Vivi22

Haven't played Natural Selection in months but it was one of my favourite HL mods. I've been following the development of NS2 off and on for the last few years. I'm at work so I can't watch the link you posted, but I've been pretty impressed with what I've been seeing from the team so far.

I won't deny that, but I do feel it was a large step away from the stuff we watched in the late 80's and early 90's, and a step in the right direction if you ask me (except for the last season of Spider-Man anyway. Good god was that aweful).

I have to agree with this, though I think there were some great cartoons in the mid-late 90's that still hold up. Reboot, Beast Wars, Batman, X-Men, and Spider-Man come to mind right now as ones that were enjoyable as a child, and stood out to me even back then for not treating kids like complete morons even if they did have their campy moments. And of course, some of this carried into the early-mid 2000's where we had shows like the remade TMNT, and Justice League. There's been a fair few cartoons over the years that were not only among my absolute favourites as a child, but also held up over time because they didn't treat their audience like they were complete idiots.

Fuck me sideways that's an incredible deal. The only way I could swing it would be to wrangle my parents into buying my Christmas present now, but I'll have to see what I can do.

I'm with you on that. There are some I like less than others, but I find the way the teams are working together is often a bigger factor in how much I'm enjoying the game. Mind you, some people just don't know how to work together on some maps, but usually things are pretty good. I'm really just happy as long as there's a good fight taking place for the objectives that isn't a stalemate due to poor design (and to be fair, I don't think there are any instances of a stalemate happening that couldn't be overcome with a little more team coordination on official maps, though some are harder than others).

At work right now so I can't watch youtube videos, but the creatures I'm talking about tended to be within maybe ten feet by the time you noticed them, and using anything other than the shotgun to kill them usually meant they'd pounce at you and kill you before you put enough bullets in them to stop them. It didn't happen all the time, but if you happened to be looking in the wrong direction when they showed up you'd usually find yourself hitting continue and trying again.

Now that you mention it, I should also point out that I'll be out of town from July 19 to August 10th more or less for courses and will be unable to play. I'll also be busy the weekend of July 10th, but only because I'd be killed were I to skip my wedding and ditch family and friends to play TF2 (or so I've been told). Aside from those, any time should work for me as long as we're setting something up a few days in advance.

I had no trouble playing through Killzone 2 firing from cover the way they intended. The guns aren't half as innacurate as you make them sound, and the multiplayer relies pretty heavily on more traditional run and gun tactics which work surprisingly well given how the single player plays. Also, I will agree that Resistance 2 online is great for the co-op mode. Competitive is pretty standard fare just with more people than you'll find on your typical console FPS. The single player was a huge let down for me though. The story was pretty boring and so poorly told that I often had little idea where I was or why. The pacing was also pretty bad if you ask me. Maybe I'm just being picky there, but the game rarely built up any excitement for me, and by the time I was getting pumped fights would be over. Or I'd run into parts so unfairly difficult that I was dying frequently for reasons largely beyond my control and just get frustrated. Case in point; the invisible enemies that one hit kill you if you don't kill them in that whole second and a half warning you get.

You can put me down as well.

I could be wrong, but I was fairly certain you could change your class in spawn without dying just like you can during a normal round, hence no advantage to either team really. Pretty sure I made the switch to medic one time for sudden death since our team didn't have one.

Agreed. I can't recall anyone ever really getting pissed about it, and considering it rarely takes more than a few minutes and can lead to some awesome moments for all I see no reason to disable it. Of course, if a majority of people disagree with me then it's no skin off my nose to have it disabled.

Nothing quite like the feeling of pinning your enemies to the wall by their head (or arm, or groin). Only thing better is reflecting an arrow back at a sniper, but that's as much luck as skill (or in my case all luck).

I've wondered if I was the only one that was like that sometimes. Though I also seem to just have specific maps that I'm good at with some classes. Especially Sniper since I like using the Huntsman a lot. I find it works best with relatively tight spaces.

I'm not sure how you can get mad about him criticizing a game you like for having an element that makes little logical sense when he ends the review by recommending it (or both games in this case).

I guess you can chalk me up as one who is a little defensive about my favourite classes as well. Odd thing is, I never thought I'd be referring to Pyro as a favourite class a year ago.

If it makes you feel any better, I was never very good at breaking up ubers anyway. Typically if someone sees me running at them with a flamethrower ready to try and blow them away I'm dead by the time I'm in range. And if they're smart, even when they don't see me coming they're usually in a decent position for one air blast to do nothing. So since I suck at breaking up Ubers, I value staying alive to help spy check, and ignite more enemy players en mass far more than my (in)ability to take on an Uber pair. I'm much better at ambushing and taking out large groups, hence my preference for a weapon that let's me do it more effectively, and keep me in the game longer before I have to wait 15 seconds to respawn. A lot can happen in 15 seconds. I once went afk for 30 to answer the phone really quick on Dustbowl and we went from having held the first point until there was maybe a minute and change left to a spy stabbing me in the face in spawn by the time I got back. The fact that I will gladly switch classes to fill gaps in a team, even when I suck at said classes and spend the rest of a round getting my butt handed to me until someone better takes up that class says how much I care about a few extra points. The backburner suits my style of play when I play Pyro, hence I use it and am more useful to the team because of it. Besides, with the number of people who use the standard flamethrower, there's usually at least one other Pyro there for when an Uber comes rolling in.

I'm starting to love the backburner more and more for all the reasons you listed. The most I ever used the air blast was for reflecting the occasional shot (which admittedly has saved my life a few times, but only once because I didn't have time to dodge instead) or trying to push an invulnerable medic and friend away so they'd be less effective. I've since found I die a lot less if I just flank people, drop from above, or ambush from places they really don't expect it. I'm also content to just stand behind the medic until his uber runs out and kill him and his friend without them noticing me. I'll admit that I'm a bit of a suicide pyro sometimes, but usually only when I'm fairly certain I can take three or four guys with me. My only problem with the backburner is that it seems to miss a lot of blatant crits for me. I seem to consistently crit more if I hit them from slightly to their side. Directly behind them seems to be a dead zone where no crits ever occur for me.

A little competition is never a bad thing. And I do mean a little, because it didn't seem the backburner is overly popular when I was looking at the server stats this morning. Wouldn't know it from the number of pyro vs. pyro battles I've lost to it.

Maybe try deleting the games install file and let it reinstall and update. Beyond something being wrong there I can't see what the problem would be. Are other games working fine, and are there any scratches on the disc?

Sometimes you just have to laugh. In fact, I choose to laugh every time I epicly fail as a Spy rather than piss off other players by blaming them for my sucktitude.

I just noticed I had the most backburner kills yesterday. Must have been the kick ass game of Dustbowl I had. Oddly I don't usually use the backburner, but I was sick of losing pyro vs. pyro because of some guaranteed crits. Now I'm not sure I'll switch back.

I have to agree with all of this. Not to mention that the Huntsman is also an effective counter for sentries now. Two full charge arrows usually takes out a level 3, so as long as you can stay out of range or have a medic healing you you can make short work of engineers and their sentries. Throw a soldier or demoman into the mix and no amount of engineers are safe.

I'm at work so I can't check our stats, but I'd say you've either played on the server longer than I have in total, play medic a lot, or spend a lot less time getting killed by people with low scores than I do. Seems that with half of my deaths I'll drop 20 points. I tend to come out ahead though by killing people with much higher scores than me, plus all of the little points you get for assists, healing, caps, etc. Just not as far ahead as if I stopped losing a lot of points so often.

I don't get the leaving thing either, but then I'll stay on a server so long as the people are cool and the team aren't horribly unbalanced. I can definitely see how someone might not read the server name though. If I'm looking for a random server to play on the only things I look at are map, player count, and ping. Most server names are pretty pointless to be honest. The only time I'll ever look at it is if I like the server and want to favourite it.

Christ, that reminds me that I need to give Brushfire my address.