So we have a bunch of bad movies, and books. But how about good/bad games with Sci Fi? I already did a list of games on another thread:

here they are (small list of games):
Bad:
007: Nightfire
All Star Wars base Building games.
Hostile Waters: Anateus rising. (Amazing storyline and very inolved story, but really, really crappy game and interface.)
Red Faction 1 (cool Geo-mod abiolity, but that is it)
The Sim's Online (yah it is not exactly sci-fi but i just want to warn you. PM me if you want details. I beta tested it...uhhg..).
Earth and Beyond
Aliens vs. Predator 2: Primal Hunt expansion pack. (good game, but the expansion pack only includes a few, very poorly sesigned levels, and the new internet modes suck and lag bigtime)
Batman: Vengence
Voyager Elite force: Expansion pack. (no real new levels. )
Most Star Trek games except Elite Force (non-expansio), Academy, Brige commander, Both Armada, and the command games)


Good:
Starcraft
Freelancer
Freespace 1 + 2
Outpsot 2
Space Quest games (how can you now include these?)
Serious Sam 1 + 2
AVP 2
I-War 1 + 2
Tribes 1 + 2
Planetside (i'm beta testing this now, great game mostly. :-) If anyone else is testing this PM me.)
Star Trek Elite Force
Star Trek Armada 1 + 2
star Trek Bridge Commander, and Academy
star Wars Jedi Knight and Dark Forces games
Startopia (a highly underated great game. Shunned by the critics, but it has many rewarding atributes in my opinion)
Giants: Citizen Kabuto
Himeworld 1 + expansion.
Mechwarrior 4

I will talk aboutsome of these these and a few more:

Spoilers for several games.......













Did i warn ya enougth this time? :P

Now i want to explain some good and bad games and their BA:




Freelancer:
Great game. Not what what expoected when it was being hyped during its creation process, but still overall great storyline and emersive atmosphere.

Bad:
- Star Wars type Asteroids, ice fields, Carbon fields, and other fields of these types. These fields show the rocks careening throught the areas at high speeds. One good thing they do is show the large amiount of them as small rocks, but many, many large rocks are still there.

-FTL travel through "jump gates" and "jump holes"

-Energy weapons and laser based wepaons that are dodgeable. They do have many plasma based weapons that are relatively slow, but even the laser based weapons are visible pulses and slower then your ship sometimes.

-Sounds in space (everywhere!) They even have orchestral music in space!

-instand shield and hull regeneration

Good:
-They use travel lanes to go high speeds throught the systems to avoid collisons with other ships and the masses of asteroids and ice in the systems.

-At cruising speeds they cannot fire weapons since most energy is devoted to engines

-Different weapons, kinetic or molecular effect different types of shilds.

-large nebulae effect systems like sensors by scattering their long range effects.

-EMp weapons disable your ability to travel very fast and can disable your shilds untill yuo renew them.


Big Spoiler!!!!!!








-the end mission in the game features a fight with Aliens and a large Disonsphere. They said that the Alsien built the Disonsphere because it captures 100% of the radiation from the Sun inside of it. Thuis ism ture, in theory. But in reality the amount of metal and materials to construct it would be enormous. Especially the size they make it our to me. This Diosonsphere's energy is then fed nito a warp gate that leads to a system that traverses the enture glaxy and beyond. (Cool!)






End Big spoiler!!!!




Overall a 90 out of 99

---------------------------------------------



007: Nightfire:

Arrrgggg.....One of the worst games for Bond Ever! Bad clipping, enemy AI (let me stand here and shoot you with perfect acuracy! Sure you can shoot my friend and i wond notice i dont care! You mean you cant shoot around corners? )
It is a almost direct ripoff of Moonraker.

Bad:

Everything....Well almost

-Guns suck, bad sound files for them and wvery very weak. Oh wait this is supposed to be BA. Well in the end missions you get a moonraker laser gun that has unlimited ammo. It just needs to recharge. The effect of the weapon is very slight on a human (good for its small size) but its beam travels sooooooooo slowly. Why? It is supposed to be a laser! go the Speed of light you moronic laser!

-The final missions you reach space. First of all sounds in space and a (surprise! surprise!) unknown space station.

-I don't remeber (nor do i want to remember) why they built the sattion, but it did have selective gravity in many parts.

-Since the station has low or selective gravity you get a Jetpack! (Good: it needs fule), Bad: it is space! why do you need a jetpack inside a space stattion?

-The station blows up in a cool explosion. Fire in space?

-Somehow Bond also knows how to use a space suit and a escape module from a station he has never seen or heard of.

-The AI sucked. REally, raeally sucked. They had almost perfect aim if you were near them. Thewy usually just stood there while you blasted their friend to pieces and once you killed them they would majically clip throught walls and fly away.....



Overall a 25 out of 99



----------------------------------

Aliens vs. Predator 2: Primal Hunt expansion pack:

Uhhhggg...horrible sequil to a gtreat game. Only 9 levels total (three for each race) and all are basically the same level over and over again. Only one new badguy (the predalien was in the multiplayer version of AVP2) and a few new weapons. Now stroyline and the multiplayer was buggier than a wamp here in Florida.

Bad:

-sound in space

-How is the Zenomorph able to live inside any living thing? It can live inside and burst from a huma, pet, or even a predator. All of their organs are different, yet somehow it still can live and grow.

-The Predator has mostly energy based weapons. These weapons draw an enormous amount of power and to renew that power it gets it from the environment. Where does this energy come from?

-The zenomorphs are rules by pheramones. They sense their prey and their buddies by this. they are even controlled by this. But what i do not understand is how the Queen can controll a Aline half a world away throught pheramones.


Overall a 30 out of 99 for the expansion pack. 75 out of 99 for the original AVP2.

-----------------------------------------------------

Voyager Elite force and its expansioon pack:

O.K., the expansion pack sucks bwecause it does not add much at all to the game except the tricorder and a few nboew useless weapons. The original game was a very good FPS (First Person Shooter) and one of the best trek games made.

Bad:
- i do not have to go throught the whole laser based weapons being dogeable do i?

-sounds in space

-ftl travel

-"dampening field" that inhbits warp on big ships, but not on shuttlcraft. Why? this is stupid. they give a semi reason fir this later on in the game with the big enemy, but ewhy not turn this effect off and on, not the entuire time.

-a super alien who wants to take over the unierse by combining the DNA of every living warroir. So somehow our DNA syas we are a good warrior? Huh?

-Somehow every ship and energy source can be converted to useable enrgy by the Hazard theam. even if they have never ,et these aliens before.

-The bad guy wastes time telling the good guys his intricate plans for universe domination thus allowing the allies of the good guys to find the weakness in the bad guys plans and destroy them.

-Supposedly super advanced aliens who can create massive starships, but cant figure out how ti fire a gin. So they resort to just rushing the good guy.

Good:

-Different, non human alien races (for once).

-The borg.

-umm...anything else?


Overal: Original: 70 out of 99 and Expansion is 40 out of 99l
---------------------------

I will add more in a few days, but i am tried and don't feel like typing anymore. Sorry. please add your own opinions. :-)

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"It takes Thousands to fight a battle for a mile, Millions to hold an election for a nation, but it only takes One to change the world." - Dan Sandler 2002

Good and all, but you forgot about Halo for Xbox (and soon PC/Mac)

although I found very little BA myself, Larry Niven OTOH. well.. you... have to see the interview youself.

Props to peona.dare from Bungie Sighting for digging this up

It looks like MS wanted Niven to write on of the Halo books, although a Niven ring encircles a star, Halo (installation 04) orbits a gas giant. although from what I have played. it has alot of good Astronomy

like:
There is no sound in space during the cut-scenes!
the ship you are in is a big non-aerodynamic clunker
the crash location has a huge trench from where it touched down, (Keep in mind this ship is big!).
and halo has lower gravity, and because of that, you can see stars somewhat in the daytime (a thinner atmosphere because of the reduced gravity) and it is a FIRST PERSON shooter so you should be able to see the contrast of the human eye.

Doh! forgot about HALO! shame on me!.

O.K. add to great game list. :-)

But i am ****ed at the transition from origonally PC first to X-Box fisrst.

X-Com - UFO Defense. The first was the best in my opinion.
It reminds me of Starship Troopers in the fact that if/when we may do battle with an alien race, we will start as the underdog. No SF weapons, and ships. The only advancements we get are spoils of war.
The game is played like real warfare, logistics, funding, and green troops included.
The excitement of dropping into a hostile zone and deploying troops in a defensive position, recon, protect civilians etc., in an SF scenario that is so similar to historical campaigns, was quite different than most twitchware.
The game speed can be adjusted down to near zero to allow a single player to manage all forces as though they had a fully staffed admin.
I have yet to come across another game that has the same realism of 'house clearing'. Building to building, floor to floor, room to room; with up to 26 troops to assign. This is after they have cleared the fields, streets, jungles, deserts, and other such.
I feel it is quite educational about how real things can be, when one race is confronted by something more alien than books, movies, or games.

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You forgot Independence War 1 and 2!


And if you're looking for a great game that actually has something to do with astronomy, check out Race Into Space it's a fun game, worth checking out.

Homeworld.. Great game with lots of BA but who cares when the game is soo good? I am sure that G99 can do a better write up of it than I could.

Well, some good things about the weapons:
The ships use railguns as weapons because their powerplants are too small to support any type of energy weapon.
The only ship, IIRC, that does have energy weapons is the Ion Frigate (haven't played in a long time, please forgive for mangling things). It is just one huge cannon with a ship and propulsion systems built around it and when it fires the weapon gets to its target instantly, no dodging.
Missiles are said to be ineffective because of the distances and speeds required, this is until you develop better technologies. -Colt

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Mmmm Homeworld...
There are in fact three regular ships featuring ion cannons

• Ion cannon frigate
• Destroyer
  This features two ion cannon in a forward mount as well as two heavy mass driver turrets.
• Heavy cruiser
  Features four ion cannons in a forward turreted mount and six heavy turrets.

There are other ships with ion cannons that are not avalably for construction. The Kadeshi multibeam frigate comes to mind. It has four ion cannons in a forward mount, but lack any additional weapons.

Hey, first post! Hiya fellas'.

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What about Deuteros? It was a classic Amiga game from 89-91 (can't remember exactly when). A really excellent game. I had an amiga emulator on my pc simply to play that game (sadly lost the installer on an upgrade ). It seemed to predate most of the space based resource/micro-management games by several years, though IIRC it may have been a sequel to something else. The game was basically a race into space against an (at the start) unseen enemy, which hots up as you expand through the solar system. It's not really BA until you meet the aliens. Eventually (IIRC) you can steal a warp drive or something from them and get to colonize new stars. It's pretty intense and the scope is amazing for a game that fitted on 2 DD floppies.

Any old mig fans remember anything?

Another space classic: The original Elite. That game was abosolutely beyond compare. It was about 50-100k and had eight galaxies worth of fun. An awsome game. As for BA, the only thing I can think of was that it had hyperspace travel (it was an interstellar trading game- hyperspace was I guess the only way to progress games along at faster than glacial speeds). Good Astronomy was the fact that solar systems had size, and quite a lot of it. I seem to remember that most of the time spent playing the game you had the J key down which engaged some kind of semi-doze state.

--Christian
PS. If you're under 25 you probably think I'm mad

Freespace 2? Good Astronomy? Not really. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the star maps, but it does have plenty of BA floating around.

- Asteroid fields: too close, etc etc. They also seem to have very peculiar shapes (like, here's a patch of asteroids 2 km wide and 15 km long).

- The ending: There's no way a supernova would only take 1 minute to get out to you, even if you could detect it ahead of time. Capella would have had to have blown up hours earlier, and the light would predate the shockwave by several weeks. Plenty of time to leisurely head to the node.

- Visible lasers: standard sci-fi fare. Those beam cannons look mighty cool, though.

- Audible lasers: I actually came up with a somewhat plausible explanation for this. Laser and other beam weapons create interference with your comm system when fired, and this translates into "laser noise" coming in through your speakers. This doesn't explain hearing explosions, though... oh well.

- The nebula: I hate Nebula missions. It's ridiculously thick, and all those nebula effects wreak havoc on a less-than-stellar (ha ha) computer. I also like seeing my targets. It's a great sense of suspense (especially when you first glimpse the Sathanas), but it really detracts from the gameplay and the visual grandeur of capital ships duking it out. Also BA.

- Coasting to a stop, constant velocity at constant acceleration: At times this ticks me off. Namely, times when I have the throttle on full and I can't go any faster. It also doesn't make sense inertially, but I guess it's to give the ships a more "fighter-aircraft" feel.

I think there are a few other points I've thought up, but I can't remember them at the moment. I just remember that every single instance of BA is there because it makes the game more fun. I don't want invisible, silent lasers, and a realistic asteroid field would be pretty boring. BA in games can be mighty tedious.

I got an XBox on Monday, so I'm just getting into Halo (along with Gotham, Buffy and Orta, but they are all fairly astro-free right now).

Niven says its a "poor man's Ringworld", huh? Lets see what Banks says about that one. Its quite clearly an Orbital. Coupled with the fact that the Elites are shockingly close to how I imagined the Idirans would look, and its obvious (even to someone who didn't know that Bungie are fans) that the Consider Phlebas influences are there.

I don't know, but when I think "Astronomy" the last type of game I expect to get it right is "First Person Shooter." Don't get me wrong, I love Halo and am equally perturbed that it went XBox before PC.

Freelancer is a lot of fun, but the BA kinda gets to me. Especially the background images. Look around and you'll see three galaxies merging in the background . . .. As for the orchestral music . . . I have a CD player in my car, so I CERTAINLY would have one in my starship. But the fighter-level and -style maneuverability moves it from sci-fi game to sci-fant game. With Taychonic weapons that travel 750 mps . . . oh, yeah.

Those of you who haven't yet: Don't get Master of Orion 3!
It hurts. With no defensive spies you get eaten alive by other spies. Mixed with the complete and utter lack of realistic Astronomy, the learning curve of quantum physics (actually QP was easier) and a five-year old 3D combat interface . . . I'll play MOO2.

I still remember the good old days of Space Rogue . . . why can't someone just get it right? It had more BA than PXers but it was fun! It was light-hearted. You could fly through an asteroid field BACKWARDS and never hit anything! How about Star Control or Star Control 2? Anyone remember them? Starflight and Starflight 2? Man, I'm jonesing for an 8086. Where's my XT?

You don't need an old PC for Star Control 2, though. Do you know The Ur-Quan Masters? A perfect timekiller... play starcon2 on any Windows Plattform (and it's free)...

Welcome Jocke, I had forgotten about those other ships. I guess because the Ion cannons on those are just part of a group of larger weapons. -Colt

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Homeworld 2 is even cooler than homeworld 1 and its expansion. :-) A sneak peak is aready out in a video on their site.

While we are on the topic of games:

Starcraft:

The queen has the ability to produce parasites into other races such as humans and Protoss. She can even produce another creature who's name escapes me) out of their bodies (well except tanks and such). Would their genetic makup be similar enougth to do that to humans?

In the game it is found out the Protoss and Zerg were created by the same race. But humans were not. So Zerg and protoss sould be able to intermingle DNA. But how can a zarg (or Alien in the AVP series) comingle DNA or even live inside them?





P.S. Sorry for the confusion I-War above is the sort for, for Independence war

And there will be much rejoycing. And drooling to boot!

The Zerg were a race of tiny parasites that could adjust their genetic code to their hosts (if I remember correctly). All of the Zerg we see are actually many different, ahem assimilated creatures. Kinda like the Tyranids from Warhammer 40k. They Tyranids would go forth and consume entire planets and assimilate their genetic information. If they found something interesting (phenomonal psychic powers from the Eldar) they would create a new life form to harness that aspect (the Zoanthrope).

If you can't tell, I'm an avid gamer :P !

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The Beast in Cataclysm does this too.

P.S. ditto :-)

In the AvP books (which I think most of them are canon though I haven't read any of them..) it turns out that the xenomorphs were either created by the Space Jockey race or by anothe race as a biological weapon to drop on a planet. The Space Jockey in the film was simply transporting some of these when his ship crashed.

Starcraft... One of th best games of all time for PC. I haven't played the PC version of it in a long time but I do have the Nintendo 64 version of it from before I had a PC. My interest in acquiring a copy of it has been renewed by my reading of Starship Troopers. -Colt

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Colt: what books do they talk about the Alien origins? i would love to read them.

Does "Space Jockey"="Pilot"?

Colt: If you're a Gundam Fan, you should see if you can find a copy of the Gundam Century Mod for Starcraft. It was a lot of fun.

G99: My computer died right around the time of Cataclysm and I never had a chance to play that. I'll have to go see if I can find a used copy somewhere.

If I'm thinking the same book: yes.

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So what book was it? :-)

Great, put me on the spot! :P

I don't remember the names. I'd have to check and see if I still have them at home. If/when I can find them, I'll let you know.

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thanks. :-)

Not exactly a sci-fi game, but I believe that in "Black & White," the phase of the moon in the game was supposed to be the actual current phase of the moon. I can't confirm that, because I have never gotten the game to run on my current machine.

Actually, I've got a bit of GREAT astronomy from a video game.
Years ago the game LHX (anyone remember that?) had great astronomy. It was a helicopter sim and you were out blowing stuff up. This game is somewhat old since I was playing it when I was in high school.

I was well away from base and got my avionics shot out. I lost my compass, GPS and INS (Inertial Navigation System). I had a load of about 8 TOWs, but was a bit too concerned about getting back to base to get fixed.

My sister noticed that the designers had put constelations in the sky, and since I knew roughly where I was on the map (needed to go north) my sister was able to use the ACCURATLEY depicted constelations to get me home.

That was an impressive bit of GOOD astronomy that made the game better.

__________________
Once you pull the pin out of Mr. Grenade, he is no longer your friend.

Halo's been mentioned already, and it is a tremendous game, but it's also got some really bad astronomy in there. Most of it's in the space sections- the most egregious example I can think of is on the bridge of the Pillar of Autumn.

For one thing, the bridge is unrealistically designed- it's right at the front of the ship, with huge bay windows on three sides. Not the most sensible of ways to design the nerve centre of your space cruiser. But another thing is the way that, when you look out of the window and see the Halo itself, it's way too small. For those who don't know, Halo is a small Niven ring, 10,000 km in diameter. Quite a large structure. But when you move from one side of the bridge to the other, you can see the ring parallax against the stars behind it; it looks far too small. Such a large object should be fixed relative to the background.

And secondly...




*SPOILERS*




When Halo is destroyed at the end of the game, the POA's engines rip a hole in the ring's structure. But from our viewpoint as we escape, a large fragment of the ring passes from one side to the other, and knocks a hole on the far side of the ring. If you broke a Niven ring, centripetal forces would cause all the pieces to fly outwards, moving away on a tangent.

Having said that, these points only niggle because the game goes to some effort to get other things right. But pedants like me will still poke holes in what we see...

That is simply a short-comming of video cards and 3d technology. At the end of Unreal I could get out of the ship and run across the "surface" of the planet.

Halo is supposed to be something like 7,000 km in diameter. The real-time rendered cutscenes have to work within the framework of the 3d engine.

__________________
Once you pull the pin out of Mr. Grenade, he is no longer your friend.

Surely they could just have made Halo part of the background, along with the gas giant and the stars? I mean, when you're on the ring itself, the structure of the Halo in the sky is just a quicktime-style background. Couldn't they have done this when you see it from space, you think? It really, really jarred for me the first time I saw it...

(in ref. to a earlier post: ) I played Black and white and it is a great game. But Don't get Creature Isle. While the ability to have a mini creature is cool, there is no good replayabliity and it is easy to beat. Wait till the bargin bin for this one.

For the AVP series: This goes along with the trek thread that they do not have as good of technology as we do now.

I would agree wityh colt that the powered armour is very advanced and really fun to play with (sad that you only get it for one level) but the hand held guns all suck (except for the chaingun).

The standard assault rifle seems similar to a assault rife today. Sure it has a attched grenade launcer, but we also have one of thise.

The flamethrower has minimal range and does not leave trailes of burning fire (but i can credit that to the game engine and frame rate issue)

the rocket launcher cant even take down a queeen in one shot

same with the grenade launcher

The predator weaponms are even worse than the human weapons. For a creature with such advanced technology, it really sucks. They all use massive amounts of energy, making you waiste several seconds having to set up your reloading energy gear, if you have it.

The staff can kill a alien and human in one shot, but you have to be almost touching them.

the disk does the same thing as a staff but at long range and must use lots of energy to return to you and you only get one.

The net gun is useless since all of the attacers attack in hordes. It is only fun for using to push enemies off cliffs (put on god mode, back them up to a cliff and throw them off, very fun. :-) )

The energy weapons are powerful, but like the humans can't even kill a queen and take a massive amount of energy.

I am not even going to bother with the preds hand blades.

That was one of the things I liked about the last level of Freespace 2. You can look over at Capella (the system you're in) and see a bunch of Juggernauts eclipsing it. It was just part of the background.

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Unfortunately, we're down to about 17 ounces of the highly unstable stuff that does.

I agree. And it required many, many of the ships to create the supernova. Not just one torpedo or something as in other games and movies.

I would also agree with the whole one minute to destruction thing, but otherwise it was good.

(side note: i love how they have two different endings depending on if you survive or not. Persoanlly i like the one in where you die. :-) )

One other thing i liked about the Freespace series is that the big capital ships were tougth, (i.e. it took a ton of hits to kill them) and they were studded with weapons and missle bays. Sure there were soft spots that you can go to to avoid them, but otherwise ithey could fire on you from many directions. I like that. They put this to more use in Freespace 2 with the anti-fighter lasers. Those pack a punch.

And that massive battle between the two giant capital ships was really cool.