And I'm not saying Civ 3 was all that long ago. Though, thinking back on when it was released reminds me painfully how long it's been since I graduated from college. *sigh*
I've heard many reports of this problem, but I didn't mention the problems in my review because I never experienced those issues.
I've got a gig of RAM in my box, though. It stinks that they list the recommended specs at 256 megs of memory. Is there any big commercial game made within the last two years or so that ran well on 256 megs of RAM?
More RAM should almost certainly take care of those issues, and if you like the genre the game will be 'worth' the hassle.
"With the exception of the Super Star Wars series of titles back in the SNES days, Star Wars movie-specific game titles have almost universally disappointed. The blending of the mythology into a more cohesive whole makes for a much richer and ultimately more rewarding environment to set a game..."
Name me one movie-specific Star Wars game that's been good, besides the old SNES games. Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Pod Racer, Obi-Wan? Yech. All the games you list (TIE Fighter, X-Wing, etc.) are great, because they don't tie themselves down to a single film. Star Wars games that use the universe as a backdrop are terrific. Jedi Knight II is still one of my favorite FPS titles *ever*, for the incredible sense of power you gain as you become one with the force.
Being honest is hard. Personal opinions and experiences color everything we do, we can't do anything about it. 75% of what I'm thinking abot when I write a review is trying to be objective and come at the game from the opinion of "everybody". Taking into account the technical problems knocks the game down from a 9 to an 8, which was what I was going to give it until I found myself swimming upside down and drowing.:)
That said, objectivity is not the only goal of a review. I'm here to give you my opinion as well as let you know what kind of game it was. If this was the Zonk show, where whatever I liked was just the way it is, Shadow would have been a 10. I am sick to death of FPSes with soulless stories, Diablo clones, and RTS games with the usability of a brick. Shadow is a very different game, and having the chance to play something different made me a happy gamer.
Re:What's the point of these Q&A sessions?
on
Sid Meier Responds
·
· Score: 2, Informative
With some folks, like game developers, we're limited to only 10 questions. There were a lot more than 10 questions modded +5 in the original post, so the 10 questions to be sent needed to be the ones with the broadest appeal that would likely result in a substantial answer.
I wish we could have covered all the questions that were voted popular too, but making games is a busy job and we needed to pick and choose.
Re:What Is In the Second Picture?
on
Review: Dragonshard
·
· Score: 1, Redundant
The craft in the background is an Airship. There's some techno-magical elements in Eberron, where spellcasters forge powerful beings (usually elementals) into control devices for trains, ships, and airships.
Since folks seem interested in link trading, I'll go ahead and plug a buddy's comic: Nercore - The Core Wars.
It starts off with some one-liner comics about sci-fi TV, and after a few strips heads off into an interesting and ongoing plot about a ringworld inhabited by equal parts Shadowrun and equal parts Dungeons and Dragons.
It's...challenging to get the hang of it. Basically, by playing with two players you have one player providing momentum and the other person steering. That's essentially what it boils down to.
Unfortunately, they took out the on-screen notice of which way the joysticks are moving which was included in the Japanese version of the game. I guess they felt us American folk wanted to be more combative?
It does take some work to get the hang of it, but once you do it's a lot of fun.
I tried to tone it down, but I *really* like this game. The co-op is so much fun my wife and I played through the whole thing in just a couple of days.
It is longer than the original, but still quite short compared to most games today. The difference is, every minute of the game was worth playing.
I know this will come as a shock, but there aren't a lot of non-Mozz browsers over here. The inline images I use for reviews are an edge case on Slashdot, and they weren't checked in every browser. A very helpful person on the backend of things has resolved the problem, so images show now be visible all around. Sorry about the confusion.
As you can imagine, I consume a lot of coverage from different places about games. I read most sites, I watch X-Play... for me, the sign that the Cube just doesn't have the kind of mindshare that the Xbox and the PS2 does is the distinct lack of enthusiasm that most places have for GC games. I mean, obviously not every game can be Twilight Princess, but every time a Cube game comes up for review I get this sense of "ho hum another one of these" from the reviewer.
I like the Cube a lot, it has some awesome games on it. RE4 is still one of the best games I've played this year. I just look at it and wish there'd been more.:(
Actually, we've reported on it a couple times since E3. I am really looking forward to it. I'm not a big fan of RTS (excepting Civ, and Starcraft), but the way that that element integrated with the other gametypes seems very cool.
Here's hoping the final version can live up to the demo.
Er... I agree with your assessment. But, did you read the title of the article?
"Nintendo profits cool in latest quarterly earnings report - The dynamite DS can't offset a dearth of games and plummeting GameCube and GBA sales; game giant remains in the black."
Much of their financial success today is based on their dominance in the handheld market, where they continue to have two consoles that garner gangbuster sales.
Nintendo as a company is very viable. It's my opinion (shared by many other folks) that the GameCube as a console simply did not do as well as the Playstation 2 or the Xbox.
Your head is on straight.:) You may want to straighten your tie, though.
The issue is that stats have consistently shown that only a very small percentage of the user base participates in any way the the forums. World of Warcraft has hundreds of thousands of English speaking players, but no where near that number participates in the official forums.
Thus, while every single person on the forums may be saying "boo honor system", they're still a minority of the players of the game.
Many dubious decisions have been made by massive game developers who listened overmuch to forum talk, and it is important to keep things in perspective.
Massively - The game is going to support scads of people. Heavy instancing will be used, to be sure, but City of Heroes does the same thing. GW is just going to a further extreme. Multiplayer - More than one person can play. Online - Going to be an internet based game. Game - Yup.
I don't see how it is not a MMOG?
What I think is cool about this is that Guild Wars is pushing the boundary of MMOG. The PVP aspect and low level cap will ensure that a lot of skill is going to be required of the players. 'Hit A and Walk Away' won't be enough, and hopefull there won't be as much of a market for farmers as in certain other games.
While there are MUDs out there that have Permadeath (PD), the most promising graphical game that will include Permadeath is Frontier 1859. The game is going to be an Old West adventure with as much realism as possible, and because of Player persistence via offspring, the possibility exists for a character in-game to die of sickness, wounds, or bad luck.
I personally think is is likely to end up with the product better than it might have already been. While you might say "WoW scared them into second guessing themselves", more development time seems almost universally to lead to a better product.
All that said, I liked the sound of the original Tabular Rasa design. I especially liked the idea of skill/attribute mods being plug-ins, with the avatar's appearance being entirely at the user's whim.
I swear, some of the color combinations I've worn in WoW has made me neauseous.
I don't think sub-subsections are likely to be seen any time soon. As far as I know the current sectional setup is going to be the paradigm going forward, with more sections (like the recently added hardware) being released in the future. It also seems somewhat confusing. Trees are fun to climb in real life, but I'm not that big a fan when it comes to web interfaces.
As for the content of Slashdot Games, I think it gets plenty of attention.:)
The goal for the games section has never been to be like Evil Avatar or Shacknews, both of who are great resources for every review, preview, and feature you might be interested in. You and I don't need help to find a review for a game that we're interested in. My hope is that the games section provides access to stories you might not otherwise come across, or provides an angle to make a story intersting that you might not have otherwise enjoyed.
Slashdot Mirror
Oops! Fixing that typo. Been playing too much WoW, apparently.
Hey, I played a fair amount of Civ, too. :)
And I'm not saying Civ 3 was all that long ago. Though, thinking back on when it was released reminds me painfully how long it's been since I graduated from college. *sigh*
I've heard many reports of this problem, but I didn't mention the problems in my review because I never experienced those issues.
I've got a gig of RAM in my box, though. It stinks that they list the recommended specs at 256 megs of memory. Is there any big commercial game made within the last two years or so that ran well on 256 megs of RAM?
More RAM should almost certainly take care of those issues, and if you like the genre the game will be 'worth' the hassle.
Is there any new material in the book? or is it just a compilation of the posts from the livejournal?
There are no cross-postings. The stuff in the book is all new and seperate from her web stuff.
Someone asked me for my friend code below, and I responded there, but the only way to actually play against each other is to exchange codes.
If you're interested in getting a little Slashdot Kart action in, a code exchange would probably be the best way to go.
My code is 000059522506.
What is yours?
000059522506
"With the exception of the Super Star Wars series of titles back in the SNES days, Star Wars movie-specific game titles have almost universally disappointed. The blending of the mythology into a more cohesive whole makes for a much richer and ultimately more rewarding environment to set a game..."
Name me one movie-specific Star Wars game that's been good, besides the old SNES games. Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Pod Racer, Obi-Wan? Yech. All the games you list (TIE Fighter, X-Wing, etc.) are great, because they don't tie themselves down to a single film. Star Wars games that use the universe as a backdrop are terrific. Jedi Knight II is still one of my favorite FPS titles *ever*, for the incredible sense of power you gain as you become one with the force.
Being honest is hard. Personal opinions and experiences color everything we do, we can't do anything about it. 75% of what I'm thinking abot when I write a review is trying to be objective and come at the game from the opinion of "everybody". Taking into account the technical problems knocks the game down from a 9 to an 8, which was what I was going to give it until I found myself swimming upside down and drowing. :)
That said, objectivity is not the only goal of a review. I'm here to give you my opinion as well as let you know what kind of game it was. If this was the Zonk show, where whatever I liked was just the way it is, Shadow would have been a 10. I am sick to death of FPSes with soulless stories, Diablo clones, and RTS games with the usability of a brick. Shadow is a very different game, and having the chance to play something different made me a happy gamer.
With some folks, like game developers, we're limited to only 10 questions. There were a lot more than 10 questions modded +5 in the original post, so the 10 questions to be sent needed to be the ones with the broadest appeal that would likely result in a substantial answer.
I wish we could have covered all the questions that were voted popular too, but making games is a busy job and we needed to pick and choose.
The craft in the background is an Airship. There's some techno-magical elements in Eberron, where spellcasters forge powerful beings (usually elementals) into control devices for trains, ships, and airships.
8 1.jpg
Here is a better illustration of the craft:
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/ebw_gallery/828
In the game, the Holy Flame army uses the flying craft to get to Xen'drik, and move about the continent.
Since folks seem interested in link trading, I'll go ahead and plug a buddy's comic: Nercore - The Core Wars.
It starts off with some one-liner comics about sci-fi TV, and after a few strips heads off into an interesting and ongoing plot about a ringworld inhabited by equal parts Shadowrun and equal parts Dungeons and Dragons.
A high pun tolerance would probably be helpful.
It's...challenging to get the hang of it. Basically, by playing with two players you have one player providing momentum and the other person steering. That's essentially what it boils down to.
Unfortunately, they took out the on-screen notice of which way the joysticks are moving which was included in the Japanese version of the game. I guess they felt us American folk wanted to be more combative?
It does take some work to get the hang of it, but once you do it's a lot of fun.
err...that may have been my enthusiasm.
I tried to tone it down, but I *really* like this game. The co-op is so much fun my wife and I played through the whole thing in just a couple of days.
It is longer than the original, but still quite short compared to most games today. The difference is, every minute of the game was worth playing.
I know this will come as a shock, but there aren't a lot of non-Mozz browsers over here. The inline images I use for reviews are an edge case on Slashdot, and they weren't checked in every browser. A very helpful person on the backend of things has resolved the problem, so images show now be visible all around. Sorry about the confusion.
I can dig it.
... for me, the sign that the Cube just doesn't have the kind of mindshare that the Xbox and the PS2 does is the distinct lack of enthusiasm that most places have for GC games. I mean, obviously not every game can be Twilight Princess, but every time a Cube game comes up for review I get this sense of "ho hum another one of these" from the reviewer.
:(
As you can imagine, I consume a lot of coverage from different places about games. I read most sites, I watch X-Play
I like the Cube a lot, it has some awesome games on it. RE4 is still one of the best games I've played this year. I just look at it and wish there'd been more.
Woo!
Actually, we've reported on it a couple times since E3. I am really looking forward to it. I'm not a big fan of RTS (excepting Civ, and Starcraft), but the way that that element integrated with the other gametypes seems very cool.
Here's hoping the final version can live up to the demo.
Er ... I agree with your assessment. But, did you read the title of the article?
"Nintendo profits cool in latest quarterly earnings report - The dynamite DS can't offset a dearth of games and plummeting GameCube and GBA sales; game giant remains in the black."
Much of their financial success today is based on their dominance in the handheld market, where they continue to have two consoles that garner gangbuster sales.
Nintendo as a company is very viable. It's my opinion (shared by many other folks) that the GameCube as a console simply did not do as well as the Playstation 2 or the Xbox.
They're busy folks, and Gen Con put a delay on things.
We'll post them as soon as we get 'em.
I don't know about you, but I have it on good authority that my fiancee is marrying me for my typing speed and controller skillz.
Your head is on straight. :) You may want to straighten your tie, though.
The issue is that stats have consistently shown that only a very small percentage of the user base participates in any way the the forums. World of Warcraft has hundreds of thousands of English speaking players, but no where near that number participates in the official forums.
Thus, while every single person on the forums may be saying "boo honor system", they're still a minority of the players of the game.
Many dubious decisions have been made by massive game developers who listened overmuch to forum talk, and it is important to keep things in perspective.
Massively - The game is going to support scads of people. Heavy instancing will be used, to be sure, but City of Heroes does the same thing. GW is just going to a further extreme.
Multiplayer - More than one person can play.
Online - Going to be an internet based game.
Game - Yup.
I don't see how it is not a MMOG?
What I think is cool about this is that Guild Wars is pushing the boundary of MMOG. The PVP aspect and low level cap will ensure that a lot of skill is going to be required of the players. 'Hit A and Walk Away' won't be enough, and hopefull there won't be as much of a market for farmers as in certain other games.
While there are MUDs out there that have Permadeath (PD), the most promising graphical game that will include Permadeath is Frontier 1859. The game is going to be an Old West adventure with as much realism as possible, and because of Player persistence via offspring, the possibility exists for a character in-game to die of sickness, wounds, or bad luck.
Commentary on this up at Grimwell.
I personally think is is likely to end up with the product better than it might have already been. While you might say "WoW scared them into second guessing themselves", more development time seems almost universally to lead to a better product.
All that said, I liked the sound of the original Tabular Rasa design. I especially liked the idea of skill/attribute mods being plug-ins, with the avatar's appearance being entirely at the user's whim.
I swear, some of the color combinations I've worn in WoW has made me neauseous.
I really don't understand....pirates are trying to make a quick buck, right?
The handheld console games from a while back were selling because they were easy to use and on the cheap.
Why would you bother knocking off NES consoles and games when most people who have the itch just buy GB versions or use emulators?
Wouldn't it make more sense to pirate Gameboy games?
I don't think sub-subsections are likely to be seen any time soon. As far as I know the current sectional setup is going to be the paradigm going forward, with more sections (like the recently added hardware) being released in the future. It also seems somewhat confusing. Trees are fun to climb in real life, but I'm not that big a fan when it comes to web interfaces.
:)
As for the content of Slashdot Games, I think it gets plenty of attention.
The goal for the games section has never been to be like Evil Avatar or Shacknews, both of who are great resources for every review, preview, and feature you might be interested in. You and I don't need help to find a review for a game that we're interested in. My hope is that the games section provides access to stories you might not otherwise come across, or provides an angle to make a story intersting that you might not have otherwise enjoyed.