The Hype Thread

[VNilla]

In the spirit of the Angry Dome, I thought it might be nice to have a thread where you can hype up and discuss upcoming book releases, game releases, your favorite websites, etc, basically anything that you are excited about. (Preferably appropriate for teens or younger - no extreme adult content, please.)

For example, I'll start us off by hyping http://www.cmune.com, a free, in-browser multiplayer First-Person Shooter. (Hint: There are, in fact, cheat codes, but you should try to find them on your own.)

Also, Book 5 of the Maximum Ride series came out last Monday, March 16th.

* * *

Well, have at it, people.

[Slayer0019]

http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/ ... .49546.htm

To summarize the article, this device and service called OnLive allows for what is essentially video games on-demand, instantly, no downloads required, for any console, on any TV.

Now I'm gonna stay conservative in my expectations, but this could be really cool. The article (and you can just google it to find more) says that OnLive has extremely low hardware overhead, allowing slow computers to play high-end games. You too could run Crysis.

EDIT: Almost forgot, requires an epic internet, something like 5mb/sec. No more simultaneous games and downloads for you.

Also, it releases right around now.

[Isu]

I'm excited that my angry-dome thread has almost 100 comments and 1500 views ^^ It's gained popularity to rival the stickies, methinks.

[Bad Boy]

@Slayer0019: The biggest problems with this as far as I can see are that
1) As you said, you'd need an excellent internet connection.
2) The providers would need super computers (or a ridiculous number of computers) to be able to run all of the games that would be being played simultaneously assuming this is a success.
3) It drains assloads of bandwith, meaning that game prices would have to be ridiculous in order for the company to make any profit, or simply not lose money.
4) If the company went bust, you would lose all the games you paid for (although I'm not too sure about this one, they probably have some form of backup for the games.

To un-rain on your parade, I'll say that they've probably (hopefully) already thought of all or most of these things and found solutions to them, I mean it's been seven years in the making, and I haven't exactly done in depth research about it.

[Exethalion]

I'm excited that my angry-dome thread has almost 100 comments and 1500 views ^^ It's gained popularity to rival the stickies, methinks.

Don't get too excited, it'll probably get purged if it gets too big like the word association game thread.

As for hype, I'm quite excited about which new Walkers crisps flavour will be picked in a few weeks time to join the rest as a permanent variety. Here's hoping for onion bhaji!!

[Isu]

I'm excited that my angry-dome thread has almost 100 comments and 1500 views ^^ It's gained popularity to rival the stickies, methinks.

Don't get too excited, it'll probably get purged if it gets too big like the word association game thread.

As for hype, I'm quite excited about which new Walkers crisps flavour will be picked in a few weeks time to join the rest as a permanent variety. Here's hoping for onion bhaji!!

D:

[Verminator]

Allow me to say that Borderlands, the upcoming RPG-RTS hybrid is going to rock everyone's balls off. The fact that it features a procedurally generated terrain on a backwater planet in a sci-fi universe, swarming with horrific alien monsters and Mad Max style bandits is already enough to make any sci-fi gaming fan excited, as is the Halo-style gameplay, only in a massive game area, but wait, you haven't even heard about the 600,000 different weapons yet, have you?

You read right. That's six hundred thousand. They used a procedural weaponmaking program, and a lot of the guns ended up with very cool properties. How about the sniper rifle that's reloaded like a revolver and fires electrically charged rounds? Or the revolver that fires explosive buckshot? How about a scoped laser rifle with a razor sharp bayonet on the end? Or a shotgun that sprays enemies with radioactive flechettes? Or the bladed tactical machine pistol, or the cluster frag grenades, or the plasma autoshotgun, etc. etc. And those are some of the less crazy ones, and you'll never gather see most of them even after multiple playthroughs. Plus, there's also a good one hundred thousand different armour and equipment doodads to equip and use, and there's the 1000 customisable gun turrets for vehicles, and then the four different player characters to choose from, all with their own unique traits, with skills to level (Done through actually practising the skills too. Shoot someone with a shotgun, you get better at shotguns. You don't shoot someone with a shotgun and then assign the points to hacking computers. That annoys me when other games do it.)

As you can probably decipher, I'm pretty excited for its release in September. It's out on 360, PC, and PS3. And it comes with four player co-op, online, and, get this, splitscreen for consoles. That huge world to explore, and you can enjoy it right there with three friends on the couch, something not enough games nowadays even offer anymore. I'm just praying for a decent length, a nice big world, plenty of sidequests to do, and most importantly, no more delays.

[Slayer0019]

Verminator, I can't believe I forgot that. I'm really excited for that game. Electro-cluster-rocket-scoped-minigun FTW!

[Exethalion]

Allow me to say that Borderlands...

Looks fantastic. Will have to get the console version because it looks rather specs-heavy, hope that it doesn't suffer from a dumbing down as most console ports do.

[Kaelis]

Well... theres this thing called Emotiv Epoc. Im certain it won't be as good as advertised, or at least itll need a few months of practice and teeth gnashing to get proficient with using it - but the fact that were already seeing consumer grade, affordable device that can literally read your brain waves and convert them into something useful means that i might live to see a proper man-machine interface. Which is fucking awesome.

Then there are a few games im mildly excited about, namely Machinarium, Fez, Demigod, Blood Bowl, CitiesXL, MS Train Simulator 2, WH40k mmo, Fallout mmo, Kingdom Under Fire 2, and probably others that i just can't remember right now.

To summarize the article, this device and service called OnLive allows for what is essentially video games on-demand, instantly, no downloads required, for any console, on any TV.

Interesting, although i think its too early - internet lines are not fast enough yet. Solution for piracy right there, though.

...as is the Halo-style gameplay...

...what?

Granted, the game seems pretty damn sweet going by your description, but that part confuses me. Why would you want your old, generic, run of the mill (no wait - its even dumbed down!) shooter gameplay? After all those superlatives id expect them to come up with something more innovative and more, you know, fun.

you haven't even heard about the 600,000 different weapons yet, have you?

Im all for procedural generation (actually, i love it and think its the future of gaming), but that is not necessarily a good thing. Just think a minute, why most shooters have 20 unique weapons tops? Because theres only so much originality and practicality you can stuff into weapons. With such a high number (which probably is just a number of possible combinations of a few stats anyway...), you're gonna end up with 599,550 mediocre, redundant weapons and 50 that actually stand out , but are still generic. Id rather have 20 hand crafted, thought out and well made weapons than that. Unless, of course, '600k procedurally generated weapons' is just a marketing babble for a weapon customization system. Which it probably is, nevertheless its like saying that mmos have hundreds of thousands possible character combinations - true, but of no consequence.

That huge world to explore

Again, not too sure about that. Sure itll be huge. But im also afraid itll be... bland. Its extremely hard to procedurally generate tons of unique content. Just look at Spore.


But i digress, really. It sounds mighty exciting regardless.

[Sponge]

...as is the Halo-style gameplay...

Granted, the game seems pretty damn sweet going by your description, but that part confuses me. Why would you want your old, generic, run of the mill (no wait - its even dumbed down!) shooter gameplay? After all those superlatives id expect them to come up with something more innovative and more, you know, fun.

I don't really understand why Halo is considered generic. Halo was actually pretty revolutionary when it came out, though I'll grant, 2 and 3 didn't really add anything new. The main problem is that 90% of the time, the battle rifle will be the best weapon to have. And they're all over the place.

you haven't even heard about the 600,000 different weapons yet, have you?

I'm with Kaelis on this one. I'm hoping they'll take a Mass Effect route, which has tons of weapons, but they're typically subtle variations on a common theme-- you just pick the variations that best suit your playing style. A weapon customization system would also be a decent way to incorporate lots of weapons. You just need to have some means of getting a weapon you like. Picking 1 out of 600000 is not going to be fun, unless you have some say in the one weapon you get.

That huge world to explore

Again, not too sure about that. Sure itll be huge. But im also afraid itll be... bland. Its extremely hard to procedurally generate tons of unique content. Just look at Spore.

Spore is kind of a lousy example. It was overhyped, and the end result was quite shitty. The art direction, the cut content, the fact that they give you a half game and expect you to buy expansions, it just wasn't a good experience. It sounds like only terrain is procedurally generated, which is definitely doable. Infinity (http://www.infinity-universe.com/) has some pretty kick ass terrain generation. Granted, it's a really different type of game, it's still pretty impressive. I have no doubt that a full dev team could do at least as well.

[Arcalane]

You read right. That's six hundred thousand. They used a procedural weaponmaking program, and a lot of the guns ended up with very cool properties. How about the sniper rifle that's reloaded like a revolver and fires electrically charged rounds? Or the revolver that fires explosive buckshot? How about a scoped laser rifle with a razor sharp bayonet on the end? Or a shotgun that sprays enemies with radioactive flechettes? Or the bladed tactical machine pistol, or the cluster frag grenades, or the plasma autoshotgun, etc. etc. And those are some of the less crazy ones, and you'll never gather see most of them even after multiple playthroughs.

You forgot the one that does absolutely nothing when fired at enemies.

Except they spontaneously explode four seconds later.

[M123]

Borderlands... upcoming RPG-RTS hybrid.

I think you meant RPG-FPS hybrid?

Mass Effect route, which has tons of weapons

I've only seen 2 real variations on the 4 weapon types, the rest are just recolours/retextures of those 2 variants.

[TheBlueEcho]

Yeah, I'm interested in how Fez is going to turn out too.

[Kaelis]

Spore is kind of a lousy example. It was overhyped, and the end result was quite shitty. The art direction, the cut content, the fact that they give you a half game and expect you to buy expansions, it just wasn't a good experience. It sounds like only terrain is procedurally generated, which is definitely doable. Infinity (http://www.infinity-universe.com/) has some pretty kick ass terrain generation. Granted, it's a really different type of game, it's still pretty impressive. I have no doubt that a full dev team could do at least as well.

I meant just the planet generation - notice that planets in Spore are really small and you hop between one and another. Infinity is another good example, actually. Youve seen the planet engine videos and screenshots, right? Its amazing, but... entire planet looks exactly the same. You won't see landmarks, you won't see specific features normally hand made by map makers, you won't see anything unique that wasnt specifically coded in. Miles and miles of the same terrain without any memorable features, especially since its post apocalyptic, hence badlands. Granted, its probably more realistic that way, but its just boring.

Unless, of course, they somehow manage to code unique feature generation into their procedural algorithms.

Yeah, I'm interested in how Fez is going to turn out too.

Quite obviously awesome. I only wish Kokoromi/Polytron werent such assholes about it.