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Oh - and what am I playing? Mainly Day of Defeat, a free WWII mod for Half-Life. It's really very excellent - fantastic sound/gfx - but the team balance has been slightly broken in the most recent version (beta 3.1). Basically, back in beta 2, the Allies/Axis were perfectly balanced but weren't clones of each other. The Axis had superb machineguns and the most powerful infantry rifle, but the infantry rifle was slow to reload, had a tiny clip, and a bayonet for close in. The Allies had better light weapons, and the M1 rifle, which is pretty powerful/accurate, has a big clip, but can't be reloaded mid clip. It was balanced in the differences. It's now got to the point where both sides are pretty much identical, which is depressing.
But it's really good at encouraging teamplay on public servers (unlike Counter-Strike); you need to work together to make any progress - a single machine-gunner can pin down a whole team unless you work together with grenades etc to flank him. Also, because most of the weapons are SO fatal (either because of high damage, bleeding, or simple rate of fire), it's the first game I've played where suppressive fire actually WORKS. You get genuinely frightened of gunfire. There's nothing as hair-raising in it as trying to make it across the town square in Caen, hearing the unmistakable sound of an MG42 letting rip, diving to the ground and crawling behind a sandbag as the bullets whistle over your head. I'm not exaggerating; it's that good. And it's free, unlike MOHAA.
Other than that - Quake3 in the lunch hour as the new machines are powerful enough to easily run it. And it confirmed its status as probably the purest, simplest multiplayer shooter. No complex team play, but what maps, and what weapon physics. (Though Q2, as Rothkoid might well have discovered, stands the test of time remarkably well).
Phew. Stupid long post about geeky topics. |
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