People talk about the graphics, but it was the crescendo and decrescendo of guard sounds/singing/footsteps in Thief that made it one of the most immersive games I’ve ever played.
Yeah, the graphics were honestly kinda underwhelming, in particular the models were behind the curve compared to contemporary titles like Half-Life, and this didn't really improve with later titles like System Shock 2, where half the horror was the distorted textures stretched across the faces of the models.
I think what modern games have lost, that some of these late 90s titles absolutely nailed (Thief in particular), is the sound design and ambiance, which is just so dang evocative. Even the smallest incidental sounds had so much character. Picking up an item, pulling a lever, footsteps on the floor.
Modern games use such flat sounds for everything. Sure it's more realistic, at the cost of character and vibe.
I never played Thief, so I can't compare two. I was really impressed w/ System Shock 2.
re: the graphics - I don't remember being particularly underwhelmed by the graphics, but I didn't play many contemporary titles to compare it to. I was drawn-in by the System Shock franchise, but otherwise didn't really game.
For me the horror element came from the voice acting on the audio journals, the voices of "the many", and those goddamned cyborg assassins.
The weird graphics is mostly because they used extreme low poly models with low res textures compared to contemporary titles. This is a bigger complaint with the relatively late System Shock 2, which was just a few months apart from e.g. Deus Ex.
Obviously neither game is a marvel of graphical fidelity, but SS2 has these distorted proportions that make the characters look like inflatable sex dolls that were stored in the same supply closet as the Necronomicon and now they're all weird and whispering of incomprehensible horrors. Like the polygons don't really correspond to the anatomy of the character at all, which is something that contemporary games were beginning to figure out.
I really like SS2 (and Thief 1 & 2, and Deus Ex for that matter), and I don't really mind them not looking that great. But man they did not look that great by late 90s early 00s standards..
These sites employ advanced cloaking and show users something different than Google. They look at request ip range, not just user-agent. Going to be a tough battle.
When you fly over the US, there are thousands of baseball fields. Sadly, however, there are more options (video games, computers, etc) for how kids spend their time. Most new baseball players are in-sourced from the Dominican, Columbia, etc, too. There are still 13-15 million people playing little league in the US.
Do the pills that make you lose weight actually work - long term? Sorry itengelhardt, I disagree. IMO, this is just another get-rich-quick scheme, like the pills I mentioned. Allured by the thought of losing weight, or being on the front page of Google is just that, an allure. It's the same mental trap the mythical siren used to drive sailors into rocks. A few of the respondents here cite content as killer, which I agree with, but there's also the element of bad ass customer experience that must be present. Treat your customer unlike the competition and try to author more content that the competition, and you'll rise to the top of your context, but it will take time. Good luck.
It's fun to compete with two or four friends. Typically everyone fights and there's little progress made by anyone. I think it's interesting to control the market and see how many collective points can be achieved by all players. Playing all four players cooperatively, I choose plot installations based on maximizing the plot of land, not out of necessity. I shared food and energy so all four players had some, every turn. Smithore was used to create mules, so I would grab mules, without installations, and drop them in the middle of no where to drive the price up. I can remember in one turn with four players, I could drop a whole pen of 15 mules. Naturally, since I owned all the Smithore and drove the price up, it payed well every turn. Crystite, however, is tricky to figure. I could never determine what drives the price fluctuations with Crystite. Seemed to be random.
Best part of the game, is the auction view. Cool UI. Buyers on the bottom and seller on the top. Moving up and down changes the price as the auction timer ticks away. Every turn, there's a lot of action in the auctions depending on the type of play going on, needs of the other players, and prices of the commodities being traded.
As +fidotron states, it is profoundly brilliant. Please check it out.
My friends and I in college had a blast playing it on the C64. One of them would occasionally buy and release mules, more to screw over the other players that wanted to deploy them for production, but I'm sure driving up the price of smithore was also a benefit. Good times.
