By art I am not simply referring to the visual art (character and level aesthetic) but also narrative and gameplay. Portal, seems to me to tie both of those later factors together extremely well and thus propelling the quality of the game as a whole beyond what any single factor could have.
Yeah, the Orange Box is beastly. Portal is amazing in that it takes a minute to learn, and ramps up the difficulty perfectly. Does anyone else find GTA overrated? IDK, it didn't feel very arty to me. It didn't really have anything to say. Art has something to say. Portal has no real message. It's kinda just entertainment. Top notch entertainment, but still, not really art. Tbh, I don't see most games or movies as art.
*Raises hand*... emphatically. San Andreas was ok, but I absolutely hated the other 2. They bored me and every quest seemed tedious and tiresome. The only fun thing was to put in codes and go on killing sprees, which wore out it's welcome after approximately 27 seconds.
Yeah...I think the idea of an open sandbox world was great, but there wasn't much you could really do...NPCs are brainless targets, you can't destroy buildings, the cartoony feel of the action and the level of destruction means that losing your ride isn't a big deal, so there's no feel of permanence - everything you do feels like a waste of time. And of course the main game? Forget that shit. Waiting for a game that'll do the sandbox awesomely. Freelancer came kinda close, Morrowind and Oblivion were closer, and from what I've heard, X3 comes damn close if you can run it.
I thought the real value in GTA was in having friends over and taking turns seeing how fast you could rack up six stars and how long you could survive.
Anyone ever play Max Payne? I just had a sudden urge to play it again. One of the most absorbing games I ever loaded on to my pc.
I hated the realtime combat - as it sat unhappily between being neither fluid enough to be a proficient shooter, nor being tactical enough to satisfy the pen n paper RPG fan in me. When they moved away from the ostensibly turn based combat of the KOTOR series and onto the real time Jade Empire style engine (which made much more sense in a melee / light RPG), I'm afraid they bought season ticket seats in the EpicFail stadium of loss.
No. But I admit to not usually watching the artier films... Yeah. One and two. Great games. Great gameplay, great style, etc. 2 had a great story as well.
3d action/adventure that's set in the 1930s. You play a taxi driver who winds up in the mafia. Memorable characters, a great story and voice acting, superb mission design and high replayability. Highly recommended.
Are you kidding? They've been working on Mafia 2 for ages. Should be like a few more months I think untill they'll release it. And yeah, Mafia is a fucking amazing game!