Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN MARCH 2025?

On Wed, 02 Apr 2025 16:39:42 +0300, Anssi Saari
<anssi.saari@usenet.mail.kapsi.fi> wrote:

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> writes:

* Star Trek: Elite Force II

Oh wow, now there's a blast from the past. Like you, I wanted to like
this but it's such a disappointment. All I remember is weird-ass never
seen before aliens and lame plot. Seems like my memories are flawed,
considering your description, I don't remember any Romulans. Still, the
original Voyager: Elite Force was a masterpiece shooter and I actually
remember what happened in it.

I suspect (without any proof or even bothering to check ;-) that
"Elite Force 2" had a lot of development problems. For one thing, the
developer changed from Raven to Ritual, and that sort of thing usually
results in Bad Things. For another, the primary enemies of the game
--biogenetically engineered machines-- seem awfully similar to the
enemies from the first game, but have an entirely different origin.
Apparently there was also some sort of dispute between Activision and
Viacom (who owned the Star Trek license), so I doubt it was given all
the resources or time it needed.

Ritual was never a great developer (certainly nowhere near the level
of Raven) but Elite Force was significantly below par for them.

What Have You Been Playing... IN MARCH 2025?

* GTA4
Continued and finished The Lost and the Damned DLC. It’s bleak and
violent and short but also, you get some pretty powerful weapons early
on. So, fun shootouts. Too bad you don’t have much money to buy
ammo. Rockets especially and there is only one pickup that can be
reached on foot and that for a measly three rockets. Oh well, on to the
other DLC.

"Lost and the Damned" seemed such a skimpy expansion compared to the
others. It didn't help that most of it was set in Alderney, which was
the least detailed region of the game. There are huge swathes of
terrain where there's nothing to do but drive past buildings you can't
enter and have no missions or pick-ups nearby.