My confession: I think Half-Life 2 is overrated.

Never really understood the obsession with the HL series. While the original HL did have some good AI for the time, I feel the linear-style of gameplay and level design was outdated by the time HL2 came out.

I remember being much more impressed by Far Cry at the time.

(I also don't care if HL3 ever comes out.)

VileR wrote on 2022-12-18, 21:45:

Guitar distortion produces tons of sustain with varying complex harmonics in the waveform, which is far from trivial to simulate. And common playing techniques (palm muting, fifths/power chords, 'pinch' harmonics) modulate that even further. Wavetable or FM synths are just not equipped for the job.

On the other hand, crap guitar is kinda ingrained into the experience of playing DOOM by now...

Well explained. This was my understanding too, as a former guitar hobbyist.

Single note material can be 'passable' (with very low standards). But multiple strings vibrating simultaneously, at the low end - thus a broad range of audible harmonic overtones - and distortion overtones! - with various elements sustaining across various times, it's pretty much Nightmare City in Romplersville.

I only play DOOM with a KORG NS5R.

the lack of standards. i either love or hate it depending on whether a game i want to play works or not. not particularly fond of via's drivers...

I could have purchased a GS capable Roland EM-15 keyboard today for 55 CAN$ . I passed on it.

Soundbank specs are similar to those of an SC-50, but the thing dates back to the early 2000s AFAICT (well after the SC-50) and it reportedly has a 1 MegaByte ROM (not sure if true/accurate).

Should I regret it ?

darry wrote on 2022-12-21, 04:56:

I could have purchased a GS capable Roland EM-15 keyboard today for 55 CAN$ . I passed on it.

Soundbank specs are similar to those of an SC-50, but the thing dates back to the early 2000s AFAICT (well after the SC-50) and it reportedly has a 1 MegaByte ROM (not sure if true/accurate).

Should I regret it ?

On a scale of 1-10 your regret should be around 11.

Bought Roland MT-32 three years ago. Haven't even tested it 🙁

kixs wrote on 2022-12-21, 14:13:

Bought Roland MT-32 three years ago. Haven't even tested it 🙁

It's the warm fuzzy feeling of having something in one's possession 😀

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-12-18, 21:50:

My confession: I think Half-Life 2 is overrated.

Never really understood the obsession with the HL series. While the original HL did have some good AI for the time, I feel the linear-style of gameplay and level design was outdated by the time HL2 came out.

I'm biased, but I think DF2: Jedi Knight was a better overall game, though original Half-Life was certainly great at the time. Maybe it's just the rule-of-cool that you have a lightsaber and Force powers in one, but the story and characters in Jedi Knight are stronger to me. But for whatever reasons, HL always seems to overshadow Jedi Knight, even though Jedi Knight did it first.

kixs wrote on 2022-12-21, 14:13:

Bought Roland MT-32 three years ago. Haven't even tested it 🙁

Could be worse. I have three of them, but can use one at a time. 😜

appiah4 wrote on 2022-12-21, 14:07:

darry wrote on 2022-12-21, 04:56:

I could have purchased a GS capable Roland EM-15 keyboard today for 55 CAN$ . I passed on it.

Soundbank specs are similar to those of an SC-50, but the thing dates back to the early 2000s AFAICT (well after the SC-50) and it reportedly has a 1 MegaByte ROM (not sure if true/accurate).

Should I regret it ?

On a scale of 1-10 your regret should be around 11.

Well OK , but I would need to understand what's special about it .

TBH, I'm running out of space and I do already have, just on the Roland side of things :
- 1x SC-D70
- 1x SC-55 MK1
- 2x SC-88VL
- 1x MT-32 (old)
- 1x RA-50

I try to keep an eye out for higher end Roland GS capable hardware (modules or keyboards), and the EM-15 seemed like a lower end unit. Granted, if I did not already own multiple GS devices, I would have been over the Moon about it.

Maybe my internal anti-hoarding safeguards were working too well. 😉

EDIT : I'm also on the lookout for LA synthesis based Roland gear the is CM32L compatible .

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-12-18, 21:50:

My confession: I think Half-Life 2 is overrated.

You aren't alone on this one. In '04 it was more about Farcry and UT2004 for me (and Farcry was the underdog then long before Ubi's tendrils got in and milked it later). Hype on HL2 was already nuts in 03 with obviously untextured WIP screenshots fantasized about (i.e. magazine scans of yellowy untextured prison that already looks unfun and cramped). Any criticism about HL2 then would be seen as blasphemous as criticizing Souls-likes now (and that's before the steam pains set in)

I got HL2 free with an ATI graphics card, it was a popular voucher scheme at the time. A 9600XT or something something, iirc. Played about quarter of the game, then just petered out and didn't continue. I found it good, but not can't-put-it-down good.

I then proceeded to not use Steam for several years, lost all records of login, and now have the great honour of owning a game that I can never access again.

Just one of the many reasons why I don't bother with digital game stores, pretty much ever. Yet funnily enough I never run out of amazing games to play, and have a never ending To-Play list full of kick-ass stuff on various different platforms.

Oh, and another contentious confession: FPS (as a genre / presentation style) is boring and lazy and unimaginative, and homogenises gaming down to various flavours of Doom-like. "Oh but this time we've got different looking guns! Oh but this one's in war time! Oh but this one's in space! Oh but this one's on a tropical island!" - who cares??? it's the same thing: first-person viewport into shooty-shootsville. Games can be so many different things. Stop FPSing everything.

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-12-21, 21:27:

Oh, and another contentious confession: FPS (as a genre / presentation style) is boring and lazy and unimaginative, and homogenises gaming down to various flavours of Doom-like. "Oh but this time we've got different looking guns! Oh but this one's in war time! Oh but this one's in space! Oh but this one's on a tropical island!" - who cares??? it's the same thing: first-person viewport into shooty-shootsville. Games can be so many different things. Stop FPSing everything.

That's likely going back to the market chasing its own tail. Product A is commercially successful. So the suits at Company B think they have to make something like Product A as well. Or consumers are told by "experts" that they need products with feature X. So they start shopping for feature X. Companies then start adding feature X to their products because that's what the market demands, regardless whether that demand was organic or not. Everything in this world, including money, operates not on reality but on the perception of reality. The older i get, the more I realize Sneakers was decades ahead of its time.

That said, a first-person camera is much easier than a third-person camera to implement. There's no question whether it's "fair" in gameplay to let a player see around corners or over walls. Perhaps most of all, you don't need to worry about the camera bumping against or clipping through walls and boundaries. How many first-person titles have you felt like you're wrestling with the camera in order to play the game?

And then you occasionally get things like Mirror's Edge where the first-person perspective wasn't the limitation a lot of people thought it would be, and instead became one of the defining features.

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-12-21, 17:44:

kixs wrote on 2022-12-21, 14:13:

Bought Roland MT-32 three years ago. Haven't even tested it 🙁

Could be worse. I have three of them, but can use one at a time. 😜

It looks nice on the shelf with SC-88 PRO and SC-55 stacked on top 🤣

leileilol wrote on 2022-12-21, 20:13:

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-12-18, 21:50:

My confession: I think Half-Life 2 is overrated.

You aren't alone on this one. In '04 it was more about Farcry and UT2004 for me (and Farcry was the underdog then long before Ubi's tendrils got in and milked it later). Hype on HL2 was already nuts in 03 with obviously untextured WIP screenshots fantasized about (i.e. magazine scans of yellowy untextured prison that already looks unfun and cramped). Any criticism about HL2 then would be seen as blasphemous as criticizing Souls-likes now (and that's before the steam pains set in)

I always LOADING... thought that LOADING... Half-Life 2 LOADING... was ass.

I think Doom 3 was and is the way superior game in every way.

The small maps and insane amount of loading is a problem. It breaks the momentum in an otherwise fast paced game. It's also a little gimmicky. But out of the big 3 of 2004 (Doom3, Half-Life 2, Far Cry), Half-Life 2 is the best one. Far Cry is a good game, but always felt a little soulless to me and I never beat it, and the gunplay in Doom3 is a little lackluster. The guns just has no punch to them in part because of bad sound design (only for the guns). It also becomes repetitive after about 2 hours until you go to hell. You just roam the same looking dark sci-fi laboratories for 6 hours straight. And the game itself doesn't even look all that great aside of the lighting tech.

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-12-22, 07:26:

It also becomes repetitive after about 2 hours until you go to hell. You just roam the same looking dark sci-fi laboratories for 6 hours straight.

This is why I've always been puzzled why HL2 and Doom 3 have been in some weird competition ever since they came out that doesn't seem to end, they are so different in design I have trouble seeing anything else they have in common other than that they are both FPS games. So it's no wonder they will devide opinions based on what kind of gameplay the player prefers.

I've personally always preferred Far Cry's shooting mechanics over HL2, I get they wanted players get closer to the enemy in HL2 by making guns mostly inaccurate but I find that a bit annoying at times. Overall I still like HL2 more since to me variation and changing scenery is king in story driven FPS games, therefore Doom 3 was never my cup of tea.

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-12-22, 07:26:

The small maps and insane amount of loading is a problem. It breaks the momentum in an otherwise fast paced game. It's also a little gimmicky. But out of the big 3 of 2004 (Doom3, Half-Life 2, Far Cry), Half-Life 2 is the best one. Far Cry is a good game, but always felt a little soulless to me and I never beat it, and the gunplay in Doom3 is a little lackluster. The guns just has no punch to them in part because of bad sound design (only for the guns). It also becomes repetitive after about 2 hours until you go to hell. You just roam the same looking dark sci-fi laboratories for 6 hours straight. And the game itself doesn't even look all that great aside of the lighting tech.

Doom 3 collectors on the OG Xbox the shadows, sounds, environmental lighting and jump scares were pretty fun. Exploring and piecing together the lore. But halfway through I discovered the cheat codes and had checked out of the game combat wise. So having infitie ammo and all the guns made the rest of the grind pretty fun xD

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-12-18, 21:50:

My confession: I think Half-Life 2 is overrated.

As someone whose favorite PC game is HL1, I too think it is. HL2 is a fine game, but it's erased the first game in any form other than Black Mesa or the occasional novelty. I think HL2 tends to get a little too much praise, to the point of some of them being... kinda not true. Like the "invisible" tutorials and "no cutscenes ever, always interactive".
It's not a bad game, but people are way to eager to hype up games in both the good and bad direction. Like Ocarina of Time, for example, is definitely not the greatest game ever, but it keeps getting called it because millennials control the gaming media and it's what they played as a kid. I think any list of "the best games of all time" or anyone who says any one game is "the best game of all time" is likely to mean "this is my favorite game of all time".
Personally, I'd say that the greatest game of all time is probably something simplistic but evergreen, like Tetris.