[Rictor]

$35 for the lot. Got BG&E at EB, and the rest at some bookstore, where I didn't even go in to buy games but could resist. That, and I'm getting Halflife 2 (legit) tommorow, but it's full price. Good times.

[Ford Prefect]

Is Tribes Vengeance any good? I used to play Tribes 2.

[Rictor]

It's made by the same guys that did System Shock 2. So that should clear that up. As far as I know, it's good, both as singleplayer and multiplayer. It's just that it sold like crap and was not embraced by the Tribes community, so it sort of just...well I can't say it faded away because it never shone, but you get the idea. It was largely ignored. Try the demo(s).

[CP5670]

FYI for Deus Ex Invisible War you'll need to drop down the graphical settings a lot or have a monster system. Some areas will be choppy no matter what, but there are a couple of tweaks that improve performance a fair bit. It's not up to the standards of the first game, but is still one of the better games I've played in the last two years.

[Turnsky]

FYI for Deus Ex Invisible War you'll need to drop down the graphical settings a lot or have a monster system. Some areas will be choppy no matter what, but there are a couple of tweaks that improve performance a fair bit. It's not up to the standards of the first game, but is still one of the better games I've played in the last two years.

yeah, no kidding, DX2 was a resource hog bar none, Doom 3 runs far better on a low end system in comparison.

[CP5670]

I think this was the first of the really badly optimized modern games, in the same line as some of the games we're getting now. Some parts of the Greasel Pit map for example crawl even on my SLI setup with the resolution and settings turned down. Although it seems to run better on ATI cards than equivalent Nvidia ones.

[redsniper]

Ahhh... Beyond Good & Evil, short but very, very sweet. It needs a sequel just as badly as FS2 does.

[Nix]

DX:IW was a rushed embarassment. Underappreciated by the DX community for good reason.  The graphics were clearly under-par due to the fact that its essentially an xbox port. I have some high res graphics packs that will make it much more pretty.  Back on the ionstorm forums people were completing the game in about two hours, speed-run style that is.  Grab DX1 instead.  Its probably cheaper and is much more satisfying.

Tribes:V rocked.  That's a worthy piece of work. Irrational made a pretty decent story with a fun way to do stuff.  I never was a tribes player but I guess I missed out on a lot.

[Rictor]

Yeah, DX:IW was botched up pretty badly, according to the response of most people in the community. But having played through DX1 several times, and loving it (just like everyone else), it's worth it to get Invisible War for $10 and play through it, just to keep up on the story-line. Besides, Gamerankings.com give it an 83% average, which isn't that bad at all.

[CP5670]

It's actually not a bad game at all, if you leave aside the horrible graphics engine. I think it still ranks among the top three games I've played during the last two years. It's just that in comparison to the first DX, it's a piece of crap.

[Janos]

Chip's Challenge and Jezzball.

Also, Rodent's Revenge.

[Nix]

DX:IW for fans of the first game, yes, it's horrid utter crap.  The community has made better mods for DX1 (Zodiac shows off what Paul Denton would have done either just before or at the same time JC starts looking for the terrorist leader on Liberty Island) As a game by itself, it has standing power alone.  I couldnt help notice though such high ratings most game sites gave this game, and looking in utter amazement. At first, I liked it first playthrough.  Then after I figured out how to widen out the HUD and stuff, and apply the higher-quality graphics, I liked it a lot more, but comparing it to the first, it's a complete dissapointment.  Apparently they tweaked the engine so much that it couldnt render water or something, due to limitations of the xbox I think, and that's why you'll get to a certain part that's all frozen over instead of having water all around like in the first game.  There was a lot MORE they could have done with the game, and when the news broke that they axed the PC Code tree, a lot of hearts were broken over on the PC side, cause some of the early screenshots were very impressive.  (Anyone remember at least the ATM shot, and the honeycomb HUD?)  But HEY! for 10 bucks, it's worth a good playthrough. I'm bitter cause I spent 50 on it plus 12 for overnight shipping.  Yes, I played the demo before I bought it, and I was hyped up like hell cause of it.  After working through the whole thing it was another story though.. 

Oh yeah, if you play without JohnP's texture packs, look for ovbious blatant misspellings on very prominent places throughout the game.  WTF were they thinking...


An underplayed and underappreciated game I liked a couple years back was Chaser.  For a dumb, mindless FPS, it was fairly entertaining, but what was interesting about it, the engine was made by someone OTHER Than the big three (id, Epic, and Crytek)  It was made by Cauldron, little known here back in the states.  Another game I actually liked was one called Bandits, from the same developers that brought us the highly addictive Ballistics.  Third-person vehicular Mad-Max style game.  I got a kick outta that one.  But as for newer games, I really thoroughly enjoy SWAT4, made by good ol' Irrational, using the Vengeance Engine, but I guess that's a pretty popular game.  I cant think of any underappreciated games that are this new at the moment.. 

[Roanoke]

It's actually not a bad game at all, if you leave aside the horrible graphics engine. I think it still ranks among the top three games I've played during the last two years. It's just that in comparison to the first DX, it's a piece of crap.

I hate games with mega-weak weapons. Even the lowliest scientist takes about 4 headshots before dropping.

[CP5670]

DX:IW for fans of the first game, yes, it's horrid utter crap.  The community has made better mods for DX1 (Zodiac shows off what Paul Denton would have done either just before or at the same time JC starts looking for the terrorist leader on Liberty Island) As a game by itself, it has standing power alone.  I couldnt help notice though such high ratings most game sites gave this game, and looking in utter amazement. At first, I liked it first playthrough.  Then after I figured out how to widen out the HUD and stuff, and apply the higher-quality graphics, I liked it a lot more, but comparing it to the first, it's a complete dissapointment.  Apparently they tweaked the engine so much that it couldnt render water or something, due to limitations of the xbox I think, and that's why you'll get to a certain part that's all frozen over instead of having water all around like in the first game.  There was a lot MORE they could have done with the game, and when the news broke that they axed the PC Code tree, a lot of hearts were broken over on the PC side, cause some of the early screenshots were very impressive.  (Anyone remember at least the ATM shot, and the honeycomb HUD?)  But HEY! for 10 bucks, it's worth a good playthrough. I'm bitter cause I spent 50 on it plus 12 for overnight shipping.  Yes, I played the demo before I bought it, and I was hyped up like hell cause of it.  After working through the whole thing it was another story though..

I got it for $15 shipped off ebay (pretty soon after it come out, actually), so it was pretty decent for that price. I was already expecting it to be a big letdown after playing the demo though, which showcased pretty much all of the problems/limitations of the full game. The general framework of the story actually had a lot of potential and I think it could have been even better than the first DX if they had put in anywhere near the level of small details that the first game's story had, which makes it all the worse that the game sucked so much.

The funny thing is despite all the corner-cutting they did on the PC version in favor of the xbox one, the xbox version runs just as badly. My brother rented it at one point and it drops into single digit framerates all the time. It's no wonder the game's price fell so quickly on both platforms.

By the way, in the first DX, I only just discovered the LAM climbing trick. I went up one of the towers in the Wan Chai map and ran into the Max Chen that they placed on the top, without any cheating. I've gotten as much fun out of this game from finding its glitches as playing the game normally, and I have played through it 12 or so times. That being said, DXIW had more than its fair share of fun glitches too (I once got all the civilians in Trier somehow afraid of a mouse that was running around, and of course there are all the usual Havok bugs).

Oh yeah, if you play without JohnP's texture packs, look for ovbious blatant misspellings on very prominent places throughout the game.  WTF were they thinking...

LOL I noticed that too. "Hanger" and "Maintinence"?

I hate games with mega-weak weapons. Even the lowliest scientist takes about 4 headshots before dropping.

I generally don't mind that and think most modern games have gone too far in the other direction (we need more singleplayer combat like the first Unreal had), but it didn't fit in with this type of game.

One really stupid thing was how the sniper rifle became like 5x more powerful when you used the scope, even at point-blank range.

[Roanoke]

I hate games with mega-weak weapons. Even the lowliest scientist takes about 4 headshots before dropping.

I generally don't mind that and think most modern games have gone too far in the other direction (we need more singleplayer combat like the first Unreal had), but it didn't fit in with this type of game.

One really stupid thing was how the sniper rifle became like 5x more powerful when you used the scope, even at point-blank range.

I'm not a gun lovin' RedNeck or anything bit I don't care much for games that trivialise guns like that. I prefer the one-shot tension and really solid, meaty guns of games like Rainbow Six. Something like an AK47, which can be quite weedy in some games (especially Flashpoint) sounded well, almost violent, which I thought was pretty cool.

[Edward Bradshaw]

FYI for Deus Ex Invisible War you'll need to drop down the graphical settings a lot or have a monster system. Some areas will be choppy no matter what, but there are a couple of tweaks that improve performance a fair bit. It's not up to the standards of the first game, but is still one of the better games I've played in the last two years.

yeah, no kidding, DX2 was a resource hog bar none, Doom 3 runs far better on a low end system in comparison.

I cant even play it because you HAVE to have a card that supports pixel shaders

[pyro-manic]

Beyond Good & Evil is the best game I've played for years. Up there with ICO, SS2 and FF7 and the like.

[Cobra]

this is a good action/RPG game.



the only trouble is that when you play it on a Windows XP the controls get choppy.

the good thing is, invincibility charms, light charms, fire spells, etc, getting a mace/halberd/morning star/long swords and slicing the undead into pieces.

[Falcon]

SkiFree has to be one of my favorites.

[knn]

this is a good action/RPG game.



the only trouble is that when you play it on a Windows XP the controls get choppy.

Not really
I had to disassemble the executable and hack it only to start it under XP(and it's a legal copy). After that in DirectX mode everything was black except the characters. It worked in software mode, but I didn't find it that good, it became boring after a while. And to think that I installed Win98 only to run this game and BC3000AD