I'm guessing there's a REASON that Whedon keeps coming back to Fox. Wasn't the Buffy series a WB project? I recall that network being relatively new and/or unnoticed until around that time. Personally, I found Buffy to only be tolerable for the first couple of seasons and was never particularly fond of Firefly. That Angel spin-off was pretty bad too. I really wonder why everyone is always so engrossed with news concerning this guy, actually. *shrugs*
Be serious. He was polling 2.3%, which put him ahead of jokes like Kucinich and Gravel (and serious candidates like Dodd) but far behind Obama and Edwards. Which would be the problem, wouldn't it? When the best candidate, by far, is considered a joke by most. Poor, misunderstood Kucinich. Poor, misguided America.
If you storm a federal building in any mask, you're just going to wind up dead or in prison. Murder in a uniform is heroic, in a costume it is a crime.
PowerPoint is friggin' annoying. You have to learn it in school nowadays even. The so-called business world should really get over PowerPoint! I don't think seeing an ametuerish slide-show would make me want to go with someone's proposal.
Having to buy the latest cards hasn't made M:TG die. No, but constantly banning cards in order to FORCE you to upgrade your entire collection sure has turned away more than enough people that I know who were once into it. That is Wizards of the Coast though. They have an almost painful reputation of such underhanded tactics across a slew of gaming lines. It's really too bad that the Call of Cthulhu CCG changed to a non-collectible format, as it is the best I've ever played (even nudging past Netrunner by an inch or two).
I mean, seriously. Any time I'm in there it's nothing but a bunch of assholes trying to shove sales down your throat, sign you up for credit cards, etc. No one that works there ever knows what they're talking about either, so unless you're completely ignorant, they usually are of no help if you do happen to have questions.
I guess the one positive thing we could say is that at least the Best Buy employees don't drool on themselves within customer eyesight like RadioShack ones.:P
That's because jocks usually outgrow their status and evolve into gas station attendants, thus no becoming a problem no longer.
I think ones dislike for publicly sponsored athletics goes farther than wimps being bullied however. Schools waste a LOT of time and money on sports, diverting attention away from what little actual education they do (or could) offer. Furthermore, a lot of morons manage to make it through classes simply because they can run fast and will thus bring in the big bucks. School athletics show a dire sense of tax money and one of its ass backwards uses by the so-called education system.
Steam was always a bad idea. It is obtrusive and annoying. It monitors your activity and adds a needless step in between me clicking and the game starting. The very idea that some douche bag can flip a switch and decide that I can no longer play the games that I purchased is ridiculous. I like having the actual media anyway. At least then there's a chance that I may be able to get the game working in several years once Steam no longer exists, making for a sticky situation for everyone that just "conveniently" downloads instead.
Like NetFlix's already operational streaming service "Instant Viewing", this would be more or less valueless considering it takes away the biggest feature of the NetFlix experience: piracy.
They're not military servicemen living overseas or families on vacation in Europe, they're cheapasses who fall for a scam because they're too eager to get a "great deal". Cheapass?! Games are ridiculously expensive nowadays. Granted, the Orange Box seems to pack a lot of content in it for the price. But most games are certainly not worth the price of admission.
I just wish that I could get a refund on my copy of Half-Life 2 and Episode One, not that "give it away as a gift" crap.
I remember a few years back when a group of preps and jocks from the local private school were busted for selling fake IDs. These kids' mommies and daddies had their bank accounts stuffed well enough for them to afford to properly produce, en mass, said IDs. The fakes were so perfectly manufactured that the only way anyone ever caught on is that the drunken little snobs failed to spell "license" correctly!
I didn't find anything in the Bioshock demo to make me think it was necessarily dumbed down. As far as the aforementioned Oblivion though, the entire menu system was overtly targeted at a console audience and suffered because of it. If nothing else, just the inventory area was awful. A lot of the problems I have with Oblivion (when compared to Morrowind) aren't directly because of it having a console audience in mind, but the menu system most certainly is.
I've played through the entirety of Halo and most of Halo 2, while only a little bit of Halo 3. I can't say that owning an Xbox is very high up on my lists of things to to before dying, and buying up Halo discs is even lower. One does not need to play the entire series, since only minor things change throughout (though, to be fair, the specifics of my graphical gripes were aimed at the first two installments). The only real value I can see in Halo is perhaps multiplayer, and even that stands as inferior to many other first person shooters. Then again, I find the very fact that you have to play said FPS with a slow and clunky gamepad to be inferior to begin with. Because as we know, though available on the PC, Halo and Halo 2 tend to be buggy and certainly overshadowed by their Xbox cousins.
But hey, what do I know? I'm not some smarmy coward on the internet, racking up "insightful" points for what is essentially a series of insults. You fail to grasp simple words within sentences that keep them from meaning what you'd like them to, and then proceed to put words in my mouth and assume that I am changing my argument whilst explaining and expanding upon such for your benefit. I'm glad that I could be such a waste of time for you though, while ultimately only passing otherwise wasted time of my own.
Yes, the hardware of the Cube (except the optical drive) was more or less twice as powerful as the PS2. The problem is that it came out at the same time as the Xbox, and it was a complete wimp when compared to that system. It had a year's development time on the PS2, so you'd expect the hardware there to be better, but it was nowhere near the (more relevant) competition. The Dreamcast came out before the Playstation and was superior in every conceivable way, save for marketing lies and commercial conditioning.
And what OS are you running? I bet it's not linux or os x since there aren't very many games out for those because they're different platforms. Yet they're still PCs. Last time I checked, Macs aren't PCs.
You're right though. PCs would have to have a set standard for it to work. As it is now, it's probably even more hectic than developing for consoles since you have to take into account the various possible hardware configurations. Still, I'd generally rather see and play games on my PC than a console.
That's surprising, considering the few times I have bought a new album they have always been $10-$12. These are fairly high-profile bands too. I've always felt that $10 seems like a fair price for any album I'd be willing to purchase in the first place.
Normally I would not make a post which breaks down and addresses each individual point, but in this case it seems best. It seems to me that I hit a nerve with you when it comes to Halo, as your textual tone seems to indicate quite a lot of personally inaccurate insults. I'm all for persons subscribing to differing tastes of entertainment, but a lot of what I state as Halo's faults aren't a simple process of whether or not I enjoyed it. I made the claim that it was overrated, not that it was a waste of a game. Now, in hopes of clarifying my position, I shall follow in suite...
On the contrary, I think Halo deserves its popular status if only so that Bungie can be appreciated for what they accomplished with Marathon, a woefully UNDER-rated game.
Halo very well may deserve a level of popularity, but being touting as the world's best game it does not. Furthermore, I don't think that Marathon is necessarily underrated so much as not well known.
Gameplay: It's so stale, that must be why virtually every other FPS has ripped-off Halo's 'recharging shield/lifebar' design concept. And why half of those FPSes have also ripped-off Halo's 'carry two weapons only' design. If you don't think Halo has been influencial to the industry (the opposite of stale), then you're sadly mistaken.
Virtually every other FPS? Hardly. Just off of the top of my head, I can only think of a few. Call of Duty now features regenerating health , which like Halo, makes the experience easier than it should be in most situations. As far as a limited carrying capacity, FEAR stands out as being one. Halo's "influence" on the industry isn't necessarily because its mechanics are better. Halo sells well, so most developers will naturally try to be more like it. In the cases stated however, limiting the amount of weapons one can carry has added a nice angle to gameplay.
Story: Perhaps contrived, but they're working within a medium (FPS games) in which nearly every storyline is contrived. That aside, at least it's pretty damned original, which is a lot more than you can say for, for instance, Gears of War. In addition to that, it does a pretty job of getting the player into the game, at least players who aren't as jaded as you.
Exactly why I mentioned that it is "more contrived than usual". Video games, and the FPS genre specifically, tend to have rather lame plots. I don't think that it pulls the player in any more than other high-profile titles though. Besides, Halo has some of the most annoying enemies every. Not annoying because of their tactics either, but because of their personalities.
Graphics: Sub-par compared to... what? Given, Halo 2 didn't exactly blow people away, but Halo 3 looks as nice as anything else on the market right now, and the original Halo definitely raised a few bars in the console world, if not necessarily the PC world.
I was never particularly inspired by the graphics. I'm certainly not one that subscribes to a game simply because of graphics either. I only bring it up because people attempt to tout how great they are. While the open environments were fairly impressive (especially for a console title), I felt that most of the textures suffered from a lack of detail and almost all of the animations were hideous. More generally speaking however, the enemies and weapons lacked a lot of visual distinguish from one another.
Oh yeah, a "polished" FPS like Battlefield: 2142? A product so buggy that merely entering the actual game is a small miracle. There are polished console games and unpolished console games. There are very polished PC games and extremely unpolished POS PC games (like aforementioned Battlefield.) If anything, I'd say console games have the edge if only because at least the unpolished ones actually *work*, which isn't necessarily true of unpolished PC games.
But making a claim that all PC games are more polished than all console games, that's just stupid.
Slashdot Mirror
PowerPoint is friggin' annoying. You have to learn it in school nowadays even. The so-called business world should really get over PowerPoint! I don't think seeing an ametuerish slide-show would make me want to go with someone's proposal.
I'm still waiting for MGS3 to come out for the PC, like the other installments of Solid have. Bastards!
Not much else to say, really...
Living in apartments and dealing with cable... My heart goes out to all those that suffer in these sub-par conditions.
I guess the one positive thing we could say is that at least the Best Buy employees don't drool on themselves within customer eyesight like RadioShack ones. :P
I think ones dislike for publicly sponsored athletics goes farther than wimps being bullied however. Schools waste a LOT of time and money on sports, diverting attention away from what little actual education they do (or could) offer. Furthermore, a lot of morons manage to make it through classes simply because they can run fast and will thus bring in the big bucks. School athletics show a dire sense of tax money and one of its ass backwards uses by the so-called education system.
Steam was always a bad idea. It is obtrusive and annoying. It monitors your activity and adds a needless step in between me clicking and the game starting. The very idea that some douche bag can flip a switch and decide that I can no longer play the games that I purchased is ridiculous. I like having the actual media anyway. At least then there's a chance that I may be able to get the game working in several years once Steam no longer exists, making for a sticky situation for everyone that just "conveniently" downloads instead.
Like NetFlix's already operational streaming service "Instant Viewing", this would be more or less valueless considering it takes away the biggest feature of the NetFlix experience: piracy.
I just wish that I could get a refund on my copy of Half-Life 2 and Episode One, not that "give it away as a gift" crap.
I remember a few years back when a group of preps and jocks from the local private school were busted for selling fake IDs. These kids' mommies and daddies had their bank accounts stuffed well enough for them to afford to properly produce, en mass, said IDs. The fakes were so perfectly manufactured that the only way anyone ever caught on is that the drunken little snobs failed to spell "license" correctly!
Boo! Hiss!
I didn't find anything in the Bioshock demo to make me think it was necessarily dumbed down. As far as the aforementioned Oblivion though, the entire menu system was overtly targeted at a console audience and suffered because of it. If nothing else, just the inventory area was awful. A lot of the problems I have with Oblivion (when compared to Morrowind) aren't directly because of it having a console audience in mind, but the menu system most certainly is.
I've played through the entirety of Halo and most of Halo 2, while only a little bit of Halo 3. I can't say that owning an Xbox is very high up on my lists of things to to before dying, and buying up Halo discs is even lower. One does not need to play the entire series, since only minor things change throughout (though, to be fair, the specifics of my graphical gripes were aimed at the first two installments). The only real value I can see in Halo is perhaps multiplayer, and even that stands as inferior to many other first person shooters. Then again, I find the very fact that you have to play said FPS with a slow and clunky gamepad to be inferior to begin with. Because as we know, though available on the PC, Halo and Halo 2 tend to be buggy and certainly overshadowed by their Xbox cousins.
But hey, what do I know? I'm not some smarmy coward on the internet, racking up "insightful" points for what is essentially a series of insults. You fail to grasp simple words within sentences that keep them from meaning what you'd like them to, and then proceed to put words in my mouth and assume that I am changing my argument whilst explaining and expanding upon such for your benefit. I'm glad that I could be such a waste of time for you though, while ultimately only passing otherwise wasted time of my own.
Viva la free singleplayer!
You're right though. PCs would have to have a set standard for it to work. As it is now, it's probably even more hectic than developing for consoles since you have to take into account the various possible hardware configurations. Still, I'd generally rather see and play games on my PC than a console.
I wish they would! The other consoles' display areas wouldn't be cluttered with EA's crap then! :P
That's surprising, considering the few times I have bought a new album they have always been $10-$12. These are fairly high-profile bands too. I've always felt that $10 seems like a fair price for any album I'd be willing to purchase in the first place.
On the contrary, I think Halo deserves its popular status if only so that Bungie can be appreciated for what they accomplished with Marathon, a woefully UNDER-rated game.
Halo very well may deserve a level of popularity, but being touting as the world's best game it does not. Furthermore, I don't think that Marathon is necessarily underrated so much as not well known.
Gameplay: It's so stale, that must be why virtually every other FPS has ripped-off Halo's 'recharging shield/lifebar' design concept. And why half of those FPSes have also ripped-off Halo's 'carry two weapons only' design. If you don't think Halo has been influencial to the industry (the opposite of stale), then you're sadly mistaken.
Virtually every other FPS? Hardly. Just off of the top of my head, I can only think of a few. Call of Duty now features regenerating health , which like Halo, makes the experience easier than it should be in most situations. As far as a limited carrying capacity, FEAR stands out as being one. Halo's "influence" on the industry isn't necessarily because its mechanics are better. Halo sells well, so most developers will naturally try to be more like it. In the cases stated however, limiting the amount of weapons one can carry has added a nice angle to gameplay.
Story: Perhaps contrived, but they're working within a medium (FPS games) in which nearly every storyline is contrived. That aside, at least it's pretty damned original, which is a lot more than you can say for, for instance, Gears of War. In addition to that, it does a pretty job of getting the player into the game, at least players who aren't as jaded as you.
Exactly why I mentioned that it is "more contrived than usual". Video games, and the FPS genre specifically, tend to have rather lame plots. I don't think that it pulls the player in any more than other high-profile titles though. Besides, Halo has some of the most annoying enemies every. Not annoying because of their tactics either, but because of their personalities.
Graphics: Sub-par compared to... what? Given, Halo 2 didn't exactly blow people away, but Halo 3 looks as nice as anything else on the market right now, and the original Halo definitely raised a few bars in the console world, if not necessarily the PC world.
I was never particularly inspired by the graphics. I'm certainly not one that subscribes to a game simply because of graphics either. I only bring it up because people attempt to tout how great they are. While the open environments were fairly impressive (especially for a console title), I felt that most of the textures suffered from a lack of detail and almost all of the animations were hideous. More generally speaking however, the enemies and weapons lacked a lot of visual distinguish from one another.
Oh yeah, a "polished" FPS like Battlefield: 2142? A product so buggy that merely entering the actual game is a small miracle. There are polished console games and unpolished console games. There are very polished PC games and extremely unpolished POS PC games (like aforementioned Battlefield.) If anything, I'd say console games have the edge if only because at least the unpolished ones actually *work*, which isn't necessarily true of unpolished PC games.
But making a claim that all PC games are more polished than all console games, that's just stupid.
I