Slant community chat on DiscoursePro Commentaries
Hear from the creators about the making of Half Life 2 Ep1 and 2. Everything from level design to technical details are discussed. More developers need to use this.
Pro Very moddable
Entire games have been made from Half Life (such as Counter Strike) and the tradition continues with it’s sequel! In fact there’s a game essentially about making your own things made from a modded Half Life 2 and that game is called Garry’s Mod.
Pro Amazing character animation
When Half Life 2 came out it set the bar super high for character animation that still rivals some games today.
Gordon Freeman didn’t choose the crowbar, the crowbar chose him! After the events of Half Life, Gordon Freeman,PHD in Physics and professional Box Pusher, gets whisked away by the G-Man to City 17, a city overtaken by an oppressive regime called the Combine. Join Gordon along with freedom fighter Alyx Vance to fight headcrabs and former co-workers in Half Life 2 (and Ep 1 & 2 but not 3).
Pro Local two-player and online four-player co-op
Left 4 Dead 2 supports two-player local co-op as well as four-player online co-op.
Pro Unique and diverse co-op versus mode
Left 4 Dead 2 features a versus mode that pits two teams against one another. For the survivor team, it is basically the same game as the normal campaign. However, versus mode adds a new way for teammates on the opposing team to work together by playing as the infected, which opens up a whole new...
Pro Melee weapons offer a more visceral gaming experience
Left 4 Dead 2 allows for the player's use of melee weapons. These create not only more graphic violence when playing (in comparison to that created when just using guns), but also a more personal and intimate experience.
Pro Tons of heavily customized and unique loot
Borderlands 2 makes it feel like Christmas every time you kill an enemy or open chests. Whether it's just ammo and health or a new mod, it makes killing enemies and finding chests much more satisfying than other loot based games through giving the player the potential for a good drop, which is...
Con Lost loot due to sharing
The unfortunate downside to all of the loot is that it is anyone's game. Loot isn't reserved for each individual player when playing co-op and can be taken by anyone. So that means the first person to get to the loot can basically take all of it. this can lead to contention between co-op p...
Con Tedious to check gun stats
You are hit with a ton of different weapons throughout the game that checking the stats on each can become tedious. This can be a pro to some but to others it can be an quite an annoyance.
Pro Hectic FPS gameplay created by 9 distinct classes and lots of varied items
TF2 has 9 playable classes - Scout, Soldier, Pyro, Demoman, Heavy, Engineer, Medic, Sniper and Spy. This allows for a range of playstyles. For example, the Heavy, starting with 300 health (going up to 450), wielding a machine gun and usually assisted by a Medic, will be commonly found on the front...
Pro Random critical hits add a significant luck element into the game and push certain types of players out
In most 'public' servers, an option called 'random crits' (short for 'random critical hits') exists by default. This allows a random percentage of your shots to multiply damage by 3 for a shot, and also remove the damage drop-off over range. This 'feature' gets incr...
Pro Good VR support
To enable VR support, type -vr in console. TF2 has 8 modes in which to control the game. They can be changed with the command vr_moveaim_mode in console. They offer choice in what combination of aiming and steering should be coupled to the rift and mouse and introduce the concept of dead zones -...
Pro Lets you roleplay matrix-like battles
The coolest thing about this mechanic is it essentially lets you role play matrix-like battles with you dodging bullets, slicing bullets out of mid-air with a katana and an assortment of other badass things to do.
Pro Awesome time-based mechanic
In Superhot time only goes forward when you move. This turns the gameplay into something closer to a puzzle game as you need to be very calculated with every move you make.
Pro Minimalistic yet beneficial art style
The art style in the game is very cool and minimalistic while actually serving to make the game easier to understand and play. The gameplay in Superhot relies on you being able to react properly to your environment, and the art choices make it really easy to understand what is going on around you.
Pro Great storyline
The puzzles in the game are great, but they're tied together with a thought provoking story line filled with mystery and intrigue. A story about a robot with human consciousness who is being guided by a disembodied voice, are they to be trusted? As the story progresses the player is drip fed c...
Pro Difficulty ramp-up
Starts out easy enough, but gets to some truly difficult puzzles by the end. If you get stuck on a puzzle you can skip it and come back to it later.
Con Ending troubles
After getting the "normal" ending you will have to replay the entire game again if you want to find everything you missed. Replaying a puzzle game isn't that fun when you already know the puzzles.
A puzzle game where the puzzles' goal are to reach the tetromino at the end. They have buttons, cubes, lasers and force fields similar to what you would find in Portal, as well as mechanics that interact with them (jammers, connectors). The game also has a philosophical story and backstory with optional lore terminals. The game is also divided into three worlds (and the Tower), each world into several levels, and each level into several puzzle rooms.
Pro Open World gameplay done spot-on
Far Cry 4 captures exactly how fun open world games can be. Key to this is the freedom you get. Apart from the main story, you can pretty much do whatever you want, whenever you want. You can escort a truck, fly around a bit in a gyrocopter you found, release prisoners from enemies, capture a bell...
Con Environment feels too familiar
While Farcry 1-3 all had different locales that had their own styles, 4 looks much like 3 and is not that much of a departure. For those looking for a different experience it is not going to be found in 4 sadly. However, Far Cry 4 in many aspects feels like the game that Far Cry 3 should have been.
Pro Adventure aspects add to what would be a stale FPS
Being able to scale cliffs, hunt and trap animals, and use ones environment as a weapon against enemies adds to the basics of first person shooting making for a fun adventure game on top of a slick FPS.
Far Cry 4 is an open-world first person shooter adventure game created by Ubisoft. The gameplay consists of mainly first person shooter action, where the player is tasked with going to different areas of an open-world map in order to shoot particular people to complete a task. Players can slowly upgrade their equipment/weapons through what they earn in completing certain tasks. This is repeated until the player finally finishes the game.
Pro Well written and acted
The story in the game is well fleshed out. It is a fictional story about if the Nazis took over the world after WWII, which is not a new premise, but has so many little touches that really create an immersive story that the player cares about. This is where the animation and voice acting of the ga...
Con Dual wield feels out of place
Using two guns at the same time, while a cool concept does not feel fully fleshed out in this title. It is often cumbersome and does not wield great results in firefights, which asks the question of why it was included.
Con Drops resolution in certain places
Certain points of the game may drop the resolution down to 1760x1080 (from 1920x1080) in order to keep the gameplay running at 60 frames per second, while this does not happen often, it does happen.
Pro Brilliant Puzzles
The primary theme to puzzles in Antichamber is that things aren't how they appear. If you walk down a hallway and turn around, you might be in a totally different area. This leads to some incredibly interesting and difficult puzzles, forcing you to think about the world around you in a totally...
Con Focuses less on its main selling point near middlegame
Near the middle of the game, you get a thing that a lot of the puzzles start to focus on, and the mind-bending puzzles and tricks to the player take more of a backseat as this mechanic changes the game to more of a traditional style of puzzle game. There are still elements of it, but much less of...
Con Short for its price
The time to beat the game is well around 7 hours for an average player, and there's not much extra content left after that. In that time the game doesn't exactly go deep in its innovations on the "mind-bending" idea (no gravity flips, just teleportations).
Con Story and Gameplay can give mixed tones
A high story concept mixed with super bloody battles threw off some people’s experience of the game who site ludonarrative dissonance as the problem.
Pro Great Add-On content
With the main game being so great you just want to keep playing! So Irrational Games came out with four dlc packs: Columbia’s Finest, Clash in the Clouds, Burial at Sea Episode 1 and Episode 2.
Pro Intense fast-paced gameplay
Continuing the super-powered gameplay from the first two Bioshock’s this installment in the series refines the fun and fast formula. Use tonics to launch fireballs, ravens, or electricty at your foes, or make them fight by your side, as long as you have enough salt that is. Then to liven things up...
Pro Unrestrictive skill-based RPG system
Skyrim has no concept of character classes, and there are no restrictions on what equipment or magic a given character can use or learn. A character's capabilities are defined by skills (e.g. heavy armor, marksman, enchantment) which automatically improve as they are used. Levels are gained by...
Con Immersion can be broken due to game limitations
While the game offers players many choices some of these choices are not reflected in the game accurately. There are instances where NPCs should know who your character is or what classes they belong to but due to the limitations of the tech used in the game it is unable to "remember" th...
Con Buggy and crash prone
Skyrim, like all Bethesda in house game engines (GameBryo) is buggy and prone to crashing. Non modded games have plenty of issues, but to then add mods on top is just asking for a crash or corrupt game save. There are still many community mods for Skyrim that try to make the game more stable by a...
Pro Keyboard controls work quite well
Surprisingly (for an EA game especially) the keyboard controls are actually designed to work quite well.
Con Poor combat sytem
The combat system often feels out of place and definitely interferes with the flow of the gameplay.
Pro Great soundtrack
The soundtrack's spacious ambient texture coupled with electronic beats and synthetic sounds supplement the game's otherworldly, contrasting setting. The complete soundtrack is available with the purchase of the game.
Pro Great theme and looks
The game takes place underwater, and with that it looks quite good for an underwater game. Looking up at the sun through the ocean looks pleasant and real. Coral reefs have multiple colors and look real as well. Graphics wise this game looks great and pulls off its theme of an underwater survival...
Con Early access
The game is still in early access, so that means there may be bugs and unfinished areas or features of the game.
Con Dated game that shows its age
Released in the early 2000's, the graphical fidelity of the game shows its age quite a bit. This is to be expected of a game of this age, but may detract from the experience if graphics are an important part of a game to the player.
Pro Runs on multiple OS's
Counter-Strike 1.6 can be installed and run on Windows, Linux and OSX making it extremely flexible.
Pro 18 maps available to the player
There are 18 maps available to play on, with three being the only ones selectable until the others are unlocked through progressive gameplay.
Con Pay to win
PlanetSide 2 has pay to win mechanics meant to coerce players into paying for equipment to avoid the extremely long grind it takes to earn anything in game. A brand new player with a deep wallet can customize their gear to their prefered playstyle giving them an advantage over those that opt not to
Pro User selectable respawn points
Users can select where they want to respawn after death. There are even vehicles that provide new spawn points on the map that players can drive and leave. This creates a great element of strategy on where to place spawn points when attacking certain targets.
Con Poor tutorial, hard to figure all mechanics out
PlanetSide 2 does a poor job at explaining how to play the game or what anything in the mues do. Equipment loadouts are confusing as well as a minefield of pay items.
Pro Everyone has a different class
When teams are set up the game does not allow multiple people to have the same class chosen for their character which makes for a great way to ensure teams are not imbalanced.
Pro Cross-platform
Works on Windows and OSX with Linux support planned.
Con Hard to get in
Even with experience in other fps games poor maps knowledge (they are quite complex) and tactical approach require quite a few hours of learning the game mechanics before you start having actual fun
Pro Intuitive health system
The player can regain health in two ways, one by finding health packs scattered around the level and two by killing enemies. The latter is a great way to stay in the action as there is no real need to stop and search for health as long as you are continually killing enemies (which should be no pro...
Pro Powerful and customizable weapon selections
You start the game with a pistol, but almost immediately start getting new weapons such as the shotgun. During the gameplay new modifications will be unlocked for each weapon, which allows for a good set of customizability in order to fit with ones playstyle. Each weapon has two different mods that
Pro Refreshing single purpose gameplay
There is no character development, this is a single purpose game that makes itself very clear from the outset. You are in this game to do one thing, kill demons, sometimes in the most gruesome ways possible. The game is very unapologetic about this, which is refreshing in a time when many games fo...
Con New DLC can be a bit expensive
Getting new DLC on Day 1 can set you back quite a lot.
Pro An element of randomness permits replayability
Important items are placed differently on each play-through adding an element of randomness to how each game plays out.
Con Limited to 4 players only
This game has not been built for huge LAN parties (unless you split your players to multiple heists).
Pro Minimal graphics' requirements
This game was released in 2007 and is still played by thousands online. As it is an older game, you don't need as many configurations to play it.
Pro Bots mod for co-op
You can get a mod that can be used if you host a server, adding bots to your team and that of the enemy, thus allowing for large offline battles.
Pro Multiple and varied game types
There are a number of game types to play including Team Deathmatch, Free for all, Domination, Sabotage and Search and Destroy making for lots of variation.
Con Side missions all the same
The side missions of the game are all exactly the same, go to an area on the map, use a key and maybe kill some badies while accomplishing this mundane task.
Con Loot feels limited
Unlike past Bordelands games, the loot in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel feels very limited. On top of that legendary items are almost impossible to find with them more often than not only able to be purchased at an item shop, which means the player will be spending most of the game grinding for cash...
Pro End game takes advantage of all players skills and weapons
The end game is the best part of Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel as it takes advantage of requiring the player to use a lot of reflex while utilizing all of their skills and weapons. It is quite a balancing act and when pulled off it very exhilarating.
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