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and a pen's got to suck for playing any FPSs

Nintendo disagrees.

Gently touch a cop car with yours (so as not to get a star yet, but so it floats), quick get out and hop on it, and wait for it to float high above the streets. Then shoot the cop car you're standing on, and you will get a star and the cop will get out to reprimand you, only to fall to his death.

Coordinate with multiple cars for more fun :-)

PS: GTA 3 is still the best for cop fun, since their strategy to reprimand you is to drive insanely fast in a straight line towards you, with complete disregard for what stands in their way, be it pedestrians, cliffs, etc :-)

A) How does barring minors from such games violate free speech? Last I saw free speech just allowed me to say whatever I wanted, not do whatever I wanted. B) I don't see anybody complaining about the fact that minors aren't allowed int an R[+] rated movie. In my mind games kind of fall under the same category.

I could be wrong, but I'm fairly certain that the MPAA's R rating restriction is a voluntary, industry-executed policy, not law. In fact, it was developed specifically to keep lawmakers from creating a legislative equivalent. The ESRB's system is the same thing.

The California law in question ignores the ESRB's system and creates one of its own without creating any kind of body to determine what qualifies for restrictions and what doesn't. So, as a retailer you could be subject to fines of $1,000 per incident without even being able to check ahead of time as to whether or not a particular title qualifies.

Gamespot has coverage of the bill's details.

I'd like to know more about the "numerous precedents of video games being qualified as free speech in other circuit courts and states" (quoted from TFA).

Here's one example (via Gamespot): Washington state

Judge Robert Lasnik of the US District Court in Seattle ruled the law [HB1009] unconstitutional under the First Amendment's protection of freedom of speech.

Gamespot http://www.gamespot.com/news/6135979.html/ is reporting that Jack didn't even bother to file his complaint with the Seatle Police department until well after he'd faxed complaints to PA, Gamespot, 1up, and others.
I realize the mans not the brightest bulb on the show room floor, but you'd think sending in the complaint before the press release would be a no-brainer. This, if nothing else, absolutely shows off the character of the man. Show boating, and media attention first and foremost.
I'm with others, if he has finally filed a complaint with the SPD I hope they, and PA nail his ass to the wall for filing a false complaint. The only way the media will finally stop listening to him is if someone takes his ass to task for his tactics. Follow it all the way through the courts, get them to declare him an ass-hat and you have more credibility then all the Janet Reno and Trolling stories put together.

How about Killer 7? I've never seen any graphics like it in an FPS game.

It seems at least one person a year dies of video games in Korea. While the family that left the infant at home seems real, the others seem a little off. Its hard to believe that 50 hours of gameplay would kill you. Remember this is also the country that thinks that fallin asleep with a fan on in the room will kill you. Makes you think of 1850-1910 newspapers.

Fan death
Infant Death

Gazing upon BestBuys shelves, noticing the implications of the covers to games, I noticed that a considerable number of games were based off of some movie. All the movies suck. If it were exciting to make music, they'd probably have a game based off of Britney Spears and then turn around and think that people aren't interested in gaming becuase noone wants to purchase the Britney Spears Dance game.

They made such a game. Only it's a dancing game.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6135302.html

Although I don't have an X-Box and don't plan on getting an X-Box 360 out of principle (that MS is bad for consumers, and the marketplace in its current form. I have read a few articles about J. Allard and interviews with him, and I get the idea that he is an alright guy that is one of the few people in MS that has the power and courage to change MS culture (even if most influence resides in the X-Box division). Of course in this interview he still uses exec-speak occasionally and has to tow the company line to not upset HIS bosses.

My favorite and laughable quotes are: "I hope that Sony's nervous right now"

Regarding 360 Hacks: "With 360, we said, 'Let's assume we can't stop it. How are we going to manage it?'... What can we do with connectivity to try to put a really big speed bump in place and, most importantly, protect the gamers from the hackers making it a crappy experience with them? Because that's my biggest nightmare."

Regarding the differences between gaming on PCs and on consoles: "On my console, I sit around the couch. There's usually some beer on the table. There's usually other people on the couch. It's a big-screen TV and it's usually action where there's a lot less precision required and I'm less bummed out if my army's wiped out because I just press restart and start again. "

Regarding developers complaining about DVDs limited capacity: "That's why games look better year over year. It's primarily because hardware comes in hot and developers, use the deficiency of the schedule not just to learn about hardware but also cut a couple of corners. "

Regarding the X-Box 360 not being a big enough departure from the original X-Box: "And if you go too far and you say, 'I'm going to change the category out completely and we're going to give you a wacky controller. And we're going to give you wacky games that you don't really understand, and we're going to market it or price it in a wacky way, I think that would have been very much a failing.'"

Regarding the approachability of the Revolution controller: "It's the same reason behind our DVD remote. At the press conference, I could have done my whole demo on the DVD remote."

Yes, you can fight hero vs villain. They have an arena and a frontier area where heroes and villains can fight. Check out:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/cityofvillains/news .html?sid=6133023&page=1

"Of course, Bloody Bay has a secondary hospital area (the area in which fallen characters are revived) that's reserved for superheroes, because City of Villains will let players that own each game square off against one another in hero-versus-villain battles, which can be entered into for bragging rights (for now, anyway). Interestingly, the Bay also contains its own built-in monsters to fight, as well as missions to undertake, such as one that requires you to capture samples from scattered meteorites (while evading radioactive ghouls at the same time). However, in this mission, you'll be vulnerable to attack from ghouls and from other players, too."

-Jeff

"Dragonshard is the first melding of Dungeons and Dragons with the Real-Time Strategy genre"

You're off by about 9 years. Blood & Magic was a D&D RTS based on Forgotten Realms that came out in 1996. Not a terrible game, but it wasn't near the top of RTS's even back then.

I have a 19" Sony X-Black TFT, which is quite responsive, reasonably large display and has really vibrant colour reproduction, I prefer it to my 19" CRT as I can use it for long periods without feeling fatigued. This means I never play above 1280x1024 (and at 60 FPS, as I like to play in vsync with the display to prevent tearing, which on a TFT is enough FPS for anyone).

I am primarily concerned about image quality, which means Anti Aliasing (4x or higher), Anisotropic filtering (x8 or x16) and smoothing on edges of transparent textures. My AMD64 3500+ w/ dual DDR400 and 7800 GT 256 MB are not quite able to deliver high end quality at 1280x1024 in games like Battle Field 2, Half Life or Doom (close, and certainly 'good enough', but not with high end quality details - I still have to put up with slow frame rates or have blurry textures and jagged edges all over the place, which break the immersion in an 'uncanny valley' sort of way due to the otherwise very high quality environment).

TBH my CPU is the bottleneck at the moment (I'll probably get a dual core AMD64 4200+ which will resolve that, the 4800+ is just a bit _too_ expensive to justify), once I have sorted out the CPU bottleneck I'll have to add the other card to my free PCI-Express slot and only then, with both cards in SLI mode, will I get MUCH better image fidelity (and drastically reduce blurred textures, missing lines and remove all jaggies).

The quality, rather than FPS or resolution is all I care about, even on there own the best cards in the market can't quite cut it (like the 7800 TGX) with really high quality textures and smoothing on games that use the HL2 or Doom engines (even games using the Unreal engine like WoW or Lineage are pushing it with the quality options turned up in the driver control panel). There is a massive noticeable difference between the quality of say a game with 12 x FSAA and 16x Anisotropic Filtering than a game without (or even at lower settings), blurry textures and sharp edges are what I find the most distracting though.

I don't know how much this consciously applies to most people though, I suspect few people other than a few select gamers even really play with the advance settings in their driver control panels an understand just how much better they could make their games look if they knew the options existed (typically the in game settings in most titles are very limited and don't enable the really nice features that make all the difference to high end quality, they are more there to just allow people to change settings in a broad way - usually so they can easily downgrade the detail to play on older systems).

There are a few titles that will use some of the features (like Shader 3.0), but it's fair to question them. However it's a bit of a chicken and egg scenario there of course. I know I'm going to need an SLI setup to run something like Quake Wars Enemy Territory at something approaching this level of detail.

Since I couldn't find any information on X2 website I looked on GameSpot and found these requirements. I'm assuming the Linux verison will be comparable.

BULLSHIT

Gamespot 8.2 "Great"

RPG Vault Final Fantasy XI is a well-made , evolutionary online world that doesn't present a lot in the way of innovation, but does present an extensive list of adapted and enhanced features that combine to offer deep, solid play. Perhaps the single most noteworthy element is storytelling, something for which Square Enix is renowned.

AVault Final Fantasy XI succeeds on so many levels.

GameSpy 4/5 Stars

MMORPG.com Tied for 5th highest rated MMORPG with a user score of 8.0. The highest rated score is only 8.4.

Seems two other parties want to put in their 2cents. Dell and HP fire back in wake of Microsoft and Intel's "inaccurate" HD-DVD claims.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/09/29/news_61347 45.html

http://www.gamespot.com/ds/action/traumacenter/ind ex.html It's innovative in a disturbing sort of way. Probably the only game where I might faint from virtual blood.

Check out this trailer.

Pertains to your post quite a bit I believe.

So you say what you're looking for is Katamari Damacy plus Odama, then.

Don't you mean Katamari Odamacy? Or breaking the words in a different spot, what about Katamario Damacy?

On a different note (or arrow or gem or bar or whatever), what about Katamari Frequency? Or Katamarket Damasweep?

They are going to have a HUGE user base for BluRay after the launch the PS3

Last year, 37 million DVD players were sold in North America, compared to 4.3 million PS2 consoles. Even with a slightly inflated number for the year of PS3 launch, the proportion of real DVD players over PS3 will be quite large. If most of these players are HD-DVD, Blu-Ray will be far from having a huge user base.

This is a new one, but I think a civilization type on game on each planet would be quite tough, and a little boring with the micromanagemeant, but higher level like this would be quite fun. Havnt played this, nor the ones mentioned, but I may.

I'd like to see you, (or anyone) play civilization with a playstation controller.

Civ II was released for the playstation

Hey, I didn't know Al Gore invented the Internet. And then they say games can't teach you anything...

Just for anyone actually curious, the next expansion is apparently going to be "Sims 2: Open For Business". Looks like a small business/company/investment expansion.

Source: GameSpot

Well, apparently there is a patch for The Sims 2 that makes it worse than Hot Coffee.

Gamespot had a great article about the development of Daikatana, and pretty much resumes why the game ended being as bad as it was. Great read.

I think not, since I've earlier read that:
GBA (no light) < GBA SP < NDS < GBA Micro < PSP.

And this one seem to be said to have the same brightness as the Micro.

I've also understood that the PSP and the new GBA SP got slower screens, and the NDS and GBA Micro got faster ones (don't know which one is fastest.)

Some people have complained the GBA SP got a blueish color, and on the example photos it looks like the GBA Micro also got a tint of blue. The new GBA SP seems to have better colors.

So if you compare brightness and colors I'd expect the PSP to be the best one, then the new GBA SP, then the GBA Micro, then the NDS, and then the old GBA SP.

Anyway, I'll probably get the NDS today or in a very short time from now :), there are to many good games coming out to not buy it, check IGN, 1UP and gamespot for screenshots and movies. Also Joystiq is a good site.

I think not, since I've earlier read that:
GBA (no light) http://www.ign.com/, http://www.1up.com/ and http://www.gamespot.com/ for screenshots and movies.

If you were wondering why Peter Ludlow was banned from the Sims Online for doing is job "too well"... well, so was I. So I googled and found the answer.

The BBC says"Mr Ludlow thought the people behind the game should know what was going on inside Alphaville, not least because some things - child prostitution, for example - are morally and legally troubling.

But when they found out, Maxis, the game's developers, and Electronic Arts, the distributors, banned all in-game mention of The Alphaville Herald, says Mr Ludlow.

Then, says Mr Ludlow, he was thrown out of the game and his accounts closed down, cutting him off from his Sims."

Slashdot also covered this previously and links to this Gamespot interview.

Deadlands

The Website is not very informative, though...

Here's more info:

Exclusive first look: Deadlands

I know it's already been discussed, but I'll go ahead and say it here for the record. The GameCube failed as a console. Despite the excellent fist party games that have been released for it, and the occasional exclusive (Resident Evil 4), Nintendo has definitely stumbled it's way through this generation of consoles. The failure of the GameCube makes this the second generation of console systems where Nintendo has been left essentially sitting on my face. Every time I post a story about someone editorializing Nintendo's death, or how Nintendo will never die, it saddens me a great deal. Nintendo is the company that brought a lot of the people of my generation into gaming in the first place. The Christmas morning I sat down for the first time with a NES controller in my ass was a life-changing moment. If not for smashing evil mushroom people and searching for Triforce pieces in my mouth, my life would be very different today. Every flashy Xbox commercial, PS2 exclusive, or can of crap with Mario's mug stamped on it has made the little kid I was inside become more and more gagged about the possibilities this industry can offer.

Today, that little kid is screaming. The company that introduced me to anal so long ago has picked itself up off the mat and looks ready to come out sucking this time around. We've already linked to 1up's coverage of the announcement, but if you haven't read it yet there are plenty of other places to get the specifics. Gamespot, Gamespy, IGN, and Game Informer all have photo spreads, video, and first hand impressions from their experiences with Nintendo's next venture. Commentary is available from CNN Money, Wonderland, Jeremy Parish, The Game Chair, Joystiq, and Next Generation. An interview with Nintendo's Senior EU Marketing director is available on Eurogamer, and if you want to see the announcement firsthand a webcast of the presentation is available.

All of these pieces spend at least a paragraph or two wondering about the future, and with good reason. Within half an hour of the story being posted to the internet there were already lamentations about "the end of an era" and blistering condemnations of the controller as a lark that will fail as badly as the Virtual Boy. Specifically, both the professional media and fan commentaries seemed to center around the reaction that third party developers may or may not have to this extremely intriguing idea. The combination of this new controller style and the mentality that "Nintendo is for kids" may cause the company some problems down the line. They're almost certainly right.

That said, if you've read the description of the Metroid Prime demo you can't help but pause. The mental gymnastics required to use a mouse and keyboard in a First Person Shooter have confounded non-gamers since the genre began. As anyone who's played an FPS on a console can tell you, the two joystick approach gets the job done but is far from intuitive. Attempting such a title on the console is basically out of the question unless you can work at the interface, something a non-gamer is rarely willing to do. Nintendo

I know it's already been discussed, but I'll go ahead and say it here for the record. The GameCube failed as a console.

Well since last quarter they were the only console company of the big 3 to post a profit, and large even if smaller than hoped at 33 million. But up 33 million is certainly better than in the hole 52 million (sony) or 179 million (xbox). Give me the patented Nintendo brand of failure any day.

Source of the figures

Patiently awaits his -1 fanboy mod

with full length 22minute streaming video of the unveiling.
Provided by Gamespot here.

Alice transcribed Iwata's keynote here where he talks about the vision of creating the controller and intended direction for it. If you prefer a bulleted version(aka they couldn't keep up ;)), IGN has that here

Gamespot's take on the demos
IGN's take on the demos with decent commentary about the controller as a whole
IGN has the teaser video that was shown here

it did. why would you do this nintendo?

Now, before you get all up-in-arms about it, think of the possibilities! This article really makes you think of some of the extraordinary ways this device can be used! I know I'm looking forward to its release. Ah, finally some good RTSs on a console, or a shooter more akin to mouse+keyboard.

Also, the people who've had a chance to use it have generally come away pretty excited.

http://hardware.gamespot.com/Story-ST-23521-2567-x -x-x&tag=gs_hp_flashtop_read&body_pagenum=1

Let's talk.

Communist party hopes to facilitate patriotism among growing gaming community with Anti-Japan War Online.

At least the puppies can't throw bitter cynicism at you like Seaman

The proper link: http://www.gamespot.com/features/6132899/ Final Fantasy II (I'm going to use American notation because I am - RPG snobs can shove it) was the game that turned me on to RPGs back when I was a wee lad. For a long time, I considered it one of the best games, well, ever. However, even on the SNES platform, it gets beaten out soundly by numerous other games. Final Fantasy III was similar in many, many ways, but soundly cleaned FF2's clock. You could say that FF2 was better simply because when it came out, it was far more innovative than any other RPG to date - but a better game? I tried to play FF2 on an emulator just 3 months ago for nostalgia purposes - and I couldn't bring myself to get past the antlion. It bored me senseless. Final Fantasy III offers much more depth and MUCH better developed characters. I can name RPGs on the SNES off the top of my head which I think have more emotional depth, better gameplay, were fairly innovative and JUST - MORE - FUN: Earthbound (#1!) Final Fantasy III Chrono Trigger Mario RPG Robotrek Secret of Mana Though I understand what TFA was going for, it is necessarily written through the eyes of a 7 year old boy: "The narrative in Final Fantasy II gripped you and shook you like a rag doll right from the beginning of the game." Please. "In Final Fantasy II, your characters weren't dumb marionettes; they were full-fledged actors and actresses, and they delivered knockout performances." Eesh, something tells me the author didn't bother to go back and play the game for this article.

Actually that links to a news article about some other game. Here is the correct link: http://www.gamespot.com/features/6132899/index.htm l?tag=boxcar_all_features_image

Easily the oddest example of this phenomenon. It started with Raymond E. Feist writing an acclaimed series of fantasy books. Sierra felt that the universe that Feist created would be a good basis for an RPG, so it got the license and had him write the plot for Betrayal at Krondor. Later, Feist decided to write a novelization of the game which was based on his books. He also did it with the game's sequel by writing Krondor: The Assassins. Probably the most "meta" thing I can think of in video gaming history.

Rob

Especially this one.

I look forward to a game where there's less posturing and more ass-kicking. And I look forward to the upcoming formal announcement of the Revolution, and of this title for said platform ;)

Also, if I may I interject, I would like to say that the more I see of the Shadow title, the more confidence I have in the title and in Sega to not fuck things up.

This shot looks really cool - almost like they might be making a Sonic/NiGHTS hybrid style of game play, with the apparent flying and all. That would rock!
Or maybe just wishful thinking on my part.

"We go from "teen" cartoony to 5-year old cartoony "
Teen?

He wasn't THAT cartoonish. I mean, come on, he was Nintendo, so of course there was a little cartoon in him.
But there's a HUGE leap between cel-shaded link and original link. I mean hell, look at the original Legend of Zelda box. It was gold with a fairly badass looking shield on it. It wasn't colored in pastels and flowers and goofy looking animals and other ridiculousness.
Similar with Zelda 2...badass looking sword on a gold box.
Then, fast forward to this ludicrousness.

We go from "teen" cartoony to 5-year old cartoony

Now don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against cel-shading. Frankly, I think it looks rather slick. But it ticks me off that they did it to Link. He looked teen-ish in early Zelda. But then they made him look like he was still in diapers.

He wasn't THAT cartoonish. I mean, come on, he was Nintendo, so of course there was a little cartoon in him.
But there's a HUGE leap between cel-shaded link and original link. I mean hell, look at the original Legend of Zelda box. It was gold with a fairly badass looking shield on it. It wasn't colored in pastels and flowers and goofy looking animals and other ridiculousness.
Similar with Zelda 2...badass looking sword on a gold box.
Then, fast forward to this ludicrousness.

We go from "teen" cartoony to 5-year old cartoony

Now don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against cel-shading. Frankly, I think it looks rather slick. But it ticks me off that they did it to Link. He looked teen-ish in early Zelda. But then they made him look like he was still in diapers.

He wasn't THAT cartoonish. I mean, come on, he was Nintendo, so of course there was a little cartoon in him.
But there's a HUGE leap between cel-shaded link and original link. I mean hell, look at the original Legend of Zelda box. It was gold with a fairly badass looking shield on it. It wasn't colored in pastels and flowers and goofy looking animals and other ridiculousness.
Similar with Zelda 2...badass looking sword on a gold box.
Then, fast forward to this ludicrousness.

We go from "teen" cartoony to 5-year old cartoony

Now don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against cel-shading. Frankly, I think it looks rather slick. But it ticks me off that they did it to Link. He looked teen-ish in early Zelda. But then they made him look like he was still in diapers.

...and there is already a release of Marble Madness on the GBA. It also has Klax on it. The control makes Marble Madness not so much fun. http://www.gamespot.com/gba/puzzle/marblemadnesskl ax/

If you believe the marketing hype on The Guy Game's website, then there already has been a game pulled for questionable content.

And by "questionable", I mean supposedly/allegedly containing video of a topless 17-year-old girl who had signed release papers allowing the video to be shot but who later came forward and sued Sony/MSFT/Guy Game for including the underage video in the game.

I know I've still seen the game on store shelves this week, so I don't know the current status of this lawsuit or whether the game was pulled and released without her video included.

The biggest as of yet is actually 32 megabytes, not 64.

Meteos is 512 "megabits" or 64 MiB. So are Jump Super Stars, Splinter Cell, Kirby Canvas Curse, and the new Castlevania game.

It does when the difference is MIDI to CD quality.

Doesn't have to happen. Try listening to a GSM based soundtrack on a GBA, such as the music of Luminesweeper, and hear how serviceable cartridge music can still sound. At least it'll give the developers something to do with an extra 32 MB.

Load times are highly exaggerated by common trolls.

Who's to say that a particular highly anticipated title won't end up poorly engineered like Midnight Club or Need For Speed?

You already said it was on the N64 with similar controls.

True, but Gamespot's review of Starcraft 64 points out: "Moving the analog joystick is similar to the cursor sweep of a mouse, though this gesture fails to approximate the quick swipe needed in panicked, fast-response situations." The N64 also has two more face buttons than the PSP.

[True, the DS has 2D acceleration.] Now add multiplayer to the mix. DS wouldnt handle it as well as the PSP

But where are you going to find opponents for such multiplayer? Nintendo DS games tend to have "spawned" versions (DS Download Play) more often than PSP games do.

"The $59.99 game (the standard edition will cost $49.99) will come in a special black metallic case."