I'm Looking forward to Star Citizen. I'm not going to play it until the campaign's released; playing anything in bite sized chunks will nullify the intended experience. Not sure why there's people siding so much on ED or SC, I'm just glad there's some life back in a sparse genre. I will say I'm more excited for Star Citizen. I think that the campaign will inject a lot of lore and personality into the Universe of which ED doesn't seem to have right now. SC also seems to have quite a large team all working on different parts of the game e.g. the FPS. So I think in the long run SC will become the more complete game over time.
Both are important qualities to have. You can make a successful game with a light amount of gameplay if the game possesses other qualities, we're entertained by movies aren't we? Entertainment is entertainment. You can't succeed on looks alone, and I strongly think gameplay trumps all. I love The Walking Dead and Amnesia, but I love Deus Ex, STALKER, Half Life, DSII and C&C more, as there's more engagement and immersion.
I wouldn't play it, it's too depraved and goes a step beyond GTA by actually focusing on killing innocents and emphasising more detail on the suffering involved, and obviously the character's a psychopathic killer with an unreasonable hatred for people.
It's not the same as it used to be. Back when you could develop a game for a lot cheaper you could afford to take risks and creativity was very high, even with the higher end games of the time. But as the tech gets better, there's more money to be made, bigger markets to hit, bigger risks, more people involved who are more interested in business than gaming thus diluting the creative process to the point where games get pigeon holed in tried and tested genres that appeal to as many people as possible for the $$$. Luckily there's Kickstarter that's breathed some life back into the industry.
I'm more looking forward to Star Citizen. I think there's going to be more personality and character etched into the world because the team's creating a single player campaign featuring a supposedly rich story with alien races and a lot of added lore, which in turn should enhance the MMO-side of the game, getting you more involved and attached to the Universe.
That being said, I'm not really sure if Elite features a story or a campaign or how much there is or will be to do in the game, it's a mystery to me until I play it for myself. I haven't seen it from SC either but I know they're definitely striving to ultimately make a genre-defying magnum opus.
I think what makes the HL series so popular is how adventurous they feel. The level design changes where you're always in an interesting new area, yet you feel as though you're getting somewhere with nothing cutting the transitions. That coupled with a big sense of being in the moment. There's no big fat objective mark or a map, it's you making your way through the game with vague hints of what to do throughout. That along with being a well crafted all-round game with imaginative characters, story and level designs with fun no-nonsense gun-play. What's not to like.
You'll notice too that very few FPS games are as well made. There's usually something major lacking. Halo suffered from a lot of repetitious level design and few memorable characters. STALKER lacked polish and a strong story. FEAR, same as Halo, but with drab warehouses. System Shock 2 and all the other Shocks suffered from weak combat. Unreal suffered from lack of characters or story.
@KHAndAnime: I think the closer you try to hit the ultimate look, the more powerful technology needs to be to render it all in real time - which would cost way too much for most people to afford the technology, which means there's no reason for devs to spend so much to target so few people. It's easy to make things look a hell of a lot better from a jump of 500 polygons to 150,000, but then you need a lot more power just to improve visually on the smallest of things.
I played it 3 months back and I can't say I enjoyed it all that much, not sure I even enjoyed the shooting mechanics too much either; enemies became bullet sponges and certain guns felt either too weak or too strong both in terms of feel and damage. The story's bare bones, the characters aren't engaging, the quests are all very MMOish and the levels are too linear and too predictable in terms of where you'll get waves of enemies.
I did enjoy certain parts of the game though. There's a big "Oh shit" moment in the middle where you see a giant appear, but then the game ends with you fighting waves of standard enemies on a tiny map. The driving's quite fun and you get a good sense of how big the wasteland is, and overall it is a pretty good looking game despite the most amount of texture popping I've ever seen. I wouldn't replay it, you get a good sense that it's a game stuck in mid 2005 in terms of ideas and that it's suffered a long development process and unnecessary restrictions to cater it to consoles.
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