I love how so many fools, in all of their make-believe worship and haughty arrogance, actually believe that Earth, in this constantly expanding universe, is the only planet capable of sustaining intelligent and mobile lifeforms.
But forget it, okay, keep blowing yourselves to hell. You know, hell, that place with the fire and the red guy with the pointy tail?
My jaw dropped when they mentioned the game Airheart. I remember how amazed me and my older brother were at the absolutely amazing graphics and the 3-D like gameplay. "Double Hi-Res" was the catch phrase of that time in our household.
Airheart was a gem, but not the only one. During this mid-to-late eighties, some very incredible games were being released for the AppleIIe: Prince of Persia was released around this time which dwarfed the giant game Karateka.
And then there was Nine Princes of Amber, an Adventure game with a verb parser that was ten-times as sophisticated as any Adventure came at the time. For an example, while conversing with a woman, you could comment on any facet of her body or personality using nearly 50 different verbs (stunning smile, radiant eyes, gorgeous blouse) which the character would react to in numerous ways, which made the game incredibly difficult but absolutely brilliant.
Please excuse the oligatory PR#6. Thank you.:P
I actually have an emulator with a few classics, but now that I've been reminded... Airheart... I'm back!
You know what the last good Shadowrun game was? Shadowrun for the Sega Genesis.
You know why that was the last good Shadowrun game? They used the already existing pen & paper system and incorporated it within a new story. It was a top down RPG featuring all the different areas of Seattle: Redmond Barrens, Renraku Arcology, Downtown Seattle, even the Native American reservations, as well as the familiar locations: Lone Star Police Department, Hollywood Correctional Facility.
It had dozens of weapons, flak jackets, grenades, stim patches, cyberware, decks, programs etc. etc. etc.
It incorporated the karma system with dozens of skills and the familiar attributes.
And, it included deckers, which changed the game into a first person like "matrix" where the user had to bypass nodes protected by various ice. The better the deck and programs, the faster the load time on your "attacks", and the more storage in your deck, the more files you could download, thus more money you could get from your fixer.
Sounds just like the pen and paper huh? Which is why this is considered one of the best RPG games released on the Genesis, not too mention far, far superior to the SNES version.
When I saw that trite, shite released for the X-Box, what was it, the Shadowrun multiplayer deathmatch, I wanted to vomit. It made no sense, of all the multiplayer games you could release, why would you basterdize the Shadowrun name by forcing it into a genre it never, ever could fit into? The most obvious solution would be to create a Shadowrun game with an "Oblivion-type" experience. It's practically begging to be made as such.
If they're going to make a Shadowrun game, make a Shadowrun game. Don't make a game released to a "specific demographic". It fails almost everytime.
I would bet that the statistics of the 52% that didn't finish the game and the 19% that didn't even make it past the first part probably had something to do with not only the Orange Box, but the heavy game releases that happened between October and November.
I could easily see some players starting Episode-2 but then getting sidetracked by the equally great games Portal or Team Fortress 2 that was bundled in the same package. I would bet those percentages would be a bit higher if more people bought this as a stand alone game the way I actually did since when you buy a game, you generally want to play it start to finish (unless it's incredibly difficult or it just plain sucks).
In this case, these last few months have given gamers a variety of offerings, including that 19%.
Don't worry. If you played through HL2Ep2, you'll remember seeing a certain Aperture Science logo on a certain something I don't want to spoil.
In other words, I have a feeling a Mr. Gordon Freeman will be sheathing that gravity gun in place for something much, much cooler...
I think you have to separate the kinds of horror. I mean sure, Halflife had many moments that made me jump in my seat, but that was more shock value than horror.
In Halflife 2, Ravenholme, the undead city, even though there were shock value moments, had a much more "horror" aspect which made it difficult to navigate around corners, even though you knew nothing was there.
I think the video game that did the best job of displaying a horror type atmosphere was Vampire: Bloodlines. I think it was called the Ocean Front Hotel, which depicted a haunted hotel with all the classic spooks. It was ingenious simply because there was absolutely nothing, repeat nothing, to shoot or fight, you were simply trying to retrieve an amulet while finding clues as to what happened years ago in the hotel. I literally had to take several short "breaks" simply because I was so unnerved.
One example: After creeping around the first floor of the abandoned hotel, you're already on edge. So you decide to walk up a flight of stairs, and the stairs suddenly collapse and drops you in the middle of a dark cellar with no way back up. Cue various sounds including footsteps and a quiet baby crying above and you suddenly wish you hadn't even tried the goddamn stairs.
I realized this level was amazing immediately after finishing it because when I went into the hotel, I think I had a full clip of bullets in my gun, but when I left, I had no ammo. Embarrassingly, there was nothing to shoot at on this level as I said before, I was just shooting because I was reacting to a scare or because it simply helped alleviate the stress of creeping around the dank, antiquated Stephen King-like floor plan. If a game can do that, then you know it's good, and it's no surprise a video game magazine had named the Ocean Front Hotel as game level of the year in 2005 I believe.
No movie could ever scare me the way this one video game level had
I mean really... providing your customer base with a buggy, heavy GUI (XP with drop shadows and a huge gut), having to have a middle-to-top tier video card regardless of RAM and CPU just to run the OS, and then slapping a new version of DX-10 that is allocated only to the remaining memory on the video card that's not being used by Vista... and then saying this is the ONLY way to have DX-10 prior to releasing Vista-only games...
Somebody actually thought this would be a good, marketable idea? You would think, in this age of backwards-compatibility, that Windows would have maybe, I dunno, thought this through a bit more...
Capcom vs. Valve - HyperFighting Black Mesa Tournament?
That would be spectacular!
Ryu and Gordon Freeman vs. Sagat and the G-Man! What a beautiful sounding medley of combat that would make.
"Round 1. Fight!"
Ryu: "Hadooken!" *Spoof!*
Gordon:... *Crowbar smashing noises and Gravity Gun whirs*
Sagat: "Tiger Uppercut!!" *Bash!*
G-Man: "The right man in the wrong time." *heavy breathing*
Stranger things have happened. However, I doubt we will see an resurgence of Netscape as a viable browser unless they come out with some wicked killer app that changes the way we look at the Internet.
That was the growth point for Netscape in the interim 1994 glory days, if you can remember. The excitement of graduating to Netscape Navigator 2.0 from the reliably mundane Mosaic browser was intense, the features were incredible and the HTML markup standards had taken a giant leap forward. It was hello exciting new table structured content, colorful backgrounds and jpeg support, and goodbye top down web content and plain grey backdrop (which to me carries a minimilist charm).
Remember, when Internet Explorer jumped onto the scene, it was laughable, a browser used only by the clueless and the elderly. Not even the IE exclusive Marquee tag could save it. Oh but of course, no one expects the Microsoft Inquisition... of lawyers. And no one expected Netscape to drop the ball by releasing a giant bundle of useless crap (aka features). Oh and don't forget... sigh... "Layers", the div-tag alternative which doubled the need for web designers in the late nineties (so, uh... thanks?).
It was over for Netscape when Opera had more credibility as a reliable web browser than Netscape 5 or 6 or wait, which version did they skip 7 or 8 or... Jesus... what a cluster fuck.
Sorry, Netscape. We had some good times, but it's over now. Not only did you get too fat for my tastes, but you cheated on me. You see, I saved the best reason for never downloading your tired web browser ever again. One word.
Weatherbug. (For the uninitiated, it's spyware! Shame on you, Netscape. Shame... on... you.)
If you want to make a kid's game educational, treat it as any other type of media. It needs to have an edgy storyline, identifiable characters, and some type of fun factor involved. The storyline however, is essential because this is where you pepper your educational, intellectual and moral factors. Notice I say pepper, and not dump.
For example, everything I learned about morality and principles I learned from Ultima IV. That's a slight exaggeration, but there's truth to it.
It might sound silly, but what's the alternative, church? Don't get me started. You know what fun is? Playing a game that upholds virtues and responses to certain decisions major and minor, things like showing mercy to the fleeing monsters for the sake of honor, accepting the hardship of battles for the greater good of valor, and not using the skull of Mondain for the sake of all that is holy even if it does kill every monster in you or your ships peripheral.
Ultima IV taught me that stealing the chests of coin in Lord British's treasury is wrong, even if you really need to buy that pirate ship to sail to Buccaneer's Den. You never had to steal, see, because it was inevitable that a pirate ship would attack you, and using your valor, you would slay the pirates, and let the fleeing pirates run off land. Then you commandeer the ship, organize your party and valuables and there you go! You've obtained your ship without falling to the dark side of virtue. Now you sail to the island of Magincia where they foolishly celebrated Pride as a virtue, in turn the island inevitably fell to an onslaught of demons forcing the survivors (living and undead) to realize that humility was the virtue, not pride.
In light of this Ultima IV rant, there are many ways to make things fun and educational. Don't beat the idea of education and morality into a kids head. Just be settle, have a solid, fun, game with an adventurous storyline that exemplifies and mandates what virtues a real hero holds onto.
When you try to cauterize principles it's obvious to the kid and they shut down immediately. It's really not that difficult, it just takes a little imagination and a board of executives and producers who can understand the benefits of putting a good storyline with an intelligent decision making parsing engine.
Just be settle. Kids, believe it or not, want to learn, but it's the spoonful of sugar theory. Make it fun, make it sweet, don't dump more sugar than medicine and don't remove the medicine completely.
$PRESIDENT and $EXECUTIVE_BRANCH_POLITICIANS do everything that they can to prevent anything even resembling a terrorist attack
Does that include duct tape on the windows and the banning of liquids on all non-private airlines? (God forbid if a terrorist has a enough money to charter private flights).
When your 'do everything they can' scenario actually happens as a viable and logical solution, maybe then your 'do everything they can' scenario will make sense. Or possibly be proven invalid.
The sad part is, we're probably the only two people on Slashdot that "gets" this.
That and the fact that Arcanum was possibly one of the most underrated RPG's to come out next to Divine Divinity. The intro alone spoke eons of awesomeness. And the conflict between technology and magic was fantastic and extremely diverse.
Quite frankly I'd hail this game as much as everyone hails Fallout. Steampunk anyone?
Ah Christian Fundamentalists... they're just like Islamic Fundamentalists... only different.
No matter what truth, facts, or educated postulations you try to help them understand and consider, to them, the world will always be flat and the Earth will always be in the center of the galaxy.
I was raised Baptist. Of all the wacky stuff the pastor threw at us, we all could appreciate a few simple principles: Mind your health, don't sleep with my wife, try not to kill anybody and education is fundamental. Traveling beyond the doctrines of common sense tends to lead to the swamps of stupidity.
If these fundamentalist zealots, in all their glorious wisdom, wish to outlaw science, deductive reasoning and critical thinking from education, then it's only fair to outlaw their solipsism as well.
And for the record, the Grand Canyon was NOT created 6000 years ago by a disastrous flood survived only by a zookeeper with a really large ship and a meticulous knack for breeding animals... hey that's genetics! Oops, sorry, too scientific, I meant that's the will of our Lord.
Slashdot Mirror
I love how so many fools, in all of their make-believe worship and haughty arrogance, actually believe that Earth, in this constantly expanding universe, is the only planet capable of sustaining intelligent and mobile lifeforms.
But forget it, okay, keep blowing yourselves to hell. You know, hell, that place with the fire and the red guy with the pointy tail?
I think you meant, "should we stop playing BurgerTime?"
My jaw dropped when they mentioned the game Airheart. I remember how amazed me and my older brother were at the absolutely amazing graphics and the 3-D like gameplay. "Double Hi-Res" was the catch phrase of that time in our household.
Airheart was a gem, but not the only one. During this mid-to-late eighties, some very incredible games were being released for the AppleIIe: Prince of Persia was released around this time which dwarfed the giant game Karateka.
And then there was Nine Princes of Amber, an Adventure game with a verb parser that was ten-times as sophisticated as any Adventure came at the time. For an example, while conversing with a woman, you could comment on any facet of her body or personality using nearly 50 different verbs (stunning smile, radiant eyes, gorgeous blouse) which the character would react to in numerous ways, which made the game incredibly difficult but absolutely brilliant.
Please excuse the oligatory PR#6. Thank you. :P
I actually have an emulator with a few classics, but now that I've been reminded... Airheart... I'm back!
What indeed.
I've been a gamer for decades. Why the hell what I take a group calling themseleves GameCock's seriously?
And then why would I listen to some well prounounced dickhead berate me for not knowing who a bunch of GameCock's are?
You know what the only deduction I have after reading the article? Fuck GameCock. I wish I could "unknow" them now.
You know what the last good Shadowrun game was? Shadowrun for the Sega Genesis.
You know why that was the last good Shadowrun game? They used the already existing pen & paper system and incorporated it within a new story. It was a top down RPG featuring all the different areas of Seattle: Redmond Barrens, Renraku Arcology, Downtown Seattle, even the Native American reservations, as well as the familiar locations: Lone Star Police Department, Hollywood Correctional Facility.
It had dozens of weapons, flak jackets, grenades, stim patches, cyberware, decks, programs etc. etc. etc. It incorporated the karma system with dozens of skills and the familiar attributes.
And, it included deckers, which changed the game into a first person like "matrix" where the user had to bypass nodes protected by various ice. The better the deck and programs, the faster the load time on your "attacks", and the more storage in your deck, the more files you could download, thus more money you could get from your fixer.
Sounds just like the pen and paper huh? Which is why this is considered one of the best RPG games released on the Genesis, not too mention far, far superior to the SNES version.
When I saw that trite, shite released for the X-Box, what was it, the Shadowrun multiplayer deathmatch, I wanted to vomit. It made no sense, of all the multiplayer games you could release, why would you basterdize the Shadowrun name by forcing it into a genre it never, ever could fit into? The most obvious solution would be to create a Shadowrun game with an "Oblivion-type" experience. It's practically begging to be made as such.
If they're going to make a Shadowrun game, make a Shadowrun game. Don't make a game released to a "specific demographic". It fails almost everytime.
There was actually a good example of how Network Troops failed in the novel World War Z.
In summary it goes like this: If one troop panics, everybody panics.
I would bet that the statistics of the 52% that didn't finish the game and the 19% that didn't even make it past the first part probably had something to do with not only the Orange Box, but the heavy game releases that happened between October and November.
I could easily see some players starting Episode-2 but then getting sidetracked by the equally great games Portal or Team Fortress 2 that was bundled in the same package. I would bet those percentages would be a bit higher if more people bought this as a stand alone game the way I actually did since when you buy a game, you generally want to play it start to finish (unless it's incredibly difficult or it just plain sucks).
In this case, these last few months have given gamers a variety of offerings, including that 19%.
One minute they're hacking grades...
And you know what happens after that?
Defcon 1... unscrambled launch codes... and brightly lit games of Tic-Tac-Toe that flash mysteriously across your face is it plays!
"Okay, but this is the Final Sacrifice."
That was Mike, I know, but it'll be good to have Joel back. If you can--- BZZZ! BZZZ!! BZZZ!
Oh no! It's another movie,ahahhhhhhh!
[slams the button]
[cue the doors]
Don't worry. If you played through HL2Ep2, you'll remember seeing a certain Aperture Science logo on a certain something I don't want to spoil. In other words, I have a feeling a Mr. Gordon Freeman will be sheathing that gravity gun in place for something much, much cooler...
...a journalism student... Really, what was his motive??? Attention Whore?Yeah so... taser him... damn journalists and their annoying questions.
Give me a break.
I think you have to separate the kinds of horror. I mean sure, Halflife had many moments that made me jump in my seat, but that was more shock value than horror.
In Halflife 2, Ravenholme, the undead city, even though there were shock value moments, had a much more "horror" aspect which made it difficult to navigate around corners, even though you knew nothing was there.
I think the video game that did the best job of displaying a horror type atmosphere was Vampire: Bloodlines. I think it was called the Ocean Front Hotel, which depicted a haunted hotel with all the classic spooks. It was ingenious simply because there was absolutely nothing, repeat nothing, to shoot or fight, you were simply trying to retrieve an amulet while finding clues as to what happened years ago in the hotel. I literally had to take several short "breaks" simply because I was so unnerved.
One example: After creeping around the first floor of the abandoned hotel, you're already on edge. So you decide to walk up a flight of stairs, and the stairs suddenly collapse and drops you in the middle of a dark cellar with no way back up. Cue various sounds including footsteps and a quiet baby crying above and you suddenly wish you hadn't even tried the goddamn stairs.
I realized this level was amazing immediately after finishing it because when I went into the hotel, I think I had a full clip of bullets in my gun, but when I left, I had no ammo. Embarrassingly, there was nothing to shoot at on this level as I said before, I was just shooting because I was reacting to a scare or because it simply helped alleviate the stress of creeping around the dank, antiquated Stephen King-like floor plan. If a game can do that, then you know it's good, and it's no surprise a video game magazine had named the Ocean Front Hotel as game level of the year in 2005 I believe.
No movie could ever scare me the way this one video game level had
I mean really... providing your customer base with a buggy, heavy GUI (XP with drop shadows and a huge gut), having to have a middle-to-top tier video card regardless of RAM and CPU just to run the OS, and then slapping a new version of DX-10 that is allocated only to the remaining memory on the video card that's not being used by Vista... and then saying this is the ONLY way to have DX-10 prior to releasing Vista-only games...
Somebody actually thought this would be a good, marketable idea? You would think, in this age of backwards-compatibility, that Windows would have maybe, I dunno, thought this through a bit more...
Poops in hand...
Flings it at you...
Grins and applauds.
Oh come on!
Rosie O'Donnell is not Egyptian nor is she a time slider!
It would, however, explain the fall of the Egyptian Empire.
"I cannot stand King Tut and his awful hairpiece! Did you know the Tut is bankrupt?!"
Capcom vs. Valve - HyperFighting Black Mesa Tournament? That would be spectacular! Ryu and Gordon Freeman vs. Sagat and the G-Man! What a beautiful sounding medley of combat that would make. "Round 1. Fight!" Ryu: "Hadooken!" *Spoof!* Gordon: ... *Crowbar smashing noises and Gravity Gun whirs*
Sagat: "Tiger Uppercut!!" *Bash!*
G-Man: "The right man in the wrong time." *heavy breathing*
Stranger things have happened. However, I doubt we will see an resurgence of Netscape as a viable browser unless they come out with some wicked killer app that changes the way we look at the Internet.
That was the growth point for Netscape in the interim 1994 glory days, if you can remember. The excitement of graduating to Netscape Navigator 2.0 from the reliably mundane Mosaic browser was intense, the features were incredible and the HTML markup standards had taken a giant leap forward. It was hello exciting new table structured content, colorful backgrounds and jpeg support, and goodbye top down web content and plain grey backdrop (which to me carries a minimilist charm).
Remember, when Internet Explorer jumped onto the scene, it was laughable, a browser used only by the clueless and the elderly. Not even the IE exclusive Marquee tag could save it. Oh but of course, no one expects the Microsoft Inquisition... of lawyers. And no one expected Netscape to drop the ball by releasing a giant bundle of useless crap (aka features). Oh and don't forget... sigh... "Layers", the div-tag alternative which doubled the need for web designers in the late nineties (so, uh... thanks?).
It was over for Netscape when Opera had more credibility as a reliable web browser than Netscape 5 or 6 or wait, which version did they skip 7 or 8 or... Jesus... what a cluster fuck.
Sorry, Netscape. We had some good times, but it's over now. Not only did you get too fat for my tastes, but you cheated on me. You see, I saved the best reason for never downloading your tired web browser ever again. One word.
Weatherbug.
(For the uninitiated, it's spyware! Shame on you, Netscape. Shame... on... you.)
If you want to make a kid's game educational, treat it as any other type of media. It needs to have an edgy storyline, identifiable characters, and some type of fun factor involved. The storyline however, is essential because this is where you pepper your educational, intellectual and moral factors. Notice I say pepper, and not dump.
For example, everything I learned about morality and principles I learned from Ultima IV. That's a slight exaggeration, but there's truth to it.
It might sound silly, but what's the alternative, church? Don't get me started. You know what fun is? Playing a game that upholds virtues and responses to certain decisions major and minor, things like showing mercy to the fleeing monsters for the sake of honor, accepting the hardship of battles for the greater good of valor, and not using the skull of Mondain for the sake of all that is holy even if it does kill every monster in you or your ships peripheral.
Ultima IV taught me that stealing the chests of coin in Lord British's treasury is wrong, even if you really need to buy that pirate ship to sail to Buccaneer's Den. You never had to steal, see, because it was inevitable that a pirate ship would attack you, and using your valor, you would slay the pirates, and let the fleeing pirates run off land. Then you commandeer the ship, organize your party and valuables and there you go! You've obtained your ship without falling to the dark side of virtue. Now you sail to the island of Magincia where they foolishly celebrated Pride as a virtue, in turn the island inevitably fell to an onslaught of demons forcing the survivors (living and undead) to realize that humility was the virtue, not pride.
In light of this Ultima IV rant, there are many ways to make things fun and educational. Don't beat the idea of education and morality into a kids head. Just be settle, have a solid, fun, game with an adventurous storyline that exemplifies and mandates what virtues a real hero holds onto.
When you try to cauterize principles it's obvious to the kid and they shut down immediately. It's really not that difficult, it just takes a little imagination and a board of executives and producers who can understand the benefits of putting a good storyline with an intelligent decision making parsing engine.
Just be settle. Kids, believe it or not, want to learn, but it's the spoonful of sugar theory. Make it fun, make it sweet, don't dump more sugar than medicine and don't remove the medicine completely.
Does that include duct tape on the windows and the banning of liquids on all non-private airlines? (God forbid if a terrorist has a enough money to charter private flights).
When your 'do everything they can' scenario actually happens as a viable and logical solution, maybe then your 'do everything they can' scenario will make sense. Or possibly be proven invalid.
Well, they Microsoft was gonna go with 'Hyper', but after frequent crashes, one employee, a Star Wars fan, put on a clip from Empire Strikes Back.
"Prepare to make the jump to lightspeed. If Lando's people fixed the HyperDrive."
"Punch it!"
*cough*sputter*cack*hack*pzzzsst*
"That can't be. They told me they fixed it! It's not my fault!"
Here's an idea...
No more God damn Furry scenes.
Under the table money from Intel?
Wait... is that why the Opinion Center colors are so... I dunno... currency like?
Reuters gets slashdotted... Slashdot gets Intel'ed!
I for one welcome our--- AGH! [tackled and beaten to death by slashdotters]
The sad part is, we're probably the only two people on Slashdot that "gets" this.
That and the fact that Arcanum was possibly one of the most underrated RPG's to come out next to Divine Divinity. The intro alone spoke eons of awesomeness. And the conflict between technology and magic was fantastic and extremely diverse.
Quite frankly I'd hail this game as much as everyone hails Fallout. Steampunk anyone?
Welcome to the information age... aka... the Age of Revealing.
Scientific proof thrown in your face. Big Government cranking those propaganda gears on full. Religion rearing its questionable head(s).
Don't you just love it?
Ah Christian Fundamentalists... they're just like Islamic Fundamentalists... only different.
No matter what truth, facts, or educated postulations you try to help them understand and consider, to them, the world will always be flat and the Earth will always be in the center of the galaxy.
I was raised Baptist. Of all the wacky stuff the pastor threw at us, we all could appreciate a few simple principles: Mind your health, don't sleep with my wife, try not to kill anybody and education is fundamental. Traveling beyond the doctrines of common sense tends to lead to the swamps of stupidity.
If these fundamentalist zealots, in all their glorious wisdom, wish to outlaw science, deductive reasoning and critical thinking from education, then it's only fair to outlaw their solipsism as well.
And for the record, the Grand Canyon was NOT created 6000 years ago by a disastrous flood survived only by a zookeeper with a really large ship and a meticulous knack for breeding animals... hey that's genetics! Oops, sorry, too scientific, I meant that's the will of our Lord.