I was duped tonight by Prince of Persia, available for PC, which features melee-style combat with one and two weapons, and some RAK-like features such as weapon degradation:

The biggest new addition to the game is a deeper combat mechanic. The prince is now capable of dozens of different weapon combos, and these are context sensitive depending on whether you are holding a single weapon or dual-wielding two weapons. With a single weapon in hand, you can grab enemies and throw them. You can even strangle them. Dual-wielding takes away your throw options, but it lets you perform much more powerful weapon combos. What's interesting is that the effect of your moves changes depending on what type of weapon you have in your left hand, which is the prince's less-dominant hand. With a mace in your right hand, you can knock opponents to the ground, while a sword in your left hand lets you to chop enemies in half with certain combos. The weapon in your left hand also degrades with use, so you'll always need to pick up new ones that are dropped by fallen foes. Otherwise, you can choose to throw your secondary weapon at enemies in attempts to impale or behead them. You can, of course, still vault off of enemies and walls for more-powerful slashing attacks, and a new pole-swinging attack has been added. There's also plenty of blood and gore in Warrior Within to further spice things up. As a result, beheadings and halved bodies are par for the course once you get used to the better fighting moves.

The upshot? no multiplayer!

I played Sands of Time last year and that was the only things that was missing. No multiplayer for an obvious multiplayer feeling game. Ubisoft doesn't seem to go for those type of games although they have the talent and the engine to produce.

It's a shame, too; they even made a half-ass attempt at supporting XBox Live with a stats mechanism, but apparently you never actually go head-to-head with anyone.

I played a little of the demo and it seemed cool. but no multiplayer seems silly.

I recommended Prince Of Persia: Sands Of Time to Middie a while ago... man is that a frustrating game, though quite incredibly beautiful. Was a 9 in my book, but I got stuck so often that I eventually found it wasn't worth it anymore... nice game but no way in hell am I going to solve this next puzzle (I'd rather do homework).

Anyway I just got PoP: Warrior Within. Problem is when mounted with all emulation options enable on DTools, the Alc120% image (*.mdf).... or I should say CloneCD copy, CD3 being the Clone (others are bins, this one isn't), requires I burn the disk in a "special" fashion rather than just play off a mount and I got no blanks so I can't play it yet. Fuckin' SafeDisc3 always finds a way to piss people off.

It looks awesome though, two handed weapons for once and the Prince just got gritty as anything ("tougher"). Of course, the idiots at Gamespot rated it a 8.8, but the PC version an 8.6. Tasteless morons, I'd love to know what they thought was wrong but my brain itches from the sheer stupidity of that chinese guy on that site who reviewed Half-Life 2, only other review I'd read from them is STALKER: SoC. No multiplayer is a given, we knew it wouldn't have it (dude... multi-platform game, very console oriented, they want it so that gamecube owners don't bitch). The fact that the combat locks on and often you put your enemy out of commission for a bit when fighting is what makes it a little odd for multiplayer... its not fun to get stopped constantly because some dude just ran up your chest and sliced your head off. Maybe that was just in SoT (not in WW, though? It has to be!), but eh. Oh and picking up enemies weapons? Do those weapons include those massive awesome incredible swords the oversized guys in SoT had? Poor prince can't even lift them, but it would be awesome to weild.

.....I refuse to install Rome: Total War until I've conquered SafeDisc3 and finally played my newly aquired PoP:WW... oh it seems too good.

Am I the only one who knows there is NO replacement for Rune? To even think such is pure blasphemy!!!!!
Long Live Rune!

Maybe a Rune mod for every other game is in order.....

The only replacement for rune will maybe be Rune 2

Hope there wouldn`t be any replacements in Rune 2. They should make it just as CS Source - just change the engine

While there is no real replacement for Rune, something must be sought out. Rune itself is on it's deathbed, and LowCaliber will go with it if we don't look into other things.

Holy crap, what a game... obviously not a replacement for Rune because of no multiplayer but of course it beats the living shit out of Rune singleplayer by a mile. I just played up to about the 8th save location/water fountain... I can't believe how much more fun it is than Sands of Time. PoP:TSOT was that game you will never ever play again after beating it, but now since this version seems a little easier and more fun, I can see myself playing it another time through... maybe. The fighting system is incredible and the fact that secondary weapons degrade a little too quick makes for some nifty variety because at once you'll be chopping heads off with that classy swipe with your secondary and the next second you'll be doing spin-attacks with that miniature dagger you stole from the enemy (without even killing him!).

Eh anyway, play it for yourselves, even those who say "I have enough games" should [quit the crap] and give the game a go, maybe one or two animations seemed unpolished but I always seem to "do the wrong thing" in games... like I always do the opposite of what the game wants and end up exploiting a bunch of glitches or animation errors... am so imperfect.

By the way, yes there will be a replacement for Rune and of course it is Rune 2.... Soulkeeper UT2K4 mod is essentially Rune just too full of knights and its very unpolished. Putting the regular Rune on a new engine?! Who the HELL would want that? I want a new game entirely, better combat, better single player, realistic (not over-shadowed Doom 3, not over-vegetated FarCry, more like STALKER or HL2), better weapons, polished enough to have no stupid ballerinas everywhere (that's right, I want it to take pure skill to kill) and maybe a little more bias to smaller caliber weapons so as to not make multiplayer such a drag in most servers.

I could just put blahblah in the middle of these blocks of text, no one reads it anyway .

I read it.

I have that arrior within demo..... ehhhhh.... I just can't get used to the console feeling of moving your guy around the screen.

But yeah rune 2 needs a stamina bar so you can't bunnyhop forever.... like I outlined several times in various threads at runegame

Too bad we can host our own private server of city of heros.

quote:

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Originally posted by Manowar:
While there is no real replacement for Rune, something must be sought out. Rune itself is on it's deathbed, and LowCaliber will go with it if we don't look into other things.

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Like it's been one hundred times before, right? There's nothing dieing about RUNE - apart from maybe the competence of the players, 99% of which are only capable of playing with two handed weapons... never ever touching the one handed apart from the hand axe, which is holstered on spawn, heh!

My main reason for saying that it's dieing is that we're at a standstill for recruitment. Our last new member was over six months ago. There are no new players, we average about one registration on the forum a month.

The 2 or 3 clan forums that I lurk/post aren't getting any new players, they're just getting established players that hop from other clans.

Low Caliber is the first to feel the pressure of this because unlike ROV and some of the others, the Low Caliber gametype is a niche. Most don't like it. but those that really do won't have it any other way.

I'm not one of those that have been saying Rune is dead for the last two years... I only started to believe it recently. It's sad, Rune was my first love (gaming of course) and I'll always play it, but Low Caliber is my baby too -- and it needs to evolve.

I think the main reason why rune would die is for the universal 2 handed weapons.

What I mean for universal is that you can use it for anything and serve any purpose. People you just started the game probably saw a max of 3 weapons to 6 weapons most of the time and none of them were one handed.Which is why the huge weapons (I believe for rune 2) should go away and not come back.

Speaking of the usage of the two-handed weapons... I've found myself playing several rounds of specific maps - being the only one using a one-handed weapon. Everyone else heads directly for the closest two-handed weapon (almost holstering the handaxe... they sure as hell don't use it, they'd rather flee) after spawning.

Really annoying, but then again, it just gives me more desire to whoops their asses with the one-handed weapons... sure is great running around with the handaxe - between "hammerwhores" and "axemonkies" jumping around spinning their weapons like there was no tommorrow - dodging here and there, staying close to them and cutting them open in a matter of seconds .

I miss the times where players would adapt to any given situation, using whatever was immediately available to them, not just using the same weapon throughout an entire map, but mixing between the whole arsenal available in a map.

In that sense, RUNE is already dead - or populated by brainless zombies. Heh.

Rune is just dead to the people who have high performance/Half decent graphics cards

quote:

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Originally posted by Socks:
Rune is just dead to the people who have high performance/Half decent graphics cards

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Nah, regardless of video card those that know and love Rune keep coming back to it. It's kind of like an old jacket that fits just right.

or a cheap whore that fits like pajamas.



wow. can you tell I have been studying for finals?
I gots the nonsense speak

Wakka wakka wakka.