You misquoted me. I said my MIS department had to up my e-mail storage. My company only telemarkets small parts of two states. I was trying to demonstrate how one particular state's list is poorly run. I can't imagine how tough it would be to actually telemarket nationally if every state had it's own DNC list with it's own set of rules. As it stands, most states have dropped their lists becasue it's irrelevant. The states that still maintain them, suprise, do not manage to stay in the black on the subscription costs alone. They end up having a nice operating budget paid for by the happy citizens of that state. Silly me for trying to imply that people might like to get something for the tax dollars every now and then.
And really, what's the point? If you're into avoiding calls, you signed with the Feds, and we don't call you. End of story. Why would you also want to sign with your state?
Study a bit of macro economics, we all work for scum-sucking weasles, just at different points in the chain. I support sales and marketing directly with data, so I'm just closer to the lips than you are.
Really? Have you visited your company's marketing department? How about accounts payable and accouts receivable? I'm sure there's lots of interesting policies you're not familliar with, not all written no doubt.
It must be nice to be able to keep it clean. I guess you're just higher up on the hill than I am, but it all runs down sooner or later.
Muggers? Grow up. Do you really want the government to keep people from calling you, protect your e-mail from spam and even manage the lock on your door? Get caller ID and Telezapper if you're bothered by somebody calling you. Use one of many available free e-mail accounts to do stuff if spam is a problem. Has the government has ever provided a cheap and effective solution to anything? Your pretending that somebody calling your house is on par with mugging is absurd. Yet, using taxpayers money to slow economic activity whether they choose to participate or not is actually fairly similar to mugging.
You're going to pay for whatever solution you have to sales nusiances no matter what. If you really think the government can do it more efficiently than you can yourself, you really should pick up that phone and get out your credit cards.
You'd probably appreciate how clever a predictive dialer system is. It's got databases, phone lines, special harware, multiple servers etc. If run properly, it's as non-offensive as telemarketing can be.
By harder I mean less profitable. But in our case, we're less able to stop the company bleeding to death from losing subscribers.
Sometimes I wonder if any of you folks have jobs at all. You don't get to pick your own e-mail system, or your own computer when you work in an office for and employer. It's called being an employee, and although nobody seems to like it that much, it's a popular life-style.
You're still able to say that after talking about the "existing business relationship" loophole? How do you sleep at night?
In a bed, in a house. Is your employer without a marketing department? Only the government doesn't need any marketing, and I imagine they all sleep fine at night too.
It has nothing to do with subsidiary businesses. It's simply subscription based products. You know magazines, newspapers, cable T.V. I'm being intentionally vague so as not to potentially embarass my employer.
Pretty much any and all subscription based products have what retention problems. Since you know you are going to lose a certain amount of subscribers every year, you need to replace them just to break even. There even a name for it - churn.
In my industry, telemarketing is pretty much the only way you can combat this, but it's not the only tool we have. As our ability to telemarket gets eroded by the DNC lists, we rely more on what we call crewing. This is especially cool because we get to employ high-school age kids. We take them into various neighborhoods by van where they go door to door making the pitch the telemarkets couldn't. That's much better for you guys, right?
Oh yes, there must be a special place in hell for people who have to do stuff they don't like to make a living. What are you independently wealthy or something? Maybe if you walk off campus once or twice a year, you'd have some idea about how the world works. If your your ethics can survive your career intact, well I'm tuly happy for you. But for the rest of us who have bills to pay, it's either adapt or die. I suppose you could always delude yourself into loving your all aspects of your job, but that's just never really worked for me.
I have to work with these lists, because part of my job is to support a telemarketing system. Nobody told me squat about that on the interview, nevertheless here I am. I've been here long enough to see the lists come into being. It's making telemarketing harder, and all that good stuff.
I also have the misfortune to need to telemarket in two states, one of which has it's own state list. As it happens, we only call five small towns in this state. In order to get access to the State's DNC list we have to purchase it for the entire state. To make matters worse, this state has a very different set of rules.
On a federal level, you are allowed to call customers you formerly did business with for 18 months after the termination of the business relationship. Not so in this other state. Apparently you aren't allowed to call even the day after the relationship ends. The federal system actually allows the people who get called some recourse. The state system I have to deal with makes it very clear in their fine print that you are allowed a certain amount of accidental calls. Because you are a paying list subscriber, they actually have a department to handle these situations. If you get caught calling people on the state DNC list, you had better have paid the man or else it's game on for lawsuits. What it ends up being is simply extortion. You want to call people of that state, you buy the list, which costs more annually than the entire federal list, for what that's worth.
I really feel sorry for the people who live in that nameless state, because they are payin a ton of taxes to manage a list system that offers them no protection whatsoever. The federal list is a big pain for telemarketers, but at least it has and element of fairness, and really attempts to protect the people who want not to be called.
I'm not interested in arguing the notion of whether the freedom not to be bothered should trump the freedom to call any phone number you want without fear of prosecution, but for the nerds out there, here's some technical details:
The federal list can be downloaded in it's entirety or in updates by date selected once a day by any business who pays the fee. The list is numbers only, no names at all. The state list I have to work with is available by e-mail or on CD-ROM. I picked e-mail, and the updates are entirely at the discretion of the state. So every month or so, my office e-mail gets choked with the list in several parts, so I had to work a special deal with the MIS guys to get extra space on the server. When I first signed up for it, the state didn't send a file until the next scheduled update, but made it clear that we'd be covered in the event of accidentally calling somebody on the list we didn't have access to! Of course almost everybody in the state list is also on the federal list, so we never got a complaint.
I imagine the only people on that state list that are not on the federal list are people looking to sue somebody. They are out there; we've encountered them before. I'm not a fan of telemarketing and would support it if I didn't have to. The federal list makes sense, and really does eliminate any reason for states to keep their own lists, except that grand-daddy of all reasons for government programs - the pork. It's all about the pork, folks. Always has been; always will be.
Seriously, if you can emulate all kinds of game machines on the PSP, a designated game machine itself, isn't that pretty much the killer ap right there? I suppose if somebody really busted butt it might be possible to turn the PC into a web-based internet phone, but why bother? Cell phones already have this covered and PSPs aren't exactly the cheapest gizomos on the market. I'm very happy with the emulation on the PSP, although I'd like the SNES to run faster. For me that's killer enough.
You know, the one who is supposed to be always right, or mostly right. It's obviously not the end user anymore. Typically a copy of Windows is purchased by guys who make the PC, so it's not really up to the end user to concern himself with these things. So MS cuts a deal with Dell, and cuts a deal with a consortium of content providers and the vast majority of the people don't know a thing until their computer tells them they can't do something. With the exception of better USB support in newer systems. I have no qualms with continuing to use Win 98 SE.
The whole thing is a war of egos over a market which doesn't exist. Who really wants to intercept video going to their monitor anyway? DVD sales are dropping in general because the sad reality is that for all the movies produced in a year, damn few are worth watching once, never mind more than once. The whole idea probably stems from the idea that if you don't prove you are defending your copyright, you lose it. This is just another frontier on which you have to prove you are defending your copyright. I think it's pretty obvious from X-Box sales that Microsoft isn't going to own the living room in our lifetimes. So they should develop a better strategy for holding the office before somebody makes Linux palatable enough for the masses.
Big OS is the same damn thing as Big government. To get the 1% you want you have to finance the 99% you don't want. If Microsoft is going to keep developing for the interests of people other than the end user, they should really just give the OS out. There has to be an end to how much you can force people to buy upgrades that have nothing they want in them. You may be able to mess with ignorance of the home user, but small business owners tend to get pissed being charged something for nothing over and over. I know a lot of shops that still use old Windows variants and even a few DOS shops. They don't even think about it until they try and add a workstation and get some crap like XP pre-installed.
When DRM starts really hitting users in the face, they will look for alternatives, or just look away. None of this amounts to a serious business model for content providers, because they really haven't been putting nearly as much effort into the content as they have into the delivery systems. Their sloth is coming home to roost, and all the DRM in the world isn't going to save them.
You wouldn't have the levels either. What's the point of having a game engine without any levels?
So far the level design in DROD Rooted Hold is great, so I don't have a problem with paying for it.
Isn't this the a pretty good example of the dream of open source? You aren't being forced to pay for the technology. You are just paying for creative work done with the technology, right? The technology is shared, as if it were a scientific discovery.
It sure is great to see that DROD is back. I played this back when it was a 16 color game for Windows 3.1. I registered earlier this week. You start getting slammed with new enemies right after you pass the demo levels. The game is just great. The addition of the wandering nephew character really adds some great puzzles.
You can actually get the full original DROD, with level editor, for free. Go visit their site and check it out:
Snood is a blatant rip-off, that adds nothing to the Puzzle Bobble series of games. I think the big break for Snood was when it was featured in a commercial for bank loans or something. A guy was playing Snood and his S/O was telling him she was pregnant in a snarky way. My first thought was, "That piece of.... in a commercial?!?!" Even if you love the concept, Snood has always been a buggy, crash-happy product.
Popcap ripped Magical Drop to make Astro Pop, but at least they added to the formula. Zuma is a rip-off a game that I think was called Ballistic. They added a bit, but it's very similar to the game that had a tiny release on the PSX. You lost a lot quicker on the PSX, so if nothing else, Popcap balanced a very rough concept. Big Money is a rip-off of the "Same Game" or Maki which is so simple and common, it may be impossible to know the true origins, but I think it's certainly Japanese. But for all the derivative titles, Popcap always added something. They added enough to help advance the genre, so I can't really fault them too much.
Cubis is a variant of a rare game called Builder's Block, but they changed so much, it's truly a different game. I like Builder's Block a lot better myself, especially the single-player game in the PSX release.
One of the greatest rip-offs with enhancements was Deadly Rooms of Death (D.R.O.D) which is a very cool exetnsion of the old game Daleks, or the even older Robots. There's even been a fan re-programming of it. (http://sourceforge.net/projects/drod) Last I heard, the original D.R.O.D. developer's whereabouts were unknown. You could also argue (at least I could, anywat) that great Williams game Robotron is actually a derivative of the ancient game Robots. I only saw it running once on some kind of terminal system, with no idea what was serving the game from the other side, so I can't really say what it was like in the day. But I still play tons of Daleks and Drod. Once again Popcap gets into the concept with Seven Seas, but with lots of changes.
Ripping off game mechanics is pretty much a standard thing development strategy. Most of the great strategy games are all boosted from great board games. Pretty much every game concept in play today can be traced back to an original title from the 80's. It's a pity the a dead-end game like Snood made a lot of money and quirky fame for the developer. Borrowing concepts is only acceptable, IMO, if it advances the genre or refines the gameplay. Just putting funny faces on an established Japanese franchies is pretty weak. Especially when the end product is vastly inferior to the source material.
At first glance, it seems pretty silly - a derivative of Puyo Puyo that perhaps isn't as good as the original. It almost seems like arbitrary complexity was added and little else. But, as you play it the tricky balance between attack and defense becomes clear. I think the developers went to great lengths to playtest and balance the game - to perfection. It's especially great as against a competent human opponent. The handicapping feature can cover a bit for differences, but you need to have somebody who's mastered the basics to really get the best experience.
In the most recent Mortal Kombat package - Deception, they copied SPF2T except for one important detail - the gems merging into power gems. Also the scrolling seems over-smooth, which is something I never thought I would actually complain about, but it feels really wrong. I haven't logged much time on this because I have easy access to the original.
The most common home version of this game you can find is for the PSX. There was a release for the GBA about a year ago. There was also a PC version put out in the cheap bins of CompUSA. There might be some MAME solution. For the life of me, I have no idea why there hasn't been an update of this game for the PS2/GameCube/XBox generation of consoles. Maybe they have a Super Puzzle Fighter 3 in Japan - I have no idea. I'd love to see some snazzy new graphics and new characters, but I think they got the gameplay so perfect on 2 Turbo, any attempt to update the mechanics or balance would probably not be an improvement.
Do you really want to cheat our post-human descendents out of their existence for the sake of immortality? I don't think of humanity as the step in the chain. As long as men are still born with nipples, we still have a long way to go. Kudos Terry Gilliam.
You're right. I should have either lied and said I had played it, or moved that bit to the very end. I've read lots of comparative artices for what that's worth. Does Halflife 2 have anything on par with the Lighting effects in Doom 3? How about the disolving skin and brains popping out effect? Is the sound as surrounding?
I don't want to start the Half Life Vs. Doom war. I just can't help but notice extreme snubbing going on when I see it. The story of Id software almost plays out like the cheesy movie version of the Fountainhead. At some point, the gaming press should pay some respect to the guys who basically created and continue to advance the genre, at least in terms of the core technology. But they don't. They seem to go out of their way to ignore them. Does this help perpetuate the myth that anybody with some time and dedication can produce a first-rate game?
Id leads; everybody else follows. Not only do they ignore the leader, they pretend they are leading instead.
You are not alone. I have always loved Squaresoft games. I always liked Disney. Granted they never produced anything on par with Tom and Jerry, but still, a powerhouse of great characters and ideas.
From go, I though Kingdom Hearts was a bad idea. I found it used for cheap and tried it anyway. It was so much worse than I ever expected, I found it really disturbing. Goofy and Donald killing monsters - it's just not right! Given that it was a PS2 game, the 3-D engine was really choppy and poor-looking. Vagrant Story, from the PS1, looks better, to me anyway. Why no Vagrant Story 2? That game was great!
Then there's the three way choice in the beginning. Sword, shield or... I forget. I knew I wasn't going to put more than a few hours into this one really early on, never mind slog through it three times for the sake of putting "replay value" somewhere in the advertising. I wish they had some up-front explanation as to why Disney characters were in the game in the first place. If they ever did explain it, it was lost on me. I bailed after clearing out the first couple are areas and realing it wasn't going to get any better.
Amazing. On the Overall Awards, it got a runner-up for best use of sound. On the PC Games Awards it got runner up for best graphics. That's all folks. I can understand Doom 3 taking some heat for the actual gameplay, but I thought both the sound and graphics were very impressive. The story wasn't half-bad either.
I haven't played Half-life 2 yet, but I thought the prevailing attitude was that the graphics on Doom 3 were far superior. What's the deal? This must be Mel Gibson's favorite game or something. Is the Half-life 2 sweep just some organized support of the Steam login scheme?
I thought the first Half-life was over-hyped and have no reason to believe any different of installment 2. They must have an amazing PR department over at Valve/Vivendi. They drop the most abusive installation proceedure on users to date, and everybody is all smiles!
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson fits the bill. It's low-brow, and a really fast read, but you'd be hard pressed to put a positive spin on the ending. I think they are making a movie out of it
Also, pretty much the entire body of work by Philip K. Dick has dystopian themes. For example, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, has a much more dismal ending than was shown in the movie version Blade Runner.
You might really want to read some J. G. Ballard too. Pretty much every book he's written has the order of society destroyed by either natural disaster or some pathological trends. High-Rise is a great example of this. Even when his books deal with only a microcosm of society, like in Concrete Island, he always depicts society as a sloppy power struggle that nobody wins.
Happy Reading!
Slashdot Mirror
You misquoted me. I said my MIS department had to up my e-mail storage. My company only telemarkets small parts of two states. I was trying to demonstrate how one particular state's list is poorly run. I can't imagine how tough it would be to actually telemarket nationally if every state had it's own DNC list with it's own set of rules. As it stands, most states have dropped their lists becasue it's irrelevant. The states that still maintain them, suprise, do not manage to stay in the black on the subscription costs alone. They end up having a nice operating budget paid for by the happy citizens of that state. Silly me for trying to imply that people might like to get something for the tax dollars every now and then.
And really, what's the point? If you're into avoiding calls, you signed with the Feds, and we don't call you. End of story. Why would you also want to sign with your state?
Study a bit of macro economics, we all work for scum-sucking weasles, just at different points in the chain. I support sales and marketing directly with data, so I'm just closer to the lips than you are.
Really? Have you visited your company's marketing department? How about accounts payable and accouts receivable? I'm sure there's lots of interesting policies you're not familliar with, not all written no doubt.
It must be nice to be able to keep it clean. I guess you're just higher up on the hill than I am, but it all runs down sooner or later.
Muggers? Grow up. Do you really want the government to keep people from calling you, protect your e-mail from spam and even manage the lock on your door? Get caller ID and Telezapper if you're bothered by somebody calling you. Use one of many available free e-mail accounts to do stuff if spam is a problem. Has the government has ever provided a cheap and effective solution to anything? Your pretending that somebody calling your house is on par with mugging is absurd. Yet, using taxpayers money to slow economic activity whether they choose to participate or not is actually fairly similar to mugging.
You're going to pay for whatever solution you have to sales nusiances no matter what. If you really think the government can do it more efficiently than you can yourself, you really should pick up that phone and get out your credit cards.
You'd probably appreciate how clever a predictive dialer system is. It's got databases, phone lines, special harware, multiple servers etc. If run properly, it's as non-offensive as telemarketing can be.
By harder I mean less profitable. But in our case, we're less able to stop the company bleeding to death from losing subscribers.
Sometimes I wonder if any of you folks have jobs at all. You don't get to pick your own e-mail system, or your own computer when you work in an office for and employer. It's called being an employee, and although nobody seems to like it that much, it's a popular life-style.
You're still able to say that after talking about the "existing business relationship" loophole? How do you sleep at night?
In a bed, in a house. Is your employer without a marketing department? Only the government doesn't need any marketing, and I imagine they all sleep fine at night too.
It has nothing to do with subsidiary businesses. It's simply subscription based products. You know magazines, newspapers, cable T.V. I'm being intentionally vague so as not to potentially embarass my employer.
Pretty much any and all subscription based products have what retention problems. Since you know you are going to lose a certain amount of subscribers every year, you need to replace them just to break even. There even a name for it - churn.
In my industry, telemarketing is pretty much the only way you can combat this, but it's not the only tool we have. As our ability to telemarket gets eroded by the DNC lists, we rely more on what we call crewing. This is especially cool because we get to employ high-school age kids. We take them into various neighborhoods by van where they go door to door making the pitch the telemarkets couldn't. That's much better for you guys, right?
Oh yes, there must be a special place in hell for people who have to do stuff they don't like to make a living. What are you independently wealthy or something? Maybe if you walk off campus once or twice a year, you'd have some idea about how the world works. If your your ethics can survive your career intact, well I'm tuly happy for you. But for the rest of us who have bills to pay, it's either adapt or die. I suppose you could always delude yourself into loving your all aspects of your job, but that's just never really worked for me.
I have to work with these lists, because part of my job is to support a telemarketing system. Nobody told me squat about that on the interview, nevertheless here I am. I've been here long enough to see the lists come into being. It's making telemarketing harder, and all that good stuff.
I also have the misfortune to need to telemarket in two states, one of which has it's own state list. As it happens, we only call five small towns in this state. In order to get access to the State's DNC list we have to purchase it for the entire state. To make matters worse, this state has a very different set of rules.
On a federal level, you are allowed to call customers you formerly did business with for 18 months after the termination of the business relationship. Not so in this other state. Apparently you aren't allowed to call even the day after the relationship ends. The federal system actually allows the people who get called some recourse. The state system I have to deal with makes it very clear in their fine print that you are allowed a certain amount of accidental calls. Because you are a paying list subscriber, they actually have a department to handle these situations. If you get caught calling people on the state DNC list, you had better have paid the man or else it's game on for lawsuits. What it ends up being is simply extortion. You want to call people of that state, you buy the list, which costs more annually than the entire federal list, for what that's worth.
I really feel sorry for the people who live in that nameless state, because they are payin a ton of taxes to manage a list system that offers them no protection whatsoever. The federal list is a big pain for telemarketers, but at least it has and element of fairness, and really attempts to protect the people who want not to be called.
I'm not interested in arguing the notion of whether the freedom not to be bothered should trump the freedom to call any phone number you want without fear of prosecution, but for the nerds out there, here's some technical details:
The federal list can be downloaded in it's entirety or in updates by date selected once a day by any business who pays the fee. The list is numbers only, no names at all. The state list I have to work with is available by e-mail or on CD-ROM. I picked e-mail, and the updates are entirely at the discretion of the state. So every month or so, my office e-mail gets choked with the list in several parts, so I had to work a special deal with the MIS guys to get extra space on the server. When I first signed up for it, the state didn't send a file until the next scheduled update, but made it clear that we'd be covered in the event of accidentally calling somebody on the list we didn't have access to! Of course almost everybody in the state list is also on the federal list, so we never got a complaint.
I imagine the only people on that state list that are not on the federal list are people looking to sue somebody. They are out there; we've encountered them before. I'm not a fan of telemarketing and would support it if I didn't have to. The federal list makes sense, and really does eliminate any reason for states to keep their own lists, except that grand-daddy of all reasons for government programs - the pork. It's all about the pork, folks. Always has been; always will be.
Seriously, if you can emulate all kinds of game machines on the PSP, a designated game machine itself, isn't that pretty much the killer ap right there? I suppose if somebody really busted butt it might be possible to turn the PC into a web-based internet phone, but why bother? Cell phones already have this covered and PSPs aren't exactly the cheapest gizomos on the market. I'm very happy with the emulation on the PSP, although I'd like the SNES to run faster. For me that's killer enough.
You know, the one who is supposed to be always right, or mostly right. It's obviously not the end user anymore. Typically a copy of Windows is purchased by guys who make the PC, so it's not really up to the end user to concern himself with these things. So MS cuts a deal with Dell, and cuts a deal with a consortium of content providers and the vast majority of the people don't know a thing until their computer tells them they can't do something. With the exception of better USB support in newer systems. I have no qualms with continuing to use Win 98 SE.
The whole thing is a war of egos over a market which doesn't exist. Who really wants to intercept video going to their monitor anyway? DVD sales are dropping in general because the sad reality is that for all the movies produced in a year, damn few are worth watching once, never mind more than once. The whole idea probably stems from the idea that if you don't prove you are defending your copyright, you lose it. This is just another frontier on which you have to prove you are defending your copyright. I think it's pretty obvious from X-Box sales that Microsoft isn't going to own the living room in our lifetimes. So they should develop a better strategy for holding the office before somebody makes Linux palatable enough for the masses.
Big OS is the same damn thing as Big government. To get the 1% you want you have to finance the 99% you don't want. If Microsoft is going to keep developing for the interests of people other than the end user, they should really just give the OS out. There has to be an end to how much you can force people to buy upgrades that have nothing they want in them. You may be able to mess with ignorance of the home user, but small business owners tend to get pissed being charged something for nothing over and over. I know a lot of shops that still use old Windows variants and even a few DOS shops. They don't even think about it until they try and add a workstation and get some crap like XP pre-installed.
When DRM starts really hitting users in the face, they will look for alternatives, or just look away. None of this amounts to a serious business model for content providers, because they really haven't been putting nearly as much effort into the content as they have into the delivery systems. Their sloth is coming home to roost, and all the DRM in the world isn't going to save them.
You wouldn't have the levels either. What's the point of having a game engine without any levels?
So far the level design in DROD Rooted Hold is great, so I don't have a problem with paying for it.
Isn't this the a pretty good example of the dream of open source? You aren't being forced to pay for the technology. You are just paying for creative work done with the technology, right? The technology is shared, as if it were a scientific discovery.
It sure is great to see that DROD is back. I played this back when it was a 16 color game for Windows 3.1. I registered earlier this week. You start getting slammed with new enemies right after you pass the demo levels. The game is just great. The addition of the wandering nephew character really adds some great puzzles.
You can actually get the full original DROD, with level editor, for free. Go visit their site and check it out:
http://www.caravelgames.com/
They even have a Linux version - such a deal!
"I want to holler the loud funny words!" - Stimpy
Snood is a blatant rip-off, that adds nothing to the Puzzle Bobble series of games. I think the big break for Snood was when it was featured in a commercial for bank loans or something. A guy was playing Snood and his S/O was telling him she was pregnant in a snarky way. My first thought was, "That piece of .... in a commercial?!?!" Even if you love the concept, Snood has always been a buggy, crash-happy product.
Popcap ripped Magical Drop to make Astro Pop, but at least they added to the formula. Zuma is a rip-off a game that I think was called Ballistic. They added a bit, but it's very similar to the game that had a tiny release on the PSX. You lost a lot quicker on the PSX, so if nothing else, Popcap balanced a very rough concept. Big Money is a rip-off of the "Same Game" or Maki which is so simple and common, it may be impossible to know the true origins, but I think it's certainly Japanese. But for all the derivative titles, Popcap always added something. They added enough to help advance the genre, so I can't really fault them too much.
Cubis is a variant of a rare game called Builder's Block, but they changed so much, it's truly a different game. I like Builder's Block a lot better myself, especially the single-player game in the PSX release.
One of the greatest rip-offs with enhancements was Deadly Rooms of Death (D.R.O.D) which is a very cool exetnsion of the old game Daleks, or the even older Robots. There's even been a fan re-programming of it. (http://sourceforge.net/projects/drod) Last I heard, the original D.R.O.D. developer's whereabouts were unknown. You could also argue (at least I could, anywat) that great Williams game Robotron is actually a derivative of the ancient game Robots. I only saw it running once on some kind of terminal system, with no idea what was serving the game from the other side, so I can't really say what it was like in the day. But I still play tons of Daleks and Drod. Once again Popcap gets into the concept with Seven Seas, but with lots of changes.
Ripping off game mechanics is pretty much a standard thing development strategy. Most of the great strategy games are all boosted from great board games. Pretty much every game concept in play today can be traced back to an original title from the 80's. It's a pity the a dead-end game like Snood made a lot of money and quirky fame for the developer. Borrowing concepts is only acceptable, IMO, if it advances the genre or refines the gameplay. Just putting funny faces on an established Japanese franchies is pretty weak. Especially when the end product is vastly inferior to the source material.
Super Puzzle fighter (2 Turbo)
At first glance, it seems pretty silly - a derivative of Puyo Puyo that perhaps isn't as good as the original. It almost seems like arbitrary complexity was added and little else. But, as you play it the tricky balance between attack and defense becomes clear. I think the developers went to great lengths to playtest and balance the game - to perfection. It's especially great as against a competent human opponent. The handicapping feature can cover a bit for differences, but you need to have somebody who's mastered the basics to really get the best experience.
In the most recent Mortal Kombat package - Deception, they copied SPF2T except for one important detail - the gems merging into power gems. Also the scrolling seems over-smooth, which is something I never thought I would actually complain about, but it feels really wrong. I haven't logged much time on this because I have easy access to the original.
The most common home version of this game you can find is for the PSX. There was a release for the GBA about a year ago. There was also a PC version put out in the cheap bins of CompUSA. There might be some MAME solution. For the life of me, I have no idea why there hasn't been an update of this game for the PS2/GameCube/XBox generation of consoles. Maybe they have a Super Puzzle Fighter 3 in Japan - I have no idea. I'd love to see some snazzy new graphics and new characters, but I think they got the gameplay so perfect on 2 Turbo, any attempt to update the mechanics or balance would probably not be an improvement.
Do you really want to cheat our post-human descendents out of their existence for the sake of immortality? I don't think of humanity as the step in the chain. As long as men are still born with nipples, we still have a long way to go. Kudos Terry Gilliam.
You're right. I should have either lied and said I had played it, or moved that bit to the very end. I've read lots of comparative artices for what that's worth. Does Halflife 2 have anything on par with the Lighting effects in Doom 3? How about the disolving skin and brains popping out effect? Is the sound as surrounding?
I don't want to start the Half Life Vs. Doom war. I just can't help but notice extreme snubbing going on when I see it. The story of Id software almost plays out like the cheesy movie version of the Fountainhead. At some point, the gaming press should pay some respect to the guys who basically created and continue to advance the genre, at least in terms of the core technology. But they don't. They seem to go out of their way to ignore them. Does this help perpetuate the myth that anybody with some time and dedication can produce a first-rate game?
Id leads; everybody else follows. Not only do they ignore the leader, they pretend they are leading instead.
You are not alone. I have always loved Squaresoft games. I always liked Disney. Granted they never produced anything on par with Tom and Jerry, but still, a powerhouse of great characters and ideas.
... I forget. I knew I wasn't going to put more than a few hours into this one really early on, never mind slog through it three times for the sake of putting "replay value" somewhere in the advertising. I wish they had some up-front explanation as to why Disney characters were in the game in the first place. If they ever did explain it, it was lost on me. I bailed after clearing out the first couple are areas and realing it wasn't going to get any better.
From go, I though Kingdom Hearts was a bad idea. I found it used for cheap and tried it anyway. It was so much worse than I ever expected, I found it really disturbing. Goofy and Donald killing monsters - it's just not right! Given that it was a PS2 game, the 3-D engine was really choppy and poor-looking. Vagrant Story, from the PS1, looks better, to me anyway. Why no Vagrant Story 2? That game was great!
Then there's the three way choice in the beginning. Sword, shield or
Amazing. On the Overall Awards, it got a runner-up for best use of sound. On the PC Games Awards it got runner up for best graphics. That's all folks. I can understand Doom 3 taking some heat for the actual gameplay, but I thought both the sound and graphics were very impressive. The story wasn't half-bad either.
I haven't played Half-life 2 yet, but I thought the prevailing attitude was that the graphics on Doom 3 were far superior. What's the deal? This must be Mel Gibson's favorite game or something. Is the Half-life 2 sweep just some organized support of the Steam login scheme?
I thought the first Half-life was over-hyped and have no reason to believe any different of installment 2. They must have an amazing PR department over at Valve/Vivendi. They drop the most abusive installation proceedure on users to date, and everybody is all smiles!
I always liked her sister Anna better.
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson fits the bill. It's low-brow, and a really fast read, but you'd be hard pressed to put a positive spin on the ending. I think they are making a movie out of it Also, pretty much the entire body of work by Philip K. Dick has dystopian themes. For example, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, has a much more dismal ending than was shown in the movie version Blade Runner. You might really want to read some J. G. Ballard too. Pretty much every book he's written has the order of society destroyed by either natural disaster or some pathological trends. High-Rise is a great example of this. Even when his books deal with only a microcosm of society, like in Concrete Island, he always depicts society as a sloppy power struggle that nobody wins. Happy Reading!