trezzer wrote:I didn't really like Counter-Strike, so for me this is like a FUN Counter-Strike. It's really well balanced and even with just bots it's a lot of fun. I'm certainly enjoying it.
I actually got the PC version, but since it plays just like the 360 one once you plug in a pad it's fine and dandy. Laid back online FPS.
It's also quite fun to play it from a PC, because whenever I enter an online game, people go "OOOH we have a Vista player" - which means you can get the cross platform achievements. People don't really know till someone gets one.
I think the criticism this game has had is pretty unfair. Yeah it sucks that it's tied to Vista and yeah there aren't that many maps, but it sure is fun - and not that expensive any more either.
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The characters are certainly charming in their own way and they have actually managed to squeeze a fair bit of (totally unnecessary but still nice to have) story in there.
Anyhoo. If anyone in here is playing it (sound like most haven't even given it a chance), I'm ready for some multiplayer

I loved CS:S but that's because I was playing on a 64-player server with a regular crowd and some great admins who believed that the point of the game was to enjoy yourself - which could result in rounds which were knifes only with the Benny Hill music playing. Utterly nuts.
But after that server closed, I drifted away from that kind of team-based online shooter. Shadowrun though is a worthy successor.
The balancing is brilliant and pretty much any combo of character, magics, techs and weapons is viable provided you can work out how to use them. The maps are actually much better thought out than a lot of people initially realised and whilst the three game modes might seem limited they do force you to play a different game dependent upon the mode.
It also seems to have far fewer arseholes than most Live games, and I've only had to give negative feedback to one idiot who tk'd 3 of us in a oner. If he'd apologised we'd have let it slide but he didn't seem to give a damn. The generally good community may be because you don't seem to have that many kids playing but even the kids I've come across didn't seem particularly whiny. Plus, the patches have fixed most of the connectivity issues and I rarely hit a laggy game.
I had an absolutely amazing 16-player Raid match on The Pit this evening. We were Lineage and were getting humped - down 5-0. Then one guy comes up with a beautiful strategy - around our spawn point in The Cavern we just dump trees like crazy and wait for them to start coming to us. Use the trees to block the back entrance and provide lots of cover for the side exit whilst we focus on the Big Hole.
The RNA guys headed into the Red Room and then started heading down the stairs into the Big Hole at which point we began carefully lobbing off grenades when we had a viable kill. They responded with nades and Minions but we kept our cool, made sure we took cover under a tree if our health got low and made sure to keep planting fresh trees. Every kill made, we made sure to destroy the body so they couldn't be rezzed and we always rushed to rez one of our fallen, particualry once they started trying to attack from the other entry points.
Once we'd got half of them, we'd storm out of the Cavern before securing a fresh point with Trees to cover and proceed to keep picking them off before those of us amongst the survivors collectively blitzed towards the Artifact. We'd then do a proper covering strategy to ensure we got the Artifact to the extraction point.
It worked brilliantly, even with a lot of variety in the same basic strategy as the match progressed and things like rockets came into play - but judicious use of trees and rez's saw us well.
We got it back to 5-5 and were only beaten in the final round with ten seconds to go. I was a rez-ing, tree-giving, SMG/Katana-wielding dwarf and managed to make 10 resurrections in those final six rounds.
It was genuinely great fun and intense as hell - the other team were even complementing us on such a good recovery immediately after the final round ended.
Earlier on, playing as RNA on an Extraction game in the Power Station, I also managed to score two juicy as hell nade kills against Lineage snipers on the tower whilst I was on the roof of the Power Station. The first one came because the sniper wasn't paying attention and I just rapid-lobbed two nades over the map at him catching him out, but the second was more fun.
I'd heard the shots from the sniper rifle and saw the body of a team-mate. Adding two and two together I had a pretty good idea of what had happened and where the sniper was likely to be. So I rushed forward, taking a quick opportunity to look around and confirm where the sniper roughly was and rezzed my team-mate before immediately pulling back to cover.
I then rushed out again and perfectly aimed a grenade so that it forced the sniper to move in a specific direction, then lobbed my second nade such that it landed almost exactly on the snipers head. Lovely kill...
That same match, I won a round by killing the last Lineage by forcing him to teleport then placing a shotty-round into him just as he emerged from the teleport.
It's one of those games where you just keep experiencing lovely things.