How to feel about Valve (a love/hate rant of sorts)
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By releasing an astounding series of games that raised the bar for FPS games, as well as nearly single-handedly saving the PC gaming market with the steam platformXvito said:
(i shudder to think how bad the other digital distribution systems would be if they weren't about)
Their 'god-like status' has been thoroughly well-earned.
I'm truely shocked at the levels of hate in this thread.
nobody is perfect (i think they dropped the ball a little with the L4D2 thing, but thats a minor annoyance really).
As for them not supporting the PS3? I can't say i blame them. They're a PC-based company through and through.
compared to the PC, even the 360 support is left out in the cold (TF2 updates and so on)
IMHO they release for the 360 because it's broadly similar to the PC and requires relatively minor changes to port over.
The PS3 is a completely different barrel of fish. It's not just different to code for, but HUGELY different. As in little or no code can be re-used, it's essentially has to be re-written from scratch for the PS3's strange CPU.
Valve aren't a huge company, so i'm glad they're focussing on actually making games than trying to code for an awkward console...
I really like Doom. Mindless fun = Win!Skutch said:
I really don't like Half-Life. I just don't get what's so special about it...? It has a serious lack of both character and story, it has some of the worst level design in any game that I've played, the puzzles are stupid and most of the enemies are annoying and not challenging and fearsome, the weapons feel powerless and to boot they don't feel very different from one another.
Also, how darn young do you think that I am? "You had to be there..."
I think that I can safely say that I was there, at least for Half-Life 2. A game that is even worse than it's predecessor, mostly due to the introduction of gamings most annoying weapon... The Gravity Gun.
Raised the bar how? Assuming you're talking about the Half-Life series, I just don't get it...? The games are just not that good! In my opinion they aren't good at all...koichan said:
Also, I can't say I like Steam either. Having to play the games from a program that I have no control over... No thanks!
Well if the birthdate on your profile is to be believed, you would have been all of 6 years old when the first Half-Life was released. It's interesting that your opinions of the individual game elements is the exact polar opposite of how most people feel about them. The characters are considered some of the most well developed and interesting, the story is considered rich and compelling, the level design and world environments were hailed as brilliant, and the puzzles were a lot more challenging than most FPS games of the time, which seemed to think of such things solely as a means to pad out the game and give you something to do while you mindlessly wander around murdering monsters with incredibly awful AI.Xvito said:
Why do people think Halo 2 and 3 were awesome? Why do people buy the new Madden games every year? After all, they're all basically the same game with maybe a few new elements added in, right? Why is is that anytime a game comes out that is a huge hit, the market gets flooded with similar games (Doom clones, GTA clones, Halo clones, WoW clones,etc.)?Xvito said:
Presumably, you would hypothetically love it because it is more of what you already love, only maybe a bit better or a little different.
I don't really have any bad things to say about Valve, since I own precisely none of their products. At one point I was interested in acquiring Half-Life thanks to the ridiculously widespread critical acclaim but for various reasons I didn't, and my enthusiasm diminished somewhat when I noticed they kept on releasing "Half-Life: Slightly Improved Edition!" for bloody years.
I've also come to understand that it wasn't Half-Life's surfeit of quality that led to the universal accolades (though it wasn't bad (except the Xen levels)), it was the contrast between it and the horrible Doom rip-offs the industry had been churning out prior to Half-Life that made it look so bloody fantastic. The Half-Life series seems to be a decent set of games that are not nearly as amazing as the fans like to insist they are, but there's nothing wrong with that.
What IS wrong is that Valve apparently doesn't understand how "episodic gaming" works - you make shorter games which take you less time to develop so you can release them at regular intervals. Valve certainly got the "shorter!" part right, but the bit where each episode is separated by a gap of bloody years clearly illustrates a fundamental failure to grasp the concept. A company like Telltale is doing episodic gaming correctly, Valve has just tacked the words "Episode" onto their Half-Life 2 additions, which isn't the same thing at all.
I've also come to understand that it wasn't Half-Life's surfeit of quality that led to the universal accolades (though it wasn't bad (except the Xen levels)), it was the contrast between it and the horrible Doom rip-offs the industry had been churning out prior to Half-Life that made it look so bloody fantastic. The Half-Life series seems to be a decent set of games that are not nearly as amazing as the fans like to insist they are, but there's nothing wrong with that.
What IS wrong is that Valve apparently doesn't understand how "episodic gaming" works - you make shorter games which take you less time to develop so you can release them at regular intervals. Valve certainly got the "shorter!" part right, but the bit where each episode is separated by a gap of bloody years clearly illustrates a fundamental failure to grasp the concept. A company like Telltale is doing episodic gaming correctly, Valve has just tacked the words "Episode" onto their Half-Life 2 additions, which isn't the same thing at all.
That's funny because that's all I see Valve doing when they release a statement.Xyphon said:
Yea, I played the obox and it was fun (especially portal) but the rest of their work is pretty meh. There's only so many FPSs I can play through.
I try not to anticipate any release too eagerly. It usually leads to disappointment: San Andreas is one of my all time favorite games but gta4 (even though it looked much nicer) didn't live up to the fun I was expecting.
Then it would seem that fans need to learn to be patient more than anything?
Rushing things is how you make a possibly good game into a sub-par game with more bugs to work out.
I'd rather a company take their time on a game and make the final product worth-while, not shell out a sequel in a year because the fans demand it. That would just prove they care more about making money off the consumer than providing a decent product.
You can't rush art, in any form.
Rushing things is how you make a possibly good game into a sub-par game with more bugs to work out.
I'd rather a company take their time on a game and make the final product worth-while, not shell out a sequel in a year because the fans demand it. That would just prove they care more about making money off the consumer than providing a decent product.
You can't rush art, in any form.
Valve let you guys know exactly what they thought of you when they started production on "Left 4 Dead 2" the day after "Left 4 Dead" came out and made you pay full price for a game that had no future and will do the same thing again.
You are all Valve's bishes. I almost made the mistake in buying "Left 4 Dead" and was a Q-Tip away from being their bish too, but I didn't. I am nobody's bish. You are mine. -Jet Li
You are all Valve's bishes. I almost made the mistake in buying "Left 4 Dead" and was a Q-Tip away from being their bish too, but I didn't. I am nobody's bish. You are mine. -Jet Li