The ESPN deal is meaningless. Nobody cares whether the halftime graphics look like Sportscenter, or whatever else comes with the license. All that matters are the teams and the players.
Heh, probably true. But it's also probably true that someone is going to be running a COBAL system in 2038 that has no source code and nobody knows how to fix. These things have a tendency to last waaaaaay past their expiration date.
I agree that it didn't go anywhere, but I haven't seen anything to imply that more of it would've made it better. In fact, I haven't seen anything to imply that Tycho is capable of better writing under any circumstances. We can only hope that there will be a period of actual comics before the next round of the Cardboard Tube Samurai or similar crap.
I always kind of chuckle when Tycho refers to "dreaded continuity" because I really do dread it. Or to put it another way, they suck at it. Any time they do a series of related comics, they go from doing a dialog-driven humour comic to some sort of graphic drama style, which in addition to not being funny also doesn't have much of a plot, or at least not a particularly interesting one. The line dancing thing in particular was a completely uninspired retelling of Karate Kid. Did that really need to be done?
Then again, I generally don't find the comic that funny even when they're doing their usual thing. I read the comic so that I'll know what Tycho's talking about in the first paragraph of his blog. For a funny gaming comic, I prefer UAC.
MarioKart is a kick-ass game, although I don't think they've really improved on the original with any of the sequels. Mario Tennis and Mario Golf are both more fun than their straight-sports counterparts, so I have high hopes for Mario Baseball. The Mario franchise is going strong on the back of a lot of really fun games.
Conversely, the Sonic franchise has largely died. Partly because it doesn't have its own console but mostly because the new Sonic games suck. The Sonic Advance GBA games try to maintain the original formula but just don't do it for me, for whatever reason. The spin-off games like Sonic Battles and the 3D platformers are pretty mediocre as well.
That's the fundamental flaw in today's MMOGs. There is no way to realistically make thousands of players feel like the hero of the story simultaneously, like you can in a single player game. They can either make it more single-player centric, with instancing, or they can make the heroism less important to the game.
That's pretty much what I'm hoping for. When John Connor realized he'd been tricked into saving only himself, and the bombs started raining down, I wanted to stand up and cheer. The story in T3 should've been summed up as five minutes of backstory, leading into a kickass dystopic war movie. But like someone quoted Cameron saying elsewhere in the thread, at least they didn't totally crap all over his vision like Alien 3. There's no reason (other than cynicism) that T4 can't be that kickass movie.
What's with the negativity? T4 should be the best one ever, assuming they ditch that whole stupid time-travel schtick and just show humans being slaughtered by robots for two and a half hours.
I'm making about $50,000, and pay around 30% tax. The thing is, that money doesn't just get thrown away. So I'm paying more in tax, but I'm paying nothing for healthcare (and in fact, Canadians pay less per capita than Americans for healthcare, and everyone is covered). Would you really feel that you were better off if you paid no tax, but personally had to pay for everything that your taxes currently cover (road tolls, police protection fees, 100% private schools, military levy, etc)? What difference does it make how you pay, when you will end up paying either way?
I didn't play the demo, but according to someone from the company responding to someone like you, the demo differed significantly from the real game. I believe he said there were a lot more agents invading your base in the demo.
In the real game, you don't want to leave your base on red alert because while your minions are arming themselves and looking for enemies, they aren't working, and anyone who sees your guys running around with rifles (tourists, investigators) is going to know this isn't just a resort island, which raises your heat. Killing everyone also raises your heat.
The game has style coming out the nethers, but there are a fair number of annoyances which I've expounded upon bloggishly here and here.
My main complaint is that the game is fundamentally a management sim, like Majesty or Tropico, but doesn't have enough for you to manage so it fills the gap some RTS-style micromanagement that feels largely unnecessary. Why do I have to manually tag everyone who comes to my island rather than setting rules? Why do I have to check the world map every minute or two to make sure my guys aren't going to get killed? The only answer I've been able to come up with is "Because otherwise there would be nothing for you to do."
It's a shame they couldn't come up with something more interesting, because at some point the novelty is going to wear off and the game will get shelved, permanently.
The reason it's important is that without a medical definition, the word can be used for anything. One company may do rigorous testing of the cats for known allergens while another may just wash them with Head and Shoulders prior to sale. Both can use the word "hypoallergenic" because as far as the FDA is concerned it's just marketing buzz, like "new and improved".
Your example of "organic" is very apt. There are rules you have to follow before you can offer an organic product. One of them is that you can't have used pesticides on the land where the produce was grown at any time during the previous ten years. There are no such standards for hypoallergenic.
"And so, if it leaves you itchy, they are still liable for false advertising"
Wrong, you are SOL because they don't say it won't cause a rash, they say its hypoallergenic, which has no meaning. They could as easily say that their new cats are 100% cromulent. Try proving that they're not.
It's also interesting to note that "hypo-allergenic" has no medical definition. People assume it means the product will be safe for allergy sufferers, but there is no certification process because there is no such thing, from a medical perspective, as hypo-allergenic. Not such a big deal when you're talking about a $5 bar of soap, but I suspect people will be pretty pissed if their $3500 designer pet turns out to make them just as itchy as the free kitten their cousin offered them.
Yup, my mom bought a stereo at the Sony Store a decade ago. I can assure you that it does not mean better service. That stereo was in and out of the shop for the entire duration of its warranty, and they never fixed a thing. We found out later, when she took it to a regular repair shop, that the motors Sony put in their cassette decks were crap, and our problem was typical of that model.
The reality is that Sony makes great TVs, and uses the name recognition from that to cover up the fact that all their other stuff is crap.
Conversely, if the pirated version has the ads removed, that's value-added from the consumer's perspective. Much like with the new, more invasive copy protection schemes, the cracked game is in a lot of ways superior to the one you can buy in a store.
"
But batteries get better and for all we know they'll offer a fuel-cell pack for this thing in a years time."
Actually, no. Batteries improve very slowly, much slower than computer technology. And fuel-cell technology will not arrive in time to save the PSP.
The consideration he doesn't mention which I think is salient is durability. Sony hardware is crap (except for TVs). PS2s break down at an alarming rate and nobody is dropping them on the ground or stuffing them into knapsacks. Conversly, the GBA could be used as a bludgeon. If it gets out that you're paying upwards of $500 for something that won't last more than a year, it will hurt sales.
"It takes a lot of guts for Molyneux to step up and say sorry I couldn't give you everything I said."
I'd be more sympathetic if he didn't do this with every single game he's ever made. Remember how the creatures in Dungeon Keeper were going to learn your personal playing habits and adapt to them? Remember how Black and White was going to end world hunger? I'm frankly surprised that people can be disappointed with Fable, since they should know better than to listen to the crap that comes out of Molyneux's mouth. From the sounds of it, it's a good game if a little short. That's enough for me.
The reality is that both major parties are centrist when it comes to actual government.
Where have you been the last four years? There are centrist Republicans, certainly, and Bush tries to sound moderate on the campaign trail, but whatever happened to actions speaking louder than words?
I for one won't be buying any crippled CDs. I'll just download the songs off P2P, and let someone smarter than me figure out how to circumvent the "copy" protection.
How diligent are they, though? I mean, you could easily rename whatever sensitive file you have to "Abba - Dancing Queen.mp3" and bury it with 20 gigs of other songs. Do they actually listen to each song and make sure it's music?
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The ESPN deal is meaningless. Nobody cares whether the halftime graphics look like Sportscenter, or whatever else comes with the license. All that matters are the teams and the players.
The reality is, most people care more about the score than the actual review. Hense the rise of aggregator sites like Game Rankings.
Heh, probably true. But it's also probably true that someone is going to be running a COBAL system in 2038 that has no source code and nobody knows how to fix. These things have a tendency to last waaaaaay past their expiration date.
I agree that it didn't go anywhere, but I haven't seen anything to imply that more of it would've made it better. In fact, I haven't seen anything to imply that Tycho is capable of better writing under any circumstances. We can only hope that there will be a period of actual comics before the next round of the Cardboard Tube Samurai or similar crap.
Apparently some people agree with you (scroll down to the newspost).
I always kind of chuckle when Tycho refers to "dreaded continuity" because I really do dread it. Or to put it another way, they suck at it. Any time they do a series of related comics, they go from doing a dialog-driven humour comic to some sort of graphic drama style, which in addition to not being funny also doesn't have much of a plot, or at least not a particularly interesting one. The line dancing thing in particular was a completely uninspired retelling of Karate Kid. Did that really need to be done?
Then again, I generally don't find the comic that funny even when they're doing their usual thing. I read the comic so that I'll know what Tycho's talking about in the first paragraph of his blog. For a funny gaming comic, I prefer UAC.
MarioKart is a kick-ass game, although I don't think they've really improved on the original with any of the sequels. Mario Tennis and Mario Golf are both more fun than their straight-sports counterparts, so I have high hopes for Mario Baseball. The Mario franchise is going strong on the back of a lot of really fun games.
Conversely, the Sonic franchise has largely died. Partly because it doesn't have its own console but mostly because the new Sonic games suck. The Sonic Advance GBA games try to maintain the original formula but just don't do it for me, for whatever reason. The spin-off games like Sonic Battles and the 3D platformers are pretty mediocre as well.
That's the fundamental flaw in today's MMOGs. There is no way to realistically make thousands of players feel like the hero of the story simultaneously, like you can in a single player game. They can either make it more single-player centric, with instancing, or they can make the heroism less important to the game.
That's pretty much what I'm hoping for. When John Connor realized he'd been tricked into saving only himself, and the bombs started raining down, I wanted to stand up and cheer. The story in T3 should've been summed up as five minutes of backstory, leading into a kickass dystopic war movie. But like someone quoted Cameron saying elsewhere in the thread, at least they didn't totally crap all over his vision like Alien 3. There's no reason (other than cynicism) that T4 can't be that kickass movie.
From where I'm sitting, it's already happening. iPod gets all the press, but I see way more cheap USB thumbdrive mp3 players than iPods.
What's with the negativity? T4 should be the best one ever, assuming they ditch that whole stupid time-travel schtick and just show humans being slaughtered by robots for two and a half hours.
I'm making about $50,000, and pay around 30% tax. The thing is, that money doesn't just get thrown away. So I'm paying more in tax, but I'm paying nothing for healthcare (and in fact, Canadians pay less per capita than Americans for healthcare, and everyone is covered). Would you really feel that you were better off if you paid no tax, but personally had to pay for everything that your taxes currently cover (road tolls, police protection fees, 100% private schools, military levy, etc)? What difference does it make how you pay, when you will end up paying either way?
I didn't play the demo, but according to someone from the company responding to someone like you, the demo differed significantly from the real game. I believe he said there were a lot more agents invading your base in the demo.
In the real game, you don't want to leave your base on red alert because while your minions are arming themselves and looking for enemies, they aren't working, and anyone who sees your guys running around with rifles (tourists, investigators) is going to know this isn't just a resort island, which raises your heat. Killing everyone also raises your heat.
Yeah, I don't know if they bring the kicking, but my bodyguards definitely bring the ass.
Has anyone figured out how to capture a monkey before it can climb a tree? Those cheeky bastards piss me off.
The game has style coming out the nethers, but there are a fair number of annoyances which I've expounded upon bloggishly here and here.
My main complaint is that the game is fundamentally a management sim, like Majesty or Tropico, but doesn't have enough for you to manage so it fills the gap some RTS-style micromanagement that feels largely unnecessary. Why do I have to manually tag everyone who comes to my island rather than setting rules? Why do I have to check the world map every minute or two to make sure my guys aren't going to get killed? The only answer I've been able to come up with is "Because otherwise there would be nothing for you to do."
It's a shame they couldn't come up with something more interesting, because at some point the novelty is going to wear off and the game will get shelved, permanently.
Your example of "organic" is very apt. There are rules you have to follow before you can offer an organic product. One of them is that you can't have used pesticides on the land where the produce was grown at any time during the previous ten years. There are no such standards for hypoallergenic.
Wrong, you are SOL because they don't say it won't cause a rash, they say its hypoallergenic, which has no meaning. They could as easily say that their new cats are 100% cromulent. Try proving that they're not.
It's also interesting to note that "hypo-allergenic" has no medical definition. People assume it means the product will be safe for allergy sufferers, but there is no certification process because there is no such thing, from a medical perspective, as hypo-allergenic. Not such a big deal when you're talking about a $5 bar of soap, but I suspect people will be pretty pissed if their $3500 designer pet turns out to make them just as itchy as the free kitten their cousin offered them.
Yup, my mom bought a stereo at the Sony Store a decade ago. I can assure you that it does not mean better service. That stereo was in and out of the shop for the entire duration of its warranty, and they never fixed a thing. We found out later, when she took it to a regular repair shop, that the motors Sony put in their cassette decks were crap, and our problem was typical of that model.
The reality is that Sony makes great TVs, and uses the name recognition from that to cover up the fact that all their other stuff is crap.
Conversely, if the pirated version has the ads removed, that's value-added from the consumer's perspective. Much like with the new, more invasive copy protection schemes, the cracked game is in a lot of ways superior to the one you can buy in a store.
The consideration he doesn't mention which I think is salient is durability. Sony hardware is crap (except for TVs). PS2s break down at an alarming rate and nobody is dropping them on the ground or stuffing them into knapsacks. Conversly, the GBA could be used as a bludgeon. If it gets out that you're paying upwards of $500 for something that won't last more than a year, it will hurt sales.
"It takes a lot of guts for Molyneux to step up and say sorry I couldn't give you everything I said."
I'd be more sympathetic if he didn't do this with every single game he's ever made. Remember how the creatures in Dungeon Keeper were going to learn your personal playing habits and adapt to them? Remember how Black and White was going to end world hunger? I'm frankly surprised that people can be disappointed with Fable, since they should know better than to listen to the crap that comes out of Molyneux's mouth. From the sounds of it, it's a good game if a little short. That's enough for me.
I for one won't be buying any crippled CDs. I'll just download the songs off P2P, and let someone smarter than me figure out how to circumvent the "copy" protection.
How diligent are they, though? I mean, you could easily rename whatever sensitive file you have to "Abba - Dancing Queen.mp3" and bury it with 20 gigs of other songs. Do they actually listen to each song and make sure it's music?