The problem is arising from the fact that people are arguing that the state of New York has no right to tax sales from a party outside the state. So, if Newegg were based in NY, they'd still be collecting the tax from people, but as they're not, they're taking the stance that it's unfair for their customers to get taxed by NY.
The obvious solution to that would be to stop selling copies of OSX and only bundling them with a new Macintosh.
If Apple wanted its users to buy upgrades, it wouldn't be able to do that.
Then they can live without selling users upgrades. They sell hardware, not software, right? So it won't hurt their business model all that much.
Oh, wait... the whole "we sell hardware thing" is only a convenient line Apple trots out to defend their monopolistic practices, and has no basis in reality. My bad. It would hurt their (unfair) business model.
According to your posts, your definition of real time strategy games are "a game in which you can beat your opponent by strategy alone with no other factors."
Actually, that's not true. It would be closer to saying that an RTS is a game where you can beat your opponent using primarily strategy. In Starcraft, strategy is not the most important factor, therefore, it isn't really a strategy game. I have no problem with the fact that all RTSes require some reflex: the question is, to what extent do they require it? With some RTSes, that's not a huge factor, but with Starcraft, that's your primary skill... and that's why it fails as a strategy game.
What stuff is he criticized for that you've heard, out of curiosity? The one I've heard is that his comic is supposedly a rip-off of Penny Arcade, which I consider complete BS. It had similarities at the beginning, but the style is totally different now, not to mention his style of humor was always different. I've never really heard anything else said against him, though, so I have no idea what else people might fling.
Psystar isn't riding Apple's development efforts at all. They aren't trying to sell Apple's OS as they're own, they're trying to stand up to Apple's bullying that immorally (and hopefully illegally, but we'll see) says you can't run their OS except on their hardware. If all they can accomplish is forcing Apple to rework their distribution methods, I'll still take what I can get. Better than Apple being allowed to behave badly unchallenged.
I really hope Psystar wins this one. Apple (and they aren't the only one, just the subject on hand at the moment) really needs to get told where to stick their monopolistic behavior. If you release a product to the market, then you have no business telling people what they can and can't do with it once they've bought it.
Just because someone can beat a better "strategic" player by out clicking them doesn't make the game non-strategic.
Actually, it does. I am not saying that there is no element of strategy in Starcraft, but that alone doesn't make it a strategy game. Good matches of Counter-Strike can have an excellent strategic element, but CS is not a strategy game by any stretch of the imagination. Similarly, Starcraft has strategic elements, but because they are given too little weight, it isn't really a strategy game.
By your logic, real life war is not strategic because whoever has the most money to fund the war usually wins.
Actually, real-life war isn't necessarily a strategic thing. There are a lot more factors involved than battlefield strategy, such as funding and popular support. Strategy is only one part of the whole picture. But, in a strategy game, strategy is the picture. It isn't trying to model real-life war perfectly, it's trying to provide a sandbox for battle strategy.
I'm "belittling" (I'm actually not belittling it, just disputing what type of game it is) it because it rewards micromanagement and twitch reflexes far more than it rewards strategy, yet claims to be a strategy game. If it were truly a strategy game, a player with better strategy would beat a player with better reflexes every time. That's not the case, though: it takes a very wide gap in strategic ability to overcome a gap in twitch ability. So, again, Starcraft is not a strategy game. This doesn't make it a bad game, just not a strategy game.
Real wars depend on speed, but RTSes like Starcraft go far beyond "speed". If we fought real wars like people play Starcraft, our great generals would be barking out "Go there! What's the situation? Go there! What's the situation! Attack that guy! No, to the other side of him! No, the other other side! Take cover for God's sake! There's one man out of cover, get him in there! Build a bunker near the enemy! Reinforce that fight! What's the situation on the other side of the battlefield? Base, build another barracks pronto! Barracks, train another guy! Send him to the second fight!", all in about 20 seconds.
It's fucking ridiculous. Our generals don't behave like that, they receive intel reports (and they don't demand for them every 5 seconds, I might add, it's brought to their attention when new things occur), and give overall instructions to their troops. They don't try to micromanage the troops, and goings-on of their army, and RTSes shouldn't make you try.
I agree, up to a point. A politician can earn my respect by fairly consistently acting in a decent manner, but precious few do. Obama never had my respect, I was merely willing to extend him the benefit of the doubt (ie, I didn't automatically distrust him like I do most politicians, although I didn't trust him either) because many of my peers who are more or less intelligent touted how great and different he was.
Then he proved that he's no different. Just another corrupt politician who will screw us all over. Again. Color me unsurprised.
No, if it requires the ability to act and react that quickly, it isn't strategy. I'm not saying that all RTS is not strategic: Relic's games, for example, are very strategic, as is Supreme Commander. Starcraft is not. It's a clickfest, and is no more strategic than Quake.
Any game where players' effectiveness is rated by how many actions per second they can perform is a crappy strategy game. Period. Strategy is about thinking, not how fast you can jump the screen around and send your units in 50 different directions.
So, as someone pointed out, I misread the GP. Scratch what I said. Reading things correctly, he's simply stating the facts: most Linux users are tech-savvy. I wouldn't be willing to hazard a guess as to whether most tech-savvy people use Linux, but certainly, very few computer-illiterate people do.
Actually, you're right, that was my bad. Minor dyslexic moment: I substituted "operating system" for event, and read the statement as saying that the DNC is the event populated by mostly tech-savvy people. If that had been what he actually said, my parsing would have been completely valid. As it is, I just need to get my eyes checked.
He's implying that Republicans are a bunch of morons, computer-illiterates, or both. Or at least, that's the most likely explanation. Maybe it's an innocent statement that I'm reading wrong, but there are some very loud slashdotters who think the Republicans have every bad quality imaginable.
Hey, now. They didn't say it'd be "technologically-savvy". They said it'd be the "most technologically-savvy". They don't necessarily have to do well to live up to that claim, it's relative.
He's a console kiddie defending against an aged PC player.
I am not.
But FPS's do not belong on a console...
They do not. Then again, I played the PC versions of Halo up until I broke down and bought a 360 rather than wait a few years for the PC port of Halo 3, so I didn't get started on them on the console, either.
don't go defining what a FPS is unless you can remember loading Wolfenstien3d on the school network with your friends.
My little brother and I used to play Doom over a null-modem cable. Good enough for you?
This sort of thinking exemplifies exactly what is wrong with the gamer community. I like Halo, and think Half-Life isn't anything special, so many gamers condescendingly write me off as a "console kiddie" who has no clue what a good game is because I haven't played anything that isn't modern... which is untrue on every count. I have as much gaming experience as anyone, save those who were gaming back in the Atari days (waaay back)... I remember playing Mario 3 when it first came out on my cousin's NES, ffs. I've been playing games for ages, but because I don't agree with the elitist gamers, they condescend and say I just haven't played any good games. Doesn't something strike you as horribly wrong about this status quo?
What? You're simply demonstrating a lack of experience.
No. I have said that I've played various games. I have, in fact, played a lot of games people think are good, and while some of them are good, some of them are not. The point is, I already said I played Half-Life, and your saying that I don't have experience is no more than a ridiculous accusation of falsity on your part.
Your definition was obviously invented on the spot to counter the fact that in terms of story Halo pales in comparison to several other FPS games.
Oh yes, of course it was. Because it isn't remotely imaginable that I'm being honest, and that I have better things to do than lie about what I think on the intarweb (not to mention the fact that if it comes down to it, being here at all is a waste of time, but meh). Oops! Forgot my sarcasm tags. Let me say this clearly so that you can understand it:
You're a bloody fucking idiot. You are perfectly entitled to your opinions about games, no matter how I disagree, but you aren't willing to concede that maybe someone else thinks differently. Because my idea is so out of alignment with yours, you claim that I don't have any experience (and implying that I'm a liar, because I clearly have claimed otherwise), you claim that when I say something, I just made it up on the spot. You utilize the lowest form of response that humans have ever come up with to a differing opinion, short of violence: sticking your fingers in your ears, pretending it can't exist, and jumping up and down claiming that the person with the opinion must just be making it up (presumably to get on people's nerves? Who knows, it's your delusion).
Most people, once they get past the age of, say, 18 or 19, understand that no matter how ridiculous someone else's opinion seems, there's a good chance they hold it honestly, and that the two of them can set aside their differences, or at least try to change each other's mind. It's rather a sad commentary on you that you can't do that. Grow up. Trust me, when you learn to accept that other people think things you find unbelievable and stupid, you'll hardly be able to believe that you were once this intolerant.
Are you intentionally trying to sabotage yourself by establishing your profound lack of gaming experience?
Are you intentionally trying to sabotage yourself by demonstrating that your intolerance for others' opinions is so great, that the people who have them must be outright lying in your mind?
Your narrow definition of an FPS game does not work and was most likely improvised on the spot to magically explain why Halo has the best story ever told in any FPS game.
Same question. Furthermore, I fail to see what the hell is wrong with my definition. You have a problem, come up with a better one, don't flimsily say "you just made that up!!!".
No, you just have poor taste. Most likely you have played very few games and have little if any experience with film and literature.
No, I just have different taste than you. Art is a subjective thing, so no one is ever wrong. Learn The Rules 101 before you start talking. And again, you're saying that I'm lying just because you think I'm wrong. My, that's pathetic.
I repeat: I paid attention to the story as much as I've paid attention to it in all the other games I've played. It just wasn't memorable.
Fine, I'll do something you are too juvenile to do: accept what you say at face value. In that case, you don't pay attention to the story in any of the games you play. Well, if that's the case, what are you doing talking about story in video games? Go and pay attention to some of them, and then get back to us.
Oh, and next time you want to come back and play with the kids who have half a brain, do have something better on hand for a retort than "Liar liar pants on fire!". It really helps.
Then I guess Halo isn't an FPS either. After all, it deviates quite a bit from the model established by Doom.
That isn't the metric of FPS. The metric of FPS is whether you primarily run around shooting things in a first-persion POV. In Bioshock, that simply isn't true. You use plasmids as much as guns, and you hack things left and right. Bioshock is an RPG that happens to use guns and a first-person POV.
Half-Life's story is told very well.
Ha! The story itself aside (which I don't think is very good), the Half-Life series has the worst storytelling of any game I've ever seen. One day Valve will realize that the first-person POV is an ineffective way to tell a story, I hope, but they sure haven't yet, and their games have bloody awful storytelling as a result.
Assassin's Creed is a third person game. Thief and Thief II are first person.
And Thief is also not a game where you primarily run around shooting things. You sneak, sneak, sneak. Which makes sense, after all, you are a thief. It does make it not an FPS though. Jedi Knight has a first-person POV as an option, but they are most definitely not FPS'es, because you almost always engage in lightsaber combat. Unless you spend most of your time in combat First Person Shooting, it isn't an FPS.
It's one thing to say that no other FPS game has had such good characters, but to compare Halo with all other games ever released? Sheer madness.
All other games I've ever played. That's a mighty big difference. And believe me, I've played a lot of games, many with good stories (I play lots of RPGs), but not one has had characters so human, I actually was moved by their plight, and felt something for them. I've been moved by a lot of stories, but in no other game have the writers got me to care about the people in the story on a personal level. That's the difference. Madness? This is opinion.
I paid attention to the story as much as I've paid attention to it in all the other games I've played. It just wasn't memorable.
Be that as it may, if what you got out of the story in Halo was what you said earlier, you weren't paying attention. Maybe you don't pay attention to any games you play, I don't know. But I can tell you that if all you got was the most superficial details of the story, you didn't pay attention at all.
Marathon was ok, but it suffered from too-complex syndrome by the end. There's a level of complexity which is good, but too much is very counterproductive.
That, and terminals are not exactly a good way to develop a story. I'll give them something of a pass here, since it was in the early days, but still, bad story-telling hampers the overall experience, even if I can appreciate the story despite the bad story-telling.
Are not FPSes. Or at least, Bioshock isn't, and from what I understand of Deus Ex, it isn't. They're hybrids.
Half-Life
Half-Life 2
Have terrible story.
System Shock
System Shock 2
See Bioshock.
Thief
Thief II
Also not FPS'es. If those are FPS, then Assassin's Creed is an FPS.
Whatever credibility you might have had just vanished. Poof. Gone
Whatever. It isn't my fault if you don't like the characters. Entertainment is subjective that way. I don't have a problem with you disagreeing, but when you presume to speak of "losing credibility" because we disagree, you need to get off your high horse.
The only thing I remember about Halo's story is that someone's going to activate Halo and it's going to kill everyone, and then Master Chief stops it.
Then pay attention? Without even reading the books, I got a lot more out of it than that. No story is going to grab you if you don't pay any attention to it.
As I said a bit above, Halo's achievement is not in graphics, gameplay, or anything like that. It's solidly average in those areas (although Halo 3 doesn't have bad graphics, I guess). The real gem that Halo has is story. The story in Halo blew anything that I had experienced before that out of the water, there was no comparison. The story in the sequels has lived up to a similarly high level. There still is no comparison between Halo's story, and the story of other FPS games on the market. That's what makes Halo great: it was the first time a really great story had been told in an FPS. And incidentally, you're right, Goldeneye is a better game mechanically... I had more fun playing Goldeneye multiplayer back in the day than I ever did or will with Halo. But one aspect of the game does not make the whole game.
...they are a new generation of gamers. One which I think are more concerned with pretty graphics than gameplay. I still go back to old games and love to play them. Of course I can't get the Halo gamer types to pick them up at all. So in this regard I agree with the GP that they wouldn't get Grim Fandango or Fallout or even games in the same vein.
I take issue with this. Unless you're talking about people even younger than me (for reference's sake, I'm 23, but it seems like that's the age bracket most of the "old-school" gamers attack), the vast majority of my gamer peers I've encountered are enamored more by gameplay than graphics. We won't hesitate to play an older game like Dragon Quest or something, because we know that the graphics are merely the best they could do at the time.
That said, we do judge modern games according to modern standards. If a game comes out with sub-par graphics, and there isn't a mitigating reason for that (one-man effort? Attempting to be more artistic at the expense of technical quality?), that's a knock against the modern game. Graphics aren't more important than gameplay, but they are as important. They're a part of the overall package, and it is the overall package which gets judged.
Note that I'm not saying Too Human is good or bad. I played the demo and found it moderately fun, but didn't get the urge to buy it from playing the demo.
Nor am I. I haven't played even so much as the demo, I'm merely fed up with the assumption that gamers who didn't grow up with the hobby are shallow, stupid creatures.
It has no discernible story (when it's not a paper-thin attempt to link the games with backstory no one seems to bother caring about)...
Now there you're wrong. Halo has, far and away, the best story to grace an FPS. No other FPS I've tried has an epic, grand tale like Halo's. No other game, for that matter, has characters so endearing that I actually gave a damn about their fates by the end of the journey. We may see better stories in FPS games in the future, but Halo's legacy will always be that it was the first FPS to have a great tale to tell.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is arising from the fact that people are arguing that the state of New York has no right to tax sales from a party outside the state. So, if Newegg were based in NY, they'd still be collecting the tax from people, but as they're not, they're taking the stance that it's unfair for their customers to get taxed by NY.
The obvious solution to that would be to stop selling copies of OSX and only bundling them with a new Macintosh.
If Apple wanted its users to buy upgrades, it wouldn't be able to do that.
Then they can live without selling users upgrades. They sell hardware, not software, right? So it won't hurt their business model all that much.
Oh, wait... the whole "we sell hardware thing" is only a convenient line Apple trots out to defend their monopolistic practices, and has no basis in reality. My bad. It would hurt their (unfair) business model.
According to your posts, your definition of real time strategy games are "a game in which you can beat your opponent by strategy alone with no other factors."
Actually, that's not true. It would be closer to saying that an RTS is a game where you can beat your opponent using primarily strategy. In Starcraft, strategy is not the most important factor, therefore, it isn't really a strategy game. I have no problem with the fact that all RTSes require some reflex: the question is, to what extent do they require it? With some RTSes, that's not a huge factor, but with Starcraft, that's your primary skill... and that's why it fails as a strategy game.
What stuff is he criticized for that you've heard, out of curiosity? The one I've heard is that his comic is supposedly a rip-off of Penny Arcade, which I consider complete BS. It had similarities at the beginning, but the style is totally different now, not to mention his style of humor was always different. I've never really heard anything else said against him, though, so I have no idea what else people might fling.
Psystar isn't riding Apple's development efforts at all. They aren't trying to sell Apple's OS as they're own, they're trying to stand up to Apple's bullying that immorally (and hopefully illegally, but we'll see) says you can't run their OS except on their hardware. If all they can accomplish is forcing Apple to rework their distribution methods, I'll still take what I can get. Better than Apple being allowed to behave badly unchallenged.
/popcorn.
I really hope Psystar wins this one. Apple (and they aren't the only one, just the subject on hand at the moment) really needs to get told where to stick their monopolistic behavior. If you release a product to the market, then you have no business telling people what they can and can't do with it once they've bought it.
Just because someone can beat a better "strategic" player by out clicking them doesn't make the game non-strategic.
Actually, it does. I am not saying that there is no element of strategy in Starcraft, but that alone doesn't make it a strategy game. Good matches of Counter-Strike can have an excellent strategic element, but CS is not a strategy game by any stretch of the imagination. Similarly, Starcraft has strategic elements, but because they are given too little weight, it isn't really a strategy game.
By your logic, real life war is not strategic because whoever has the most money to fund the war usually wins.
Actually, real-life war isn't necessarily a strategic thing. There are a lot more factors involved than battlefield strategy, such as funding and popular support. Strategy is only one part of the whole picture. But, in a strategy game, strategy is the picture. It isn't trying to model real-life war perfectly, it's trying to provide a sandbox for battle strategy.
I'm "belittling" (I'm actually not belittling it, just disputing what type of game it is) it because it rewards micromanagement and twitch reflexes far more than it rewards strategy, yet claims to be a strategy game. If it were truly a strategy game, a player with better strategy would beat a player with better reflexes every time. That's not the case, though: it takes a very wide gap in strategic ability to overcome a gap in twitch ability. So, again, Starcraft is not a strategy game. This doesn't make it a bad game, just not a strategy game.
Real wars depend on speed, but RTSes like Starcraft go far beyond "speed". If we fought real wars like people play Starcraft, our great generals would be barking out "Go there! What's the situation? Go there! What's the situation! Attack that guy! No, to the other side of him! No, the other other side! Take cover for God's sake! There's one man out of cover, get him in there! Build a bunker near the enemy! Reinforce that fight! What's the situation on the other side of the battlefield? Base, build another barracks pronto! Barracks, train another guy! Send him to the second fight!", all in about 20 seconds.
It's fucking ridiculous. Our generals don't behave like that, they receive intel reports (and they don't demand for them every 5 seconds, I might add, it's brought to their attention when new things occur), and give overall instructions to their troops. They don't try to micromanage the troops, and goings-on of their army, and RTSes shouldn't make you try.
I agree, up to a point. A politician can earn my respect by fairly consistently acting in a decent manner, but precious few do. Obama never had my respect, I was merely willing to extend him the benefit of the doubt (ie, I didn't automatically distrust him like I do most politicians, although I didn't trust him either) because many of my peers who are more or less intelligent touted how great and different he was.
Then he proved that he's no different. Just another corrupt politician who will screw us all over. Again. Color me unsurprised.
No, if it requires the ability to act and react that quickly, it isn't strategy. I'm not saying that all RTS is not strategic: Relic's games, for example, are very strategic, as is Supreme Commander. Starcraft is not. It's a clickfest, and is no more strategic than Quake.
Any game where players' effectiveness is rated by how many actions per second they can perform is a crappy strategy game. Period. Strategy is about thinking, not how fast you can jump the screen around and send your units in 50 different directions.
So, as someone pointed out, I misread the GP. Scratch what I said. Reading things correctly, he's simply stating the facts: most Linux users are tech-savvy. I wouldn't be willing to hazard a guess as to whether most tech-savvy people use Linux, but certainly, very few computer-illiterate people do.
Actually, you're right, that was my bad. Minor dyslexic moment: I substituted "operating system" for event, and read the statement as saying that the DNC is the event populated by mostly tech-savvy people. If that had been what he actually said, my parsing would have been completely valid. As it is, I just need to get my eyes checked.
And no mod gave me +1. It's a karma bonus.
He's implying that Republicans are a bunch of morons, computer-illiterates, or both. Or at least, that's the most likely explanation. Maybe it's an innocent statement that I'm reading wrong, but there are some very loud slashdotters who think the Republicans have every bad quality imaginable.
Hey, now. They didn't say it'd be "technologically-savvy". They said it'd be the "most technologically-savvy". They don't necessarily have to do well to live up to that claim, it's relative.
Obama lost his mojo two months ago.
He's a console kiddie defending against an aged PC player.
I am not.
But FPS's do not belong on a console...
They do not. Then again, I played the PC versions of Halo up until I broke down and bought a 360 rather than wait a few years for the PC port of Halo 3, so I didn't get started on them on the console, either.
don't go defining what a FPS is unless you can remember loading Wolfenstien3d on the school network with your friends.
My little brother and I used to play Doom over a null-modem cable. Good enough for you?
This sort of thinking exemplifies exactly what is wrong with the gamer community. I like Halo, and think Half-Life isn't anything special, so many gamers condescendingly write me off as a "console kiddie" who has no clue what a good game is because I haven't played anything that isn't modern... which is untrue on every count. I have as much gaming experience as anyone, save those who were gaming back in the Atari days (waaay back)... I remember playing Mario 3 when it first came out on my cousin's NES, ffs. I've been playing games for ages, but because I don't agree with the elitist gamers, they condescend and say I just haven't played any good games. Doesn't something strike you as horribly wrong about this status quo?
What? You're simply demonstrating a lack of experience.
No. I have said that I've played various games. I have, in fact, played a lot of games people think are good, and while some of them are good, some of them are not. The point is, I already said I played Half-Life, and your saying that I don't have experience is no more than a ridiculous accusation of falsity on your part.
Your definition was obviously invented on the spot to counter the fact that in terms of story Halo pales in comparison to several other FPS games.
Oh yes, of course it was. Because it isn't remotely imaginable that I'm being honest, and that I have better things to do than lie about what I think on the intarweb (not to mention the fact that if it comes down to it, being here at all is a waste of time, but meh). Oops! Forgot my sarcasm tags. Let me say this clearly so that you can understand it:
You're a bloody fucking idiot. You are perfectly entitled to your opinions about games, no matter how I disagree, but you aren't willing to concede that maybe someone else thinks differently. Because my idea is so out of alignment with yours, you claim that I don't have any experience (and implying that I'm a liar, because I clearly have claimed otherwise), you claim that when I say something, I just made it up on the spot. You utilize the lowest form of response that humans have ever come up with to a differing opinion, short of violence: sticking your fingers in your ears, pretending it can't exist, and jumping up and down claiming that the person with the opinion must just be making it up (presumably to get on people's nerves? Who knows, it's your delusion).
Most people, once they get past the age of, say, 18 or 19, understand that no matter how ridiculous someone else's opinion seems, there's a good chance they hold it honestly, and that the two of them can set aside their differences, or at least try to change each other's mind. It's rather a sad commentary on you that you can't do that. Grow up. Trust me, when you learn to accept that other people think things you find unbelievable and stupid, you'll hardly be able to believe that you were once this intolerant.
Are you intentionally trying to sabotage yourself by establishing your profound lack of gaming experience?
Are you intentionally trying to sabotage yourself by demonstrating that your intolerance for others' opinions is so great, that the people who have them must be outright lying in your mind?
Your narrow definition of an FPS game does not work and was most likely improvised on the spot to magically explain why Halo has the best story ever told in any FPS game.
Same question. Furthermore, I fail to see what the hell is wrong with my definition. You have a problem, come up with a better one, don't flimsily say "you just made that up!!!".
No, you just have poor taste. Most likely you have played very few games and have little if any experience with film and literature.
No, I just have different taste than you. Art is a subjective thing, so no one is ever wrong. Learn The Rules 101 before you start talking. And again, you're saying that I'm lying just because you think I'm wrong. My, that's pathetic.
I repeat: I paid attention to the story as much as I've paid attention to it in all the other games I've played. It just wasn't memorable.
Fine, I'll do something you are too juvenile to do: accept what you say at face value. In that case, you don't pay attention to the story in any of the games you play. Well, if that's the case, what are you doing talking about story in video games? Go and pay attention to some of them, and then get back to us.
Oh, and next time you want to come back and play with the kids who have half a brain, do have something better on hand for a retort than "Liar liar pants on fire!". It really helps.
Then I guess Halo isn't an FPS either. After all, it deviates quite a bit from the model established by Doom.
That isn't the metric of FPS. The metric of FPS is whether you primarily run around shooting things in a first-persion POV. In Bioshock, that simply isn't true. You use plasmids as much as guns, and you hack things left and right. Bioshock is an RPG that happens to use guns and a first-person POV.
Half-Life's story is told very well.
Ha! The story itself aside (which I don't think is very good), the Half-Life series has the worst storytelling of any game I've ever seen. One day Valve will realize that the first-person POV is an ineffective way to tell a story, I hope, but they sure haven't yet, and their games have bloody awful storytelling as a result.
Assassin's Creed is a third person game. Thief and Thief II are first person.
And Thief is also not a game where you primarily run around shooting things. You sneak, sneak, sneak. Which makes sense, after all, you are a thief. It does make it not an FPS though. Jedi Knight has a first-person POV as an option, but they are most definitely not FPS'es, because you almost always engage in lightsaber combat. Unless you spend most of your time in combat First Person Shooting, it isn't an FPS.
It's one thing to say that no other FPS game has had such good characters, but to compare Halo with all other games ever released? Sheer madness.
All other games I've ever played. That's a mighty big difference. And believe me, I've played a lot of games, many with good stories (I play lots of RPGs), but not one has had characters so human, I actually was moved by their plight, and felt something for them. I've been moved by a lot of stories, but in no other game have the writers got me to care about the people in the story on a personal level. That's the difference. Madness? This is opinion.
I paid attention to the story as much as I've paid attention to it in all the other games I've played. It just wasn't memorable.
Be that as it may, if what you got out of the story in Halo was what you said earlier, you weren't paying attention. Maybe you don't pay attention to any games you play, I don't know. But I can tell you that if all you got was the most superficial details of the story, you didn't pay attention at all.
Marathon was ok, but it suffered from too-complex syndrome by the end. There's a level of complexity which is good, but too much is very counterproductive.
That, and terminals are not exactly a good way to develop a story. I'll give them something of a pass here, since it was in the early days, but still, bad story-telling hampers the overall experience, even if I can appreciate the story despite the bad story-telling.
BioShock
Deus Ex
Are not FPSes. Or at least, Bioshock isn't, and from what I understand of Deus Ex, it isn't. They're hybrids.
Half-Life
Half-Life 2
Have terrible story.
System Shock
System Shock 2
See Bioshock.
Thief
Thief II
Also not FPS'es. If those are FPS, then Assassin's Creed is an FPS.
Whatever credibility you might have had just vanished. Poof. Gone
Whatever. It isn't my fault if you don't like the characters. Entertainment is subjective that way. I don't have a problem with you disagreeing, but when you presume to speak of "losing credibility" because we disagree, you need to get off your high horse.
The only thing I remember about Halo's story is that someone's going to activate Halo and it's going to kill everyone, and then Master Chief stops it.
Then pay attention? Without even reading the books, I got a lot more out of it than that. No story is going to grab you if you don't pay any attention to it.
As I said a bit above, Halo's achievement is not in graphics, gameplay, or anything like that. It's solidly average in those areas (although Halo 3 doesn't have bad graphics, I guess). The real gem that Halo has is story. The story in Halo blew anything that I had experienced before that out of the water, there was no comparison. The story in the sequels has lived up to a similarly high level. There still is no comparison between Halo's story, and the story of other FPS games on the market. That's what makes Halo great: it was the first time a really great story had been told in an FPS. And incidentally, you're right, Goldeneye is a better game mechanically... I had more fun playing Goldeneye multiplayer back in the day than I ever did or will with Halo. But one aspect of the game does not make the whole game.
...they are a new generation of gamers. One which I think are more concerned with pretty graphics than gameplay. I still go back to old games and love to play them. Of course I can't get the Halo gamer types to pick them up at all. So in this regard I agree with the GP that they wouldn't get Grim Fandango or Fallout or even games in the same vein.
I take issue with this. Unless you're talking about people even younger than me (for reference's sake, I'm 23, but it seems like that's the age bracket most of the "old-school" gamers attack), the vast majority of my gamer peers I've encountered are enamored more by gameplay than graphics. We won't hesitate to play an older game like Dragon Quest or something, because we know that the graphics are merely the best they could do at the time.
That said, we do judge modern games according to modern standards. If a game comes out with sub-par graphics, and there isn't a mitigating reason for that (one-man effort? Attempting to be more artistic at the expense of technical quality?), that's a knock against the modern game. Graphics aren't more important than gameplay, but they are as important. They're a part of the overall package, and it is the overall package which gets judged.
Note that I'm not saying Too Human is good or bad. I played the demo and found it moderately fun, but didn't get the urge to buy it from playing the demo.
Nor am I. I haven't played even so much as the demo, I'm merely fed up with the assumption that gamers who didn't grow up with the hobby are shallow, stupid creatures.
It's just another FPS.
Mechanically, yes.
It has no discernible story (when it's not a paper-thin attempt to link the games with backstory no one seems to bother caring about)...
Now there you're wrong. Halo has, far and away, the best story to grace an FPS. No other FPS I've tried has an epic, grand tale like Halo's. No other game, for that matter, has characters so endearing that I actually gave a damn about their fates by the end of the journey. We may see better stories in FPS games in the future, but Halo's legacy will always be that it was the first FPS to have a great tale to tell.