Half-Life 2.net Review

[Desyphur]

Why does he keep going back to the "lol TF is gay" thing in that review? Seriously, I don't think anyone is going to listen to him if he keep reviewing things like that...

[Ohcanep]

Some thoughts on bunnyhopping as an "ancient oriental art of jumping": FF (and other TF mods) include bunnyhopping, unlike pretty much any of the newer games. This means players who don't want to play on the last century engines wouldn't have the opportunity to exercise this beloved style of movement anymore if it wasn't for FF. Like it or not, it is indeed an unique movement technique mainly found in TF mods and as such it would be a shame to have it disappear forever.

Obviously not everyone new to Quake/TF based games will find "jumping like a rabbit" fun or reasonable. Nor will all of the old school players but there certainly are also those who do indeed enjoy this technique. So what does the way bunnyhopping was referred to in this particular review sound like? Surely that sentence didn't really encourage new players to find out what it is, yet that's what they need to do to find out whether they would actually like it.

Originally Posted by caesium

As well as the veterans, there will also be new players who are attracted to the game because of it's depth (this was how I myself got into TFC: I saw ppl doing crazy cool tricks with conc grens, and wanted to learn to do it.

Assuming the internets hasn't changed that much in the last few years, this will still be true to some extent. If it was't for skiing I probably wouldn't have played Tribes for as long as I did. Initially the concept of truly 3-dimensional action on huge maps of course did the trick but then something new made it even more fun. ...I guess what I'm basicly chattering about here is that the not-so-realistic fast-paced multiplayer games are currently being despised and pushed aside by the slower "tactical" shooters and it's not looking good for the former. Not only because of personal intrest towards those types of games but also because it could lead to a less colourful range of multiplayer mayhem to choose from.

Originally Posted by Mike.Gayner

The elitist clan players wanted it

Uhm I wouldn't call all the clan players elitists, even if some of those exist in each and every game, but since I tend to enjoy games where organized clan matches are possible in addition to public games, what do I know?

[Ihmhi]

Maps are painstakingly faithful to their TFC counterparts, and there are a total of 20 included in this build.

Where the fuck does he get 20 maps "included in this build"? It was nowhere near 20.

[MightyLotu]

new people to fortress games reading this won't want to play FF
crap review

[SoBe Green]

*sigh*
You guys are focusing too much on the fact that he brought up TF2 and FF in the same review. My point of posting this was the focus on the visual problems held in FF. I'm going to assume (and forgive me for doing so) that most of you haven't played TF2 yet. Anyone who has played both games for so long will notice the exact things he talks about on character models and visual styles of each map. It isn't a comparison of the two games by veterans of TF and TFC its what a new player is going to see.

Fact
Most players were turned off of TFC due to lack of "theme" and most levels looking like Half-Life. This was fine at the beginning of the Half-Life era but around the Counter-Strike era it started to take its toll. CS was great because you had textures not included in HL on the more popular maps. And from there most CS maps took the staple "dust" look. It was agreeable that dust textures were the "theme" players could attach to the game and the "aztec" was secondary. This even carried on to CS Source. Look at de_nuke in CS. Its made up of nothing but HL textures. How many servers run the map in rotation? Its not the layout that destroyed it but the way it looked.

Fact
FF doesn't have a theme. There aren't many maps that even somewhat resemble each other so the newer players at each turn are just going to feel more and more lost. The lack of visual signs or directions on each map adds to this. This isn't bashing FF its way too early to say all is lost.

Fact
TF2 (not comparing the two games just visualizations) has a general theme and does not go too far from it. The Red team is usually a "western" style part of the map. The Blue team is almost always "industrial". All maps carry this through all the way down to the core of each teams individual cap points or points to defend.

The positive side to FF is that you have different talent and different people all throwing in their designs so you don't really get a "stale" look. The entire point is that its also a downside when every new player has to wonder around trying to figure out what they are supposed to do and already its apparent most pub players don't even care about the flag because its not made apparent that they need to get it. This is where TF2 accels and please don't even try to label me a "fanboy" of either game until you've played both of them extensively. I love both games and will continue to play both games I'd just like to see FF take off and I feel this is (aside from any bugs) something the dev team should look into.

[barronofhellion]

just a quick poll, who actually reads reviews anyway ? i find out what actually people say about the game, and that gets me to try it , not what somebody that has enough time on there hands to pick apart something and try to blab on endlessly because he has been paid to do so.

[Nuk3m]

Originally Posted by SoBe Green

http://www.halflife2.net/2007/09/20/...ver-v1-review/



Hopefully there isn't any flaming for this. Sadly a lot of this review is true. This isn't me saying "FF sucks" or "TF2 is better!" its about the future of the TF community in general. And before any of you go blasting on me about hating FF, know that I was here back when the message boards had less than 100 registered users and posted for over a year before taking a break. Hopefully instead of locking this we can have a mature discussion. FF is a great game period and I love every second I play in it but this review brings in a lot of fine points about FF that will need to be addressed in the future. Its not a competition about two games but how one of the two can represent what we know as TF.

that was such a biased review.

[rizzo]

That review has some good points

[IvaQuaL]

It's not even a review, not even a preview, it's a piece of trash that should have never seen the light of day, let alone the front page of a major website.

I don't care about this TF2 >< FF rivality that some people like to push, it's not my intention to whiteknight either of them. The only thing that I mind is that piece of text harming the community (not considering it does harm to the website's credibility itself).

[Defrag]

The main thing I found annoying was that they picked our worst model by a mile for the header :P

[Dr.Uudge]

Originally Posted by Defrag

The main thing I found annoying was that they picked our worst model by a mile for the header :P

http://planethalflife.gamespy.com/Vi...s.Detail&id=38

Here is another review by a different perspective.

both reviews can be found on wiki it seems.

I went onto the half-life2.net forums and it's no surprise they will pick the worst of FF to represent it. they have a section called "mods" which have like 6 or 7 posts for ff, and a whole section devoted to TF2.

This planethalflife review is i think more fair, because he points out, that it's FF's first release, and has room to grow.

And he doesn't do a shameless plugin by saying "if you're new to the TF world, buy TF2." Eh... hello, TF2 play style with it's "slower tactical teamplay" is the diametric opposite of tf's fight or flight quick decision options. Newcomers going to TF2 will most definately keep them away from FF, due to the very opposite directions both of the devs took.

As for the attack on lack of theme(not from you Sobe, but from the reviewer)...that's just a low blow. Why is that reviewer trying to convince the public that a game needs a theme to be enjoyable. I don't remember playing unreal and going, "wow, this game has potential, but the lack of theme sure takes away from the gameplay."

I mean, if its supposed to be a gimick to attract new comers, i suppose that themes could be employed. But thats such a superficial way of advertising the aspects of a game, especially when it deals with physics and mechanics of the game itself. And personally, i dont' think there's any visual gimick that FF could employ to attract newcomers over TF2, especially since TF2 uses several lighting/shading algorithms to give the impressionistic effect, according to the TF2 dev team, which they said took a while(which is significant considering they were paid, and had many coders) to develop. And even currently, i think one of the FF dev guys mentioned that there's no animator right now.

In conclusion, i wish reviewers would get their nose out of valve's butt, and actually play/test/lan-match/read responses from the mod dev team, before they make a mockery of what's supposed to be a "review," and not "my opinion which is worth 100x more than a fair review."

[SoBe Green]

I agree the review is heavily biased but also find plenty of people here and on other websites just as biased the other way. Some people don't know how to be neutral so I just ignore it. There are plenty of reviews praising FF no use in so many people here losing their head over one bad review. The best part of FF and TF2 existing is that both sides have to continue to raise the bar and push for great things which is something the TF community has not had in a very long time. I don't see either game becoming "stale" or "ignored" in awhile and that makes me happy and should make everybody else happy too. Thanks to just about everybody here (with exceptions) for being able to talk about this without exploding because your favorite game got a bad review.

[Nurdbot]

Originally Posted by FF|Skyrider

I have to agree, the review is poor.


^ That image above, makes it even worse.

TF2 Fan boy I see.

I lol'd.

But I really do hope the devs re-design Heavy to look more like the Vulcan/Arnie HWG. The current one with the cap really looks dorky.

[Ohcanep]

Some maps are admittedly "out of place" compared to others. By this I mean that e.g. cornfield is built with HL2 textures and even has the citadel in there while e.g. shutdown2 goes by the familiar concrete theme, yet has a tad more life to it this time. All the CTF maps, excluding monkey, follow the same theme though which should make them quite recognisable from the others. AvD maps and hunted seem to have inherited the more realistic setting from TFC which I don't think is nescessarely bad. As you said, it breaks the constant concrete & steel look but at the same time brings some variation in. Not many newcomers have posted here about varying themes as far as I remember, maybe we could have a poll for questions like these on the front page?

[SoBe Green]

But you forget we are talking about the average joe here. Joe doesn't visit many gaming websites or message boards. Joe also makes the world go round. Joe is the quiet guy in the server that you may or may not be killing every second. Joe is the guy that sits in there all day regardless of score. Joe is the guy that doesn't reconnect because he/she is embarrassed about his/her "skill". By looking at the amount of players playing FF right now there aren't many Joes in FF. If I were to take a guess I'd say FF has about 200 TF/C vets playing, 100 random people testing out a new game, and about 50 guys just enjoying the game at that exact time (average joe).

[bokko]

Fortress Forever can't really compete with Valve in terms of design, themes etc. The dev team are better off improving other things. Perhaps they could put more effort into distinguish the classes in future patches. The whole 'theme' thing seems a bit pointless though, after all this is a community driven modification so there will always be new custom made maps coming in.

[Foxtrick]

Most players were turned off of TFC due to lack of "theme" and most levels looking like Half-Life. This was fine at the beginning of the Half-Life era but around the Counter-Strike era it started to take its toll. CS was great because you had textures not included in HL on the more popular maps. And from there most CS maps took the staple "dust" look. It was agreeable that dust textures were the "theme" players could attach to the game and the "aztec" was secondary. This even carried on to CS Source. Look at de_nuke in CS. Its made up of nothing but HL textures. How many servers run the map in rotation? Its not the layout that destroyed it but the way it looked.

So you're saying, that the slightly higher population that TFC had, over CS, at several moments in HL1's existance was nothing notable then? Disclaimer, no means saying TFC was more popular generally or consistantly but for a period it was certainly close, and TFC was a huge game for some years .. just like CS. The only thing I could possibly say about TFC was there wasn't enough box's and layabout decor, but that was nothing notable in a action based, insta-respawn/gib game. Which is not CS.

I don't think a lack of 'theme' or used HL1 textures being used has anything to do with a downfall in TFC. Everyone I know who played TFC(hundreds, probably a thousand or more people over the years) didn't go around thinking 'oh its just Half-Life', bearing in mind HL had a huge, overly stocked set of textures that was never over used in the actual single player we all completed several times.

TFC died/dieing because they had a near perfect game they didn't need to do anything to, the issues later became that, it didnt make them any further money. Future patches was sporadic, and superficial to a superseded engine they was already developing and going to make money on. Its simple. Valve wanted it this way. I think its miraculous they didn't port a TFC over just for the hell of it, and dev from there. To develop something new and so different I thought was very dangerous and risky, even if it makes them another line of money, they could have easily just made their own 'sven-coop' - now thats a game

[SoBe Green]

Not only do I think that, it is true. Over the years CS was not only something new in terms of multiplayer fps it looked new too. Yes TFC had a larger player base than CS did in the early CS days. But compared to CS TFC is/was very ugly and that can not be contested. Over the years the Half-Life engine received updates and CS was updated to take advantage of these updates. Anyone who remembers when de_piranesi was released will remember how awesome it was to see a realistic tree on the HL engine. TFC was never given any opportunities or visual upgrades except for the newer player models which most hardcore TF players will swear were the worst thing to ever happen to the game. Its that kind of thinking that can hurt FF. Who here hasn't honestly saw a new guy play TFC and say "This game is ugly as hell." I see it now in CS 1.6. Yes people still play both games and visualizations aren't everything but they damn sure do hook people from the start and a game like this thats based on an idea so old needs that more than anything.

[lollerskates]

Originally Posted by Ihmhi

Where the fuck does he get 20 maps "included in this build"? It was nowhere near 20.

Not to mention that only a couple of the FF maps are actually played. I haven't seen 2morforever, cz2, dm or hunted on any server, even once. I doubt I ever will. Basically it's just well and dustbowl.

Originally Posted by SoBe Green

Fact
Most players were turned off of TFC due to lack of "theme" and most levels looking like Half-Life. This was fine at the beginning of the Half-Life era but around the Counter-Strike era it started to take its toll. CS was great because you had textures not included in HL on the more popular maps.

TFC uses custom textures.

Look at de_nuke in CS. Its made up of nothing but HL textures. How many servers run the map in rotation? Its not the layout that destroyed it but the way it looked.

de_nuke has been in CS since the first few versions, and they ported it to CS:S. It wasn't "destroyed."

The entire point is that its also a downside when every new player has to wonder around trying to figure out what they are supposed to do.

Why would a lack of a unified art style confuse players?

and already its apparent most pub players don't even care about the flag because its not made apparent that they need to get it.

When you load a map it tells you what to do, and you'll periodically hear announcements like "your team has the enemy flag." If someone doesn't get it, it really isn't the game's fault.

It's nice that TF2 has a distinct art and level design style, but not all levels have to look the same.

[SoBe Green]

Most of TFC's textures are from Half-Life. Go look.

I was talking in public play about de_nuke try to use common sense. The fact it was ported means nothing and I was well aware of that fact when I posted it. Once again use common sense.

Every post I have made has explained why lack of a unified art system could confuse players and it does. Once again common sense.

TFC had those same announcements. Players need a reason to get the flag. Just like players have a reason to plant a bomb in CS. rock2 was a popular pub map because players were rewarded for "capping" but the layout caused most to move away from it later on. You haven't played TF2 obviously, there isn't even a flag in the game and I've seen far more caps there than in FF.

In the future don't quote lines out of another post it just takes up room, looks ugly, and shows you can't use your memory to save your life. But with a name like lollerskates I wouldn't expect any different. I don't mind open discussion but at least have strong point when trying.