Slashdot Mirror

Less than 5ms is nonsense (a simple framerate calculation , but Digital Foundry did quite a few input lag tests.

Anywhere from 60ms to over 100ms is common. Apparently gamers start to notice input lag at 166ms. Also, input lag and network lag shouldn't be confused with each other. The ping values you see in your game aren't 1-on-1 comparable to the input lag rates reported here.

To be honest, the 150ms input lag surprises me in a positive way. It's much lower than I had expected. For a game like UT3, 150ms is probably way too much and apparently that's one of the faster games, so OnLive's input latency is probably still too high for most games.

Many developers do, hence 360 versions of multiplatform games tend to look better. But this is pointless fanboy dickwagging anyway, you can refer to Digital Foundry if you really need a breakdown on the differences but usually they are too small for a regular user to worry about.

No, no, no!! He wants a console, not a crappy gaming PC

But I can totally see your point, look at the difference in graphics between the PC and Xbox version of Mass Effect 2. It really is like night and day, and in the PC version you also get DRM totally free. Ha! suck it console fanboys!

Yes, whatever happened to the Jeff Green from the EA.com story?

Yes, Activision has embraced its evil status: the CEO has turned away potentially good games because he didn't see the recurring-fee model or the tweak-a-few-settings-and-release-20xx-the-next-year model (as one example). Supposedly, EA has realized its mistakes, but I'm still not seeing a lot of fan support for its popular games. (The Need For Speed series could be great, but one $50 game is only playable for so long. It's re-playability is not too good.)

If Ubisoft is really trying to correct its image, then why are they telling Eurogamer.net "that its 'online services platform' for PC games will 'evolve and improve' and is most certainly here to stay"? (Essentially, suck it, our DRM stays.)

Of course there are sources.

EuroGamer reported on it, and it's quoting Valve's Chet Faliszek.

Note: This is for the already released Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 DLC, and not about the vaporware that is the 360 Team Fortress 2 update (which makes engine changes).

First off the latency wasn't half a second, it was estimated at 133ms even with unknown factors such as the latency of the TV, game settings and unoptimized code to consider. Second, plenty of casual or sedate games would benefit from motion sensing that tried to smooth out spikes caused by wobbly hands or whatever. Casual gamers don't need twitchy controls.

Eurogamer have already run a report with Sony techs stating precisely that. Specifically "If you want to make a more casual game, you smooth [jitter] out. It introduces latency when you smooth things but for a casual user, maybe that's a better thing. As a developer, you have control of this. If you want to make a hardcore game with precise tracking or if you want to make a more casual game, or give some help to the user you can do that." .

So games can be tuned for smoothness or twitchiness. A game like Socom for example is more interested in how the user is flicking the controller around rather than the ball on the end so perhaps smoothing is turned off and the camera sample rate dialled down to lower CPU and increase responsiveness.

Yeah, the eurogamer article on the Move also claims that there are accelerometers.

This just establishes that the original post was making a lot of assumptions. There was very little information at that point since all they had the was GDC announcement speech to go on. If it really were an EyeToy + a glowy controller, this would be awful.

They've got a preview up on Eurogamer as well.

And yes the PS3 is inferior hardware. Look it up.

http://www.gamezine.co.uk/news/game-types/fighting-games/street-fighter-iv-ps3-sub-hd-in-close-up-$1270459.htm

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/face-off-resident-evil-5-article

http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-348-1.htm

EVERY game that has come out on both platforms, is able to run, and look better on the 360 due to better GPU and the additional 10MB back buffer. The 360's OS has a smaller memory footprint, and provides better functionality with online gaming. It took sony forever to get features into their OS, it was already eating up a shitload of memory and providing less functionality than the 360. Its been a slow process for Sony. They're still not there yet. Their first party games beat the shit out of anything Microsoft has ever made on the 360 though. I own both consoles, and enjoy them both for different reasons.

blah blah, your moms a cunt, and she raised an asshole.

They forgot to bury it below crossroads, it's coming back again.

Then again Hellgate at least has a singleplayer mode so it remains playable in some form.

Apparently not as much as you think. Check out these measured latencies from XBox 360 games:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-lag-factor-article?page=3

The lowest any game got was 67ms of latency, and Unreal Tournament 3 measured 100ms-133ms.

There's a *LOT* of leeway in there to account for 20ms of network latency.

The problem with the PC Perspective article, other than that he was using a borrowed account, was that the OnLive beta has a limited number of PoPs active; the beta is limited to the geographical areas near the PoPs.

The author of the article alternatively either had OnLive refuse to connect since the latency was too high, or received warnings that the latency was too high; he ignored them. It's obvious that that would seriously impact performance.

I'll do some math... I'm sitting on a fibre connection, pinging a fibre connection 1752 miles away, and getting peak latency of 60ms. Let's assume the user is on DSL and add 10ms of latency to account for that, 70ms. OnLive has a maximum range of 1000 miles, so they'd have 34+10ms of latency, or 44ms of network latency. You're already over one frame worth of latency, but this is worst-case for a user at the edge of the range of a PoP.

Now, if the author of the article was at least twice as far away, you'd be expecting him to get at least 78ms of latency or more... We're starting to talk about 2-3 frames of lag at least. And that is where responsiveness starts going down the tubes.

He complained about going half a screen past enemies in UT3; if we assume that a twitch action to rotate by 90 degrees takes one fifth of a second (which is probably slower than reality), and the author's ill-adviced "preview" of OnLive has added perhaps 50ms of latency over the intended experience. That would mean that he would overshoot his mark by about 23 degrees, which sounds about right from his experience.

OnLive will always have problems with twitch games; I suspect games like UT3 will work for users who are quite close to the PoP and experience good conditions. But most other games that are not latency sensitive should work fine for anyone in range of a PoP. The author, however, was far enough away that even those games start to have issues.

If the author had done all his previewing at the home of this "friend of a friend", we might have seen something more representative of what the final service will behave like!

OnLive knows all this. They set themselves a target of 80ms round-trip latency.

To achieve this, they set certain geographical limits. This journalist broke those limits. The software warning him about high latency. He observed high latency.

Note that some games are perceived as OK despite up to 200ms round-trip latency. GTA IV on the Xbox was measured to have 133-200ms latency. Nobody cared because it's not a twitch game.

Not that that's a real reason for removing dedicated servers

The real reason for removing (not adding) dedicated servers is so they could push MW2 out as fast as possible. Cut out as much as you can, make it short and sell hard, that's the EA\Activision way. There's more marketing hype then actual game in Modern Warfare 2. Personally I didn't think Modern Warfare 1 was that good, certainly not as good as the fanboys or marketing are making it out. Maybe I'm just a crotchety old PC gamer but there is nothing in Modern Warfare that I haven't played before in better games.

But Modern Warfare enjoyed success on the consoles (possibly due to games like BF 1942 or earlier COD's never being released on conosles). So Activision immediately started on a sequel, personally I think if a game cannot stand on it's own for no less then three years it does not deserve a sequel, this is why getting a sequel out for Modern Warfare had to be done so quickly, if people started seeing Modern Warfare in reality, as passe then they would lose mind-share and never sell a big sequel. Modern Warfare did terribly on PC's and rightly so, we expect better. In fact we already have better games like Battlefield 2.

Anyone who doesn't think that Activision is working on Modern Warfare 3 is kidding themselves, it was in production before Modern Warfare 2 hit shelves. I earmark mid 2011 for it's release bugs or no and it will be just as short as and uninventive as the previous Modern Warfare games, because that's the Activision way. They'd get a new Modern Warfare out each year before Christmas if it were possible.

Fortunately the consolisation of decent games is ending. Nintendo proved that the real money is with casual games not the "hardcore" crowd. Microsoft took note (what do you think Natal is all about) so the next Xbox will be built along the same lines as the Wii (MS are nothing if not good at copying) and probably make a profit from the word go. Decent FPS games will gravitate back to the PC as consoles will no longer be able to compete in terms of power (not that they've been able to, you still cant do FSAA on consoles). This means the death of pointless sequels and the Activision way which is a good thing(TM).

BTW, it's not all doom and gloom, there still are decent developers out there, like Valve and Stardock.

Remember this from 2007?

I don't trust game critic scores anymore. I either play a demo myself, or I don't buy the game.

Oh I forgot this nugget: the reason for the 4 year delay on GT4 for PSP: ""Once we experienced PS3 online and went through all of that, we came to the conclusion that PSP should not be a standalone product - it should be linked in to the world of Gran Turismo, linked with the PlayStation 3," said Yamauchi."

18 months later GT for PSP is released and there is no online play, nor are there any online leaderboards for time trial times or the ability to share ghost laps with other players.

Polyphony is full of crap. I sold my PSP after GT4 was released since there was no point to keeping it anymore.

Since the linked article just returns 404, here's EuroGamer's one.

Also note "Update: In related news, Sony Europe has said that the delay is "only applicable for the Japanese market"."

Let me quote Eurogamer on the 1997 Playstation game Bushido Blade:

Bushido Blade works like this: If somebody scores a glancing blow on you, you're slowed. If somebody hits your arm, you fight on one-handed. If somebody hits your leg, you go down to one knee. If somebody hits you hard, anywhere at all, there is a horrible crunch or spurt of blood and you die.

Eurogamer's retrospective says it all. Imagine if it had caught on.

Wouldn't surprise me at all if it's true. Most modern console games have unacceptably high latency:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-lag-factor-article

this was pretty obviously an Xbox game originally

Not so much - it's been in development since 2004, and was originally planned as PC only, and indeed was still being talked about as PC only back in 2008.

You're right about the simplicity of some of the models (although I'm pretty sure they are using bump mapping), but that's not because they were originally targeting consoles.

Mickey has to draw and scribble his way through levels, mending broken bridges by applying the right colour paint or peering through walls after applying thinner. He can even clear rubble from his path by erasing parts of the world.

Source

It's a painting game puzzle game with retro art style. It may be darker than previous painting games, but I really doubt it's Mickey's version of Batman Begins.

Unless their story is "Knights of the Old Republic" and they are deliberately choosing the most evil choice at every opportunity. Check out this excellent article "Bastard of the Old Republic" by John Walker

part 1: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/bastard-of-the-old-republic-article
part 2: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/bastard-of-the-old-republic-article_2
part 3: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/bastard-of-the-old-republic-part3

Unless their story is "Knights of the Old Republic" and they are deliberately choosing the most evil choice at every opportunity. Check out this excellent article "Bastard of the Old Republic" by John Walker

part 1: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/bastard-of-the-old-republic-article
part 2: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/bastard-of-the-old-republic-article_2
part 3: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/bastard-of-the-old-republic-part3

Unless their story is "Knights of the Old Republic" and they are deliberately choosing the most evil choice at every opportunity. Check out this excellent article "Bastard of the Old Republic" by John Walker

part 1: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/bastard-of-the-old-republic-article
part 2: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/bastard-of-the-old-republic-article_2
part 3: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/bastard-of-the-old-republic-part3

Rich Leadbetter at Eurogamer really laid into the OnLive concept. But he seems more convinced by Gaikai.

Me, I think both could work - although I'd be surprised if most people could acheive 60fps / 720p

I wonder why i try replying to an anon troll, but I will bite.

Your rant is nice and long (and partially true, for example i hate the way they charge for Live), but could you back it up by facts ? For example, how is the Xbox a train wreck ? how is it dying ?

Quick and dirty google search :
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/microsoft-games-profits-up-by-16-per-cent

The original Xbox was a real money sink, but it was a way to get a foothold in the console market. Now the Xbox 360, while still outpaced by the Wii, is the real deal and a money maker for Microsoft. Moreover, despite being the oldest console, its growth keeps increasing over the past 2 years.

Filters can work wonders, but they can't turn this into this.

(notwithstanding the user comment on Eurogamer that the new screens look like something from someone's Deviantart account)

Filters can work wonders, but they can't turn this into this.

(notwithstanding the user comment on Eurogamer that the new screens look like something from someone's Deviantart account)

If your business model relays on licensing your SDK and getting a commission on written games for your system, you want to control that.

The problem is that Nintendo and Sony don't make SDKs available to hobbyists or micro-ISVs operating out of a home office at all.

If Microsoft were to do something like that on Windows, you bet they would do some weirder crap like forcing developers to enter a key to activate the SDK, or forcing developers to purchase a install code.

Microsoft did exactly this. Micro-ISVs developing Xbox 360 games need to purchase a PC that runs Windows, along with a developer certificate called "XNA Creators Club" for $99 per year. (Apple copied this model nearly verbatim for the iPhone SDK.) And to target Windows Mobile, developers need to buy the paid version of Visual Studio, not download Visual C++ Express.

the main difference between Console DRM and PC DRM is that console DRM doesn't get in your way when you play the games you legally bought.

Yes it does. I want to back up my save files in Wii games, but if a game uses Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, the save file gets marked as no-copy and the Wii Menu won't let me copy it to an SD card.

you won't have some stupid crap like SecuROM's three install and you're out.

Or you lose your saved games and purchased WiiWare/VC games when Nintendo cross-ships you a replacement console. Nintendo originally planned to limit Wii Speak Channel to one Wii console per Wii Speak microphone, and the media interpreted this as a tactic to discourage resale of microphones. The company eventually did back down, issuing replacement activation codes for Wii Speak Channel.

Discussed here

One of the first things you see in the game, seconds after taking control of Chris Redfield, is a gang of African men brutally beating something in a sack. Animal or human, it's never revealed, but these are not infected Majini. There are no red bloodshot eyes. These are ordinary Africans, who stop and stare at you menacingly as you approach. Since the Majini are not undead corpses, and are capable of driving vehicles, handling weapons and even using guns, it makes the line between the infected monsters and African civilians uncomfortably vague. Where Africans are concerned, the game seems to be suggesting, bloodthirsty savagery just comes with the territory.

It's a zombie game. Maybe what's in the sack is a fucking zombie.

The assumption that these African civilians are menacing savages pulping an innocent animal or a human says more about the racism of the author of the excerpted comment than it does about the racism of the game.

Discussed here

One of the first things you see in the game, seconds after taking control of Chris Redfield, is a gang of African men brutally beating something in a sack. Animal or human, it's never revealed, but these are not infected Majini. There are no red bloodshot eyes. These are ordinary Africans, who stop and stare at you menacingly as you approach. Since the Majini are not undead corpses, and are capable of driving vehicles, handling weapons and even using guns, it makes the line between the infected monsters and African civilians uncomfortably vague. Where Africans are concerned, the game seems to be suggesting, bloodthirsty savagery just comes with the territory.

also here

And because there's a history of demonization and subhuman portrayals with regard to people of African descent, there's a certain sensitivity around that. I understand that legacy for the most part is completely different in Japan. But that history of negative portrayals was what informed my reactions.

There's also the spectre of the old racism debate, hovering the background. That debate is only going to get louder and more urgent once the game is released, and is being covered beyond the cosy world of the specialist gaming press, since there's imagery in here that goes beyond the general air of foreign menace that caused a ruckus in the first trailers.

One of the first things you see in the game, seconds after taking control of Chris Redfield, is a gang of African men brutally beating something in a sack. Animal or human, it's never revealed, but these are not infected Majini. There are no red bloodshot eyes. These are ordinary Africans, who stop and stare at you menacingly as you approach. Since the Majini are not undead corpses, and are capable of driving vehicles, handling weapons and even using guns, it makes the line between the infected monsters and African civilians uncomfortably vague. Where Africans are concerned, the game seems to be suggesting, bloodthirsty savagery just comes with the territory.

Later on, there's a cut-scene of a white blonde woman being dragged off, screaming, by black men. When you attempt to rescue her, she's been turned and must be killed. If this has any relevance to the story it's not apparent in the first three chapters, and it plays so blatantly into the old clichés of the dangerous "dark continent" and the primitive lust of its inhabitants that you'd swear the game was written in the 1920s. That Sheva neatly fits the approved Hollywood model of the light-skinned black heroine, and talks more like Lara Croft than her thickly-accented foes, merely compounds the problem rather than easing it. There are even more outrageous and outdated images to be found later in the game, stuff that I was honestly surprised to see in 2009, but Capcom has specifically asked that details of these scenes remain under wraps for now, whether for these reasons we don't know.

There will be plenty of people who refuse to see anything untoward in this material. "It wasn't racist when the enemies were Spanish in Resident Evil 4," goes the argument, but then the Spanish don't have the baggage of being stereotyped as subhuman animals for the past two hundred years. It's perfectly possible to use Africa as the setting for a powerful and troubling horror story, but when you're applying the concept of people being turned into savage monsters onto an actual ethnic group that has long been misrepresented as savage monsters, it's hard to see how elements of race weren't going to be a factor.

All it will take is for one mainstream media outlet to show the heroic Chris Redfield stamping on the face of a black woman, splattering her skull, and the controversy over Manhunt 2 will seem quaint by comparison. If we're going to accept this sort of imagery in games then questions are going be asked, these questions will have merit, and we're going to need a more convincing answer than "lol it's just a game."

You need a round of Pathologic. It addresses every concern you've mentioned there, at the expense of being unapproachable even by most "hardcore" gamers' standards.

Psychology studies of the effects of playing video games have found emotional responses and physical reactions associated with reinforced violent and anti-social attitudes. It is not clear, however, whether these markers are associated with increases in one's preferences for anti-social behaviors or whether virtual behaviors act to partially sate one's desire for actual antisocial behaviors. Violent or criminal behaviors in the virtual world and in the physical world could plausibly be either complements or substitutes. A finding of one versus the other would have diametrically opposing policy implications. I study the incidence of criminal activity as related to a proxy for increased gaming, the number of game stores, from a panel of US counties from 1994 to 2004. With fixed county and year effects, I can examine if changes relative increases in gaming in an area are associated with relative increases or decreases in criminal activity. For six of eight categories of crime, more game stores are associated with significant declines in crime rates. Proxies for other leisure activities, sports and movie viewing, do not have a similar effect. For confirmation, I also find that mortality rates, especially mortality rates stemming from injuries, also are negatively related to the number of game stores.

Video Games, Crime and Violence by Michael R. Ward, University of Texas at Arlington - Department of Economics

There is no epidemic of youth violence in America.

The whole concept is a lie manufactured, distributed and perpetuated by the media. Kids are not killing each other more frequently than they used to. In fact, it turns out the opposite is true.

CAUTION: Childen at Play - The Truth About Violent Youth and Video Games

Overall results of the study found that although violent video games appear to increase people's aggressive thoughts (which it would not be surprising that people are still thinking about what they were just playing), violent games do not appear to increase aggressive behavior.

This as true for both correlational and experimental studies. Also it was found that studies that employed less standardized measures of aggression produced higher effects than better standardized measures of aggression. In other words, better measures of aggression are associated with lower effects.

Researcher Finds Scant Evidence Linking Violent Games With Aggressive Behavior

"It's a natural behavior and it's surprising that the idea that children and adolescents learn aggression from the media is still relevant," says Richard Tremblay, a professor of pediatrics, psychiatry and psychology at the University of Montreal, who has spent more than two decades tracking 35,000 Canadian children (from age five months through their 20s) in search of the roots of physical aggression. "Clearly youth were violent before television appeared."

Taming Baby Rage: Why Are Some Kids So Angry?

The BBFC has accepted there is no proven link between anti-social behaviour and violent videogames - but said more research is required to conclusively rule any connection out.

No evidence connecting games and violence, says BBFC News

Failing? Didn't the game sell almost 2 million copies?

"LucasArts has already shipped 4.3 million copies of the game, but it's proved so popular they've told the factory to make some extra copies. Looks like The Force Unleashed could be the most popular Star Wars game to date - unsurprising when you consider it's one of the least rubbish"
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=243312

This article, listed in the summary, has this as an official response from EA:

"Please do not continue to post these threads or you account may be at risk of banning, which in some cases would mean you would need to buy a new copy to play Spore."

I'm all for calling out bad summaries, but the summary appears to be correct.

There's Warhammer: Mark of Chaos, which I believe fits your bill.

Be forewarned Mark of Chaos is apparently a badly done Total War clone.

He's the fundamental difference: on a console you put in the CD which is needed to authenticate that you have the disk, but it doesn't actually update the firmware of your system. When you eject the disk, the system is exactly the same as it was before.

You're rather misinformed.

The wii does that, the PSP and PS3 do that, and the Xbox 360 does that. The XBOX did that too, and the PS2 allowed for modifications of the "Your System Configuration" save to retroactively patch the system to fix issues with games. This was what led to the "PS2 Independence" exploit.

To do things like close security holes in their DRM, they include new firmware on the disks of games that come out, and require firmware updates before you are permitted to play. The Xbox 360, for example, has fuses that it blows in the processor. Older firmware refuses to run if the fuses are blown, newer firmware refuses to run if it isn't. This prevents you from downgrading your firmware.

Games have also been known to check or alter the dashboard, which is basically the "OS".

On a console, you have a manufacturer controlled device that only runs manufacturer-approved software. The disk can be used to authenticate itself, or update the entire OS or firmware. And, due to DRM, cryptography, and poor documentation, it's significantly harder to have any clue what's going on. The system might be exactly the same, but you have no way of knowing.

Consoles are _way_ worse than PCs are - the worst DRM I've seen for the PC involved slight sector changes or drivers. No DRM yet (AFAIK) goes so far as to mandate firmware or bios upgrades.

Found recently an article about piracy, mostly in context of games but also touching **AA claims. This is pretty much my opinion on piracy in well written form.

It is hard to swallow to many, but I still stand on the position that many people will not engage in what now called "piracy" if only business was better and quicker in responding to changing customer needs. Nobody wants to be criminal, nor states want to criminalize its populace. But **AA actions... This is pretty much worst what have happened in creative business in ages.

Tell you what - you hang on to the pony, while the OP and I play Far Cry 2 and Spore.

Moving beyond the linear storyline in games might be an ambitious goal, but some game developers are giving it a go. The links above, especially the first, show just how they're trying to achieve it. They might not pull it off quite yet, but at least they're giving it a try.

Valve has a nice vision:

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=160866

Have to say I agree with them.

I recently bought a new, up-to-date PC with dual cores and all the bells and whistles. After playing nothing but WoW, Civ and other less-powerhungry games on my trusty old 1,2 GHz Celeron and Win'98, I could finally check out all the games I missed.

So far: Half-Life 2, Orange Box (consisting of EP1&EP2 too, and Portal). Love it. Also love Steam. It works.
Another case: Galactic Civilizations 2. Stardock's Stardock Central (and the parallel, Impulse), rock.

NO Copy protection. No DVD in drive bullshit. No running through the hoops. Before, when I bought a game it was always running via gamecopyworld.com to get the crack. Another game that I got was Crysis. Fine, gamecopyworld has cracks - except there isn't one for the 64-bit 1.21 version. So I was stuck with the DVD in drive..

Then, as an old Baldur's Gate&Torment&Kotor fan, I heard that Bioware had done a new RPG - Mass Effect. To avoid hassle, I googled for what copy protection it's using - and read about the whole phone-home-schema. I can run Steam in offline mode. Stardock Central doesn't phone home. But these guys seriously thought that spyware in your PC is ok?!

I was already firing up my torrent client, but then I read http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/09/2318229 about EA loosening the DRM and actually bought the game instead.

Gotta love Valve. And Blizzard.

It's not that strange, if you define "strange" as meaning something similar to "unusual". It is a bit of a worry though -- my general impression of Spore has been of a "it's done when it's done" type of project, and aiming for an arbitrary release date seems contrary to that.

Still, I have hope. Even all those years ago when it was first demonstrated it appeared pretty gamey, even if the different phases weren't linked. And I've been seeing various hands-on previews that say the game is virtually complete. So it might be they've given themselves heaps of time for polishing (I imagine you could spend forever polishing this sort of game) but it's already pretty much done.

Here's a review from August 2007: http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=82007

Gabe Newell seems to show a lot of fancy towards the episodic method of distributing games. Put that in mind when he remarked to Eurogamer a while back that Episode 1 to Episode 3 "essentially" was Half Life 3. Smaller teams with less to lose permits them to take more risks in game design. Does this mean the real Half Life 3 (not episode 1-3!) will be distributed the same way?

However, on what we know about Episode 3: First of all, Portal takes place in the Half Life universe in the laboratories of Aperture Science. This had to be for an obvious reason since it essentially is a storyline shoe-horn in to a puzzle game. They didn't need to do it, but they did it anyway. Episode 2 spills the info that Aperture Science has a vessel called the Borealis. It "vanished" (i.e. teleportation) but has now been found. Obviously Gordon will have to go there and find the ship and obtain the gadgets and gizmos. This means Gordon will have to travel to the arctic, so Episode 3 will most likely feature snowy areas. And then there is this Gabe Newell quote on Portal (After you launch the player, play the video called "X-Play Review: Portal". Gabe's quote is a little over the halfway mark):
"The character that you play is a character who has importance in the overall half-life universe, and will eventually have a fairly significant relationship with other characters that we're already familiar with".

The way Portal works as an introductory game to educate the players on how to use the Portal gun to interact with the environment is a really clever method to set things up on how it will potentially be used in Episode 3. But I'm actually not so sure however whether Chell will give Gordon the gun, cause he doesn't have the surgically inserted heel springs to prevent injury from falling the large distances. Oh, and GLaDOS will probably be involved somehow...she's "still alive" you know.

"Basically this guy decided to criticize a gameplay setup without giving any thought to why it's there in the first place."

I'm arguing for the existence of levels, not against. I apologise for not making it clear enough in the summary - I guess I expected more people to read the fine article. However, I'm setting out the reasons why the existence of levels in order to load additional parts of the game is no longer a requirement, and perhaps theming, pacing, narrative, learning curve and reward are much better reasons for the level structure (I missed out reward, and I'm kicking myself for not thinking of when I first wrote the article - ironically, there's a great review of Supreme Commander on Eurogamer at the moment arguing one of the frustrating issues in that gave is the reward for 'finishing a level' in that game is to expand the play area and make it harder).

A book has chapters and a movie has scenes because these are both (mostly) narrative mediums. A counter example of books without chapters which venture closer to the game space is the Fighting Fantasy series, where the chapter mechanism is thrown away in favour of the 'choose your own' mechanic. Similarly, cross-cutting two scenes in film is a way of mixing up the narrative structure. I would be interested to know if there are any Momento-like games out there.

A game has levels for - well, narrative is certainly a reason, but not the only one.

There are a TON of games with substantial artistic value. Some notable older ones I can think of offhand:

-MDK
-ZPC
-Alice
-Myst (plus Riven and the Myst sequels)
-Unreal

more recently:

-Bioshock
-Okami
-Zelda Twilight Princess

I mean, I could go on, but I'm getting tired of copying & pasting all these URLs.... ;)

I, for one, welcome Groening as our overlord!

• Zelda: The Twilight Princess (2006, Wii, GC)
• Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass (2007, DS)
• Super Mario Galaxy (2007, Wii)
• Super Paper Mario (2007, Wii)
• New Super Mario Bros (2006, DS)

Live text feed:

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=79 482

Major news:
Smash Bros Dec 3rd in US
Mario Kart Wii confirmed
Zapper lightgun-style addon

They did publish Ultima Ascension and System Shock 2. But nothing is better than EA Canada's comments.

I'll bite:

* Microsoft has no solution to the hardware failures - system bought this month are still failing

Their solution is the warranty program and hardware changes (maybe heatsinks, maybe something else) will undoubtedly show up soon. The financial onus is now squarely on Microsoft to reduce hardware problems.

* Microsoft has no solution to the disc scratching problem - you aren't covered under this billion dollar's worth of repairs for anything other than the specific RRoD problems

But you would be covered under the 1-year console warranty. I've known someone who this specific issue applied to and got it fixed.

* The system is the loudest ever due to the crappy 12x speed DVD drive and fans

No argument there.

* Forced to pay 50 dollars a year for online play that adds 250 dollars to the price of the console over five years

And it adds 500 over ten years and 5000 over one-hundred years. Look, multiplayer isn't free, but you aren't forced to pay for it, and you aren't forced to pay up front. All other online services are free to other players.

* No dedicated servers - laggy games that aren't even hosted by Microsoft

The entire system is managed by Microsoft and has an impressive track record. Games might be peer-to-peer, but I've never seen lag and voice chat works in every 360 game I've played. What kind of connection do you have?

* Low player count games - Gears of War only could handle 8 players, Halo 3 can only handle 16 - that is pathetic in 2007

How is that an indictment of Microsoft or their console? Neither developer has said that Xbox Live was a restriction for multiplayer match size.

* Halfassed backwards compatibility - Microsoft tried to get away with skipping it and they were forced to put in an amateur effort where even the games that 'work' don't really work or have major issues

I found their advertising fairly clear on this. While I wish all games would work, 90% of my old Xbox games work fine. Go read the compatibility list, it isn't small. This becomes less of an issue as the system gets older.

* Absurd peripheral prices

Whose aren't? That hardly sways me from one console to another.

* No ability to upgrade the harddrive - you are forced to only upgrade to one size drive and you have to pay twice as much money as it's worth

That might be the only accurate thing you said, but again, you aren't forced to upgrade. You aren't even forced to use the HDD at all.

* No HD movie playback - Microsoft decided to throw a tantrum over BluRay's Java layer and gamers lost out

The 360 has the best downloadable HD movie option available at the moment. It also has an HD-DVD drive option, which isn't standard, but the 360 costs $200 less than a PS3 anyway. I don't feel limited by the lack of it.

* Pathetic storage medium - the 360 is the first console to ever have LESS storage than a previous generation - 7 gigs for the 360 versus 8 gigs for the Xbox. And open world games have to use only a single layer due to the 100 ms layer switch penalty thus limiting games like GTA to only 3.5 gigs

I've never heard of this. Oblivion seemed pretty expansive to me, I'm so sad for GTA's worries.

* Botched graphics system - can't handle 1080p in real next gen games like Lair on the PS3 due to the retarded 10 megs of EDRAM that were designed for 480p

You are starting to show your true fanboy. The 360 can output in 1080p and was designed for 720p, which it looks great at. Check out the 360 to PS3 graphics compariso

Yes smart. GTA IV is still coming to the PS3 so what's the problem? As I said if they can fund 5-10 games for what GTA would have cost to keep exclusive. I'd rather see Sony bulk up with new exclusives rather than pay through the nose to hang onto existing ones.

And I say that as someone who has owned pretty much every GTA title at one title at one time or another. I'm looking forward to GTA IV, but I really don't care that it's coming to the 360 too. Good for them. I just hope the PS3 version isn't hobbled by the DVD-9 capacity of the 360.

Even the much vaunted exclusive content for the 360 isn't happening until some time next year and might end up being a "timed exclusive" or similar. The PS3 is rumoured to be exclusive content which may or may not be the same content just 6 months later. I hope Sony didn't pay to get it and don't see why they should if Take Two rake it in from people downloading the content from the PSN store.