love to run and gun in FPSes, but the world and its atmosphere becomes far more interesting to me if I feel like I'm a constant presence in it. Cutscenes, while they work for the games they're in (And hey, I like a good cutscene), they mess with this feeling, you're no longer a part of the world, you're just some guy watching tv. I can appreciate the way Halo is presented, for example, but I also appreciate how Half-Life does it differently. My dream FPS would probably draw elements from both, as I see many strengths and benefits of both (I'd probably lean towards no cutscenes and meaningful character interaction, though, there's just so much potential for developing realistic characters that the player can care about and relate to).

[Botolf]

Since we're on the topic of content reuse, I'll toss in my two cents.

I'm not at all bothered by it. The weapons are many and diverse in function, and there's a weapon popping up here and there. I haven't tired of these weapons yet, but that could be because of how Valve's tendency to avoid dumping everything into your lap at once.

As far as level design goes, it's similar, but not a merely a rehash. Episode 1 has been directed this complaint a lot, but having played through it, I can't say it's the problem people think it is. You're still in City 17, yes, but the areas you visit feel and for the most part look different. The City 17 of Half-Life 2 was a very different place, a large human city that was more or less stable, but repressed and locked down. It almost felt like you were in a zoo. From the outset of Ep1, City 17 is different. Everything's fallen into chaos, and the city feels and looks like a wasteland. The Citadel feels different as well, it's insides wrench off and fall apart, the structure itself feels more animated (No, not talking about animations). The atmosphere is far more dark and chaotic, while the original felt almost clinical and mechanical. The zombie filled parking garages of Episode One didn't really feel at all similar to HL2's Ravenholm or the zombie-infested highways. Episode 2 felt even less like HL2, due to the massive change in scenery. There are many more organic scenes than in HL2, and highway 17 and the road to white forest feel so dissimilar. HL2's organic environments felt very dry and dessicated, Episode 2's environments feel very "foresty" and full of moisture.

Some locales, while similar, felt totally different than those I had seen previously. They may appear copy pasted at first glance, but the differences are more than enough for me to feel like I'm not playing or seeing the same thing again.

[Timo]

I hadn't beaten any of the HL games before buying the orange box. $50 for all of that was DAMN well worth spent.

More or less of this. I hadn't played any of Valve's games, and since it was $100 for 5 games (woop woop this was 10 hours work at a petrol station), it seemed like a good idea as any other game i'd like to play would be $90+ anyway. Have to say - money well spent. Sure, the episodes were a lot shorter than I had expected, but I did have a bunch of fun playing. Portal was also a great bit on the side, too.

[Bodzilla]

long post is long.

aggy mate they have released ep 2 on its own now :/
same with TF2 and Portal. you can buy them all individually :)

And droves of kiddies in TF2?
TF2 is the most mature community i've ever been in. I've been playing for a few months now and i've heard a total of 5 kiddies. The rest are all laid back dudes just relaxing and having fun.
it's fuckign awesome. And there isnt all the elitist stigma attached to it like there has been in every other online game i've played.

[Agamemnon]

I believe right there is where you said it.
You believe wrong. Maybe I should put a :haw: in the parenthesis to further put across how much of a joke the statement "TFC4eva yo" is? Even then, for the sake of argument, where do I say, "TFC is the better game?" I criticized its graphics.


Also, repeatedly attacking my reasoning skills counts as attacking my persona.I wasn't attacking your reasoning skills, I was making an observation. Learn how to tell the difference between the two, because your inductive reasoning skills would've been able to infer what I was actually talking about (just like how everyone else did). You, however, perceived it as hostile. Not my problem if you did. Seriously, you need to go take some birth control and chill out with your PMS.


I love the first-person perspective, it has the most potential for immersion, imo. I love Valve's approach to FPSes partly because they do this, I can feel like the character and not like a temporary indwelling that subsides in cutscenes. I love to run and gun in FPSes, but the world and its atmosphere becomes far more interesting to me if I feel like I'm a constant presence in it. Cutscenes, while they work for the games they're in (And hey, I like a good cutscene), they mess with this feeling, you're no longer a part of the world, you're just some guy watching tv. I can appreciate the way Halo is presented, for example, but I also appreciate how Half-Life does it differently. My dream FPS would probably draw elements from both, as I see many strengths and benefits of both (I'd probably lean towards no cutscenes and meaningful character interaction, though, there's just so much potential for developing realistic characters that the player can care about and relate to).
Personally I still feel like an observer here because you still can't actually do things your way. I think what that dev said about the story was rather bogus if they didn't actually try to make an effort to have different ways to tackle a situation (and I don't mean weapons-wise). There are no actual defining choices in the game to give me the impression that I am in control, they just seem to be doing the whole, "hey, these scripted actions are happening around you and will always happen the same way each and every time you play the game, but instead of us showing you the character running and dodging the debris falling, we'll just throw it at you." Which, of course, the first time around when you play the game seems rather fun, but once you go through it again and say, "Ohhhh yeeeaahhh, this rock falls here and that rock fall there, etc." then the novelty has expired. A key example of this is at the near end of Half-Life 2 when you enter the Citadel and you then come to the end of the transport cannisters for the stalkers. It's great that they give you the option to go ahead and get in the cannister that leads to your death (and I suppose you would enter it if you didn't bother to look five feet to your right and see that they went through some sort of traction beam), but the thing is is that the only way to progress through that stage is by actually trapping yourself in a cannister. Given that it seems to be some sort of staging area for stalkers to enter in, why are there no flight of stairs that have these stalkers inconspicuously entering these pods? I mean, they could've designed an aspect of the game where you could've fought your way to the top of the citadel and then walked in on Breen having both Eli and Alyx captured, but that would've defeated the whole process of where the gravity gun "magically" becomes the "erase you from existence" gun.

This is what I mean by choice. This is something you get in Deus Ex. And what's better is that you feel the repercussions later with how well you interact with NPCs. In Half-Life 2 you will always be captured when you meet Breen. You will always have to deal with the gunships that attack Odessa's encampment. And you will always end up running away from the Combine instead of letting yourself be captured in the very beginning. It's scripted linearity, and if they were going for the effect of, "you're in control," then they're doing a pretty bad job at it, regardless if the only thing they do different is that they just don't do cut scenes any more.


Since we're on the topic of content reuse, I'll toss in my two cents.

I'm not at all bothered by it. The weapons are many and diverse in function, and there's a weapon popping up here and there. I haven't tired of these weapons yet, but that could be because of how Valve's tendency to avoid dumping everything into your lap at once.

As far as level design goes, it's similar, but not a merely a rehash. Episode 1 has been directed this complaint a lot, but having played through it, I can't say it's the problem people think it is. You're still in City 17, yes, but the areas you visit feel and for the most part look different. The City 17 of Half-Life 2 was a very different place, a large human city that was more or less stable, but repressed and locked down. It almost felt like you were in a zoo. From the outset of Ep1, City 17 is different. Everything's fallen into chaos, and the city feels and looks like a wasteland. The Citadel feels different as well, it's insides wrench off and fall apart, the structure itself feels more animated (No, not talking about animations). The atmosphere is far more dark and chaotic, while the original felt almost clinical and mechanical. The zombie filled parking garages of Episode One didn't really feel at all similar to HL2's Ravenholm or the zombie-infested highways. Episode 2 felt even less like HL2, due to the massive change in scenery. There are many more organic scenes than in HL2, and highway 17 and the road to white forest feel so dissimilar. HL2's organic environments felt very dry and dessicated, Episode 2's environments feel very "foresty" and full of moisture.

Some locales, while similar, felt totally different than those I had seen previously. They may appear copy pasted at first glance, but the differences are more than enough for me to feel like I'm not playing or seeing the same thing again.
My gripe is not with the environments. Hell, that was one thing Half-Life 2 pulled off quite well (the environments you came upon were never the same--well, at least until you go through that whole "run through the destroyed beginning" area). My gripe is with the sounds, the textures, the graphics, the concept, the weapons--you get my drift? In Halo 1 they realized the piss-poor combination of weapons of how the pistol was the sniper rifle/rocket launcher and how the assault rifle was the BB gun. And you know what? They changed in Halo 2. And even then they didn't right. So what did they do? They changed it in Halo 3. But Half-Life 2? We still have that stupid 14th century crossbow as a sniper rifle (especially when we know the Combine have actual sniper rifles). And we know this isn't a case of, "Oh, well, you only have access to rebel weapons," because we get to use the Combine's rifles that can erase people from existence. There is no clear distinction between sides and there is no clear distinction that this game takes place in the future with those horrible weapon placements.

And really, I can't believe this doesn't bother anyone. We could've waited four years for Valve to rework a whole new original game with new textures, new sounds, new music, and instead of releasing $50 expansion packs with useless tech demos added into it, thus totaling the profit yield to suckering a $150 out of people, we could've had Half-Life 3 for $50. I'm rather bemused that you people don't find this a con.


long post is long.

aggy mate they have released ep 2 on its own now :/
same with TF2 and Portal. you can buy them all individually :)

And droves of kiddies in TF2?
TF2 is the most mature community i've ever been in. I've been playing for a few months now and i've heard a total of 5 kiddies. The rest are all laid back dudes just relaxing and having fun.
it's fuckign awesome. And there isnt all the elitist stigma attached to it like there has been in every other online game i've played.
Well, I'll find out tomorrow. I caught wind that TF2 will be free to play for the next two days, so I'll be able to make my assessment then.

[Botolf]

Personally I still feel like an observer here because you still can't actually do things your way. I think what that dev said about the story was rather bogus if they didn't actually try to make an effort to have different ways to tackle a situation (and I don't mean weapons-wise). There are no actual defining choices in the game to give me the impression that I am in control, they just seem to be doing the whole, "hey, these scripted actions are happening around you and will always happen the same way each and every time you play the game, but instead of us showing you the character running and dodging the debris falling, we'll just throw it at you." Which, of course, the first time around when you play the game seems rather fun, but once you go through it again and say, "Ohhhh yeeeaahhh, this rock falls here and that rock fall there, etc." then the novelty has expired. A key example of this is at the near end of Half-Life 2 when you enter the Citadel and you then come to the end of the transport cannisters for the stalkers. It's great that they give you the option to go ahead and get in the cannister that leads to your death (and I suppose you would enter it if you didn't bother to look five feet to your right and see that they went through some sort of traction beam), but the thing is is that the only way to progress through that stage is by actually trapping yourself in a cannister. Given that it seems to be some sort of staging area for stalkers to enter in, why are there no flight of stairs that have these stalkers inconspicuously entering these pods? I mean, they could've designed an aspect of the game where you could've fought your way to the top of the citadel and then walked in on Breen having both Eli and Alyx captured, but that would've defeated the whole process of where the gravity gun "magically" becomes the "erase you from existence" gun.

This is what I mean by choice. This is something you get in Deus Ex. And what's better is that you feel the repercussions later with how well you interact with NPCs. In Half-Life 2 you will always be captured when you meet Breen. You will always have to deal with the gunships that attack Odessa's encampment. And you will always end up running away from the Combine instead of letting yourself be captured in the very beginning. It's scripted linearity, and if they were going for the effect of, "you're in control," then they're doing a pretty bad job at it, regardless if the only thing they do different is that they just don't do cut scenes any more.
The game is very linear, yes, you won't hear me arguing that it's not. It's something I'm fine with, though, as it enhances the story-telling (In my experience, at least). If you stray deep into non-linearity, there's a danger of things becoming one of those "Pick your adventure" books, there's a wealth of choice, but the stories are diluted and watered down. I'm fine with the extreme linearity of HL2 and its sequels in large part of the fact that I choose when I get to these points, and choose how I got there. There aren't any cutscenes to swoop in and take that control away from me and usher me into the next area, it's all my effort to continue on. Would I trade all the awesome situations I experienced and feelings I have for these characters for a wide-open environment of choice? I can't say I would, the experience is a powerful one, and I like how it is so very much.


My gripe is not with the environments. Hell, that was one thing Half-Life 2 pulled off quite well (the environments you came upon were never the same--well, at least until you go through that whole "run through the destroyed beginning" area). My gripe is with the sounds, the textures, the graphics, the concept, the weapons--you get my drift? In Halo 1 they realized the piss-poor combination of weapons of how the pistol was the sniper rifle/rocket launcher and how the assault rifle was the BB gun. And you know what? They changed in Halo 2. And even then they didn't right. So what did they do? They changed it in Halo 3. But Half-Life 2? We still have that stupid 14th century crossbow as a sniper rifle (especially when we know the Combine have actual sniper rifles). And we know this isn't a case of, "Oh, well, you only have access to rebel weapons," because we get to use the Combine's rifles that can erase people from existence. There is no clear distinction between sides and there is no clear distinction that this game takes place in the future with those horrible weapon placements.

And really, I can't believe this doesn't bother anyone. We could've waited four years for Valve to rework a whole new original game with new textures, new sounds, new music, and instead of releasing $50 expansion packs with useless tech demos added into it, thus totaling the profit yield to suckering a $150 out of people, we could've had Half-Life 3 for $50. I'm rather bemused that you people don't find this a con.
I won't argue that the gunplay is on the weak side when compared to something continually refined like Halo's (The crossbow is bloody awesome, though, how dare ye! :mad:). I get the feeling that a few of the weapons were held onto just for sake of some kind of continuity, but they do need a shake-up of their arsenal sometime in the future. Aside from weapons, there's a few recycled textures and sounds, but they appear to be in very short supply (There's a lot of new assets here. Or, if it's not new, there are many that are upgraded (New models of characters, etc)).

I like Valve's venture with episodic content, the engine is updated sooner, new features and whatnot are tested and put out far earlier. The individual prices of these items do smell off to me, but the Orange Box is a bargain, given how much it contains. $50 for a package of excellent games, each with a high amount of replayability, that's a scam? For the same price you could dredge up games of infinitely worse quality.

[jngrow]

I never really saw the Cube as a character. It wasn't around long enough for me to consider it one. If the developers had done more with it, ie. Make it appear more often, maybe with a knife near it (callback to Glados quote), or in strange locations, to help the character more often, I might reconsider. Really, people hold it far too highly for the small part it played.

WTF? AN ON TOPIC POST? Well, seeing as that attempt failed, I'll try also. It is most definitely a character.

However, I do think the whole companion cube/cake is a lie stuff was so blatantly an attempt to be internet-ish/start a new fad/meme, that I thought while playing "cute, kinda funny, but trying too hard." Then I get online for the first time after playing Portal, and get pissed because it worked. But the end-game song was so awesome I forgot.

[Agamemnon]

^

Why is your post invisible?

[n00b1n8R]

The days for Valve to convince me that they were doing something differently have come and gone. I refuse to play Half-Life 3's storyline in a recycled environment, though I'd be plenty of happy to pirate a copy, seeing as that is the only way I will ever play material I already have and not get suckered into buying it again.
So how come you don't seem to be getting infractions for advocating piracy. :confused2:
And how can you say that the HL2 ep's are "HL3's storyline"? Their direct continuations of HL2's, unlike HL2 which was set 20-ish years after the events of HL1 (and I'd expect HL3 to do something similar)


It's very simple. You do this little thing called "independent research." You then take all the examples of the shit Valve has pulled from their ass in the past. You then apply, "let sleeping dogs lie." Portal was a chance for me to see if they changed the formula. They didn't. I now expect to see 12 sequels to that tech demo and people will end up eating each one up.
Jee Aggy, I guess we just can't all be as perceptive as you.


Rinse, lather, repeat (sort of like all the HL1 expansion packs--oops, did I say that?). Frankly I'm rather tired of this bullshit excuse of, "You can't criticize the game if you haven't played it." If that's the case then I would kindly tell you to keep your comments about Hellgate to yourself, despite how the game speaks for itself in the department of absolute shittiness.
Hellgate what? Never heard of it.
I don't recall anybody mentioning it anywhere anyway. :raise:


What's this, the weak, "let's see you do it" argument? Oh, how nice of you to show up. Yeah, because I'm glad that is so relevant to the argument, right? :rolleyes:
Oh noez! I can't come up with a decent response so I'll just settle for attempting to discredit it so that people will think I'm super knowledgeable! :tinfoil:Yes, I'm perfectly aware of what I did there ;-P


1. The source engine is four years old. Yes, it's wonderful that it's been abused to hell and back for tons of modders, but what, 2. are you honestly going to tell me that in 2011 or 2012, or when ever Episode 3 comes out, that you're going to be perfectly content that all the other market standard video games will have a graphics engine equal to that of Crysis/UT and you're going to be alright with recycled shit from 2004? 3. While graphics don't make the game, they do, however, play a necessary role and part in the aesthetic pleasure of the game. 4. I know I can remember the days when I thought Quake III Arena's graphics were AMAZING, and now when I play Crysis and fire up Q3A, I feel like I'm playing Doom95. The novelty expired sooner then this here carton of milk. 5. While you lot are fooling yourself to pay the same admission price (or one that is jacked up) for the same lights and pony show, other developers are actually looking for bigger and better attractions--ones that involve effort too.

Your right. Instead of using a tried and tested engine, which runs well on a wide range of PC's they should have re-invented the wheel or just licensed the new UT engine like every other developer.
I'd love to know what your basing these dates on. And yeah actually, I am. I'm not interested in hyper-realistic graphics.
I do agree with you there.
Because comparing Q3A (a 1999 game) to the likes of crysis is a great way to.. Wait, what were you trying to demonstrate here?
No, your right. There was nothing innovative, exciting or interesting at all in portal, TF2 or HL2 ep2.
The game looks like a cartoon, hence the whole "pokemon-fied" statement. It's like WoW marketing. You make everything with nice bright, shiny colors and you attract all the kiddies who are dazzled and easily amused by explosions and bright colors. It's like crack for your eyes. The only problem is that you can be perfectly content without crack, it's just that it wouldn't attract the droves of kiddies.
As zilla said, I've only seen a handfull or "kiddies" on TF2. Far, faar less than in CSS, Halo (any) or pretty much any other FPS I've played. The cartoony look is just a way to validate the setting (you ever bitch about the 2 bases being right in front of each other on 2fort) and make it easy to tell the classes apart at a moments glance. When you play TF2, be sure to check out the dev commentary.


Nope, sorry, I don't buy into that whole "gift" shit. I didn't want extra copies to "give away." The Black Box was not going to have a $50 price tag, but considering Valve spent too much time making a tech demo and a pokemon deathmatch game, they decided, well, what the hell, let's just up it up to industry standards! The only problem is that the people who didn't want to buy Half-Life 2 and Episode 1 (which are included in the price) didn't want to have to pay extra. Why? Because it would seem rather stupid to buy the same product. Instead you had this whole "gift" bullshit excuse circulated. And, oh, how about that, people actually believed it.
Your right, the whole gift thing is a conspiracy, purported by valve to cover their asses for packaging extra games. :tinfoil:


1. Was there an actual argument there? Oh,

2. Stop acting like Dole and refute the points like a human being.


3. The reason people fill thousands of pages with theories is because they need something to tell their tiny brains that there is a story in Portal, it's just "hidden," or you need to "delve deeper" into it. 4. Hell, you just admitted there is no plot in Portal; it's just there to "drive the game along." So, I mean, what, you're into mediocre crap that doesn't even try to make a decent attempt to pass itself off as a market standard video game? 5. If so, I've got a collector's edition Hellgate: London you might be interested in then.

The point was that your crying over nothing.
What does Dole have to do with this? And it's difficult to refute a point when it's not clear.
Again with the insights? Back up your theories next time.
I'm into a fun game that doesn't try to be more than it is.
What the heck is Hellgate :S
1. Uh huh. What ever helps you sleep at night.


2. Oh, you haven't seen on EVERY SINGLE GAMING FORUM some kid go, "The cake is a lie!" or quote some useless, unfunny quote from Portal? You haven't seen tons circulated drawings of TF2 "teh funniez?" Valve doesn't have to market the game; the community does a bang up job of doing it for them.


3. And Episode 1. And Lost Coast (i.e. another tech demo). And Portal. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say I won't say Episode 2 or TF2 is shitty; however, I will say they look quite shitty (and rightfully so).

Try to refute my points, and I'll make an effort to do the same for yours.
Your absolutely right. How fucking dare those bastards at valve make games with memorable lines and characters.
Ep1 was lame. Lost coast was never marketed as anything more than a tech demo (and was free, so what are you complaining about), and what leads you to the conclusion that their shitty?
Someone point me in the direction of a pirated copy and I will, because that's the only way I'll ever play another Valve product again (unless I'm actually surprised with something new). I don't really see what a "new situation" can be if it just ends in mystery and the characters in the previous game just act like nothing has happened at all. There is no depth, there is no character development, and there is no clear direction; it's a cluster fuck mess of a story. It's like someone tossed the script in a bag and then chucked in three or four cats into that bag as well, and then after emptying the contents of the bag, they sent a PA around to piece random pieces of the script together and called it a "story."
Still no infractions? Anyways, play ep2 then re-state that. There's plenty of character development (just not for Gordon). I also, disagree with the end of that quote.


1. Needs less Dole.


2. What can I say, lots of people enjoy being ignorant and convincing themselves that shit is good. You'll always find someone willing to polish a turd.

Again, what does Dole have to do with the price of eggs?
And you'll find even more willing to piss on brilliance.

[Botolf]

Ep1 was awesome for reasons different than Ep2. It made me appreciate zombie sections, for one, and this is coming from a guy who skipped Ravenholm on his first HL2 playthrough :p

[n00b1n8R]

I actually enjoyed ravenholm. I just couldn't care much for spending hours running through city 17 (the first part with the citadel was cool though).

[Pooky]

(the first part with the citadel was cool though).

Would have been cooler if you got some guns though :\


I wasn't attacking your reasoning skills, I was making an observation. Learn how to tell the difference between the two, because your inductive reasoning skills would've been able to infer what I was actually talking about (just like how everyone else did). You, however, perceived it as hostile. Not my problem if you did. Seriously, you need to go take some birth control and chill out with your PMS.

Oh right, you're not being hostile. You're only perceiving anger that isn't there and repeating the same insult over and over again. :S

[Agamemnon]

So how come you don't seem to be getting infractions for advocating piracy. :confused2:
Probably because the admins/mods advocate it their selves. :rolleyes:



And how can you say that the HL2 ep's are "HL3's storyline"? Their direct continuations of HL2's, unlike HL2 which was set 20-ish years after the events of HL1 (and I'd expect HL3 to do something similar)It is Half-Life 3's storyline. Go look it up. Half-Life 2 has an ending. These "episodes" are just the continuation of where Half-Life 2 ended, thus they are Half-Life 3's storyling.


Oh noez! I can't come up with a decent response so I'll just settle for attempting to discredit it so that people will think I'm super knowledgeable! :tinfoil:Yes, I'm perfectly aware of what I did there ;-PYeah, you used a shitty argument and I actually discredited it. Congratulations, logical fallacies for you.


Your right. Instead of using a tried and tested engine, which runs well on a wide range of PC's they should have re-invented the wheel or just licensed the new UT engine like every other developer.Right, because I'm sure it's so hard to modify the engine a bit, make it look like it isn't four years old, and tried to perfect it some more. :haw:

Actually, that would've been hard. That would've meant they had to do something different. So my bad. We don't want Valve to pull a muscle here or anything.


I'd love to know what your basing these dates on. And yeah actually, I am. I'm not interested in hyper-realistic graphics.Cool, I'll try and sell you a copy of Elder Scrolls V when it comes out and it looks like Hammerfell, okay? Because you're not into "hyper-realistic" graphics (see: making the video games look less like cartoon shit). And if you really need a source of information to realize that most new games of even today are coming out on new graphics engines then you need a pair of glasses.


I do agree with you there.If you do then you'd be bothered by this recycling.


Because comparing Q3A (a 1999 game) to the likes of crysis is a great way to.. Wait, what were you trying to demonstrate here?Ugh, Q3A, at its time of release, was considered the God-all of pinnacle in video game graphics. People were whining and bitching about having to "upgrade their RAM to 1GB!" and all that other crap. Everyone who played it used to talk about how the use of all the new graphical features in the game made it "so much better looking" than older games. And the same can be said for video games of today.

You don't go back and play older video games because they look pretty, you do so because they hold a novelty value for you. Industry standards are moving into a new graphics age, just like it always has done, and, once again, we have the naysayers saying, "No, we're fine where we are!" These are the same people that cried and cried when Doom 3 needed XP to play ("Oh no, XP sucks! I'm never upgrading! Windows 2000 4 eva!"). The very same people who claimed that "the graphics don't matter!" And, as you have agreed, they certainly do to an extent. I can guarantee you Crysis wouldn't be successful as it is now if it didn't look as beautiful as it does, and while Half-Life doesn't need a makeover as serious as Crysis, it does, however, need to change things up a bit, which has always been my main complaint. Here, this chart explains it better:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Fpsengine.svg

Look at how many games are already using the U3 Engine. And I know there are quite a few games coming out in the near future that are going to be using the CryENGINE 2. Now notice how the Source engine is still stuck in 2004. Know any games that recently came out that use the Source engine? Well, do you? I mean, besides Valve's own games?


Your right, the whole gift thing is a conspiracy, purported by valve to cover their asses for packaging extra games. :tinfoil:Yes, because marketing is such a serious conspiracy. :tinfoil:


The point was that your crying over nothing.Pooky, is that you? Need to resort to insults because you have nothing else in your bag of tricks there?


What does Dole have to do with this? And it's difficult to refute a point when it's not clear.Go look at how Dole argues. He puts numbers to everything like as if he's writing a report and submitting it to an automated machine. L2arguelikeahuman.


Again with the insights? Back up your theories next time.Please tell me how I'm going to "back up my theories" when the source of information I'm using here are the different forums that have dedicated parts to the game and that have kids that argue with one another about the "story" of Portal. All the information that is needed is there.


I'm into a fun game that doesn't try to be more than it is.You mean a piece of shit? Yeah, I suppose you've got a point there. Valve never actually came out and said that Portal was new or innovative. They never said they put much effort into it. By all definitions it could actually be a piece of shit and people would still pick it up off the floor and bite into it.


What the heck is Hellgate :SA game that lowered the bar for standard gaming market quality so low that it tripped over it.


Try to refute my points, and I'll make an effort to do the same for yours.Uh, lets remember who started the argument, shall we? Because I can clearly remember it was a select few of you who didn't like my spoilered response. You could've walked away or even ignored it, but you decided that you didn't. I'm the one actually defending myself here, from people who are satisfied with recycled garbage and that have a hard time seeing why I have a legitimate complaint against Valve no less.


Your absolutely right. How fucking dare those bastards at valve make games with memorable lines and characters.Yes, what a memorable line! Oh, how absolutely hilarious! Those turrets, hahahaha! It's better than watching Dennis Leary! "Hello, are you there?" SO FUCKING HILARIOUS AHHAAHAHAHHAH!

Christ, if you believe that then I've got some beach property in Arizona I'd like to sell you. I suppose if I barfed out a couple of overtly generic, unfunny, stupid lines to make the kiddies lawl that I would be praised for it too. And what characters? Chell and Glados? Wow, that's a lot of characters there, even for a tech demo! :haw:


Ep1 was lame. Lost coast was never marketed as anything more than a tech demo (and was free, so what are you complaining about)They still took the time to develop a tech demo and release it when they could've just gone on with their lives and continued to develop the real content. And we all know that it did take a substantial amount of time out of their work time, given that the length of Portal is only four times as greater than this tech demo (one tech demo for another). That's the complaint.


and what leads you to the conclusion that their shitty?My overall past experiences with Valve (i.e. Their flaws in their game design, their continued mistakes, their continued recycling of a four-year-old video game, etc.). I suppose the better word to use here is, "I don't give a shit about the games because I'm not paying another dime to be swindled." Because as long as they're reusing content I already paid for, then it can be as shitty as it ever wants to be.


Still no infractions?Still looking for a weak crutch?


Anyways, play ep2 then re-state that. There's plenty of character development (just not for Gordon). I also, disagree with the end of that quote.What, you're telling me after ten years that Valve finally started to get their act straight? Sorry, I'm not drinking the Kool-Aid.


And you'll find even more willing to piss on brilliance.LMAO, brilliance, that's funny! HAHAHAHA! Next you'll be saying Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3 are "brilliant"! :lol:

Why don't you go line someone's pockets with money--preferably a company that does nothing more than recycle its old material, slap a "NEW!" sticker on it, and fool all the simpletons like yourself.


Oh right, you're not being hostile. You're only perceiving anger that isn't there and repeating the same insult over and over again. :S
Sorry Pook, you're going to have to try harder than that, especially with your wonderful hypocrisy.

[Pooky]

Try? What do you think I'm trying to do, fight with you? I just want you to give me a really solid reason why the Orange Box isn't fun, and why we're all idiots for liking it.

So far all you've said just sounds like elitist bullshit. None of the reasons you've cited have any effect on how fun the games are.

[Agamemnon]

Try? What do you think I'm trying to do, fight with you? I just want you to give me a really solid reason why the Orange Box isn't fun, and why we're all idiots for liking it.

So far all you've said just sounds like elitist bullshit. None of the reasons you've cited have any effect on how fun the games are.
If that's what you think then you can't read at all. Go sell crazy elsewhere.

[jngrow]

^

Why is your post invisible?

Oh, that. That post a few months back came out the wrong way, I was really just commenting on how long one of your posts was. Sorry.

I tend to agree that the massive amount of recycle-age in the Source games is not only annoying, but disappointing. Has anyone heard/seen the explosion effect? It looks like someone threw some burnt shit in the air with like 5 unburnt pieces. At the same time, the games are still fun to me.

[thehoodedsmack]

^ I always noticed that about the explosions, now that you mention it.

[Bodzilla]

I actually really enjoy the art style of Half life. more so then even Crysis or ut3.

i dunno why, but after an hour or so of playing it dosent seem like graphics. It seems exactly how it should be.
Draws me in :)

[Agamemnon]

This user is on your Ignore List.

I was wondering why I couldn't read your posts. I don't even remember adding you.

e: Apparently I can't take you off my ignore list either. It seems to be broken. :/

[n00b1n8R]

Seems to me that neither side is going to change their stance.

[Agamemnon]

So let's not continue then?

[n00b1n8R]

So let's not continue then?
.

[Pooky]

.
.

[Llama Juice]

How is it stupid? I'm literally buying material that was found in a game I bought years ago. It's like buying Windows Vista and then saying, "Wow, this is so different from XP!" You upgrade, you make a few little changes, you give it a new environment setting, and viola, you've made people think you've done something new when they actually haven't, and what's more is that they charge the full price for something that should be new. This is usually called a con. Why on Earth you people can't see past this con is beyond me, especially if you call yourself "logical."
You're buying a GAME, sure it has a lot of the same resources, but if they were to revamp the graphics between the episodes it wouldn't feel as a constant continuation of the story. A gap between the time frames. When EP:1 came out I said "Oh neat, a cheap way for developers to continue their stories." For some reason you equate "effort" to FUN.



Oh and just so ya know Agememnon... I am in college, rent is due tomorrow and that game came from my pocket.

That's nice. I don't remember calling you out on this subject, did I? Again, relevance?

Relevance? You attacked someone else because of that, so for someone to say "Hey, I paid my money out of my pocket for a product that I enjoy" to combat that attack, instead of realizing that you decided to just attack my argument trying to discredit it.

Overall your attitude t'wards this is just silly. You think of buying a game as buying all of the resources that are in the game, rather than the actual game itself. I don't know about you, but when I buy a game... I buy it to play it, not to rip stuff from it and then bitch that it's stuff I already had.


Mario has been working forever because Nintendo has proved to us that they can get away with recycling people's childhoods and making tons of money off of it. He's an icon, one that many can never seem to shake of the novelty factor from. Conditioning is such a sad thing, after all. I mean, well, except to the people that are conditioned. They don't have a clue.

It's not just Nintendo that's been able to pull this off. IMO Portal did beautifully. Banjo Kazooie, Donkey Kong (any of them), Conker's Bad Fur Day, Psychonauts, and a bunch of others ALL pulled this off well. All of those games are memorable because of their GAMEPLAY not because of their story (or lack thereof).

Also, have you played any recent Mario games? They're quality games, that are damn fun. My nephew picked up Super Mario Sunshine and had a blast with it, being the first Mario game he's played. The "novelty factor" wasn't there for him, and he BEGGED to play it whenever he'd come over.

My point was that Nintendo can put GAMEPLAY's importance in front of a storyline. Because, in the end you play the game because it looks fun. For some reason whenever someone else tries to do this kids will try to find anything wrong with the game to discredit it, saying it's not perfect or worth playing. When they can't figure it out they just hate on the storyline.

One of my best friends asked me the other day what Halo's storyline was, she'd never payed any attention to any of the cutscenes and still enjoyed the games immensely. STORY /=PLAYABILITY.

[Agamemnon]

You're buying a GAME, sure it has a lot of the same resources, but if they were to revamp the graphics between the episodes it wouldn't feel as a constant continuation of the story. A gap between the time frames. When EP:1 came out I said "Oh neat, a cheap way for developers to continue their stories." For some reason you equate "effort" to FUN.
And that's just it. You there have your bullshit setup to an excuse for why Valve would say, "We're trying not to change the graphics/setting too much so as not to confuse players." More bullshit excuses. These aren't continued "episodes" from Half-Life 2, this is HALF-LIFE 3'S STORYLINE FOR CHIRST'S SAKE. The main conflict of City 17 and Breen being the overseer ended in HALF-LIFE 2. Instead of coming out with these shitty episodes every three years, they could've developed a full game in half the time frame that it will take for them to come out for all three episodes. Everyone knows this. Again, instead of paying $50 for three sets of products just to get RECYLED MATERIAL over and over, we could've waited three or four years for them to develop a full sequel. The difference? We only would've paid once.

Honestly, it's like going to a children's party and seeing all the kiddies go "ooh!" and "aah!" when the magician does basic and simple magic tricks. "How did he do that? THAT WAS SO COOL!" You can't even see how absolutely insulting this is because you're too busy "HURF DURF HAVIN DA FUNZ!!" Sorry, I don't dumb down my intelligence when I play a game and then am fascinated by explosions and plots that go NOWHERE. If I am not satisfied for the product I pay for, then I am damn well fully entitled to such an opinion. These things that I have talked upon in the past are more than acceptable points in an argument. It's not my fault if you or others continue to eat the crap Valve shits out their bum.


Relevance? You attacked someone else because of that, so for someone to say "Hey, I paid my money out of my pocket for a product that I enjoy" to combat that attack, instead of realizing that you decided to just attack my argument trying to discredit it.That sentence didn't make a lick of sense. Were you trying to convey a point here? Because I don't see one. There's still zero relevance attached to it.


Overall your attitude t'wards this is just silly. You think of buying a game as buying all of the resources that are in the game, rather than the actual game itself. I don't know about you, but when I buy a game... I buy it to play it, not to rip stuff from it and then bitch that it's stuff I already had.I think of buying a game as something new, fun, and original. If I wanted to play GRAW, I would buy GRAW, not buy Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, or SOCOM, or CoD4. Sadly enough, those games are nearly copy and pastes of gameplay and style of GRAW (or vice versa for one another; who ever the hell started the circle of shit). I don't know how exactly pointing out these marketing scams is "silly," so maybe you can elaborate for me. The reasons I have given for why these episodes (at least Episode 1 to the fullest extent) are complete garbage are completely legitimate complaints--ones that, once again, you are willing to overlook simply because you enjoyed the content and, oh, GOD FORBID someone says something negative about them. Oh no, their comments must be "silly."


It's not just Nintendo that's been able to pull this off. IMO Portal did beautifully. Banjo Kazooie, Donkey Kong (any of them), Conker's Bad Fur Day, Psychonauts, and a bunch of others ALL pulled this off well. All of those games are memorable because of their GAMEPLAY not because of their story (or lack thereof).Banjo Kazooi, Conker's Bad Fur Day, and Psychonauts all had one thing in common; they were finished games, they had a great art that distinguished them from different cartoonish products, and they were also quite original to their own degree. Donkey Kong, at least the original Super Nintendo series, was also original to its own degree. Portal though? No (http://www.prey.com/). Not a bit. It was a four hour tech demo with third-grade puzzles and a dry sense of humor that if you don't laugh at it you'll suddenly feel like you're in an environment that was made to dazzle you and make you think you were playing a full game (which you aren't). "Oh, but the humor was supposed to be dry! That's what made it funny!" Yes yes, what ever helps you sleep at night.


Also, have you played any recent Mario games? They're quality games, that are damn fun. My nephew picked up Super Mario Sunshine and had a blast with it, being the first Mario game he's played. The "novelty factor" wasn't there for him, and he BEGGED to play it whenever he'd come over.Here is where your statement went wrong: "My nephew." Kids don't give a shit about plot, depth, and originality. As long as they can control a character and make pretty colors appear on the screen, they are satisfied. So your whole "novelty factor" rebuttal came up a bit short. Sorry to tell you that. If you enjoy buying a game featuring a 20-year-old character, then by all means, do so. We haven't saved the princess enough times from Bowser, nor has Samus saved the galaxy from the Space Pirates enough times, or Link hasn't saved Hyrule enough times, and et cetera and et cetera.

I should go into marketing since recycling material doesn't bother you guys. Here's what I'll do. I'll release a product everyone would like. A year later, I'll get the product to be recolored, get a bit more shiny on it, and slap a "NEW!" sticker on it, and sell it again for full retail price once more. By all your defending of recycled bullshit, you'd eat this up, right? But wait! I won't stop there! What I'll do for the next year is that I'll make the product come in a BIGGER box! That'll throw people off!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v411/hells/nelle/clever6613.gif


My point was that Nintendo can put GAMEPLAY's importance in front of a storyline. Because, in the end you play the game because it looks fun. For some reason whenever someone else tries to do this kids will try to find anything wrong with the game to discredit it, saying it's not perfect or worth playing. When they can't figure it out they just hate on the storyline.If games were meant to be fun on a level that you could enjoy it over and over again they would send a woman in the box--preferably one that couldn't talk.

Please, take your trash argument out of here. You clearly don't care about anything but "having fun" and if you have the same fun in the same recycled material for various games then it won't matter, because, as long as you're having fun, everyone else's opinions don't matter. :rolleyes:


One of my best friends asked me the other day what Halo's storyline was, she'd never payed any attention to any of the cutscenes and still enjoyed the games immensely. STORY /=PLAYABILITY.I think you meant brain =/= needed to shoot bad guys and make explosions.

[Llama Juice]

My misunderstanding, I thought games were about entertainment and having fun. I'll shut up now.

[MNC]

He's a she >:U

e: WTF was that tl;dr above me?

[itszutak]

Guess what?

Those are all successful marketing strategies.

Those companies that succeed are the ones willing to sacrifice plot for what the majority of people want, i.e. pretty explosions and colors and violence.

Recycled "garbage" sells because it is fun to most of us. If I wanted plot, I'd read a book. Or write one.

Those companies that create a fantastic game with a deep plot tend to be buried under the lowest-common-denominator stuff, and tend not to release another game.

People want what's familiar to them. Grand Theft Auto, Halo, Half-life, and pretty much everything by Nintendo is familiar.

Once in a while, some new, ground-breaking game will come out, but if you notice, they do the same thing. We have three halo games, four calls of duty, over seven varieties of half-life, not to mention Nintendo again.

And if you don't appreciate the humor in portal, fine with me. Just stop trying to stop us from having fun.

Posting on a halo forum may have been a bad idea. I see it well on the way to becoming another big franchise.

[Agamemnon]

:words:
So basically you confirmed to me that you and others are perfectly content with getting swindled. Thanks.

[itszutak]

The average person who walks into gamestop or some other game store is perfectly content with being swindled.

(Prev. post before edit: "Yup. :)")

[Agamemnon]

War is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength!

God, I wish I could live in your fantasy world.

[itszutak]

Probably should have edited my post before you came in. Sorry about that.

Anyhow, I'm done arguing.

Also, extra points for the 1984 reference at the end there.

Still can't rep you for that :/

Last thoughts: I'm happy being swindled because the products, while uncreative, tend to be of a relatively high quality. If it really was shit, I wouldn't buy it. There are instances of games in a series being shit, and not selling well.

[Pooky]

Posting on a halo forum may have been a bad idea. I see it well on the way to becoming another big franchise.

Halo Party 7 anyone?

[itszutak]

Halo Party 7 anyone?
FUCK YES BRING IT ON

D:

[Cortexian]

It's a box, until it interacts with me, I don't classify it as a character.

[Botolf]

It's a box, until it interacts with me, I don't classify it as a character.
http://www.solarnavigator.net/films_movies_actors/film_images/cast_away_movie_Wilson_football.jpg

Wilson could be considered a character, even though he's nothing more than an inanimate object serving as an extension of Chuck's personality. In the same way, the cube is nothing more than an inanimate object serving as an extension of GlaDos's personality. They're both characters, but not in the conventional manner.

[Bodzilla]

WILSON!!!!!!!!!!

[Tweek]

agamemnon shut your fucking shithole.

why do you always have to turn every thread into shit like this with your pointless arguements.

[Pooky]

Because we're not supposed to be all huggy huggy nice to eachother on the Internet :downs:

[legionaire45]

Really this bit about the orange box reusing art content because the developers are lazy is bullshit. Open up Hammer with the updated source engine and take a look at all the new content they added. There are enough props alone to equal the number of props from both Half Life 2 and Ep 1 COMBINED. I'm not even taking into account all of the stuff that they added that is still encrypted in the map files themselves.

Honestly you sound like you are bitching about the fact that the art style is the same as in past games. If this is the case, then is it not too much of a stretch to say that Halo 3's level "The Covenant" is shitty because it shares gameplay and stylistic elements with the Silent Cartographer level from the first game? Don't tell me that Halo 1 and Halo 3 are too far apart in age, because Halo 2 fits with this example as well.

About the engine - Valve has been actively updating the Source engine with each episode. Episode 1 introduced tonemapped HDR, phong mapping and numerous other low end technical features that make the game look prettier. Yes, the setting is the "same old" city 17 but there is plenty of new content - you are just too busy pointing out the old stuff to notice the new. The citadel, the train station at the end, even the behaviors of the AI are drastically different from Half Life 2. The same is true of Episode 2: Throughout the entire game you are either underground in an Antlion mine/layer (which was going to be in the first game but was cut because they couldn't finish the level on time), a mountainous forest road or a dark and scary nuclear silo. These locations are so distinctly different that I have no idea where you are getting this reused content crap from. Of coarse they are going to reuse some textures here and there, but not once did I find myself actively pointing them out because I was too busy playing the game and having fun. Episode 3 is going to take place in an arctic wilderness, so you are shotting yourself in the foot by saying that you aren't going to play any more Valve games because "they are all the same thing copied and pasted over".

This applies with the current iteration of the Source engine as well. With Source 2007 they focused on making the outdoor scenes of Episode 2 look better by adding in more foliage and other things. Compare the two images below:
"Old" Source Engine:
http://www.visualwalkthroughs.com/halflife2/sandtraps/hl2-2005-09-03-18-25-17-78.jpg
Source 2007:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/oct07/valve/ep2-30.jpg

I admit that I couldn't find the best outdoor image from Half Life 2, but if you really must continue bitching about the engine being "the same old same old" then just play through an hour or so each of both games and tell me that the graphics are the same as they were years ago in the new version of the engine. They are similar but they are far from the same.

Team Fortress 2's rendering style is actually more hardware intensive then the other Orange Box games. I do have to agree that Episode 1's fire graphics were weak, but the TF2 Flamethrower's fire is some of the best I have seen in a game besides Crysis, which I cannot play absolutely maxed in DirectX 10 mode - Hell, I have to turn AA and AF completely off for it to run at 40ish FPS. As for Portal, why don't you try dragging the Half Life 2 Map files into Portal (http://www.primotechnology.com/2007/10/17/half-life-2-portal/) and playing it without the portal gun for a while to see how superior the graphics are in the updated engine. You won't get HDR because the original maps were not compiled for it, but there are still many other tweaks that make the new engine looks better.

The new version of the Source Engine also has Motion Blur, which is one of the nicest add-ons I've seen for the games. Yes, the old engine had that feature too but it was not implemented well and performed like a dog. You could only officially turn it on with Gmod 9 IIRC, although to be honest I'm not completely positive about that.

The funny thing about all this: Crysis and UT3 have sold quite poorly, with less then 100,000 copies of both games COMBINED being sold in the first few months. Meanwhile, the Orange Box actually beat out Halo 3 in sales in October. Obviously, hundreds of thousands of people are completely retarded and spend their money on games that they enjoy when they could be playing the unstable but pretty mess that is Crysis or the empty, void of players UT3 (no offense meant to the people who play it - the UT3 engine is very impressive and performs insanely well).

By the way, good luck pirating that copy of the orange box - now you are justifying Draconian DRM schemes for other game developers. If you are hell bent on not buying the game because you think it sucks, don't bitch to us when you get a virus from the torrent or your steam account gets stolen. You don't deserve to play the game anyway. The Orange Box is a bargain, and even at minimum wage you could buy Portal with roughly 4 to 5 hours of work - $5 for an hour of entertainment is about what Movie theaters charge anyway. You are saying that a single $50 game like Crysis or UT3 is better then 3/5 games for $50. Value wise, I don't think that is the case. It took me 14 hours to complete Crysis and around that to beat both Episode 2 and Portal together - yet you also get Team Fortress 2 to play, which could end up being hundreds of hours of fun. Of coarse, you are too busy saying that it has pokeman styling to actually look at the visual style rationally. Let me get you some more comparison shots just in case you need them - it looks like you do:
Pokemon:
http://www.trickfilmwelt.de/pokemon_serie.jpg
TF2:
http://www.tfportal.de/gfx/screenshots/tf2/tf2_240507_03.jpg


Enough of this, I have homework to do =P.

[Sanctus]

Yes! The weighted companion cube is indeed a character! :dance:

[Llama Juice]

^
=
http://www.bomberger.net/uploaded_images/6-7-08-Bump-on-head-761168.JPG

it's a bump...

[Heathen]

well, since it was bumped.
yes, it is indeed the only other character besides you and glados.
It is a character.

[legionaire45]

^
=
-snip-

[niiiinja]it's a bump...[/ninja]
It's a tumor.

If anything, I'd call it a minor character or a plot device.

[Ki11a_FTW]

no its just a fucking box, and if you go into hammer its under the prop_phys!!!!!!!!!

[Jean-Luc]

I felt absolutely no sympathy or remorse when I incinerated the companion cube. :shrug:

[Heathen]

No, I mean....there is no argument.
Unless your retarded.
By definition, its the only other character besides you and glados.
I would even count the AI turrets and the Chicken from the achievement.

[English Mobster]

Yeah, it's a character. No contest.

[NuggetWarmer]

this thread = what