I agree with every single one of your postulates! Such a nicely performing engine ruined by everything else!
Did anyone do a mod where the infinite NME regen is turned off? That's important to me. I want the places i risked my life to conquer, stay that way.
I'm a bit behind the curve on this one but I recently started playing this game and I've gotta say I'm not sure where all the bashing game from. So far I think it's great. Really fun and immersive. In fact the biggest complaint I've heard about this game is the one I'm finding it hardest to understand... i.e. respawing of enemies at guard stations / outposts. IMO the game would get pretty boring pretty fast if enemies didn't re-spawn since you spend so much time travelliing back and forth across the map that you need something to do in the mean time. The combat itself is pretty engaging, at least once I swapped from struggling with the control pad to the keyboard & Mouse. Before that combat was just a pain in the arse. That said though the combat in Crysis is still a lot more fullfilling (i've just finished warhead, it's not some random comparison) I regularly find myself missing the radar and stealth modes. As for the graphics... this game is easily one of the best looking things I've played. While it doesn't have the photorealism of Crysis, the more stylised graphics aren't far off Crysis IMO (this is the PC version at maximum of course). And on top of the that you have the huge open world nature of it and the really cool spreading fire effect. Overall, very impressed and dare I say it... a worhty successor to the original. (Not quite as good though
My problem was the use of diamonds as payment and you would find these diamonds in suitcases at random locations with no real logic behind it. Also respawns where bad becouse you just had to walk some 100m outside spawn radius and they would respawn. It would have been more imerssive would they have had something like Stalkers spawn system and AI job system. For me it's a deal breaker when AI just exists there to be killed. Imagine if they would have partrolled around the plains, hunting teams, faction wars etc. Actually I think devs said they would have something like this before it went multiplatform. Go figure.
Ehhh.. theres a damn big difference between monotone color scheme like Gears/KZ and FC2. "Brown" is just a way to big exaggeration regarding FC2. I sentence you to search up all my FC2 shots in screenshot thread and observe.
FC2 is from the school of games that use like a color filter over the camera so they can have that pretentious sepia tone-ish look. There's definitely something unnatural going on here Besides the respawning crap, there was also the issue of the place being a labyrinth (boring frustrating). And those annoying engine repair minigames you needed to do like 10 times an hour. Etc. Oh and the weird turbo monotone voiceovers spouting stuff that wasn't particularly motivating. And the lack of really any civilians which was just odd considering the location. Why are we fighting over this place anyway? Dumb. See STALKER for more interesting approach. Much better gunplay too. Oh and moddability.
Yikes is that supposed to give the game that old 1930s film look or what? Are we playing Grand Prix Legends here? Oh wait, GPL looked better than that.
I think a sepia filter is nice if A. It suits the setting of the game. B. It can be turned off. If both are not in the game, then the filter can go to hell.
There's A Fallout: New Vegas mod that lets you process the image like those shots. Not my cup of tea, I uninstalled it, but kudos for the many options. http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=39619 Lol, it's hard to resist giving it a shot after viewing that link.
"Piss filter" is a proper term. I remember it being an issue with many Xbox and PS2 games as well like MGS3 and Fable. The glow it produces was very annoying. As for FC2, it holds a certain place in my gaming heart, with so many interesting concepts that mostly ended up badly executed. Personally I find the Jackal character very fascinating, but then again, he's not original as he's based on Kurtz from Heart of Darkness. However, the "twist" by the end was interesting. I also found it difficult to accept the "country" that the game took place in as a complete country. Realistically, such a game needs to be much bigger in order to have that feeling. Honestly I would want a world the size of JC1 or 2, but that would require a high degree of detail which would make the game expensive. However, if half the game world is pure wilderness in the interior, with a coastline with a couple large cities and many villages, I can see it being possible, I can see it in my head quite well.