Slashdot Mirror

Oh gosh, mine are long gone. They were pretty worn out from RealSports Baseball and trying to time the jumps over the crocodiles in Pitfall. I had totally forgotten about the EVIL paddles. Why is it that they all seemed to develop that "stuttering" motion after a few uses? I hated using them because whatever you were trying to control with them never moved smoothly across the screen, so you'd end up overcompensating since you weren't sure where things were going to go.

I guess I'm just bitter that I could never get past level 9 playing Kaboom!

Sorry, but I linked the wrong thing. This is the correct link.

I judge new games against the $9.99 I paid for The Bouncer by Squaresoft. I figure, if a $9.99 game lasts 2 hours, then getting 4 out of Portal would be ok.

> The only way it could be improved is a frame rate of at least 30Hz and maybe updated graphics.

Like this? Has bots and everything. Far better shooter than Halo in both single and multiplayer.

Maybe he'd have trouble walking into an R-rated movie in a theater, but according to a recent study...

here

They are able to purchase an R-rated movie far more often then they are able to purchase an M-rated game. What say you now?

It would appear so, kind of:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6184775.html

Nintendo's official line was much the same. "Games made for Nintendo systems enjoy a broad variety of styles, genres, and ratings," a representative told GameSpot. "These are some of the reasons our Wii and Nintendo DS systems appeal to such a broad range of people. But as with books, television, and movies, different content is meant for different audiences. That's why the ESRB provides ratings to help consumers understand the content of a game before they purchase it. As stated on Nintendo.com, Nintendo does not allow any AO-rated content on its systems."

Actually, the last thing I heard was that the UMD format was growing in Japan.

This might be what gave him the idea in the first place.

While I did like Shadowrun on the SNES it was fairly simplistic but is was good fun. I thought Shadowrun on the Sega Megadrive was so much better since it had IMHO a better story and a better character build path, of course that made the game so much harder and challenging, this was especially so when you thought you were fairly powerful then got slaughtered when you went into a new area, Well back to running some less dangerous jobs - sigh! Unlike the SNES Shadowrun you really needed to depend on the people you hired (let them get hurt and their re-hire cost went up). Still both games were good on their own merits.

After reading the Xbox360 Shadowrun review on gamespot it turns out this game was fairly mediocre even though it should have been much better, from what I can gather even though I have not played the game since I an not a fan of on-line games and especially FPS games, the review gives me the impression that it has similar RPG elements to the Shadowrun on the Megadrive. Still no mater what the review said I am quite sure some will have liked it.

After I modded my original Xbox I put as many party games on it as I could, I played only on my PC but I tried to cater to guests.

It had an RTS and it was horrible, not horrible like FPS on a console but pretty bad...

Now I'm a long time FPSer, I played back before you needed a mouse (Wolf3D etc) and the mouse is the best controller for a first person perspective yet, others may pshaw fps games as simplistic but they are the closest thing to a human perspective, that being said their simplicity has been caused by complex controller systems fragmenting the market (see Deus Ex, Rainbow Six, Hitman, Descent for examples of this complexity).

Now I'm not sure that the DS will be able to bring the RTS to consoles, but I know it will improve on the Xbox RTS experience. My first time playing Metroid DS I thought it might have as good a controller set up as a PC, later I found some flaws but the DS is a remarkably flexible platform.

Hopefully this mod will bring RTS and Baldurs gate style RPG to consoles.

• Infinite spin (explained
• Spin triples (explained
• Exploitable randomizer (explained

Nintendo will be bringing DVD playback at some point. Here's the story: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6161611.html/ It sounds as if it will not be available for the current iteration of the Wii though due to licensing issues, but who knows. It's true you can play MP3's in the picture channel, but I would love to see divx, H.264, etc. Those will have to be implemented via the mod scene though.

Here's a link to a Gamespot news article.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6183773.html?tag=result;title;1

Here's a quote from the article - "With Bungie no longer tied to Microsoft, many speculated on whether the developer would lend projects to consoles other than the Xbox 360. While the option remains, Bungie lead writer Frank O'Connor has said that the developer isn't going to make the move any time soon."

As for the rest of your comments, I might not agree with you 100% but I recognize that Halo, Mass Effect and Forza have their issues. I also recognize that Bungie not being owned outright by Microsoft is a bad thing for Microsoft. And losing any type of exclusivity is probably bad for the Xbox 360. I do not contest any of that. But the AC's tone was what I took issue with. He seems to think that the Xbox 360 is doomed, and that impressions of the system so far are overwhelmingly negative. This seems to be very opposite to the tone of the gaming industry as a whole, or at least what I have seen of it (which is a lot). Very few would argue that the 360 didn't have the best lineup of games for this holiday season. The Xbox Live system is often touted as the most robust online console service. And all three of those games he touted as "graphical disasters" have received very positive overall reviews (check metacritic) and have sold quite well. Terms like "shambles" and "graphical disasters" seem so ridiculous to me. I don't see any reason to believe, as the AC so elegantly put it, that the 360 turned out to be a "mess."

I also forgot to mention in my previous post that the AC's claim that the Xbox is only selling well in the U.S. is a flat out lie. In fact, the only market I know of where the Xbox is NOT doing well is the Asian market, primarily because of lackluster sales in Japan. But in Europe, Canada and Australia, the system is selling very well. I'm not gonna look up the stats to back this up cause I'm lazy, but I'm sure one wouldn't have too look far.

One last thing, you stated third party exclusivity hasn't been anyones strong point so far, but I disagree. The Orange Box (Valve), Bioshock (2k) and Mass Affect (Bioware) were all 3rd party exclusives to the Xbox during the holiday season, (yes, I know this will change but the damage has already been done). I believe last year that Oblivion was exclusive during the holiday season. The Xbox might not retain these exclusivities forever, but they know how to time it right.

Isn't that just like the Titanic game? http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/titanicadventureoutoftime/review.html?tag=tabs;reviews

I'm sure Wil Wright would've made it more fun though.

Wii - $250 Wii Play w/Wiimote - $50, Two more Wiimotes - $80, An extra Nunchuk - $20, Component Video Cable - $20

Wii Play and remote bundle, sure. Extra nunchuck? Yeah, if you want to to box against a human.

But two extra remotes? And a component cable? Sorry, dude, not necessary. If you can find two extra friends to share your Wii-xperience, they can buy their own damn remotes. :-j And there's plenty of returned component cables out there since many many people can't even detect the difference between 480i and 470p; I got a good deal on a used one at a Game Stop.

People who buy the Wii want it for the innovative game play, and nothing else satisfies that demand.

Spot on. I am in the key Wii-mographic. I'm a formumble-something who has never owned a video game; there has been little point since I've already spent thousands of dollars on computers over the years -- plus I'm really lousy at shoot 'em ups. Hell, I'm having trouble to find one person to come play Wii with me... my wife can't even handle Wii Sports tennis . After all, the only way I could convince her to let me [cough] buy one is to get my butt off the chair in front of the computer and get some exercise. (It worked too until I got a cold and got sucked into Paper Mario , a great game for people like me who have... less than nimble fingers.. make that much less.)

Uh... where was I? Oh yeah; what I'm saying is that key Wii-mographic Wii-ple will buy just enough extras to get started and get more if they become sucked into the Wii-xperience. Take me for example. I bought the Wii Play when I got the unit. A month or so later I bought a component. Another few weeks and I've downloaded a few virtual console games. Now I have my eyes on Rayman Raving Rabbids . If it wasn't for the fact that I already have a bunch of rechargable batteries I'd have sunk more money into my new addic... er, pastime.

How was that a PC versus console argument? If anything, it's a "play an old game that can run amazingly well on nearly any PC" versus "emulate a game ported to the Xbox without taking advantage of the capabilities of the Xbox360" argument. By the way, is it really as slow as they say?

I don't care about any "console versus PC" teenage crap. I just prefer to play games on the whatever system they run best on. (Which is usually the one they were designed for.)

There are several VERY notable games that look far better under DirectX 10. Crysis, Bioshock, Lost Planet

According to wikipedia, that's been deprecated and replaced by Live since 2004. I personally don't know of any software that uses it.

I recommend Big Brain Academy. I have it for the Wii, and my daughter enjoys it. It is a game that forces thinking, but reading is only needed to read the instructions for most games.

http://www.gamespot.com/ds/puzzle/gentlebrainexercises/

I don't think that using a pda-sized device is any good at teaching a young person reading skills. My daughter is only 4, and is only beginning to recognize all the letters, but she exhibited interest when she was 2, calling out the large capitals as I was reading her a story. You should hone this interest, and build on it by playing with her, spending time together, using books. I also had a great toy when I was younger, The Little Professor. That kind of functionality could be very good for a child, but I am not aware of any that is available. http://www.datamath.org/Edu/Professor-76.htm

That is not my argument. My argument is that the top 10 games in a year represent a significant portion of most people's gaming time and for the most part, that situation is not very bad for Mac users. The casual gamer can easily find 1 to 3 games to play in a year and that is all most people buy. If their tastes are average, they're even better off. I don't think the games available are a large deterrent to the average person, even if it is the the relatively small hardcore gamer market. This isn't even taking into account the console gaming market's mitigating effect.

I would also recommend the Interactive Story Book series. These are specifically directed at pre-readers. I personally use a CycloDS Evolution for my homebrew endeavours and have been very satisfied with it.

For all those calling us naysayers idiots, check this out. can't say where it's from other than "a trusted source." You decide if it's legit.

this is the latest info depicting the bigger picture around this incident:

The main problem here is that no one in the entire editorial team was aware that this was about to occur, least of all Gerstmann. We're very clear in our review policies that all reviews are vetted by the entire team before they go live - everything that goes up is the product of an entire team's output. Our freelancers are especially guilty of making snide comments, but those are always yanked before the review goes live, because everyone in the office reads these reviews and makes sure they're up to our standards before they get put up.

If there was a problem with his reviews, then it would've been a problem with the entire team. Firing him without telling anyone implies that anyone else on this team can be fired at the drop of a hat as well, because none of us are writing any differently or meaner or less professionally than we were two years ago before the management changed. I'm sure management wants to spin this as the G-Man being unprofessional to take away from the egg on their face that results after a ten-year employee gets locked out of his office and told to leave the premises and then no one communicates anything to us about it until the next day.

Also, despite the fact that this occured two weeks ago, there was no way they were going to fire him then; the last big games didn't come out until just before Thanksgiving, and there was no doubt that management knew that the rest of the reviewers would refuse to write any reviews after his termination, which is indeed what is happening. After thanksgiving nothing major comes out in games; everything is either before thanksgiving or comes out in January. They waited to fire him until they knew that any strike or walkout by the rest of the staff wouldn't have much of an effect.

Also, keep in mind that these salespeople do have axes to grind with editorial. I know a lot of people busted their asses to get not only this large deal with Eidos done, but also other huge ad deals. The salespeople and the marketers are the ones who have to deal with the publishers when a heavily-advertised game gets a bad review, so obviously they like it if every game that comes out is peachy keen and gets a 9.0 or above. If a salesperson knows anything about unprofessional review practices, then that says a lot about the management team that we have in place because not a single other member of the editorial team had heard word one about this until Jeff was fired. Surely site management would want to let us know about their concerns before firing the most senior staff member and one of the most respected game critics in the industry? If they're sharing their concerns with the salespeople and not with us then that says a lot about their priorities.

No one wants to be named because no one wants to get **** fired! This management team has shown what they're willing to do. Jeff had ten years in and was **** locked out of his office and told to leave the building.

What you might not be aware of is that GS is well known for appealing mostly to hardcore gamers. The mucky-mucks have been doing a lot of "brand research" over the last year or so and indicating that they want to reach out to more casual gamers. Our last executive editor, Greg Kasavin, left to go to EA, and he was replaced by a suit, Josh Larson, who had no editorial experience and was only involved on the business side of things.

Over the last year there has been an increasing amount of pressure to allow the advertising teams to have more of a say in the editorial pro

http://uk.gamespot.com/error/knl_review.html

Kane & Lynch User Reviews Are Currently Disabled

Thank you for your efforts to contribute to the gaming community.
Ratings for Kane & Lynch are currently not being accepted for display on GameSpot.com.

Return to Kane & Lynch

Because it wasn't?

Difficult to say if it is related to the events described above, but the editor Tim Tracy appears to be leaving Gamespot as well.

His (exceedingly brief) post on the site blog: http://www.gamespot.com/users/TimT/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=m-100-25233420

A comment or two on destructiod.com http://www.destructoid.com/gamespot-drops-reviewer-to-appease-eidos-w-r-hearst-rolls-in-his-grave-56683.phtml

I haven't given Gamespot reviews any real thought in a long time, due to the massive amount of advertising games would get on the main page at the same time the review was out.

I will quote from this thread on Gamespot: http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/kanelynchdeadmen/show_msgs.php?topic_id=m-1-39530902&pid=934403 I'm sure some of you are aware Jeff Gertsmann, now the face of GameSpot is responsible for the review. It should come as no surprise he played this game on an Xbox 360 for the review and like most people with a 360 he has a GamerTag attached to his account... as I gazed upon his weak gamescore I found only two achievements had been unlocked. One for beating the first mission and one for trying the co-op. It should be noted that the OP is dated prior to the firing, so perhaps Gertsmann wasn't sacked for a bad review, but sacked for not doing his job.

The review was up as of 11am. I think it is ridiculous that a 6/10 is considered a review score so horribly low that it can get somebody fired. It seems all games are reviewed on a scale of good to excellent, and you are discouraged from saying something is just good.

I went and skimmed the actual review and found this little gem at the bottom:

"The 10 Worst Games Ever: Read a Canadian review of the top 10 worst games ever! pcworld.ca"

Here you go:

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/kanelynchdeadmen/review.html

here it is.

Now Gamespot users are doing their own protest by rating the game 1.0: http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/kanelynchdeadmen/players.html?tag=readerreviews;alluser

There seems to be a huge community backlash in the user scores section: http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/kanelynchdeadmen/players.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=gssummary&tag=summary;yousay

For those of us that aren't in the game dev industry, what does it mean when he says "everybody was forced to share tech"?

Sharing of common technology between studios. ... it's about halfway down.

I don't have a wii, but my brother does and have had lots of fun playing wii sports. Well just golf and bowling, the rest are actually pretty bad. The boxing is so out of sync with what you actually do it's not funny, and tennis is just dumb when you make a swing gesture and the little racket swings with it's canned animation.

From what I've read the wii is capable of true 1:1 movement but has any game shown that yet? Like even golf in wii sports, when it's in putting mode it feels a little off sometimes and you get these mis-swings. I wish they'd make it a true 1:1 movement so even if I want to wallop the ball with the putter, when then just let the user do that.

But about other games, ignoring mario, from some of the other games I've tried, I wasn't impressed. And again there doesn't seem to be a killer game besides mario galaxy.

I know nintendo goes for the the kid/family market but why not have the other deeper games as well? I remember when nintendo got an 'exclusive' for the resident evil series. I was shocked at that deal that sony would let that franchise slip away, and was curious what nintendo was up to in the sense that were they going to make a push and show it can be a more mature gaming box as well? But they didn't really.

Anyway, I think it's a great little system, that's cheap, well built and it's cool with the browser capabilites and all, I'm just not sold on the titles yet.

Not that gamespot is the greatest review site, but just look at the scores for the latest wii games:

http://www.gamespot.com/reviews.html?type=reviews&platform=1031&tag=subnav;reviews

I get excited about the hardware but when I see the titles out there I think, meh not yet.

raise your hand if you think this will not be a major boost for pr0n industrie and adult video games?

I wouldn't be too sure about that, none of the console manufacturers even allow AO games. We're quite a ways off from pr0n video games. http://www.gamespot.com/news/6172830.html

It a controversial issue, since GameSpot claim the PS3 version performs better whilst IGN say exactly the opposite. (Having played neither version I have no idea who is correct.)

No I didn't.

No I didn't.

According to GameSpot 674 games. Sure some of them not shipping until next year, but most slated before Xmas.
http://www.gamespot.com/games.html?type=games&platform=1031&mode=all&sort=views&dlx_type=all&sortdir=asc&page=1
To say Nothing of the VC Games available.

The Wii was fun at first but it wears off, mine has been off for months.
You have no children. Or no WiFi. That's where the wii shines. Internet access and portal pages full of games and video content. Keeps a wii in service daily since launch.

The Wii is a fad
Yeah like console gaming, or the Gameboy, DS, or Pokemon, or Guitar Hero.

No LightSaber Game
You may have a point there. No way LucasArts is going to pass up this opportunity to cash in again. I'm thinking Jedi Wii Academy

This round, Nintendo Played the game without missing a step. Meanwhile Sony stumbled, not Rumbled, badly aped Nintendo control, Overpriced, Then rumbled, Then Cut Price, Screwed Compatibility. Microsoft, coyly moved to #2. Next round No Halo from Bungie.

All this and there are still no Wiis on the Walmart Shelf for more than a day.

Apparently sales are up in Japan -- outselling the Wii even. Maybe they got the color wrong?

I don't know if you've noticed, but expensive cartridges have been replaced with dirt-cheap optical media. It used to cost orders of magnitudes more to "print" a video game compared to a book, and now it costs at least one order of magnitude less.

We're going in circles here. I don't need to give you an anecdotal example, because *all* GameStops were taking pre-orders for the items I listed in this post before the release dates and/or prices of the items were announced.

Hardware is where they really can't make any guarantees, hence the care they put into the PS3 and Wii launches. These being the most recent examples, it's probably safe to say they won't be returning to the same preorder insanity we saw for the 360 or any other prior hardware.

There is no such product as "GameBoy DS". There is Game Boy Advance, and there is Nintendo DS.

Seriously: You may want to start your kids on Big Brain Academy for DS and then head on to the rest of educational games for DS. To teach them to draw, you can buy an R4 expansion card and then load Colors! on it.

Bethesda does not (currently) have the MMOG rights to the Fallout property--when they acquired the Fallout IP they licensed back MMOG rights to Interplay: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1057232/000117091807000324/0001170918-07-000324.txt.

Take it up with the individual who posted the blog entry that the summary was excerpting: http://www.gamespot.com/users/thorsen-ink/. The '?:' construct originated there. If you must have a reason to attack the summary, attack it for poorly structuring the excerpt of the blog entry such that the "Bogus or not bogus?" item seems to be part of the preceding quote from Pete Hines.

Dead or alive extreme beach volleyball, as reviewed at IGN:
http://xbox.ign.com/articles/383/383421p1.html Score: 9.2

As reviewed by Gamespot:
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/sports/deadoralivextremebv/review.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=gssummary&tag=summary;review Score: 6.0

When I read the IGN review for this game, having played it, I was yelling at my computer screen at how rediculous it was. 9.2 for that game!? I don't need to say anything else, really, just read the two reviews. The gamespot one is much more accurate. Not to say gamespot hasn't done the same thing, I just don't have any examples.

Clearly the only way we can resolve this (and simultaneously cause major problems for Best Buy) is to unpack our purchases while we stand at the counter to check the contents. I mean, obviously you can't trust Best Buy.

Funny you should say this .. At the weekend I went to buy a copy of Worms: Open Warfare 2 for the DS. At the counter I opened the box to check it was correct and discovered it had "Open Warfare 1" inside it. It would have sucked to get home (30 minute bus ride) before spotting it.

I always check games, DVDs, and CDs I buy to make sure I have the correct disks. Sometimes I find mistakes and it doesn't take long to do. (I only buy DVDs & CDs second-hand/used from small shops so there is no shrinkwrap involved.)

Riccitiello paid off some friends and himself with his acquisition. Bioware and Pandemic aren't worth $840 million, since their total accumulated revenue since inception has barely been higher. Riccitiello made gobs of cash, his buddies made gobs of cash, and Bioware and Pandemic will be gutted for the sake of efficiency. There's nothing else here. If anything, this will only be the milestone where EA will have started to go downhill. Goodbye Bioware. I hope the founders made enough money to start from scratch again.