fortunately it's NOT a proton pack. i say fortunately since the proton pack's inventor is quoted as saying "the proton pack is not a toy" whereas this device is clearly intended for entertainment purposes.
The friends list is for grouping, as are guilds. Grouping IS necessary to get many things accomplished in the game, just not until you get into dungeons. It's easiest to just pair with people until you actually need five people for something, then call out all those on your friends list. A lot of the best items are in dungeons that are impossible to do alone.
Smash Bros Melee: Gamecube
This is my all-time favorite couch game. The pace is fast and the game has depth beyond any other fighter. I HATE button combos and I love Smash's lack of them. Anyone can pick up a controller and learn to play, but really mastering the game takes far more dedication that most would assume. One of my favorite things about this game is how good people think they are at it. For those that have it and never really saw it's glory you just weren't playing it right. I played this game for a very long time before I finally understood it's potential. What made that happen? I started to play against a group of other guys and we would always all roll the random square on a random map with only one or two lives. The games go by fast so even when you get a character you hate it's over with quickly. We also play without items and turn off certain levels. By now I know (and enjoy) every single character and every single match-up, but it is STILL very exciting to play, even after literally thousands of matches and dozens of opponents. My favorite fighter of all time.
Virtua Tennis: Dreamcast
Virtua Tennis (one) on the Dreamcast is another favorite. Whether you're playing 1v1 or 2v2 the game is always very entertaining. Just the right number of shot types and the right degree of control and speed make this game a balanced tennis game. While I enjoy Nintendo's multiplayer games for most genres, I still think Virtua Tennis is more fun than any Mario Tennis game.
Burnout 3: XBox
My favorite in high-speed racing. It lends itself better for getting opponents than does my other favorite high-speed racer, F-Zero GX. The crashes make things beyond hilarious, especially when you manage to rub out a friend right into a huge concrete column. Amazing control style, cool cars, perfectly made maps; this game really goes above and beyond in terms of racing. Sadly, Burnout 4 didn't live up. Need For Speed: Underground is good for this genre too, but Burnout outshines it imho.
Gears is my current favorite for two player co-op gameplay. It's the only game where I can really say I was forced to think with my teamate and make serious strategies, even though both myself and the friend I play with are pretty experienced at Xbox shooters. Always makes for a lot of loud yelling and high fiving.
Yes! I first played worms on a PS1 in second grade and loved it instantly! My favorite version has to be the Dreamcast version of Worms World Party for hilarious and strategic couch fun. Ninja roping is always entertaining, especially those moments when you swing just a little over the water and everyone is amazed, or you totally think you're going to land on the edge of a cliff and fall to your doom and everyone laughs. Even better about console Worms games is that anyone can enjoy them without needing to purchase four controllers.
Copying Wikipedia only because it's already compiled; this info can be found anywhere:
Video systems frequently use a more complex approach referred to as interlaced video. Broadcast television systems such as NTSC, PAL, and SECAM produce an image using two passes called fields. Each field contains half of the lines in a complete frame (the odd-numbered lines or the even-numbered lines). Thus, while only using the bandwidth of 25 or 30 complete frames per second, they achieve a flicker fusion frequency of 50 or 60 Hz, at the expense of some vertical judder and additional system complexity. The "frame rate" of interlaced systems is usually defined as the number of complete frames (pairs of fields) transmitted each second (25 or 30 in most broadcast systems). However, since a conventional television camera will scan the scene again for each field, in many circumstances it may be useful to think of the frame rate as being equal to the field rate.
In contrast to televisions, computer monitors generally use progressive scan, and therefore internet video formats generally do also. The "P" versions of HDTV (typically 720P) also supports progressive scan, as do modern DVD players.
Most computer monitors are 60 frames per second. Hence if you go to your display setting the refresh rate is 60Hz. Since a computer monitor is progressive scan, this is like saying it's capable of being able to display up to 60 Frames per second natively.
A video game console does not show still images like a film projector; it's a completely different way of generating a light pattern. On a film the image changes all at once; it's a series of still images connected in time. On a video screen you have one pixel changing at a time in an ordered fashion; the whole screen is changing from top to bottom and left to right the whole time but you just can't notice. It's kinda like how fluorescent lightbulbs actually flicker on and off at 120 times per second (in america) but you can't tell because it's too fast for the eye to see so it just appears to be on all the time.
You can see that television boasts a 8ms response time, aka up to 125 frames per second. The average display has been showing more than 30 frames per second for quite some time.
Please cite your source more thoroughly. What geographic region does this research cover? It may be irrelivent. The Wii is a global product. Your argument is fundamentally flawed because the market is not "those with televisions" it is "those that play video games". Therefore the HD argument can be summed up to be dependant on the following:
each of these should be considered in terms of the global market:
% of homes with a HD television
% of homes that buy a new television each year
% of televisions sold that are HD for each year and it's respective growth
% of homes with video game players
% of homes where games are played on the main television. This is particularly important. If the majority of video game players are youths and the majority of televisions being purchased are being purchased by a different demographic (i.e. their parents) it is fully within reason that there is a sizable chunk of the television purchasing demographic that will not fit into the video game playing demographic. For example, it is very common for parents to give their old television to their children because it costs them nothing. It is also very commong for parents to say "get that out of my living room" and tell their children to play their games on their older (read: SD) televisions.
I also believe that it is beyond resonable doubt that the amount of homes that contain High Definition televisions that are actively used for game playing is significantly lower than the number of homes that simply contain a high definition television.
Nintendo's strategy is not to take the market but to widen the market. As so, it's important to understand that the market will expand from where it started from; those that play video games currently. This is largely made up of the youth. For those that play on an SD television the one difference between a non-HD and an HD system will be framerate (since the graphics will be comparable). If you've ever played an HD Xbox 360 game pumped up to 1080p with four players you will likely have noticed frame skipping at some point, especially if connected to the internet. I have a friend with an Xbox 360 and a 62" HD television. With the graphics settings turned all the way up, I was no longer impressed once the guns started to go off due to performance issues. Anticipating someone will retaliate with this point I will simply agree with it ahead of time: yes it was a very early release and they are currently unaware of how to get the most out of the XBox 360 at this time. However, christmas is coming soon, so I'm strictly speaking the XBox's performance at this time.
Due to performance reasons, Nintendo's goals to conquer the multiplayer environment, and the current availability of HDequipped gaming televisions, I think Nintendo made the correct choice. For these reasons, as well as the legacy of Nintendo franchise games, I will be buying a Wii without even considering an Xbox as an option. I already have a computer to do all that other non-console stuff.
Framerate 30FPS?
Judging by the Gamecube, nintendo values smooth performance. Compare, for example, the framrfate of smash brothers to the framerate of Halo 2. Yes Halo 2 has more polygons and is more complex, but it runs on a beefier machine. I find it much easier to get Halo 2 to frameskip than to get Smash to frameskip. You have to be pretty damn nasty at smash to get it to framskip. Lets not even talk about the 360 games that run on 1080p. Metal of Honor and Perfect Dark are both fairly easy to get to framskip. I don't care how clear the enemy looks, if you are unable to react, you will die. Your death may look prettier, but what's more important, playing the game and having fun and being able to do what you as a human are capable of or looking at some pretty polygons?
30 FPS is half what your eye is capable of seeing. I, for one, would rather have less impressive graphics with a higher frame rate.
This is especially important in internet gaming, which is getting more and more popular. I think the most functional example of WHY this is important would be Perfect Dark. The reason for this is that Perfect Dark has (in my opinion) the most well defined hitboxes in any first person shooter I've ever played. You can stand behind an ally and shoot over his/her shoulder with ease. However, it's that much harder to hit your enemy because you have to be spot on, especially when using a weapon that fires in a very tight pattern like a silenced rifle. In this respect, I find Perfect Dark's graphics to be the best of any first person shooter not because of looks but because the graphics are actually functional.
Now, when you can miss by moving your crosshair over by one pixel combined with trying to hit a moving target AND you're frameskipping you'll never make that headshot.
Oh and for all those that play PC games with 300 frames, way to go you can't even see the difference...real cool.
360 Frameskips on it's HD games. It's graphics system is, in my opinion, inferior (although yes I agree, astechically beautiful and currently the most impressive....when standing still). However, if you are bad at video games and 30 FPS doesn't bother you because you can't react at faster than 1/30th of a second (or 1/5th a second if you're frame skipping) then by all means go with that pretty one. Us real gamers know where our priorities lie.
(I'm talking consoles here, I understand PC games can look beautiful and have high frames and I actually love to PC game I just hate the price sticker of having the newest hardware.)
You're right. Nobody twisted my arm to auto travel. However, the locations you needed to get to were so far away that not auto travelling was so ridiculous. Half of the quests involved going to locations spread out all over the game's world rather than putting the large travel distances in between quests. Having to travel long distances was so frequently employed that NOT autotravelling would have made the game even more boring. In my opinion, travelling long distances shouldn't be over used like it was in Oblivion. I mean, think about joining the mage guild. Travel to every city in the game? How many games seriously employ tactics like this?
Outside of quests, the combat system was very very very very very very very very very boring. Very. Hacking and slashing in that game got old really fast. There were how many melee hits available to you? Clearly not enough. I thought RPG's involved strategically picking which moves to use, not just holding up your shield and waiting for your turn to swing your weapon.
Oh and glass armor? Are you serious? Not only does it look stupid but it makes no sense.
Weapon magical effects are charged and have to be recharged? Yea...cause I really want to have to change weapons in mid battle to accomodate what I need and maybe swing that magical weapon twice for its effect and then switch back. I find it hard to be emersed in the game when the most effective tactics are so outrageous.
Re:I can only agree on the Choices
on
Quantum Leaps in RPGs
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· Score: 2, Informative
Enemy scaling due to character level was bad because the enemies respawned very easily once you hit a loading screen, which are EVERYWHERE in oblivion. I played this game for a while and got a pretty strong character going simply by sidequesting. When I went back to the main quest it was actually impossible because it was scaled so poorly. None of the NPC's could survive to help me for more than a second when they were supposed to fight along side me.
Also, Oblivion has very bad art. The graphics are very sharp, but the art is very bad and unoriginal. The characters look horrible. That cheeta guy is stupid. However, I will give credit where credit is due; the buildings look beautiful in that game and the architecture is interesting. The forests looked pretty nice too, as did a lot of the animals in the game. But the fact of the matter is you play a humanoid and all the NPC's that you interact with are humanoid and they all look like doodoo. (lolz doodoo)
Another thing I hate about Oblivion was the amount of mana spells cost compared to how much damage they did. I tried to make a character that was focussed on spell casting with some blade skill in order to get myself out of trouble when I have to. After playing the game for a couple of days, spamming my spells for no reason got their skills to max and they were still weaker than my sword. I verymuch dislike how easy it was to abuse the skill leveling system. Since it was so easy I couldn't stop myself from sneaking into a wall by leaving the controller with a weight on it to get sneak skill while I made myself dinner, or spamming summon spells then doing an hour of rest time.
Auto travel is bad because it makes the world small.
Auto wait is bad because it makes time-based challenges......not challenging. "Do this, then come back tomorrow". Normally this took some time management. Not anymore. Anytime you fought something and you were about to go into another room it was easier to just wait an hour than to heal yourself because the heals were so weak and your mana would run out so fast.
Slashdot Mirror
fortunately it's NOT a proton pack. i say fortunately since the proton pack's inventor is quoted as saying "the proton pack is not a toy" whereas this device is clearly intended for entertainment purposes.
The friends list is for grouping, as are guilds. Grouping IS necessary to get many things accomplished in the game, just not until you get into dungeons. It's easiest to just pair with people until you actually need five people for something, then call out all those on your friends list. A lot of the best items are in dungeons that are impossible to do alone.
Smash Bros Melee: Gamecube
This is my all-time favorite couch game. The pace is fast and the game has depth beyond any other fighter. I HATE button combos and I love Smash's lack of them. Anyone can pick up a controller and learn to play, but really mastering the game takes far more dedication that most would assume. One of my favorite things about this game is how good people think they are at it. For those that have it and never really saw it's glory you just weren't playing it right. I played this game for a very long time before I finally understood it's potential. What made that happen? I started to play against a group of other guys and we would always all roll the random square on a random map with only one or two lives. The games go by fast so even when you get a character you hate it's over with quickly. We also play without items and turn off certain levels. By now I know (and enjoy) every single character and every single match-up, but it is STILL very exciting to play, even after literally thousands of matches and dozens of opponents. My favorite fighter of all time.
Virtua Tennis: Dreamcast
Virtua Tennis (one) on the Dreamcast is another favorite. Whether you're playing 1v1 or 2v2 the game is always very entertaining. Just the right number of shot types and the right degree of control and speed make this game a balanced tennis game. While I enjoy Nintendo's multiplayer games for most genres, I still think Virtua Tennis is more fun than any Mario Tennis game.
Burnout 3: XBox
My favorite in high-speed racing. It lends itself better for getting opponents than does my other favorite high-speed racer, F-Zero GX. The crashes make things beyond hilarious, especially when you manage to rub out a friend right into a huge concrete column. Amazing control style, cool cars, perfectly made maps; this game really goes above and beyond in terms of racing. Sadly, Burnout 4 didn't live up. Need For Speed: Underground is good for this genre too, but Burnout outshines it imho.
Gears is my current favorite for two player co-op gameplay. It's the only game where I can really say I was forced to think with my teamate and make serious strategies, even though both myself and the friend I play with are pretty experienced at Xbox shooters. Always makes for a lot of loud yelling and high fiving.
Yes! I first played worms on a PS1 in second grade and loved it instantly! My favorite version has to be the Dreamcast version of Worms World Party for hilarious and strategic couch fun. Ninja roping is always entertaining, especially those moments when you swing just a little over the water and everyone is amazed, or you totally think you're going to land on the edge of a cliff and fall to your doom and everyone laughs. Even better about console Worms games is that anyone can enjoy them without needing to purchase four controllers.
...i thought he said freebase, no?
Most computer monitors are 60 frames per second. Hence if you go to your display setting the refresh rate is 60Hz. Since a computer monitor is progressive scan, this is like saying it's capable of being able to display up to 60 Frames per second natively.
A video game console does not show still images like a film projector; it's a completely different way of generating a light pattern. On a film the image changes all at once; it's a series of still images connected in time. On a video screen you have one pixel changing at a time in an ordered fashion; the whole screen is changing from top to bottom and left to right the whole time but you just can't notice. It's kinda like how fluorescent lightbulbs actually flicker on and off at 120 times per second (in america) but you can't tell because it's too fast for the eye to see so it just appears to be on all the time.
From Samsung.com: Spec Sheet for Samsung 40' LCD
You can see that television boasts a 8ms response time, aka up to 125 frames per second. The average display has been showing more than 30 frames per second for quite some time.
each of these should be considered in terms of the global market:
- % of homes with a HD television
- % of homes that buy a new television each year
- % of televisions sold that are HD for each year and it's respective growth
- % of homes with video game players
- % of homes where games are played on the main television. This is particularly important. If the majority of video game players are youths and the majority of televisions being purchased are being purchased by a different demographic (i.e. their parents) it is fully within reason that there is a sizable chunk of the television purchasing demographic that will not fit into the video game playing demographic. For example, it is very common for parents to give their old television to their children because it costs them nothing. It is also very commong for parents to say "get that out of my living room" and tell their children to play their games on their older (read: SD) televisions.
I also believe that it is beyond resonable doubt that the amount of homes that contain High Definition televisions that are actively used for game playing is significantly lower than the number of homes that simply contain a high definition television.Nintendo's strategy is not to take the market but to widen the market. As so, it's important to understand that the market will expand from where it started from; those that play video games currently. This is largely made up of the youth. For those that play on an SD television the one difference between a non-HD and an HD system will be framerate (since the graphics will be comparable). If you've ever played an HD Xbox 360 game pumped up to 1080p with four players you will likely have noticed frame skipping at some point, especially if connected to the internet. I have a friend with an Xbox 360 and a 62" HD television. With the graphics settings turned all the way up, I was no longer impressed once the guns started to go off due to performance issues. Anticipating someone will retaliate with this point I will simply agree with it ahead of time: yes it was a very early release and they are currently unaware of how to get the most out of the XBox 360 at this time. However, christmas is coming soon, so I'm strictly speaking the XBox's performance at this time.
Due to performance reasons, Nintendo's goals to conquer the multiplayer environment, and the current availability of HDequipped gaming televisions, I think Nintendo made the correct choice. For these reasons, as well as the legacy of Nintendo franchise games, I will be buying a Wii without even considering an Xbox as an option. I already have a computer to do all that other non-console stuff.
Framerate 30FPS? Judging by the Gamecube, nintendo values smooth performance. Compare, for example, the framrfate of smash brothers to the framerate of Halo 2. Yes Halo 2 has more polygons and is more complex, but it runs on a beefier machine. I find it much easier to get Halo 2 to frameskip than to get Smash to frameskip. You have to be pretty damn nasty at smash to get it to framskip. Lets not even talk about the 360 games that run on 1080p. Metal of Honor and Perfect Dark are both fairly easy to get to framskip. I don't care how clear the enemy looks, if you are unable to react, you will die. Your death may look prettier, but what's more important, playing the game and having fun and being able to do what you as a human are capable of or looking at some pretty polygons? 30 FPS is half what your eye is capable of seeing. I, for one, would rather have less impressive graphics with a higher frame rate. This is especially important in internet gaming, which is getting more and more popular. I think the most functional example of WHY this is important would be Perfect Dark. The reason for this is that Perfect Dark has (in my opinion) the most well defined hitboxes in any first person shooter I've ever played. You can stand behind an ally and shoot over his/her shoulder with ease. However, it's that much harder to hit your enemy because you have to be spot on, especially when using a weapon that fires in a very tight pattern like a silenced rifle. In this respect, I find Perfect Dark's graphics to be the best of any first person shooter not because of looks but because the graphics are actually functional. Now, when you can miss by moving your crosshair over by one pixel combined with trying to hit a moving target AND you're frameskipping you'll never make that headshot. Oh and for all those that play PC games with 300 frames, way to go you can't even see the difference...real cool. 360 Frameskips on it's HD games. It's graphics system is, in my opinion, inferior (although yes I agree, astechically beautiful and currently the most impressive....when standing still). However, if you are bad at video games and 30 FPS doesn't bother you because you can't react at faster than 1/30th of a second (or 1/5th a second if you're frame skipping) then by all means go with that pretty one. Us real gamers know where our priorities lie. (I'm talking consoles here, I understand PC games can look beautiful and have high frames and I actually love to PC game I just hate the price sticker of having the newest hardware.)
You're right. Nobody twisted my arm to auto travel. However, the locations you needed to get to were so far away that not auto travelling was so ridiculous. Half of the quests involved going to locations spread out all over the game's world rather than putting the large travel distances in between quests. Having to travel long distances was so frequently employed that NOT autotravelling would have made the game even more boring. In my opinion, travelling long distances shouldn't be over used like it was in Oblivion. I mean, think about joining the mage guild. Travel to every city in the game? How many games seriously employ tactics like this?
Outside of quests, the combat system was very very very very very very very very very boring. Very. Hacking and slashing in that game got old really fast. There were how many melee hits available to you? Clearly not enough. I thought RPG's involved strategically picking which moves to use, not just holding up your shield and waiting for your turn to swing your weapon.
Oh and glass armor? Are you serious? Not only does it look stupid but it makes no sense.
Weapon magical effects are charged and have to be recharged? Yea...cause I really want to have to change weapons in mid battle to accomodate what I need and maybe swing that magical weapon twice for its effect and then switch back. I find it hard to be emersed in the game when the most effective tactics are so outrageous.
Enemy scaling due to character level was bad because the enemies respawned very easily once you hit a loading screen, which are EVERYWHERE in oblivion. I played this game for a while and got a pretty strong character going simply by sidequesting. When I went back to the main quest it was actually impossible because it was scaled so poorly. None of the NPC's could survive to help me for more than a second when they were supposed to fight along side me.
Also, Oblivion has very bad art. The graphics are very sharp, but the art is very bad and unoriginal. The characters look horrible. That cheeta guy is stupid. However, I will give credit where credit is due; the buildings look beautiful in that game and the architecture is interesting. The forests looked pretty nice too, as did a lot of the animals in the game. But the fact of the matter is you play a humanoid and all the NPC's that you interact with are humanoid and they all look like doodoo. (lolz doodoo)
Another thing I hate about Oblivion was the amount of mana spells cost compared to how much damage they did. I tried to make a character that was focussed on spell casting with some blade skill in order to get myself out of trouble when I have to. After playing the game for a couple of days, spamming my spells for no reason got their skills to max and they were still weaker than my sword. I verymuch dislike how easy it was to abuse the skill leveling system. Since it was so easy I couldn't stop myself from sneaking into a wall by leaving the controller with a weight on it to get sneak skill while I made myself dinner, or spamming summon spells then doing an hour of rest time.
Auto travel is bad because it makes the world small. Auto wait is bad because it makes time-based challenges......not challenging. "Do this, then come back tomorrow". Normally this took some time management. Not anymore. Anytime you fought something and you were about to go into another room it was easier to just wait an hour than to heal yourself because the heals were so weak and your mana would run out so fast.
It was just a very bad game. (...imo)