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Top 20 Gaming Lows of 2004
An anonymous reader writes "Gamepro has posted a story about the gaming lows in 2004 -- a fair roundup of all the junk that's happened this past year. Those poor smugglers..."
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The parent poster will probably get modded troll or flamebait, but he's right.
At first I thought that my expectations for it had just been too high, or that my tastes in gaming had begun to change... but now that HL2 is out, I can be sure that neither of these things were true, and Doom 3 was, in fact, just a crappy game. Ravenholm was one of my favorite parts of HL2, and that kind of atmosphere was what I expected throughout Doom 3. It didn't deliver.
HL2's Steam system being on this list while Doom's craptasticness is omitted is unjust.
The entire entry on the N-Gage basically complains about features on the previous model of N-Gage, in other words, it's old news. The only thing it mentions about the new N-gage (which did come out this year) is that it is more "bearable" (a positive note) and that a certain ad campaign isn't running any more. That hardly qualifies as a low for this year in my opinion.
To complicate matters, I happen to think the N-Gage QD is quite a nifty device -- aside from being a cell phone it runs symbian software, has bluetooth (and can act as a remote control to my laptop). Also, it doesn't suffer from the drawbacks mentioned in the article (it isn't side talking, you *can* hot swap games and memory cards easily, etc).
On the gaming side of things, Sega just realeased a MMOG for the N-Gage called Pocket Kingdom which is a great game and a news maker in that it is the first true MMOG for a portable handheld. The campaign for that game has been running pretty strongly so it quite compensates for the ending of the other campaign mentioned in the article. Perhaps the author just didn't notice it since they have shifted more to online advertising than offline ads? Either way, again, the end of an particular ad campaign is hardly qualification for a "Lowest" point of the year.
~Fricka
OffLineTshirts.com
That's not a low. There's no reason for legislation, or for having the ESRB and the retailers act as surrogate parents.
The last time I went to walmart, I bought a video game that was rated M (One of those repacked Midway arcade series things... god knows why it was rated M, the whole screen consists of about 200 pixels.) Anyway, the Wal-Mart cashier carded me. I gave him a funny look and he said he had to make sure I was at least 18. Apparently Wal-Mart has decided that they are going to act as a surrogate parent to video game buyers.
Exactly. What purpose does File Planet serve anymore? Why don't distributers use BitTorrent?
That's not that strange with Walmart. They try to perpetuate their "family friendly" reputation. They don't sell any music with the parental advisory on it (all the cds are the "clean" version). They also card like crazy on movies and games (I haven't looked 17 for quite a few years, and I still get carded).
I find the whole thing rather annoying. This is why I tend to shop elsewhere.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
Part of Doom 3's problem was that it had to meet some huge expectations. Doom 1 was *such* a ground breaking game, but Doom 3 failed to deliver the expected 'raising of the bar' in any of the areas that people were looking for: graphics (technically good, but not exactly stunning, considering the horsepower required), gameplay (pretty dull), characters (what characters?), weapons (fairly crap). level design (polished, but too samey and waay too dark).
I know when I'm playing a good FPS; I only get that 'I'm starting to get bored' feeling after the 3rd or 4th day (usually on the second go through). I played Doom 3 through once - I started again on 'hard' and I just lost interest half way through.
The other problem with the perception of Doom 3 is that the two decent FPSs which came before and after (FarCry and HL2) are just *way* better. If you took Doom 3 and sent it back in a time machine to 2002, perhaps it would have been that ground breaking smash-hit that people were expecting.
I'm certainly looking forward to games by Ravensoft et al. based on the Doom 3 engine.
Humm...I find it painfully interesting that the legistlatures of states would try to enforce age restrictions on "M" rated games when fifteen year olds are freely walking into violent PG-13 and R rated movies. As it turns out the Gaming Industry was praised for the standards on how they rate video games, while the MPAA washes back and forth and allows some movies which should be R to be PG-13. At least with the Gaming Industry an M rating will be given with even the hint that it should be M rated, while the movie industry will tweak with a movie to take content out to sqeek it down to PG-13. So in my mind, I would like to see legislatures take on the MPAA and tighten the ratings before they get into games. Movies reach a larger audience than games do. If Government is going to get into legislating morals and games, then they should make it so minors can't get into R rated movies, rent them or buy them. I am tired of different standards being placed on different forms of media than others. The MPAA, RIAA and the Gaming Industry ought to get togther and develop a media neutral content rating system. That way a parent can reliably compare games to movies to music to print to whatever form the diffenet medias take. And if you compare M to the MPAA ratings, it turns out that M comes out to be the equivalent of a PG-13 rating. While Adults Only (AO) is closer to the mid-range R to NC-17.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
I wholly agree that the government shouldn't be doing the parenting. HOWEVER, there are many other factors in play here. What about the time when you are your parenting are simply out of the picture? It happens, and unless you live on the moon there's little that you can do about the influence of societal acceptance of a violent gaming paradigm.
And indeed, there is societal accpetance. Every day, I have the thrill of watching Channel One news at school, and as such see a pretty fair amount of exactly what is being directed toward kids in the school- hopefully the most protected of atmospheres.
The number one advertiser on Channel One is the US government, shilling participation in the armed forces and drawing comparisons between "playing soldier" sand living a real life.
The one that troubles me though is the incessant ad for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. In the ad, the characters spend a fair amount of time doing your basic garden variety vandalism. Slashing tires, tagging walls, etc. While the game doesn't seem violent in nature, it sure puts a premium on anti-social behavior. There's no way that you, the parent, know when the kids are seeing this maner of ad.
Now I'm not a prude- my kids Halo away on weekends, but I worry for those who do not take the time to put the needed effort into decent parenting. It begets the question of whether we should protect our kids from the parents who throw the kids to the fancy of the game designers.
The parents, already strapped for time, don't take the time to learn parenting skills. Who needs to pick up the slack then?
befuddled (noun) 1. Unable to create a pithy sig
With sites like GameFaqs, spending money on a gaming magazine is a true waste. Even strategy guides are a waste with all the detailed enthousiast faqs out there for free. Plus, the free faqs are actually honest. This is no longer the days of Nintendo Power.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
While this may all work the overly religious parents I have would never let me buy anything that wasn't E rated. Then I turned 17, told them to mind their own buisness and now happily rent M rated games and R rated films (ex: Matrix, Doom, ect.). Sometimes our parents do too much regulating. Now certain games and films I wouldn't rent, but I am old enough I think to knwo what I like and dislike. There comes a time where parents have to let their kids make decisions on their own. We can't have our hand held for all of our life. Now I will agree there are certain things that are inappropriate for little kids, but overzealous parents don't help either.
The way smuggler players were treated typified the entire SWG experience. SOE basically took a guaranteed hit and flushed it down the toilet by ignoring what players wanted and focusing on what marketing decided would pull in new players.
So yeah I agree that SWG as a whole was really one of the lows of 2004.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
Hell no! Steam makes it impossible to sell HL2 once you completed it. This alone is a good reason to hate Steam.
And that's not the only reason for me to hate it, but it's the most important.
Why is it that everyone complains about DRM, but when Valve released Steam, no one complained? People bitched about Palladium, but when Steam came out, everyone bent over like a lifer in the shower.
Right now Steam exerts as much control over your computer as any Trojan, except we pay for the privilege. Steam tells you want to do, when you can do it, how you can do it, and can pull the plug for ANY reason. Right now Valve has pulled accounts for those who allegedly run warez versions of its game. But what's stopping it from branching out?
What if Valve gets bought out by Sony, for example, and Sony decides to crack down on MP3 and Divx files?
What if Valve decides to charge a monthly access to Steam?
What if Valve goes out of business or its servers get shut down?
And here's the important one: What if Steam makes mistakes and people who validly paid for the game gets screwed out of ALL of their Valve games?! Does Valve really think it has created the first perfect system in all of humanity?! From their press releases it sure sounds that way.
With Steam buyers of Half-Life 2 have given up any resale rights. They have given up any right to play the game off line. And despite the fact that the game is validated every time you play it, you're still stuck using the CD when you play. Oh, and by the way, if you have any other Valve games you lost the same rights on those too because Steam will conveniently convert them to its draconian DRM, free of charge.
And where is the advantage to the user?! If Steam eliminated all piracy of Half-Life 2, why isn't it cheaper?!
The bad news is that because Half-Life 2 is such a success, Steam will be the future of PC gaming. So it's only a matter of time before ALL games are sold this way. But the really bad news is because people are accepting this Palladium-lite in droves, it's only a matter of time before ALL software is sold this way!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
EQ2 dead? OK, EQ2 might not be everyone's favorite, but ripping on EQ2 while praising WoW is just fanboy talk.
I don't think it's fan boy talk at all, I think to suggest that it is, is in itself much closer to 'fanboy talk' of the EQ2 variety. EQ2 has been widley fairly reguarded as a flop because people have full knowledged of how SOE run their titles and after SWG in particular customers were very shy of them.
In a building full of developers and IT workers from 20-35 only one has taken up EQ2 to my knowledge. People have never the less intentionally avoided EQ2 because they are fully aware of what to expect from an SOE title and by and large it's not something people equate with 'fun' (or competant mangement, witness SWG, PS). As we are a European office we don't have WoW here yet (a few weeks to go), but all the MMO players here are itching to play it again after having had such a great time in the open (and closed) beta.
Sony On Line grind-a-thons simply have little appeal in the wider market; as the take up of the more traditional gaming experience found in WoW has shown, which is unique centered around allowing players to solo any quest if they wish, not worry to much about money or skill and just concentrate on fun things like exporing, gaining new abilities (at a fairly rapid pace I might add) and learning about the game world. As a consequense of course it fails the hardcore players somewhat (due to the relative ease of levelling and the aquisition of items), though the genuine diversity of classes and races should provide a significant amount of longevity. The vast majority of people prefer games to be fun-centric with many rewards and the oppertunity to explore new environments, they don't want to play some crazy 3D fantasy equivolent of a hardcore Japanese shoot-em-up.
Of course some people find hardcore games provide 'a different form of entertainment', other people find them an exercise in frustration (I fall into the latter and get quite pissed off if a game is not entertaining or if I'm frustaded by an inadequte design). While the division is much smaller in the PA reading community (for example), the majority of gamers - both dedicated and casual - are in the same camp as me to a large extent.
I don't think this is an indication that people want easier games, indeed I don't think that has anything to do with it, though I mention this as it's often cited. The truth is people just want better games that don't fall back of doing repetative tasks (or illogical puzzles, or pixel perfect jumping puzzles, or big reverse-engineering puzzles where you try to workout how the game mechanics are implimented in order to get the most out of the game, rather than concentrating on just playing it in an abstract manner) as a way of demonstrating your commitment or ability.
I have a friend who plays L2, _a lot_. He has a Jedi in SWG. He really likes to level, to challange the game mechanics and 'beat' the game. In each an every game he evaluates it and uses all his reasources to reverse engineer the game mechanics to work out what weapon used on what monters at what level will allow you to level fastest or produce the most 'wins' in PvP, down to the (what can be surprisingly complex) math routines underneath. I think that L2 caters to players like him brilliantly and is a testament to NC Soft (as is CoH I would add, which caters to a totally differnt segment of players). That L2 has have very little take off in the west is hardly surprising though, it's just no the sort of experience most people are looking for in an entertainment title.
The same is true of EQ2. The wider world is simply much more impressed with WoW, no surprise it was Penny Arcade's game of the year. As comptent a follow up as it is and as good as it's parts are, I think EQ2 is a contender for anyone's game of the year as the crucial gratifying gameplay factor just isn't there.
We'll have a better idea by the spring/summer about how the EQ2 style of MMO is going to do agains
Of course she does, they have the legal authority to refuse service for any reason and beligerance definitely qualifies, and so does being under 18 and legally unable to purchase ANYTHING under US contract law. A minor can purchase and return anything other than consumables and return it for no reason at all as long as it is in ~original condition.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
I'm sure the same calibre GPU two years ago would have required a fan + more power. I'm sure 2 years from now the 6800FX will be a "moderate" card by the newer standards.
You're spot on. I just replaced my son's GF3 Ti200 with an on-sale GF FX 5700LE. While the 5700LE does need a fan, it doesn't need the molex connector like my 5600 Ultra that I purchased a year and a half ago. (The two cards are approximately equal in performance.)
"All the darkness in the world can not quench the light of one small candle."