Saturday, August 21, 2004
The following is very much a touristy picture, complete with snapshot-snapping extras in the background, but the old man is such a wonderful character. It was taken just inside the entrance to the 'new' Summer Palace:
Been playing Doom 3 quite a bit this past week - to the point of cutting into my shut-eye time - and aside from running very smoothly on my Dell Inspiron 8600 sporting a Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro (very impressive engine), the game is impressively designed and paced, if a bit monotonous in the long run. Yes, it's supposed to be a corridor-shooter, and yes, it does what it's supposed to do, but more variety wouldn't have hurt, particularly in the face of the upcoming Half-Life 2. I also feel that the tension and atmosphere - top-notch for the first hour - suffer a bit from the deluge of monsters and the occasional bit of cheese (the diabolical laughter is rather over-the-top), but that's nit-picking. It's a great game, and it's deservedly topping the sales-charts; a rare thing these days for a PC-only game.
Shame about the excessive copying going on, though, and while that's only to be expected for such a major release, it's still inexcusable. Fewer and fewer publishers make PC games these days, simply because business is bad. Every game copied impacts the balance sheets of both developers and publishers, and people lose their jobs all the time. If you want to keep playing PC games in the future, don't steal. It really is an enormous problem for us, and it makes it hard to get funding for a non-MMO, single-player game...like Dreamfall. So go buy Doom 3, and play with a clear conscience.
"Confucius says, ID tag is needed to get into work every morning."
Been playing Doom 3 quite a bit this past week - to the point of cutting into my shut-eye time - and aside from running very smoothly on my Dell Inspiron 8600 sporting a Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro (very impressive engine), the game is impressively designed and paced, if a bit monotonous in the long run. Yes, it's supposed to be a corridor-shooter, and yes, it does what it's supposed to do, but more variety wouldn't have hurt, particularly in the face of the upcoming Half-Life 2. I also feel that the tension and atmosphere - top-notch for the first hour - suffer a bit from the deluge of monsters and the occasional bit of cheese (the diabolical laughter is rather over-the-top), but that's nit-picking. It's a great game, and it's deservedly topping the sales-charts; a rare thing these days for a PC-only game.
Shame about the excessive copying going on, though, and while that's only to be expected for such a major release, it's still inexcusable. Fewer and fewer publishers make PC games these days, simply because business is bad. Every game copied impacts the balance sheets of both developers and publishers, and people lose their jobs all the time. If you want to keep playing PC games in the future, don't steal. It really is an enormous problem for us, and it makes it hard to get funding for a non-MMO, single-player game...like Dreamfall. So go buy Doom 3, and play with a clear conscience.
