PCGP Episode 75
In the news: video games improve your eyesight; racing game fans drive recklessly; inaudible, subliminal sound used to treat video game addiction; Richard Garriott (Lord British) robbed by stupid kids; games that would make good movies; Devil May Cry 4 simultaneous multi-platform release; why next-gen console titles are so expensive; a decent shooter you can play in your web browser; q&a and playlists!
March 22nd, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Nice. I like.
March 22nd, 2007 at 9:50 pm
I liek 2 post!
March 22nd, 2007 at 10:06 pm
I think DJ got cut off, and the podcast ends at around 30:00. At least from listening to it from the website’s bar.
March 22nd, 2007 at 11:12 pm
You might have started listening as it was still being uploaded - I’ve done that before. My downloaded version goes for 54.26 and works all the way through.
March 22nd, 2007 at 11:30 pm
DJ: In C&C games when your Construction Yard gets captured or destroyed look for crates, in past games you would always get an MCV if you had no ConYard.
March 23rd, 2007 at 12:03 am
Crates were turned off in this match, I think. Didn’t see any, at least.
March 23rd, 2007 at 3:21 am
just so you know DJ i think it was you that said go buy the MAGAZINE the only thing that has stoped me from subscribing to it is that you over charge us canadian’s! it should only be 23 bucks for us not 35$! but you got you’re wish am going to subscribe to the mag.
March 23rd, 2007 at 7:14 am
Regarding the violent thought thing that’s discussed: I remember reading about that, it’s a well-documented psychological phenomenon that just about every human being has.
The theory is that it’s almost an evolutionary trait, it’s your brain running through worst case scenario’s, so as to actually avoid those situations.
March 23rd, 2007 at 9:05 am
Regarding the study about your vision becoming better with playing games, I have to say from experience I believe it does help. I’ve been wearing glasses since I was 3 years old and have also been playing video games since around then. My parents got the NES right when it came out and that was the start to my gaming years. I’ve been playing all types of games since then and sit in front of a computer 8 hours a day working and more playing games etc after. My vision has gotten better little by little as I’ve aged. Every time I go to the eye doctor he gives me a new less powerful prescription. Anyone else have the same experience? I do believe all the twitch gaming has helped my eyesight. And they all said sitting in front of the computer / tv isn’t good for you!
March 23rd, 2007 at 11:33 am
What’s funny about FEAR is that if you ask the writer behind the story line, he won’t be able to tell you why that little girl is in there.
March 23rd, 2007 at 2:01 pm
Flash and Shockwave are two very different platforms. Flash is by far the most popular and the most used, but every now and then you find something written in Shockwave format.
March 23rd, 2007 at 3:21 pm
Anyone playing Stalker yet.
I’m into it a bit. I really like the free range aproach but i’m afraid the graphics and feel of the game is a bit cartoony and aged. The detail on every area of the maps is great though, they must have put huge amounts of work to prevent it from having repetetive stuff.
It’s a good loose game to ‘exist’ in and get up to stuff, a great change from the slick but on the rails Hl2.
March 23rd, 2007 at 3:35 pm
I buy my magazines from the newsstands (Vancouver here) so I only got the CnC3 review issue about 2 weeks ago. Anyways, in the may issue, do they reveal the legs-editor match up?
March 23rd, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Devil May Cry 2 was horrid and is an affront to the other two brilliant games…
they basically took the IP, and made a game without the original creator involved at all.
Devil May Cry 3 was done properly and is amazing. Play the first or the third. They are good examples of what the game should be…
And i’m happy DMC4 is coming to PC because i have no PS3 or 360.
And Sheep i subscribe and i just got the C&C3 Cover issue this week, i fucking hate Canada Post sometimes.
March 23rd, 2007 at 7:14 pm
STALKER: Definitely wondering if I should pick it up. I’m an FPS fan but, like Poita, I’m hearing some bitter thoughts towards the dated graphics and such… (damn delays). Anyone have advice one way or the other?
March 24th, 2007 at 6:47 am
Re STALKER: The graphics are dated, but really.. who cares? The game has the strangest feel about it, it’s quite disconcerting, as if you’re playing a game in the most depressing post-nuclear holocaust setting. The game is also strangely hard in places and you feel kind of thrown into the deep end when you start playing, which is quite refreshing. The whole experience is generally refreshing after all the polished Hollywood-y American made FPS’s.
March 24th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
I have to admit it, I’m pretty addicted to STALKER now. One of the most immersive fps since… Unreal IMO.
The graphic is like Half-life 2 without the bloom effect. In static lighting setting the game looks like most Q3 engine (Jedi Academy, Call of Duty) game.
March 24th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
Unlike other FPS’s I’ve played, I don’t really play STALKER for long stretches of time. I do find myself thinking about the game a lot, when I’m not playing. It’s a strangely compelling game.
If you’re not afraid of trying something different and you like your games a bit more “edgy” and you won’t mind doing a bit of work to play the game (not everything is clearly explained), I’d say give it a whirl.
March 24th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Stalker looks BEAUTIFUL. Dated? Meh, only the textures could be a little more high-res on the models but the enviornments look stunning, blowing Oblivion out of the water.
March 24th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Yeah Stalker has got a lot going for it. The atmosphere is cool and thought i complained a bit about the grahics, i’d take atmosphere over graphics any day. Strange but in a way the game is very similar to Oblivion, which was stalkers original name. It’s just oblivion set in a post nuke apocalypse.
Man, if the stalker main game was MP it would be truly revolutionary.
Wow, that Rasterwerks game is totally amazing in full screen full res. Very impressive for a web browser game. I think in the next few years we are gonna find that that kind of game is the next big thing.
Pretty soon you will have really popular CS type games in web browsers. When some really stellar games come out you are gonna find that the most played game by far is gonna be a web browser game. So convenient to just click on favorites then you are in an MP game, whether it’s five minutes or a marathon session. Great things are gonna come from browser games in the future i think.
March 25th, 2007 at 9:38 am
Counterstrike sucks.
March 25th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
Your favorite game sucks.
March 25th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Video games suck……j\k
March 25th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Consoles suck. :p
March 25th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
Yea, for the most part, except God of War series and Destroy All Humans, those games are cool.
March 26th, 2007 at 4:51 am
DMC2 was the worst one :/
Lol, please don’t base your idea of the series on 2(widely considered the worst).
March 26th, 2007 at 9:29 am
can someone post a link to that browser game please. i cant find one and want to take a look
March 26th, 2007 at 11:52 am
All the links we discuss are on our Del.icio.us page, which is on the sidebar of the main page.
March 26th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
Warning. Warning. UFO Detected.
March 27th, 2007 at 11:56 am
GJ guys, what a bunch of dumb ass kids
March 28th, 2007 at 10:02 am
Gary, I always want to punch people in the face just to see what happens.
Fortunantly, my hat IS a time machine, so I can get away with it.
March 28th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Jeremy - you crack me up, dude. I don’t know why I found it so funny, but your comment when Norm told the Lord British UO death story had me laughing like crazy. “I love that story… tell it again!” I was literally laughing along with everyone else on the podcast when you did that.
March 29th, 2007 at 6:03 am
Re Stalker: The game just got patched by the way, it should fix the issues it had with Vista. I got screwed pretty bad though because of the patch. I’m pretty far into the game, and I have all the decent equipment and loot and now all the saved games don’t load. I am definitely not starting all over again… there are some disturbing places in that game that I would NOT want to visit again.
Why do some developers do that? Who would want to play a game where you can progress a great deal and then have you start all over again when its patched? I should have just finished playing it un-patched and who would want to encourage that?
March 29th, 2007 at 10:08 am
www.rasterwerks.com
March 29th, 2007 at 10:10 am
The problem is that the updated materials aren’t compatible with the previous versions. Unfortunate, yes, but that’s the nature of PC gaming.
March 29th, 2007 at 10:44 am
I only have one problem with STALKER, it’s just like the whole world is hostile to you. While it does an excellent job for the atmosphere, after several hours of play i feel really tense since i have to be constantly on my toes . This is not a game where you can walk around leisurely looking for things to kill like “oblivion”
March 29th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
I’m digging STALKER as well. I’m a bit of a noob with open-ended gameplay. Last time I got into a game like this was DEUS EX which I stopped playing before completing because I got stuck and I hate consulting guides. I’m a few hours into Stalker now and the prospect of having to restart due to a patch is rather discouraging. Especially considering the next patch might do the same thing. I might put the game aside and wait for another patch or two. Have they announced one?
I’m not all that far into the game, but I absolutely love the lighting effects. This game has the best thunder and lightning I’ve ever seen in a game. Call of Juarez didn’t get to hold that title for very long! The flashlight effects are also pretty stunning. In one scene I decided to attack a bunch of Stalkers just to see what happened and they were all on the other side of a plank fence with their flashlights. The lightbeams all cast individual shadows through the slits, casting multiple comb-pattern shadows which moved convincingly through perspective as the NPCs ran around. There were lots of other objects between my point of view and the fence which also interacted with the light. It was incredibly striking to see this in the context of genuine gameplay. The first time I saw this type of dynamic light was in Far Cry where you could shoot a light and the shadows would move accordingly. This is the next level of that if you ask me. It was more impressive than the stuff in 3DMark’s Forest Faeries realtime lighting benchmark.
As for the gameplay, I like it as an alternative to what I play 99% of the time: BF2 and single player FPS like HL2. I like how you can pick and choose objectives. I really wish it were possible to propose missions and teamups to other stalkers as opposed to only receiving propositions. I’d like to recruit a bunch of guys to go blow the fuck out of that mouthy bitch on the loudspeaker at Agroprom.
I’ve listened to every podcast now, and I don’t think you guys ever mentioned DEFCON. This is one of the purest games out there. It’s basically “Global Thermonuclear War” from the movie WARGAMES. It’s great for a change of pace and is one of the most impressive looking things to display on a huge monitor like the Dell 3007. Makes your living room look like NORAD missile command. Anyhow I think it makes a nice thematic compliment to STALKER.
Cheers, hope you guys deliver the podcast on time this week!
March 29th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Regarding the hostile world in STALKER: you’re absolutely right, m72.
But it’s also what makes STALKER quite unique. I love the desolate feeling you get when you’re standing in some godforsaken field, radiation humming all around you, packs of blind dogs running not far off (all the time trying to keep an eye on their movement patterns..). It really feels like you’re very, very alone and very vulnerable. It has that strange feeling of being far away from home with no idea how to ever return.
Another great thing is that you’ll be experiencing this “soldier of fortune in nuclear wasteland” thing and then walk into one of the Stalker outposts and you can physically feel yourself relaxing. You’ll be safe here now, for a bit. Probably. Maybe..
Regarding the STALKER patch: to be fair, the readme warns about the savegame problem. It may sound a bit pedantic, but always read the readme before installing any patch..
That said, I think it’s kind of poor. It makes people (including myself) wonder why they should ever bother pre-ordering games, as they’re the ones getting crapped on.
April 4th, 2007 at 7:08 am
Please read PCG staff. This is for Gary. He claims that gaming improves your eyesight, yet also hurts it. I’m surprised that the staff at PC Gamer neglects to do research on something so important as your vision! Here’s how it works. Staring at a computer screen is not harmful if proper precautions are taken. Namely, you need to stop every 15min or so and focus on various objects in the room or outside that are at different distances from your eye. ( Yes this will require taking your gaming addicted eyes off the screen for a little bit ). Some other tricks that you may know about are setting the refresh rate as high as possible on crt’s. The refresh rate on LCD’s doesn’t affect the way your eyes have to constantly refocus as much as CRT’s, so this advice applies mostly to CRT’s.
Therefore, assuming you taken the appropriate measures for computer using, the articles claim about FPS helping your vision is valid.
April 7th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Good cast. As far as eyes go, most things that people say hurts your eyes is just straining them, like reading in low light. That would be like saying having your eyes open in the dark hurts them, of course not. Vision fluctuates over time, and you can be near-sighted one checkup and more far-sighted the next (and each eye can change independently too). As hantavirus64 says, the best bet is to just take breaks in order to relieve the stress on your eyes.