Portal for OSX now FREE! (until May 24th)

zweitplatzierungsboy

menace690 wrote:

I've never understood the Half Life craze. They were ok. Just generic FPS's. Am I missing something?

that depends, i guess.
i'm curious, if hl is generic, what's a good/special fps then?
personally i thought in hl1 it was genius to tell the story without shoving walls of text down your throat or halt gameplay only to show you some cutscene.
they were still there, but you could decide if you'd stay with the character you tells you or does something or go on/kill him. it felt so much more natural.

hl2 for me was the perfect example of not overusing gameplay elements and "training" a player. when you are about to exit the trainstation, a guard comes up, throws a can on the floor, tells you to pick it up and throw it in the trash.
that's basically how they show you the physics system. from there you are free to play around with it and discover for yourself.
well, if you really want to i could go on forever about this game... :)

HelixNRG

I'm kinda interested in buying Half Life for Mac with Steam (even after admitting I think playing games on the Mac is over - see comments here: http://emulation.macscene.net/component/content/article/186.html) but I read the system requirements - requires internet connection.

I'm going to be holidaying throughout Europe from August to December with a brand spanking new MacBook Pro 15", but I don't want to have to rely on always having an internet connection just to play a single player FPS. Do you ALWAYS need to be connected to the net just to play Steam games? That seems a bit silly.

Also, fired up Steam today and it downloaded an update for Portal - without asking me whether I wanted to download however large the file size was, or telling me what the update actually did. Not a fan of that either.

Can anyone clarify these issues?

- Alex

IUG

Yeah, that's normal for Steam unfortunately. The PC users have been putting up with that forever.

HelixNRG

That's a bit crap then.

I was just wanting to play a 'new' first person shooter between those times sightseeing (a holiday from the holiday if you like). I think then my comments hold true regarding my comments left on http://emulation.macscene.net/component/content/article/186.html.

I'd be better off installing Windows (7, I guess) and finding a boxed version of Half Life 2. Or Bioshock.

It also irritates me regarding Steam - it seems completely unintuitive to me due to those issues. I don't need to be online after I've bought music or apps on the ITunes Store. Wish Valve would spend time on making things a bit easier rather than making smug promotions about how they've brough Steam to the Mac...when it's kind of stupid.

Bit cross, sorry all :-)

- Alex

mossy_11

The automatic updates thing annoyed me too, but they're quick and painless, so I don't notice them very often.

There is also an offline mode (found in the "account" menu). I haven't used it, but you might be able to play your games that way -- just signing in for updates when you get a chance (unless offline mode doesn't work like that).

This is exactly the kind of thing that will slow the long-term uptake of Steam on Mac -- we don't put up with as much usability crap as PC users.

zweitplatzierungsboy

Offline mode works perfectly fine. I've just tried to start HL2 without an internet connection, no problem.
But of course you would need one to download and install the game from steam.
And with the PC version, when it came out the installed HL2 files were encrypted and you would have to go online for decryption. I guess they wanted to keep release dates, so that even if you had bought and installed the game, it won't work until they flipped the switch.

Don't know if it was still unplayable without internet connection and decrypted gamefiles, but 2 years ago offline mode worked fine already.

btw: a boxed copy wouldn't change anything, because the game still requires steam to run. it's the same as the steam download, only an older version (that gets patched of course) and you have a disc.

edit: i don't get why people bitch about the usability of steam? only because it looks different from every other mac app?
and thank god for auto-patching. i don't have to think about keeping up with updates, getting the correct version and installing it.

edit 2: if you get the boxed copy, you can still play it on the mac once you registered the key with you steam account, so in the end it comes down to how much you wanna spend and if you need a cd.

menace690

Mungo wrote:

menace690 wrote:

I've never understood the Half Life craze. They were ok. Just generic FPS's. Am I missing something?

that depends, i guess.
i'm curious, if hl is generic, what's a good/special fps then?
personally i thought in hl1 it was genius to tell the story without shoving walls of text down your throat or halt gameplay only to show you some cutscene.
they were still there, but you could decide if you'd stay with the character you tells you or does something or go on/kill him. it felt so much more natural.

hl2 for me was the perfect example of not overusing gameplay elements and "training" a player. when you are about to exit the trainstation, a guard comes up, throws a can on the floor, tells you to pick it up and throw it in the trash.
that's basically how they show you the physics system. from there you are free to play around with it and discover for yourself.
well, if you really want to i could go on forever about this game... :)

BioShock was pretty awesome.
Condemned was way different than anything I had played before.
And I love Uncharted 1 and 2, the combination of action and FPS was perfect.

Edit:Deus Ex!!!!

zweitplatzierungsboy

don't mean to be a smartass, but uncharted isn't a FPS, more like a 3rd person action-adventure :)
i've only played part 1, didn't like it too much. the gameplay was ok, but i hated the characters.

it's interesting that you'd pick bioshock and deus ex, i've always thought of them more of rpg's with a first person perspective, not particularly a "shooter". same with system shock.
and we have to thank warren spector for all of them. thanks.

mossy_11

Well there you have it then -- he prefers FPS-hybrids over "pure" FPS games (or should I say Doom-clones?) :P

The characters are a huge part of the draw of the Uncharted games, so if you don't like them you should probably skip the second one -- although it is a big improvement on the original.

HelixNRG

Thanks Mungo for clarifying things. I might well give HL2 a go given it can work offline, especially while it's on sale (when does the sale end?).

I love the idea that a 2010 MacBook Pro running OS X should play a FPS from 2004 well regarding frames per second and loading times, despite the OS X's graphics drivers being less optimised than Windows :-)

But Valve should be more specific with their system requirements. Obviously, I'm going to need a certain amount of RAM, graphics horsepower and storage space, but 'Internet Connection' implies being continuously online to play, just as i continously need that specific amount of memory, graphics card, drive space, etc. They should list it as 'Internet Connection (to download and install game initially) or words to that effect.

Thanks again guys!

- Alex

IUG

I was thinking about getting the Orange Box. Even though I already have Portal, even with the Half Life 2 sale and the episodes, for the price of HL2&EP1/2, you basically get Team Fortress 2 and Portal for free. And Team Fortress is coming to the Mac eventually, so might as well. I just don't have the money yet.

zweitplatzierungsboy

mossy_11 wrote:

Well there you have it then -- he prefers FPS-hybrids over "pure" FPS games (or should I say Doom-clones?) :P

whatever man, as long as we all can kill how we like to... :p

HelixNRG wrote:

I love the idea that a 2010 MacBook Pro running OS X should play a FPS from 2004 well regarding frames per second and loading times, despite the OS X's graphics drivers being less optimised than Windows :-)

Funnily enough, I've played HL2 and Portal in 2007 through Crossover and the performance was much better...

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