I honestly don't remember, but I normally do, so if there was one, I probably did. The problem wasn't not knowing what to do, it was actually getting it right.
Oh, there's a reason I pick TLJ instead of TLJ2 when citing cutscenes. TLJ did it fairly well. TJL2, OTOH, was hell. Possibly the most innovative adventure game storywise in a long time, two very real-feeling universe, but there were whole scenes where the plot was essentially 'run between these five different people and talk to them repeatedly'. And they were like three screens apart. (Hey, it is The Longest Journey, and, yes, I'm pretty certain they mean distance covered, not time, in which case the first game really was probably the actual longest journey anyone has ever taken.)
Let's say the time spent represented as; figuring out what to do:talking to people:cutscreens:required movement. (Not including erronious movement, which would be in 'figuring out what to do', along with puzzles.) Normal games are somewhere near 2:1:1:1. TLJ was 1:3:2:1 or so. TLJ2 was 1:5:6:4. It was really absurd.
As for the 'keeping the player immersed'...anyone who thinks the way to do that is to keep me having to do things is barking up the wrong tree. I was completely immersed in TLJ and TLJ2, because I emphasized with April and Zoe and they never did anything inane or stupid in a cutscreen just to advance the plot. That is what really throws me out of the game. Like I said, almost all cutscreens were either a conversation, where the character asked nice, logical questions (Of course, I always have questions they don't, but absolutely no game lets you type in questions and get answers.), or they were merely camera pans showing the world or people talking on other sides of a wall, or the character was out-of-control and control made no sense. (Being marched at swordpoint, sliding down a slope, whatever.)
There was no 'Man, why'd she do that, that was stupid?' questions during a cutscreen. It was, I guess, good characterization. (OTOH, they did take it to extremes a few times, where you end up in a place where there was literally one things to do, like walk through a door, and you had to manually wander over and do it. No, I want to remain in this room the rest of my life instead.)
I.e., it's not the exact physical control of the character at all times that means anything. It's whether or not you feel the character is acting independently of you. That's why cutscreens can be bad. In fact, that's exactly the disconnect the article is talking about, but you can have it without a single cutscreen at all, or not have it with a lot of cutscreens.
Of course, for all I know, the Indigo Prophecy managed to do everything exactly right. All I remember is that the controls were so annoying at start that I tried to hide the evidence of the murder I just committed (That is the very start, right?) and couldn't seem to pull it off. I have a very low tolerance of games with complicated controls that don't seem to need them.
Maybe it's time to borrow it again and try it again.
Incidentally, I'm one of the people who hated Myst. It was one of those games where the concept actually overpowered the actual game. I think that's always the pattern. There's a new innovative game, which isn't actually that great, but in the end, parts of it work themselves into other games. Usually the first game disappears into history, but not so with Myst.
And Under A Killing Moon deserves a place in your list for innovation for pulling off both a full 360 degree first person view and FMV, both of which are standard features now. It didn't invent either, but it was the first game with both, and the first game to do either right.
And I'm not sure why Maniac Mansion is on the list...the ability to do different things different ways? Switching between different characters with different skills? I admit I wasn't playing adventure, or any, games back then, and didn't 'keep up', and while I've since gone back and played pretty much everything, I don't really know the 'order' or what was start of the art at what times. I'm the right age to have grown up with them, but I didn't get into them until about 93 or so, when I, and everyone else, got DOOM, eventually causing me to discover there was a, to me, much more interesting kind of computer game.
Did I actually give an opinion of the game? Why, I don't think so! I said the first five minutes were so annoying to play that I gave up. Especially as, IIRC, they dump you in a fairly quick-paced scene. I don't like out-of-character little 'tutorial' areas in general, but if you're going to have a game with weird controls, you might want to consider having a place for people to get used to them without dumping them straight into the action.
The only thing that could be construde as an opinion of the game, beyond the first five minutes being annoying, was that I did call 'button pumping endurance' 'stupid-ass', but I will freely admit that they might have had the most magical wonderful button pumping endurance in the world, as I didn't get to anything like that in the game.
The entire concept of that, however, is still stupid.
Impartial is a state of mind, not a monetary status.
You can be partial towards one side or another winning (For example, if one of them is family.), and still be disinterested monetarily.
Likewise, you can be impartial but not disinterested. It would be hard, but it's possible.
Disinterested is a specific legal term. Impartial is a different specific legal term.
And it's not inflammable that's the ridiculous one. The correct word is inflammable, it means 'easy to inflame', aka, 'easy to catch on fire', or 'catches on fire quickly', which is a slightly incorrect way to say 'explode'.(1) It's not the prefix in- that everyone assumes, it's the preposition 'in' that we still have. 'inflame' is a very old word, and still in use in English, although rarely in a non-metaphoric sense. When things are 'inflamed', the whole thing essentially explodes into flame. Rags burn, gasoline soaked rags become inflamed.
At some point, people stayed using the much newer, gibberish term 'flammable', which would mean 'easy to burn', except they use it in the same meaning of inflammable. Almost everything is 'easy to burn' once it is actually on fire. Fire is a pretty automatic process once started. The problem isn't that a gas truck will burn, it's that it will burst into flames, aka, inflame.
Don't bitch about imflammable, bitch about flammable, that's the screwed up term.
1) Yes, explosions have a few requirements, I am aware of that. But one of those requirements is that they must happen quickly. Everything that explodes would be inflammable, if the blast didn't outrace and extinguish any flames.
...that someone bitching about the narrative flow of a game had such stupid-ass things as 'button pumping endurance'.
Look, I understand the dichotomy between cutscreen and action, but plenty of adventure games manage to tell a pretty engrossing story with the player remaining in control 99% of the time. Look at the Broken Sword 1 and 2. (3 got a little consolely, but the problem wasn't the cutscreens.) Or The Longest Journey, where the only real cutscreens are speech and the few times the character herself is not in control. (And TLJ 2 did their little thing of controlling three characters, too, at one point at the end walking them all into the same cutscene. One character got there, you switched to the second, you walked them to where the first was, you had part of a cutscreen, you flipped to the third, you walked them in where the conversation continued from that point. That actually sounds kinda dumb when I said it, but it wasn't.)
Indigo Prophecy, on the other hand, was so annoying I ended up stopping it five minutes in.
And, incidently, their little 'bending the story' idea via emotions isn't that original. Tex Murphy: The Pandora Directive had that, too. Solely based on whether or not you acted like an ass, a normal guy, or a saint determined on how much and which of the three people at the end trusted you, which had a rather large effect on the final ending sequence. There were three 'paths' with eight(1) total endings, and six unique ones. (I.e, of the six, some you can reach via two different 'paths', and in some of them the most you could do in the final scene was save the world, but not yourself. (You could go back to a little before the last scene and make some choices that at least let live, but you couldn't switch paths at that point...if you'd been a jerk the whole game you'd never get the girl and probably get shot in the leg, just not killed.)
And it wasn't just the ending. Your dialog would come out more snarky, at once point someone would delay you a few seconds instead of trusting you as you're trying to save someone else and get her killed, people would fail to pass on an important clue and you'd have to do some extra work, etc. OTOH, if you acted like an ass, you had a lot more money. (You owed basically everyone in the game money, so part of the way to 'play nice' was to pay them back with the big fat advance you got on the case.)
1) Incidentally, you'll see all the reviews, and the original game material, say 'Seven endings'. It's known there are only six unique videos for ending, so the best guess is that Access Software meant seven endings total, and didn't realize you could reach one of the 'medium' endings by staying on the worst past until after some stuff happened (The girl I was talking about got killed, for one.), and then go back and do some of the good stuff you should have done earlier.
You are insane. I don't know if you're lying or being lead on, but that is, simply, insane.
High schoolers do not sleep in the beds of people of the opposite gender, period. Why? Because parents would never allow it under their roof, so it's a lot of damn work for 'a little warmth'.
Hell, high schools don't usually even sleep together after sex, because, duh, they usually have to get home. It happens sometimes, I guess, but I'd wager that 75% of sexually active, not 18-yet-and-thus-can't-rent-hotel-rooms high-schoolers living under their parents roof have never literally 'slept with' someone, and most of the ones that did, did it on a trip of some sort where they were poorly chaperoned or not chaperoned at all, and all the rest either cleverly planned a getaway or accidently fell asleep and had to do some fast footwork in the morning.
I may be 27, but my brother's about to turn 21, and he thinks you're on crack too. Social norms don't change that fast, anyway, and parents haven't suddenly become okay with that.
Hell, adults who don't live together usually don't do that. When you already had plans to spend the night and something stopped the sex or you just weren't in the mood, or when you had to get up early and they were driving you somewhat, sure, but 'planning to sleep in the same bed without sex to be close' is not something that is commonly done until people move in together. Either the relationship includes sex, or it doesn't include sleeping in the same bed.
And, no one in their 'early to mid teens' had girls 'come back to their place'. You didn't even have a damn driver's license in your early to mid teens, much less a place you could take girls to to sleep in your bed.
We don't actually know he lied about his age. At all. He said he was a high school senior, which 19-year olds can indeed be. And I have no idea how credit card verification would have picked up he was 19 instead of 18.
In fact, although a lot of people are avoiding saying it, it's probably her who lied about her age, claiming to be 14 instead of 13, to, I suspect, get around a myspace filter. (She's 14 now, but maybe not then.)
11- and 12- year olds are not 'people', or, rather, that's about when they turn into people. Before that time they need to be watched like a loved pet to make sure they don't do anything stupid. After that you can reason with them and explain things like danger to them.
Anyone who thinks it's safe to leave a 10-year old alone to do whatever they want is guilty of child neglect. Children do stupid things, and some of those things are very dangerous. You don't have to be in the room every second, obviously, they should be able to start on a task and keep at it, but you need to monitor them to make sure they haven't suddenly decided to build a tower of furniture to try to reach the ceiling or flip the TV over to see what's under it.
Then, at some point, a little switch in their head flips and they become rational, though extremely stupid and ignorant, human beings. Your job becomes explaining things they don't know in simple enough terms they can understand.
Of course, this is an over-simplification. In reality, you explain some things and hope you got through enough that they won't do them, but it's about 11 until they can actually apply the rule to other things, and you can't possibly cover everything dangerous.
OTOH, the poster who said his children don't get any privacy until 16 is an ass.
In Georgia, the state that is, the law is that anyone can have sex with 16 and older, and going down to 14 as long there's less than a three year difference. By less than, I mean '2 years and 355 days is okay'. (A lot of people think it's 'two years', but the law says 'less than three years difference'.)(1)
This means that a seventeen year old, in general, can have sex all the way down to a fourteen year old, assuming the younger will be fifteen before the older is eighteen.
And, of course, married people can always have sex, no matter what the age, but you both have to be 16 (Or is it 17?) to marry without parental consent. People can get married down to 14 with parental consent, though, so there is a slight objection that, in theory, 14-year olds can marry 50-year olds, but so far that does not actually happen.
1) And now I'm wondering about leap years. What if one was born on, say, Feb 29, 1992, and one was born Feb 28, 1989? Or Feb 29, 1995? This isn't a 'one only' day issue, because the somewhat nice thing about the law is that it's relational to ages. I.e, if two people can have sex at any point, they can always have sex, as opposed to some poorly written laws where a 16 and 17 year old can have sex, then the 17 turns 18 and they can't have sex anymore. Below 14 noone can have sex with, over 14 anyone within three years, over 16, anyone except people in positions of authority over you. (Which technically never goes away.) So, couples can be barred, from 14 to 16, from having sex because of one day extra difference in their age, which must seem really unfair to them. (Although it's a good deal more fair then saying 'As of midnight, it is now illegal for you two to have sex anymore.'.)
No. That would actually require 18, 19, and 20 year olds to vote.
Fucking morons.
OTOH, Michael Moore (Yes, that Michael Moore.) has a fairly funny story where he ran for school board, his senior year in high school, and was elected, and was thus the boss of his principal. (He somewhat regrets how he acted, because, looking back, they both were somewhat okay guys, and he managed to make them both quit by the end of the year.)
It depends. Is the side with the alcohol and sex allowed to invite the people with guns and violence over for a party, and then roll them of their weapons when they get drunk or fall asleep after sex?;)
19-year olds can be high-school seniors. You can be in high school until 21. (Actually, I think, you can enter until you'd be 21 during that semester, but I suspect different states do it differently.)
They're going to have fun asserting that a lie that he hadn't graduated high-school is somehow relevant to all this.
And how many kids are going to shoulder surf to find their parents PIN? And how many parents are going to leave it in their wallet where a kid can pull it out to use at any time?
Okay, you're the one crossing a line here. The girl is innocent. I don't know exactly what you would think she was guilty of, but even assuming you meant 'She intended to have sex but chickened out', you're wrong. She chickened out, if it was that, in a car in a parking lot, so they obviously were not about to go into full intercourse at that point. This wasn't 'both of them almost completely naked on a bed', and he put his hand somewhere and she decided to sto pright then and there, or whatever you think it was.
As for the guy's intention being nefarious. I'm sorry, 19-year olds shouldn't even try to get laid with a 14-year old. Not because it's illegal, but because she's got the maturity of a high school freshman, whereas he's supposed to be an adult. For all we know, she's mature for her age, and he's immature, but that age gap is about twice as far as both I, and law, are comfortable with.
and some girls that age may not have caught onto the sheer number of people who will say and do whatever they can to get into someones pants
Which is why someone should sue the damn parents. That's a pretty important fact to not have drilled it into a girl's head. It's right up there with 'Don't walk on the edge of cliffs', 'Wild animals are not pet', and 'Don't juggle chainsaws.'.
I almost entire agree with you, but you need a modification: Teach your kids what is right from wrong, and most importantly be their friend - listen to what they have to say.
No. Be their ally, not their 'friend'. They can't be your friend when they're kids, you two are a generation apart and probably have almost nothing in common. Later on, when they're adults, sure, but not when they're kids. What are you going to do, hang out at the mall together? I assure, they might act nice, but they'll be mortified. You are not their 'friend'. You don't need to be cool, or hip, or whatever the terms are.
Instead, you need to be the person that they can turn to when they are in trouble or scared. You need to be a person who logically and intelligently helps them make decisions, instead of a 'friend'. At a certain point, you have to switch from 'controlling their life and keeping them from danger' to 'supporting their life and teaching them to keep themselves from danger'.
However, during early teen yeas, many parents mistake rebellion for 'stupidity' instead of the teens simply not having the same priorities as the parents. However, they aren't stupid, and are quite willing to understand the priority of 'safety', and even recognize your experience there.
Unless, of course, you've emphasized completely unimportant things as priorities, like being a 'good kid' or 'not embarrassing them' or even 'not having sex', that they don't give a damn about or even actively oppose, so they start lying continually to you, thus leading to you being unable to help them with the safety priority. Or if yu start lying to them about safety issues when it's really other things you care about, so they lie right back. Good job there.
An underaged person raping someone of age does not legally count as sexual assault on the older person's part. All assault requires intent, period. No intent, no assault, sexual or otherwise
Good luck in court with that one, through. But legally, no, it doesn't.
OTOH, 'sexual assault' isn't 'rape' either...pawing at her until she could get out of the car is 'sexual assault', and that's probably what happened. I think this one of those 'The girl stopped at first, the guy kept going and was on second and trying for third and she slapped him and leapt out of the car.'. Yes, that's obviously not acceptable, but it's not rape, it's over-eagerness.
However, the fact he was 19 and she was 14, does, in my eyes, change it a little. That's the sort of crap I expect from 15-year olds, not 19-year olds. He should probably get a month or so in jail if that is what happened.(1)
Whereas a 15-year old probably just need a stern talking to by the police about how you go at the slower of whatever speed you two think is acceptable, and he needs to ask if he's not sure where she's going, and they're going to give him the benefit of the doubt this time, but try that crap again and they'll lock him up.(2)
However, she'll be fine, with no lasting trauma at all. Teenager girls who date get grabbed where they don't necessarily want to be grabbed yet, and they, in general, are fine. (I think almost every single adult human being on the planet, man or woman, has had some experience like that, where someone tried to 'make a move' on them they were not expecting and didn't really welcome.)
Except now her parents are dragging her though this absurd lawsuit. I'd like to see how they assert that somehow this wouldn't have happened if it was a 14- or 15- year old boy....they're a lot stupider about this sort of thing. Of course, they don't have a car, but that's never presented a problem before. (And this is ignoring the fact she's legally required to spend most of her the day in a building full of 18- and even 19-year olds, called high school.)
1) OTOH, 'sexual assault' also covers all sorts of things barely short of rape. I'm going to presume, however, that that sort of assault doesn't happen inside cars in parking lots.
2) Anyone who disagrees is reminded that we have different rules for child lawbreakers already, because they are immature, and there is no one so immature as a 15-year old who thinks this time he might finally get in the girl's pants.
The internet is like any other public place - anyone can use it, and anyone *will* use it - which is why parents need to be more vigilant.
Actually, it's a good deal safer than any other public place. No woman has ever been assaulted in the parking lot while walking back to her car after shopping at Amazon.com, no kid has ever been snatched while visiting pbskids.org, no one has ever shot up a room full of teenagers at MySpace.com because he gets picked on, no guy has ever walked into an IRC channel where they didn't like 'his kind' there and ended up injured. (Whatever 'kind' that might be.) And barring some rather extreme technologic advances, none of that will ever happen.
The problem arises in other environments. The internet merely created a way for people to communicate their non-internet information to each other.
Like you said, the same can be said for the local mall, the local cineplex, the local church, the local school, the local park, and any one of a number of other venues. Except there, they are in danger at that place, in addition to anywhere else they go, and can even be secretly followed and stalked, whereas online, it's completely impossible for a random person to physically locate you in real life unless you want them to.
Although, I might add, it's rather trivial to find 14-year old girls in real life. I've recently been stumbling over like five of them every time I go into the local Taco Bell, along with their male counterparts.(1) There's always some local hangout, and probably three or four of them. Should Taco Bell be sued if they let 19-year olds talk to them and exchange phone numbers? (And there's obviously, um, their school itself. Plenty of 19-year olds go to the same school as 14-year olds.)
1) Actually, I'm just guessing their age. Has anyone else noticed, as you grow older, that high-schoolers get younger and younger? Surely I was older than that in high school. But I'm pretty certain that some of them drive there, at least they never seem to have any parents with them, so logically one of them have to be at least 16, and from what I remember, people in high school normally hang out only with other high-schoolers. But they all look like they're 12 to me.
Kids will never ask for permission to have sex or do drugs because they already know the answer.
This is why, like I've been saying, the answer to those questions must not be flatout NO. The answer must be 'Here's how to do those things somewhat safely, but do you really feel you're ready for that?'.
Also, with booze, it's a good idea to let them 'experiment' by getting them completely smashed on vodka one Friday night, while safely at home, so they have a horrible hangover Saturday. And videotape them looking like an idiot. And ask them if that's what they really want to do. Play dirty.;)
Children, past about 11 or so, are not idiots. They can understand logically presented arguments like 'People pretend to be things they are online that they are in real life. Surely, you've said some things that weren't strictly true online, so you know what we mean. And we've already told you about what teenage boys are thinking about 80% of the time, and you don't actually know this boy is a teenager anyway. So, to make sure you're safe, we will be driving you to and from this first date.' (Actually, parents should be driving 14-year olds on all their dates, but whatever.)
They might not believe those arguments, children sometimes don't understand how things can look safe and be dangerous, like concerts, where the concert itself is safe, but the environs around it are not. Then, yeah, sometimes they need to be physically prevented from acting in a stupid manner. But first come the reasons. If there aren't any reasons, or the reasons are stupid, parents should be asking themselves why they care that much.
However, the parents didn't get a chance to do that. Why? Because she didn't tell them what she was doing. Why? Because she doesn't trust them. Why?
Well, that's a great mystery, isn't it, considering that for very young children, trusting people is the default, so surely she trusted them when she was, say, four. And they've had a decade to prove that trust. Or, as happened here, break that trust.
7-year olds should be sneaking into the cookie jar. 14-year olds should be saying 'Mom, you want me to get you a soda while I'm in here?'. If they're sneaking into the cookie jar, something's gone wrong.
Put it this way....do you honestly believe you could monitor some person 24/7 short of being with them 24/7? If not then you see why your statement fails to work.
No, which is why the most important aspect of parenting is having your child trust you. If someone does not trust you, they will not tell you the truth, and if they do not tell you the truth, you cannot protect them.
Best way to lose someone's trust: Punishing them for stuff they tell you. They will soon get the message and stop telling you things.
It's not a failure of parenting to say 'You're 14-years old, if you tell me you have some after-school activity, I'll believe you'. It's a failure of parenting for a child to think that 'sneaking out' is ever needed.
14-year old dating should be 'We're going out to eat. You and your boyfriend can sit at your own table and talk about whatever you want, and maybe wander around the mall a bit when you're done.' became unclear in the editing. I meant the parents should be saying that.
I don't know about 'wined and dined' (Especially as duh, neither of them can purchase wine.), but I do want to know what the hell she thought they'd be doing at his place.
For real adults, 'come back to my place' is 'let's get cozy and see where this goes'. For teenagers, and even immature adults (And a 19-year old dating a 14 is immature, but more to the point, she is a teenager, so she should expect it.) 'Come back to my place, where there are no parents' means 'Let's fuck'. Well, in a way, it means that for adults, too, but it is more an optional thing, whereas kids have to wrangle a place to go, so it is more 'expected' that it's going to happen when they finally get there.
Anyway, they should teach this in sex ed. It's a perfect howto on how to get yourself date raped: Invite an invite back to the guy's place on the first date.
I would think this was the victim's fault to some extent (And every time I say that, I have to mention that I don't believe fault is additive or subtractive, so he's not any less to blame.), but, um, she's a kid. 14-year olds shouldn't be going out on dates like this. 14-year old dating should be 'We're going out to eat. You and your boyfriend can sit at your own table and talk about whatever you want, and maybe wander around the mall a bit when you're done.'. Letting a 14-year old get hauled around by a 19-year old on a date is just completely irresponsible parenting.(1)
And knowing how fucked up our educational system is, she probably got abstinence-only education that didn't even mention date-rape.
OTOH, there's absolutely no reason to sue MySpace for all this. Like I said, her parents, and probably her school, are both more at fault, and more to the point, legally responsible for her welfare, whereas MySpace is like the mall tht all the kids hang out at that's just where they met.
1) And I don't care if she 'snuck out'. Engendering the level of mistrust withn your child that she'd do that is also irresponsible behavior. The most important thing for a parent is to be trusted, because being trusted is the only way to keep someone safe.
Ask yourself why, for example, assaults against prostitutes are rarely reported. You shouldn't be, as some people claim, your child's friend, but you should always be their ally, and past a certain point, you should never punish them for problems, even if it's their own fault, that they bring to you to help with. Because otherwise they'll just have the problems and not tell you.
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I honestly don't remember, but I normally do, so if there was one, I probably did. The problem wasn't not knowing what to do, it was actually getting it right.
Oh, there's a reason I pick TLJ instead of TLJ2 when citing cutscenes. TLJ did it fairly well. TJL2, OTOH, was hell. Possibly the most innovative adventure game storywise in a long time, two very real-feeling universe, but there were whole scenes where the plot was essentially 'run between these five different people and talk to them repeatedly'. And they were like three screens apart. (Hey, it is The Longest Journey, and, yes, I'm pretty certain they mean distance covered, not time, in which case the first game really was probably the actual longest journey anyone has ever taken.)
Let's say the time spent represented as; figuring out what to do:talking to people:cutscreens:required movement. (Not including erronious movement, which would be in 'figuring out what to do', along with puzzles.) Normal games are somewhere near 2:1:1:1. TLJ was 1:3:2:1 or so. TLJ2 was 1:5:6:4. It was really absurd.
As for the 'keeping the player immersed'...anyone who thinks the way to do that is to keep me having to do things is barking up the wrong tree. I was completely immersed in TLJ and TLJ2, because I emphasized with April and Zoe and they never did anything inane or stupid in a cutscreen just to advance the plot. That is what really throws me out of the game. Like I said, almost all cutscreens were either a conversation, where the character asked nice, logical questions (Of course, I always have questions they don't, but absolutely no game lets you type in questions and get answers.), or they were merely camera pans showing the world or people talking on other sides of a wall, or the character was out-of-control and control made no sense. (Being marched at swordpoint, sliding down a slope, whatever.)
There was no 'Man, why'd she do that, that was stupid?' questions during a cutscreen. It was, I guess, good characterization. (OTOH, they did take it to extremes a few times, where you end up in a place where there was literally one things to do, like walk through a door, and you had to manually wander over and do it. No, I want to remain in this room the rest of my life instead.)
I.e., it's not the exact physical control of the character at all times that means anything. It's whether or not you feel the character is acting independently of you. That's why cutscreens can be bad. In fact, that's exactly the disconnect the article is talking about, but you can have it without a single cutscreen at all, or not have it with a lot of cutscreens.
Of course, for all I know, the Indigo Prophecy managed to do everything exactly right. All I remember is that the controls were so annoying at start that I tried to hide the evidence of the murder I just committed (That is the very start, right?) and couldn't seem to pull it off. I have a very low tolerance of games with complicated controls that don't seem to need them.
Maybe it's time to borrow it again and try it again.
Incidentally, I'm one of the people who hated Myst. It was one of those games where the concept actually overpowered the actual game. I think that's always the pattern. There's a new innovative game, which isn't actually that great, but in the end, parts of it work themselves into other games. Usually the first game disappears into history, but not so with Myst.
And Under A Killing Moon deserves a place in your list for innovation for pulling off both a full 360 degree first person view and FMV, both of which are standard features now. It didn't invent either, but it was the first game with both, and the first game to do either right.
And I'm not sure why Maniac Mansion is on the list...the ability to do different things different ways? Switching between different characters with different skills? I admit I wasn't playing adventure, or any, games back then, and didn't 'keep up', and while I've since gone back and played pretty much everything, I don't really know the 'order' or what was start of the art at what times. I'm the right age to have grown up with them, but I didn't get into them until about 93 or so, when I, and everyone else, got DOOM, eventually causing me to discover there was a, to me, much more interesting kind of computer game.
Did I actually give an opinion of the game? Why, I don't think so! I said the first five minutes were so annoying to play that I gave up. Especially as, IIRC, they dump you in a fairly quick-paced scene. I don't like out-of-character little 'tutorial' areas in general, but if you're going to have a game with weird controls, you might want to consider having a place for people to get used to them without dumping them straight into the action.
The only thing that could be construde as an opinion of the game, beyond the first five minutes being annoying, was that I did call 'button pumping endurance' 'stupid-ass', but I will freely admit that they might have had the most magical wonderful button pumping endurance in the world, as I didn't get to anything like that in the game.
The entire concept of that, however, is still stupid.
Impartial is a state of mind, not a monetary status.
You can be partial towards one side or another winning (For example, if one of them is family.), and still be disinterested monetarily.
Likewise, you can be impartial but not disinterested. It would be hard, but it's possible.
Disinterested is a specific legal term. Impartial is a different specific legal term.
And it's not inflammable that's the ridiculous one. The correct word is inflammable, it means 'easy to inflame', aka, 'easy to catch on fire', or 'catches on fire quickly', which is a slightly incorrect way to say 'explode'.(1) It's not the prefix in- that everyone assumes, it's the preposition 'in' that we still have. 'inflame' is a very old word, and still in use in English, although rarely in a non-metaphoric sense. When things are 'inflamed', the whole thing essentially explodes into flame. Rags burn, gasoline soaked rags become inflamed.
At some point, people stayed using the much newer, gibberish term 'flammable', which would mean 'easy to burn', except they use it in the same meaning of inflammable. Almost everything is 'easy to burn' once it is actually on fire. Fire is a pretty automatic process once started. The problem isn't that a gas truck will burn, it's that it will burst into flames, aka, inflame.
Don't bitch about imflammable, bitch about flammable, that's the screwed up term.
1) Yes, explosions have a few requirements, I am aware of that. But one of those requirements is that they must happen quickly. Everything that explodes would be inflammable, if the blast didn't outrace and extinguish any flames.
...that someone bitching about the narrative flow of a game had such stupid-ass things as 'button pumping endurance'.
Look, I understand the dichotomy between cutscreen and action, but plenty of adventure games manage to tell a pretty engrossing story with the player remaining in control 99% of the time. Look at the Broken Sword 1 and 2. (3 got a little consolely, but the problem wasn't the cutscreens.) Or The Longest Journey, where the only real cutscreens are speech and the few times the character herself is not in control. (And TLJ 2 did their little thing of controlling three characters, too, at one point at the end walking them all into the same cutscene. One character got there, you switched to the second, you walked them to where the first was, you had part of a cutscreen, you flipped to the third, you walked them in where the conversation continued from that point. That actually sounds kinda dumb when I said it, but it wasn't.)
Indigo Prophecy, on the other hand, was so annoying I ended up stopping it five minutes in.
And, incidently, their little 'bending the story' idea via emotions isn't that original. Tex Murphy: The Pandora Directive had that, too. Solely based on whether or not you acted like an ass, a normal guy, or a saint determined on how much and which of the three people at the end trusted you, which had a rather large effect on the final ending sequence. There were three 'paths' with eight(1) total endings, and six unique ones. (I.e, of the six, some you can reach via two different 'paths', and in some of them the most you could do in the final scene was save the world, but not yourself. (You could go back to a little before the last scene and make some choices that at least let live, but you couldn't switch paths at that point...if you'd been a jerk the whole game you'd never get the girl and probably get shot in the leg, just not killed.)
And it wasn't just the ending. Your dialog would come out more snarky, at once point someone would delay you a few seconds instead of trusting you as you're trying to save someone else and get her killed, people would fail to pass on an important clue and you'd have to do some extra work, etc. OTOH, if you acted like an ass, you had a lot more money. (You owed basically everyone in the game money, so part of the way to 'play nice' was to pay them back with the big fat advance you got on the case.)
1) Incidentally, you'll see all the reviews, and the original game material, say 'Seven endings'. It's known there are only six unique videos for ending, so the best guess is that Access Software meant seven endings total, and didn't realize you could reach one of the 'medium' endings by staying on the worst past until after some stuff happened (The girl I was talking about got killed, for one.), and then go back and do some of the good stuff you should have done earlier.
You are insane. I don't know if you're lying or being lead on, but that is, simply, insane.
High schoolers do not sleep in the beds of people of the opposite gender, period. Why? Because parents would never allow it under their roof, so it's a lot of damn work for 'a little warmth'.
Hell, high schools don't usually even sleep together after sex, because, duh, they usually have to get home. It happens sometimes, I guess, but I'd wager that 75% of sexually active, not 18-yet-and-thus-can't-rent-hotel-rooms high-schoolers living under their parents roof have never literally 'slept with' someone, and most of the ones that did, did it on a trip of some sort where they were poorly chaperoned or not chaperoned at all, and all the rest either cleverly planned a getaway or accidently fell asleep and had to do some fast footwork in the morning.
I may be 27, but my brother's about to turn 21, and he thinks you're on crack too. Social norms don't change that fast, anyway, and parents haven't suddenly become okay with that.
Hell, adults who don't live together usually don't do that. When you already had plans to spend the night and something stopped the sex or you just weren't in the mood, or when you had to get up early and they were driving you somewhat, sure, but 'planning to sleep in the same bed without sex to be close' is not something that is commonly done until people move in together. Either the relationship includes sex, or it doesn't include sleeping in the same bed.
And, no one in their 'early to mid teens' had girls 'come back to their place'. You didn't even have a damn driver's license in your early to mid teens, much less a place you could take girls to to sleep in your bed.
We don't actually know he lied about his age. At all. He said he was a high school senior, which 19-year olds can indeed be. And I have no idea how credit card verification would have picked up he was 19 instead of 18.
In fact, although a lot of people are avoiding saying it, it's probably her who lied about her age, claiming to be 14 instead of 13, to, I suspect, get around a myspace filter. (She's 14 now, but maybe not then.)
And for a minor, sexual assault in Texas includes a blowjob. Either giving or receiving.
Technically, it appears to include such things as licking the side of someone's breast.
11- and 12- year olds are not 'people', or, rather, that's about when they turn into people. Before that time they need to be watched like a loved pet to make sure they don't do anything stupid. After that you can reason with them and explain things like danger to them.
Anyone who thinks it's safe to leave a 10-year old alone to do whatever they want is guilty of child neglect. Children do stupid things, and some of those things are very dangerous. You don't have to be in the room every second, obviously, they should be able to start on a task and keep at it, but you need to monitor them to make sure they haven't suddenly decided to build a tower of furniture to try to reach the ceiling or flip the TV over to see what's under it.
Then, at some point, a little switch in their head flips and they become rational, though extremely stupid and ignorant, human beings. Your job becomes explaining things they don't know in simple enough terms they can understand.
Of course, this is an over-simplification. In reality, you explain some things and hope you got through enough that they won't do them, but it's about 11 until they can actually apply the rule to other things, and you can't possibly cover everything dangerous.
OTOH, the poster who said his children don't get any privacy until 16 is an ass.
Or do they mean that myspace signs people up without any email account?
This means that a seventeen year old, in general, can have sex all the way down to a fourteen year old, assuming the younger will be fifteen before the older is eighteen.
And, of course, married people can always have sex, no matter what the age, but you both have to be 16 (Or is it 17?) to marry without parental consent. People can get married down to 14 with parental consent, though, so there is a slight objection that, in theory, 14-year olds can marry 50-year olds, but so far that does not actually happen.
1) And now I'm wondering about leap years. What if one was born on, say, Feb 29, 1992, and one was born Feb 28, 1989? Or Feb 29, 1995? This isn't a 'one only' day issue, because the somewhat nice thing about the law is that it's relational to ages. I.e, if two people can have sex at any point, they can always have sex, as opposed to some poorly written laws where a 16 and 17 year old can have sex, then the 17 turns 18 and they can't have sex anymore. Below 14 noone can have sex with, over 14 anyone within three years, over 16, anyone except people in positions of authority over you. (Which technically never goes away.) So, couples can be barred, from 14 to 16, from having sex because of one day extra difference in their age, which must seem really unfair to them. (Although it's a good deal more fair then saying 'As of midnight, it is now illegal for you two to have sex anymore.'.)
Fucking morons.
OTOH, Michael Moore (Yes, that Michael Moore.) has a fairly funny story where he ran for school board, his senior year in high school, and was elected, and was thus the boss of his principal. (He somewhat regrets how he acted, because, looking back, they both were somewhat okay guys, and he managed to make them both quit by the end of the year.)
It depends. Is the side with the alcohol and sex allowed to invite the people with guns and violence over for a party, and then roll them of their weapons when they get drunk or fall asleep after sex? ;)
19-year olds can be high-school seniors. You can be in high school until 21. (Actually, I think, you can enter until you'd be 21 during that semester, but I suspect different states do it differently.)
They're going to have fun asserting that a lie that he hadn't graduated high-school is somehow relevant to all this.
This whole thing is getting absurd.
Okay, you're the one crossing a line here. The girl is innocent. I don't know exactly what you would think she was guilty of, but even assuming you meant 'She intended to have sex but chickened out', you're wrong. She chickened out, if it was that, in a car in a parking lot, so they obviously were not about to go into full intercourse at that point. This wasn't 'both of them almost completely naked on a bed', and he put his hand somewhere and she decided to sto pright then and there, or whatever you think it was.
As for the guy's intention being nefarious. I'm sorry, 19-year olds shouldn't even try to get laid with a 14-year old. Not because it's illegal, but because she's got the maturity of a high school freshman, whereas he's supposed to be an adult. For all we know, she's mature for her age, and he's immature, but that age gap is about twice as far as both I, and law, are comfortable with.
and some girls that age may not have caught onto the sheer number of people who will say and do whatever they can to get into someones pants
Which is why someone should sue the damn parents. That's a pretty important fact to not have drilled it into a girl's head. It's right up there with 'Don't walk on the edge of cliffs', 'Wild animals are not pet', and 'Don't juggle chainsaws.'.
I almost entire agree with you, but you need a modification: Teach your kids what is right from wrong, and most importantly be their friend - listen to what they have to say.
No. Be their ally, not their 'friend'. They can't be your friend when they're kids, you two are a generation apart and probably have almost nothing in common. Later on, when they're adults, sure, but not when they're kids. What are you going to do, hang out at the mall together? I assure, they might act nice, but they'll be mortified. You are not their 'friend'. You don't need to be cool, or hip, or whatever the terms are.
Instead, you need to be the person that they can turn to when they are in trouble or scared. You need to be a person who logically and intelligently helps them make decisions, instead of a 'friend'. At a certain point, you have to switch from 'controlling their life and keeping them from danger' to 'supporting their life and teaching them to keep themselves from danger'.
However, during early teen yeas, many parents mistake rebellion for 'stupidity' instead of the teens simply not having the same priorities as the parents. However, they aren't stupid, and are quite willing to understand the priority of 'safety', and even recognize your experience there.
Unless, of course, you've emphasized completely unimportant things as priorities, like being a 'good kid' or 'not embarrassing them' or even 'not having sex', that they don't give a damn about or even actively oppose, so they start lying continually to you, thus leading to you being unable to help them with the safety priority. Or if yu start lying to them about safety issues when it's really other things you care about, so they lie right back. Good job there.
An underaged person raping someone of age does not legally count as sexual assault on the older person's part. All assault requires intent, period. No intent, no assault, sexual or otherwise
Good luck in court with that one, through. But legally, no, it doesn't.
OTOH, 'sexual assault' isn't 'rape' either...pawing at her until she could get out of the car is 'sexual assault', and that's probably what happened. I think this one of those 'The girl stopped at first, the guy kept going and was on second and trying for third and she slapped him and leapt out of the car.'. Yes, that's obviously not acceptable, but it's not rape, it's over-eagerness.
However, the fact he was 19 and she was 14, does, in my eyes, change it a little. That's the sort of crap I expect from 15-year olds, not 19-year olds. He should probably get a month or so in jail if that is what happened.(1)
Whereas a 15-year old probably just need a stern talking to by the police about how you go at the slower of whatever speed you two think is acceptable, and he needs to ask if he's not sure where she's going, and they're going to give him the benefit of the doubt this time, but try that crap again and they'll lock him up.(2)
However, she'll be fine, with no lasting trauma at all. Teenager girls who date get grabbed where they don't necessarily want to be grabbed yet, and they, in general, are fine. (I think almost every single adult human being on the planet, man or woman, has had some experience like that, where someone tried to 'make a move' on them they were not expecting and didn't really welcome.)
Except now her parents are dragging her though this absurd lawsuit. I'd like to see how they assert that somehow this wouldn't have happened if it was a 14- or 15- year old boy....they're a lot stupider about this sort of thing. Of course, they don't have a car, but that's never presented a problem before. (And this is ignoring the fact she's legally required to spend most of her the day in a building full of 18- and even 19-year olds, called high school.)
1) OTOH, 'sexual assault' also covers all sorts of things barely short of rape. I'm going to presume, however, that that sort of assault doesn't happen inside cars in parking lots.
2) Anyone who disagrees is reminded that we have different rules for child lawbreakers already, because they are immature, and there is no one so immature as a 15-year old who thinks this time he might finally get in the girl's pants.
The internet is like any other public place - anyone can use it, and anyone *will* use it - which is why parents need to be more vigilant.
Actually, it's a good deal safer than any other public place. No woman has ever been assaulted in the parking lot while walking back to her car after shopping at Amazon.com, no kid has ever been snatched while visiting pbskids.org, no one has ever shot up a room full of teenagers at MySpace.com because he gets picked on, no guy has ever walked into an IRC channel where they didn't like 'his kind' there and ended up injured. (Whatever 'kind' that might be.) And barring some rather extreme technologic advances, none of that will ever happen.
The problem arises in other environments. The internet merely created a way for people to communicate their non-internet information to each other.
Like you said, the same can be said for the local mall, the local cineplex, the local church, the local school, the local park, and any one of a number of other venues. Except there, they are in danger at that place, in addition to anywhere else they go, and can even be secretly followed and stalked, whereas online, it's completely impossible for a random person to physically locate you in real life unless you want them to.
Although, I might add, it's rather trivial to find 14-year old girls in real life. I've recently been stumbling over like five of them every time I go into the local Taco Bell, along with their male counterparts.(1) There's always some local hangout, and probably three or four of them. Should Taco Bell be sued if they let 19-year olds talk to them and exchange phone numbers? (And there's obviously, um, their school itself. Plenty of 19-year olds go to the same school as 14-year olds.)
1) Actually, I'm just guessing their age. Has anyone else noticed, as you grow older, that high-schoolers get younger and younger? Surely I was older than that in high school. But I'm pretty certain that some of them drive there, at least they never seem to have any parents with them, so logically one of them have to be at least 16, and from what I remember, people in high school normally hang out only with other high-schoolers. But they all look like they're 12 to me.
Kids will never ask for permission to have sex or do drugs because they already know the answer.
This is why, like I've been saying, the answer to those questions must not be flatout NO. The answer must be 'Here's how to do those things somewhat safely, but do you really feel you're ready for that?'.
Also, with booze, it's a good idea to let them 'experiment' by getting them completely smashed on vodka one Friday night, while safely at home, so they have a horrible hangover Saturday. And videotape them looking like an idiot. And ask them if that's what they really want to do. Play dirty. ;)
Ha, I'm glad someone is on the same page as me.
Children, past about 11 or so, are not idiots. They can understand logically presented arguments like 'People pretend to be things they are online that they are in real life. Surely, you've said some things that weren't strictly true online, so you know what we mean. And we've already told you about what teenage boys are thinking about 80% of the time, and you don't actually know this boy is a teenager anyway. So, to make sure you're safe, we will be driving you to and from this first date.' (Actually, parents should be driving 14-year olds on all their dates, but whatever.)
They might not believe those arguments, children sometimes don't understand how things can look safe and be dangerous, like concerts, where the concert itself is safe, but the environs around it are not. Then, yeah, sometimes they need to be physically prevented from acting in a stupid manner. But first come the reasons. If there aren't any reasons, or the reasons are stupid, parents should be asking themselves why they care that much.
However, the parents didn't get a chance to do that. Why? Because she didn't tell them what she was doing. Why? Because she doesn't trust them. Why?
Well, that's a great mystery, isn't it, considering that for very young children, trusting people is the default, so surely she trusted them when she was, say, four. And they've had a decade to prove that trust. Or, as happened here, break that trust.
7-year olds should be sneaking into the cookie jar. 14-year olds should be saying 'Mom, you want me to get you a soda while I'm in here?'. If they're sneaking into the cookie jar, something's gone wrong.
Put it this way....do you honestly believe you could monitor some person 24/7 short of being with them 24/7? If not then you see why your statement fails to work.
No, which is why the most important aspect of parenting is having your child trust you. If someone does not trust you, they will not tell you the truth, and if they do not tell you the truth, you cannot protect them.
Best way to lose someone's trust: Punishing them for stuff they tell you. They will soon get the message and stop telling you things.
It's not a failure of parenting to say 'You're 14-years old, if you tell me you have some after-school activity, I'll believe you'. It's a failure of parenting for a child to think that 'sneaking out' is ever needed.
14-year old dating should be 'We're going out to eat. You and your boyfriend can sit at your own table and talk about whatever you want, and maybe wander around the mall a bit when you're done.' became unclear in the editing. I meant the parents should be saying that.
I don't know about 'wined and dined' (Especially as duh, neither of them can purchase wine.), but I do want to know what the hell she thought they'd be doing at his place.
For real adults, 'come back to my place' is 'let's get cozy and see where this goes'. For teenagers, and even immature adults (And a 19-year old dating a 14 is immature, but more to the point, she is a teenager, so she should expect it.) 'Come back to my place, where there are no parents' means 'Let's fuck'. Well, in a way, it means that for adults, too, but it is more an optional thing, whereas kids have to wrangle a place to go, so it is more 'expected' that it's going to happen when they finally get there.
Anyway, they should teach this in sex ed. It's a perfect howto on how to get yourself date raped: Invite an invite back to the guy's place on the first date.
I would think this was the victim's fault to some extent (And every time I say that, I have to mention that I don't believe fault is additive or subtractive, so he's not any less to blame.), but, um, she's a kid. 14-year olds shouldn't be going out on dates like this. 14-year old dating should be 'We're going out to eat. You and your boyfriend can sit at your own table and talk about whatever you want, and maybe wander around the mall a bit when you're done.'. Letting a 14-year old get hauled around by a 19-year old on a date is just completely irresponsible parenting.(1)
And knowing how fucked up our educational system is, she probably got abstinence-only education that didn't even mention date-rape.
OTOH, there's absolutely no reason to sue MySpace for all this. Like I said, her parents, and probably her school, are both more at fault, and more to the point, legally responsible for her welfare, whereas MySpace is like the mall tht all the kids hang out at that's just where they met.
1) And I don't care if she 'snuck out'. Engendering the level of mistrust withn your child that she'd do that is also irresponsible behavior. The most important thing for a parent is to be trusted, because being trusted is the only way to keep someone safe.
Ask yourself why, for example, assaults against prostitutes are rarely reported. You shouldn't be, as some people claim, your child's friend, but you should always be their ally, and past a certain point, you should never punish them for problems, even if it's their own fault, that they bring to you to help with. Because otherwise they'll just have the problems and not tell you.