[Martinus]

Not one of these XBOX goof balls even realizes that every single game and piece of software ever written for their pathetic consoles, was written on either a PC, Mac, or Unix box...

But my xbox is a linux box...

*is confuzzled*

[aldo_14]

You mean whack.

As long as it wasn't 'wanks'..........

[Cyker]

I don't think anybody cares - Halo 2 is not good enough a game for anyone to upgrade their OS and entire hardware rig just to run it - They can make it as pretty as they like, but the game just wasn't that great.
At the moment, the ONLY reason I want to play Halo 3 is to get closure on the story - That's *it*. This is not enough motivation to make me buy an XBox360.

I don't know what's happening with the gaming market; It seems like some magic has been lost over the years - Halo 2 and Half-Life 2 are both far superior to their predecessors technically, but most people I know think the original were more... 'fun'.
I often suspect it's the striving for graphical quality over everything else - Most games seem like they're built around the graphics engine instead of the graphics engine being built around the game!

Most of the games I have fond memories for are ones that have had "Moments".

e.g., in TIE Fighter, the part when I got ordered to take out a mine-field in an unshielded TIE Interceptor, and then all hell broke loose when I did...

In Freespace 2, when the Psamtik opens fire on the Belisarius (I was like "OMFGWTFBBQ!DidYouSeeThat?!  ), when you meet the Ravana, and later the Sathanas. And who can forget "DIVE DIVE DIVE!!"

In Doom, the end of E1 is usually a memory for people - The whole build up of the level with the music, and when at the end you meet a Baron of Hell for the first time! (That roar it makes scared the shizzle out of me! Nevermind that they were quite wussy... )

In Half-Life... well, it was pretty much the whole game

In Halo, two were where me and my friend managed to get two Warthogs deep into the Cartographer structure (Using many a plasma-grenade and some creative driving ), and that part that builds up to you meeting The Flood.

System Shock 2... definitely when you meet SHODAN.

In Half-Life 2 and Halo 2, I can't recall any such events that just burned themselves into my brain. I dunno, maybe I'm getting old and jaded or something, but they just didn't draw me in like the originals.
In more modern shooters, FEAR, FarCry and Pariah for instance... they were pretty and the AI was clever and stuff... but y'know? They just didn't grab me... well actually no, FEAR was pretty good... it's given me a pathological fear of little girls in red dresses for one thing... 

[Shade]

I think if we were getting old and jaded, the originals would have lost their appeal as well But games that could keep me up playing all night 5-8 years ago can mostly still do it today. Hell, I sometimes even play old Amiga games with WinUAE (I actually have a working Amiga 1200 still, but the screen broke and it's impossible to get a new one these days ), there are definitely some classics there worth playing still. They're ugly as hell by today's standards (though nowhere near as ugly as PC games at the time, and the sound is actually quite good), but just... fun. Real, honest to god, no nonsense fun.

The thing is though, I can't really put my finger on what exactly it is that's wrong with some newer games. They almost universally look great and sound great and have generally more thought-out plots than most games of old, but somehow there's a lack of that fun factor. Is it that they're too polished, too realistic? Certainly, one of the reasons games are fun is because they're games, not reality. So if games becomes like reality, that might cost some of the fun. Could it be that the seemingly never ending wave of political correctness we're experienceing these days is affecting the games too, taking away some of their edge? Or maybe they've grown complex to the point of being too cumbersome for the average player to easily handle? I don't know what it is. I do know though, that there are exceptions: KOTOR, for instance, was amazing, including hitting that fun factor spot-on.

I just wish games like that were the rule instead of the exception.

[karajorma]

The Amiga had some of the finest games ever made on it. About the only reason I don't install UAE is cause you lot wouldn't see me for the next 6 months while I went back through UFO Enemy Unknown and a whole bunch of other stuff.

[Shade]

You can play that on a PC too... there's even a windows version. It stole a week of my life when I stumbled onto that despite having finished it many times over already By the way, I HATE Chryssalids. Anyways, there's just so many goodies for the Amiga I couldn't not intall UAE when I found out it existed. Pinball Dreams, Worms, Lemmings II, Superfrog, I could go on...

Damn it, now I gotta get my brother to come over and kick his ass in Pinball Dreams.

Sigh.

[Roanoke]

I recall being more impressed with Halo than Halo2, though I  think I was more interested in games back then than I am nowadays.

I agree with Icy though. Halo has done the SciFi matinee much better than any recent games. And who doesn't like Warthogs ?

[karajorma]

You can play that on a PC too.

I know. But I have the Amiga version

[CP5670]

My 16 year old Mac is loaded with all kinds of great games. I was just playing this one called Mission Starlight the other day. "Adolf Blittler" and his minions have taken over the Procyon system and you, the best pilot in the Starlight rebel faction, must stop them. The graphics are actually quite advanced for that time.

I got several cool games off Macintosh Garden that I would really like to try out, but they won't fit on floppies.

Lemmings II

I never managed to get the DOS version of this to work. I got the SNES version to work great on an emulator, although a few levels were different in that.

At least judging by the SNES version though, Lemmings 2 was way too easy. After finishing Lemmings and Oh no more Lemmings (the Mac versions too, which had excellent graphics and music), L2 felt like a walk in the park. It was a real pity, since all those extra skills they added in could have made for some very interesting levels.

[Shade]

All this reminds me, I gotta get Dosbox set up on this computer too. I absolutely need to play Privateer now that I finally have a computer fast enough to run it on an emulator

WinUAE and Dosbox are probably two of the best programs ever to see the light of day.

[Edit] Oh yeah, there were some great games for the Mac too. My best friend's father had one with all sorts of goodies on it way back when I was in the early years of school. I especially remember three games: A really cool racing game called Vette where you raced around a pretty detailed San Francisco, and some obscure little game where the objective was to drop a guy from a helicopter into a moving cart. And finally there was some adventure game, Spaceship somethingorother, which had really impressive graphics.

[Re-Edit] Warlock. Spaceship Warlock. That's what it was called.

[WeatherOp]

Hmmm, I must be the only one who liked Halo 2 more than the first one. And I like nether all that much. And they are allright into you fight the flood, then it gets really boring, because it is the same thing over and over and over.

Halo and Halo 2 are fun games, however they don't even come close to the 96% and 95% ratings they get.

However I guess Halo disapointed me more, because I got an X-box to play the first one.

[Cyker]

Halo and espescially Halo 2 are incredibly mediocre games.

There are a few saving graces:

1) The Warthog.
2) 2 Player mode.

Combined, these turn them into awesome games (Well, H2 less so...)
Without them... they just kinda suck.

The PC *REALLY* needs more co-op multiplayer games.
I don't understand WHY nobody does it... I mean, I can understand in the case of, say, Half-Life 2 (Freeman Clones! ), but Call of Duty 2 for instance - It's squad-based!! It's just BEGGING for a co-op mode!!

Oh yeah, and someone make a good co-op compatible campaign!!!

[Deepblue]

I thought they both were great because of the pure shooting action. Unlike HL2, they actually required fluid movement and strategy that resulted in an overwhelmingly positive experience for many people.

[CP5670]

The funny thing is, all the old games had co-op modes. Unreal and all three Descent games had them, and I think the Doom games did too. I guess games have taken a step backwards since then.

[Edit] Oh yeah, there were some great games for the Mac too. My best friend's father had one with all sorts of goodies on it way back when I was in the early years of school. I especially remember three games: A really cool racing game called Vette where you raced around a pretty detailed San Francisco, and some obscure little game where the objective was to drop a guy from a helicopter into a moving cart. And finally there was some adventure game, Spaceship somethingorother, which had really impressive graphics.

[Re-Edit] Warlock. Spaceship Warlock. That's what it was called.

Dude, I have all three of those. Vette was great. I spent so many hours doing crazy things in that game. The helicopter game was called Stuntcopter. I have it on a CD with about 500 other shareware/freeware things. Spaceship Warlock looks interesting, but the problem is it runs too slowly on this machine (33mhz '030 and 4MB memory ), as do some other games I have. I'm really thinking of getting a slightly newer Mac off ebay that still runs System 7.x but has somewhat better hardware. The Quadras usually go for less than $50 there and frequently even come with a monitor.

WinUAE and Dosbox are probably two of the best programs ever to see the light of day.

Dosbox is wonderful. Although I have an older computer set up just for running old games, including DOS stuff, so I usually just use that instead.

[aldo_14]

I can't speak of Halo 2, but Halo was one of the worst FPS' I've ever played on the PC; incredibly repetitive, weedy weapons and sound, dull story, crap vehicles, and boring enemies.  Not to mention the awful Pc conversion slowdowns.  I think Red Faction is the only game worse than it I've had the misfortune of buying.

[Deepblue]

I think the majority of people would disagree with you.

[Unknown Target]

But not many; Halo was recieved well on consoles for the same reason as Red Faction; they weren't used to anything better. Halo is better than what he described, IMO, but it's still not anywhere close to the best. It is, if anything, space marines done right (as opposed to the numerous other crap space marine games).

[Solatar]

I think the majority of people would disagree with you.

I downloaded the PC demo. Kinda fun for about 15 minutes. Then it just wasn't too great...

[Deepblue]

I find it superior to HL.

[Goober5000]

Actually, what got me interested in Halo was the story.  To be fair, I read The Fall of Reach first...