A brief rant

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by Frederf

...Anyone can make a big explosion or impossible fighting moves in software, that doesn't impress me. Bigger or faster is not praiseworthy. Using the tools at your disposal to tell a meaningful story is what makes a good game good. By story I mean the whole message and feeling.

Good rant. I agree. I don't mind a little fantasy as long as the game doesn't try to sell itself as realistic. When I get into something that I'm not expecting, and that doesn't involve an awesome story, its game over!

I expect Doom 3 or 4 to be not so realistic. I buy that for the story. I expect a Falcon 4.0 AF to be realistic. I buy that for the learning! If it's not realistic when I expect it to be, it's probably headed for the garbage bin - and I will warn anyone that talks about it what i found - guaranteed!

-S

[Frederf]

Falcon 4.0 and Falcon AF are realllllly close to the same game but they aren't. Falcon 4.0 is older and isn't the "Falcon 4.5" that AF is but 4.0 has the benefit of having the "Open Falcon" modification community which has basically gone to town on the old bird for some very impressive results. It's waaay updated. IL-2 is really cool except that the campaign is very... eastern european developer'd. Falcon is more like a war sim with a flight sim attached instead of the other way around. You could play a very interesting game without ever getting in the cockpit and thus the generated content is a little better feeling. I like how IL-2 flies and the Falcon 4.0 world.

Find/Buy Falcon 4.0 and get OpenFalcon. You'll like it muuuch better than AF.

Coop. Dear lord that's the most fun part of multiplay. Using AI as the other side lets you have things you can't have against humans, like they don't complain about bad odds, they are actually surprised by a surprise attack, they calmly walk patrols unalerted. You can actually make a plan and execute some tactics. PvP is generally so fast and deadly that it's a straight TDM and any sneaking, teamplay or tactics go out the window.

Coop seems to be very low on a dev's list but it's up near #1 on mine. The magazine reviews always say "The coop was cut at the last minute but there's deathmatch for up to 20 people!" And I think... might as well not release it. Try SWAT4 or H&D2 Sabre Squadron for some good squad coops. There's an OK coop mod for AvP2. Valve's Left 4 Dead is a very 4-person coop type of game which means it'll be enjoyable. I wish they had periods of "slow tension" between all the fast zombie bits. Sadly it's GOGOGO-quake-fast but besides that looks golden.

Doom and RPGs don't have to be realistic to be good, just sensible. I mean the three-days-till-retirement cop doesn't have to die every time ironically, the WWII private doesn't have to catch a sniper bullet mid-conversation, and a lot of other cliches. OMG, just as I got past this bit of corridor a big boss smashed thorugh the wall!! What are the odds of that perfect timing!? *save, reload* Oh...

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by Frederf

Falcon 4.0 and Falcon AF are realllllly close to the same game but they aren't. Falcon 4.0 is older and isn't the "Falcon 4.5" that AF is but 4.0 has the benefit of having the "Open Falcon" modification community which has basically gone to town on the old bird for some very impressive results. It's waaay updated. IL-2 is really cool except that the campaign is very... eastern european developer'd. Falcon is more like a war sim with a flight sim attached instead of the other way around. You could play a very interesting game without ever getting in the cockpit and thus the generated content is a little better feeling. I like how IL-2 flies and the Falcon 4.0 world.

Find/Buy Falcon 4.0 and get OpenFalcon. You'll like it muuuch better than AF.

I have the original Falcon 4.0 - In the big spiral bound manual to go with! I'll have to see if Open Falcon gives me anything over AF. I haven't seen anything out of the community that would suggest as much. I see some better looking explosions, and slightly better clouds. Not much else to trade for the downgrade. What would I be missing?

I used to play with the BMS 2.0 mods way back when, but AF is a better product, not to mention is supports dual core.

-S

[SUBMAN1]

Studying the graphics in Open Falcon, the puffy cloud missile and explosions look worse, not better!

A bunch of vids can be found here - http://www.fencecheck.com/forums/ind...?topic=10810.0

-S

[Ilpalazzo]

Hope you guys don't mind if I continue the Falcon talk. It really sucks when a complex game has a crappy tutorial. IL2 and Civ 4 come to my mind right now. A game can be learned so much more quickly and easily with a comprehensive, hands on, tutorial.

I'm wondering if Falcon has a good tutorial mode. It sucks having to learn by reading/screwing around when a game could just make a tutorial. IL2 for example. That game had the worst tutorial I had ever seen. Espcially disconcerting because it was a sim. It had those lame watch and pay attention recordings, but no actual hands on tutorial. It didn't help that I'm colorblind and had immense difficulty reading the red fonts used in the training recordings. It took me too long to get decent at that game because of those reasons. I'm surprised I didn't give up.

So yeah, would be much easier to get into a game like Falcon if it has a good tutorial mode.

[NeonSamurai]

If i remember correctly all the versions of falcon 4 have extensive training missions, the only problem is they are the manual in hand kind (which is fine for the original f4 manual, but bad if your working off a pdf unless you have a second monitor or a laptop)

F4 AF has 30 training missions (all hands on) and a couple hundred pages to go with the missions in the manual. You can also make your own "training" missions too. There are also a pile of other external tutorials (the flash "ramp start" program is very handy to learn the sequence).

Also the worst is sims with no training missions at all in either format, i can think of several that are like that.

[Ilpalazzo]

Are there still copies of Falcon with this giant manual? Where might I find one? It would kinda suck to get stuck with a gigantic PDF. Not too bad though as I do use a second monitor.

Heh,

/Seinfeld
And what's the deal with game manuals these days?

I have the original Falcon 4.0 - In the big spiral bound manual to go with! I'll have to see if Open Falcon gives me anything over AF. I haven't seen anything out of the community that would suggest as much. I see some better looking explosions, and slightly better clouds. Not much else to trade for the downgrade. What would I be missing?

Hmm, would be cool to hear what the actual differences are. I have heard that OF is supposed to be more realistic and better looking. I haven't heard exactly why though.

[Ilpalazzo]

hah! When you can't use the mouse right? I hate that crap

Find/Buy Falcon 4.0 and get OpenFalcon. You'll like it muuuch better than AF.

Just looked up a little on OpenFalcon. Sounds and looks amazing. Been watching videos on youtube and find myself, once again, mumbling about needing a trackir.

Try SWAT4 or H&D2 Sabre Squadron for some good squad coops. There's an OK coop mod for AvP2. Valve's Left 4 Dead is a very 4-person coop type of game which means it'll be enjoyable. I wish they had periods of "slow tension" between all the fast zombie bits. Sadly it's GOGOGO-quake-fast but besides that looks golden.

AH yes, I forgot about Swat 4. That was a lot of fun. I loved all the shouting and shocking. Had fun popping cuffed perps with that bean bag shotty just for kicks. Sigh, they never did make a 5 did they?

Arma is probably a lot of fun coop, but nobody I know wanted to get into it. I'm having trouble thinking of any recent releases that had a coop feature. Oh god my mind just started wandering and I imagined coop Oblivion. Some extra enemies spawns and increased difficulty would be neat, like when players are increased in Diablo 2. Are there any coop RPGs? I don't mean mmo games. hmm looking at my games the only ones seem to be of the hack n' slash variety.

I have had mixed feelings about Left 4 Dead. First and foremost I was excited by the concept. I love zombies and survival horror. I learned more about it eventually and saw the videos and was a little disappointed with the fast pacing, quick game style of play. I was secretly hoping for some tough coop campaign through a zombie infested city. I dunno, I guess I was imagining some sort of coop Resident Evil or something. Still, doesn't mean that it can't be fun.

Oh yea, I agree. IL2 has a crappy campaign. I did however find myself enjoying some downloaded user made ones.

eastern european developer'd

LoL, many of those games do have a similar way. Like the Cossacks series and all the other games that use that engine. Lackluster campaigns. From now on they shall be described as this.

ps. Been thinking about getting Umbrella Chronicles on the Wii with a couple of blasters. Still wishing Thief 4 will include coop play.

[Captain Vlad]

Swat 4 was probably my favorite tactical shooter-type game since Rogue Spear. Particularly liked the creepy warrant service on the old apartment building the weird cult had taken up residence in...