Category Archives: Poll Questions

• Weekly polls to stimulate interesting and intelligent discussion

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So I was checking out a game on Steam and I noticed who had the game and one person I know has all the games on Steam.

Yes, I do mean all.

Some readers know him, but I won’t explicitly say who he his. He has a special Steam account that gives him every single game released.

Just launched my feed reader and saw that Valve has introduced a Steam Mobile service.

Here’s their blurb… ” gamers around the world may chat with Steam friends, browse community groups and user profiles, view screenshots and user-generated content for their favorite games, read the latest gaming news, stay up to date on unbeatable Steam sales, and more.”

Having a good sound card and speaker set up can make a big difference to your experience of gaming, yet few of us can have a large speaker system dedicated to our PC.

Currently I just use my laptop speakers or some cheap headphones. I have had 7.1 headphones but my ears overheated, so I had to stop using them.

As much as I would love to have huge speakers to play with but my living arrangements and the fact I like portability, anything other than headphones is impossible.

Tell me more about your speaker set up. Got any recommendations regarding headphones?

So there I was sitting at my desk, staring at the blank screen of my laptop wondering what this week’s poll question should be and then I remembered a comment s.anchev had made (He wasn’t the first and won’t be the last) …“If someone could use all the GuildHall ideas on a full mod, it could make one hell of a mod.”.

And then I had the question. Phew, they are getting harder and harder to write.

Anyway, back to the question.

I made a list of different types of mods that I thought might be fun to play.

I have gone into a little detail below in case readers aren’t sure what I mean by them.

I’m terrible. I make more NYRs than you can imagine.

The inside of my wardrobe door is covered in photos and post it notes.

In fact, as I get older, I get worse or more ambitious, depending on which way you look at it.

And yes, I do achieve some of them!

So, this year, I plan to make some gaming resolutions, not related to the website.

At the risk of jinxing my chances of achieving these resolutions, here they are.

With only one week to go before the end of the year, I thought it might be nice to think back over the last year of HL modding.

Now, when I say “HL” I mean all maps and mods related to Half-Life. Hl2 EP2, Portal 2 etc.

This is not a proper retrospective of the year but just a general feel for it.

Stole this idea from ModDB (Thanks guys!). Of course, I adapted it slightly for you, but it’s the theme that’s the same.

There’s no doubt that defining a great mod is harder than just picking a few answers in my poll (BTW, you get to choose 3) and it can be hard to even recognize what it was exactly that made you think it was great in the first place. But that doesn’t mean we should think about it!

Personally, I am more interested in how something plays than it looks and new stuff is only good if it helps the gameplay. Same for doing something new.

However, when a mod makes you think about life, than that’s gotta be a great thing. Don’t you think?

The winning entry for HalloweenVille had an alternative ending.

I kept meaning to go back and replay it, but never did.

I realized that unless the part where the divergence is made very clear, as in The Citizen 2, then I never go back and play it.

I noticed that Valve announced today that they would be using Steam Workshop to distribute Skyrim mods.

They had previously announced distribution of Portal 2 mods via the same method, and as I wrote on somewhere, that scared the heck out of me.

I don’t use Steam Friends as much as some, but that’s true of Facebook, LinkedIn or Skype etc.

For those that seem to spend their entire life online (I’m looking at you Au Heppa!) they may not pay much attention to their friends list.

I do. I don’t know why but I do.

Following on from last week’s poll question of Which is better: P1 or P2, I thought I would continue the theme.

This time it’s much hard to decide because like many great questions of prowess (Ali vs Tyson, Caruso vs Pavarotti etc) it often comes down to era. Just as importantly is which one you played first.

I’m not a huge Portal fan but I do enjoy the occasional map or mod.

There’s been more debate about which is better: Portal 1 or Portal 2 than for HL1 or HL2, mainly because they are both on the “same” engine and any comparison naturally gravitates towards visual aspects.

I’ve just finished a really long and great book. I feel a little relieved that I have finished it, but also sad because the story has finished, at least for the time being.

As much as I love reading I couldn’t start a new book for a few days, even a short one – I need time to “digest” what I have just experienced. I need time to look for the plot holes and consider the actions of the protagonists.

I move around a lot when I play video games.

In fact, once or twice, I’ve nearly fallen off my chair as I twist and turn in an effort to avoid a rocket or some other projectile.

I’m guessing that’s pretty common, but the other day I noticed myself actually talking while playing.

I’ve been thinking more about the comparisons between games/mods and other entertainment media and one thing that struck me yesterday was that every film/TV show and every book (unless it’s short stories) has it’s length quite obvious to the viewer or reader.

Obviously, I play everything.

I don’t have to, but I feel it’s required of me.

My reviews don’t carry any more weight than other reviewers, except in the sense that everything I add now, I review, so regular readers can get a sense of how their tastes fit against mine.

Almost 4 and a half years ago, I wrote a piece called, Ten-Year Anniversary Half-Life Convention starting a tongue-in-cheek petition for a Valve convention (Which only got 84 signatures!).

For some reason, I started thinking about it earlier this week again.

Not sure what makes me think this, but It seems there are more and more “Non-HL” mods being made. I suppose most are TCs (Total Conversions), but not huge new universes, just little adaptations of new ideas.

I am certainly not against these types of releases, but do admit to “Knowing what I like and liking what I know” mentality.