The reason right out of the gate that ST:HD Remix separates itself from the pack this year is that it was a community wide effort between Capcom and the most loyal and devoted Street Fighter fans to produce a game that the community wanted above all else.
In addition to having new music and art the game is fully playable online using the excellent latency compensating GGPO, and is completely rebalanced, this game took a long time to develop because of that.
With your premise of a game being an update making it unqualified to be Game of the Year that disqualifies some pretty major titles from past years. Are you saying that a game like Starcraft: Broodwar shouldn't have been considered for Game of the Year when it came out because it was simply an expansion pack? On the surface it might look like they only added a couple of new units and threw in three new campaigns. But to the most hardcore player of Starcraft the new strategies and competitive depth introduced with new units and abilities (and maps) created a new opportunity for strategies and build orders and macro that only the most hardcore could ever appreciate.
Guspaz (556486): Don't get me wrong, SF2HD is an excellent product, giving the fans what they want and updating an old favourite.
But it's not just any fans. It's the HARDCORE following. The legion of people who travel to arcades and tournaments around the world. The people who keep arcade cabinets in their own houses. Capcom only consulted those fans for this game.
There are not many companies that are willing to listen to the most rabid fans. Just take one look at Nintendo's emphasis on producing softcore games that have an extremely casual appeal to them. Sure they make a lot of money because children play them, but for adults, the games fail to be intellectually satisfying.
Even NAMCO with Soul Calibur keeps shutting its hardcore fans out by, instead of balancing the game and structuring a sold online net code, they spend the money obtaining a license for a Darth Vader character. The game was dumbed down so that the Star Wars brand could help move copies. Money was spent not on balance but on a Star Wars license.
Would you want Unreal Tournament? Starcraft? Fallout 3? Metal Gear Solid? etc. toned down and dumbed down not just concerning content but concerning difficulty as well just so they could sell more copies to younger and casual fans?
There were a ton of really great original games out this year, and the vast majority of them are better than SF2HD simply because they're original.
I'm sorry but you contradict yourself excessively here. ST:HD Remix should be disqualified because it's not original? Because it's a remake? But nearly all of the games you listed above as contenders for Game of the Year are sequels and remakes of older versions...let's have a look at that list:
Smash Bros. Brawl GTA4 MGS4 Burnout Paradise Disgaea 3 Army of Two Condemned 2 Quake Wars R6 Vegas 2 Rock Band 2 UT3 Battlefield: Bad Company Dragon Quest V Soul Calibur IV Fatal Frame 4 Saints Row 2 Fable II Guitar Hero World Tour Red Alert 3 Fallout 3
Yes, those games are highly original. Even Dead Space is just Resident Evil 4 in space with shinier guns...
I mean, if you want to say that an update of an old game is the best game of the year, I could probably just say "Chronotrigger DS" and end it there.
But that's where Squaresoft doesn't listen to the hardcore community of fans and produces something for the softcore and younger generation.
The fans who played Chrono Trigger now don't want Chrono Trigger DS, they want Chrono Trigger II and they want it on the PS3 or Wii, they want a true sequel for the current or next generation. Square instead took the nearly the same game and merely ported it over to a new system not out of demand at all (no one was pounding down the door saying "WE WANT CHRONO TRIGGE
Capcom really outdid the competition with this game. Taking an idea from a hardcore fan, David Sirlin (who produced Capcom Classics Collection and some other stuff for Capcom), to take Street Fighter 2 and update the game with 1080p graphics and new rebalanced moves was something the entire fighting game community wanted like crazy and no surprise the game has come out fantastically. This is easily a sleeper for best game of 2008 on any platform.
Capcom hired not just OCRemix to do the soundtrack, but they hired UDON Comics (guys who drew SF comics previously), and David Sirlin (a tournament level SF player) to oversee and rebalance the entire game, and they had fans play test the game constantly in local matches in California, and had a beta test for the 360 version to test the net code. And speaking of net code, Capcom consulted the creator of GGPO (a man who also help found the EVOLUTION Fighting Game tournaments) to smooth out the online component of ST:HD Remix. This was basically an all star effort of Street Fighter fans and Capcom to produce something that would appeal to the most rabid hardcore fighting game enthusiast.
Street Fighter came out in 1987 (SF2 in 1991)...and two decades later the brand is strong as ever because the hardcore fans kept the momentum alive all of these years. And Capcom recognized the overwhelming support from the hardcore faithful and geared the entire game (HD Remix) to the hardcore audience.
Put some major points on the board for Capcom this week, some other studios should be paying attention, in fact ALL studios should open their eyes up and start moving back to the hardcore fan.
No retailer would ever offer a full refund for an opened game. The only way to circumnavigate a full refund is of course to pirate a retail version of the game on a different platform. In my case, I will be keeping my PS3 version, collecting dust in its case, and then pirating the PC version to play.
And because the PS3 version has no DLC available I will without question be pirating the DLC for the PC unless Bethesda decides to violate the ridiculous cartel that is Microsoft and actually go multi-platform with add-on content.
And companies wonder why we don't pay for their games.
I pre-ordered a BRAND NEW copy of Fallout 3 for my PS3 (Survival Edition from Amazon) the day it first became available.
It arrived at my doorstep the same day that the first reviews started appearing, reviews like the one at IGN where they said that the PS3 version was riddled with bugs and glitches and made parts of the game unplayable...of course IGN is in the pocket of the game companies so the PS3 version was given a ridiculous 9.4 out of 10.
Really 9.4 out of 10 when the game has massive glitches, bugs, and freezes constantly? Many quests cannot be completed due to glitches including sometimes the final quest. 9.4 for that? No ending to the game? NO downloadble content? This is a 9.4?
So the 360/PC versions get a 9.6/10 meaning that all of these things: massive glitches, tons of bugs, terrible draw distance, no downloadable content whatsoever...........are all worth a combined score.2 out of 10.
I thought, "ok be optimistic, so I might encounter some glitches that's fine," but before I had even left vault 101 I had to HARD reboot my PS3 not once but three times as the game froze THREE times while I was taking the g.o.a.t. at school. Did Bethesda test the PS3 version? (Rhetorical question. Answer: no)
Now that the PS3 won't be getting down-loadable content I will be downloading a PC copy and playing that.
If I had known during my pre-order of Fallout 3 for the PS3 that the game would be nearly unplayable without encountering massive problems and that the game would have no ending to the story...and no DLC to resolve the story in the future...I would have opted to just avoid the game entirely.
I know some people are going to respond, "you should have gotten the PC version" but as a hardcore PS2 fan (Metal Gear, Final Fantasy, God of War), unless a game is exclusive to the PC (Starcraft II!), if it's multi-platform I usually go for the PS3 version (like I did with Dead Space).
IGN :
"Fallout 3 is a top notch shooter-RPG that fails to disappoint in any substantial way. There are minor problems with the game -- issues such as clipping, the occasional framerate chug, and some questionable animation (especially in third-person view) -- but nothing that takes away from the overarching enjoyment you should derive from even a few hours of gameplay."
This is from the PS3 review. Top notch? No. Better than average. Yes. Worth $60 on the PS3. No way.
Wow those plagiarists...what next are you going to tell me that the Holy Grail movie was based on ancient stories as well?
Or Life of Brian? Are you telling me that Jesus wasn't an original character?
I received three packages from Amazon.com today and one of them was not properly sealed and it was heavily damaged. The box contained some books.....all of the books fell out of the box because there was only a single layer of thin tape holding the entire cardboard box together......so I got an empty box today from Amazon.com because they are cutting back on packaging materials. I guess this is what you get with "FREE SUPER SHIPPING SAVING" or whatever.
Thankfully my package consisting of the collector's guide for Fallout 3 and Dead Space arrived perfectly, but my political science readings are in mail heaven (or hell) right now.
I'm sure Firefox 3 has some marvelous upgrades, but I cannot be bothered to reinstall my plug-ins, create a new profile, retype in every single password, and do a thousand other things that running FF3 instead of FF2 would force me to.
What logic the police have. Let me write a short play on what police conversation must be like in the office:
Officer John Smith: "If someone researches terrorism, that means that they MUST be a terrorist!"
Officer Jack White: "Brilliant thinking John, that must mean...that if someone researches professional baseball...that they MUST be a PRO-BASEBALL PLAYER!!"
Officer John Smith: "And...if someone researchers about geese...then....they must be a GOOSE!"
- - -
Seriously, this logic reminds me of the scene from Monty Python's Holy Grail where they determine that a woman is a witch because she's 'made of wood'. Go police! 1984!
I'm surprised at this statistic as I thought that it required a Machine > $1000 to run Windows Vista efficiently, which is what most PCs ship with currently.
I can't believe people are buying cheap machines to run the system hog Vista on.
Slashdot Mirror
The reason right out of the gate that ST:HD Remix separates itself from the pack this year is that it was a community wide effort between Capcom and the most loyal and devoted Street Fighter fans to produce a game that the community wanted above all else.
In addition to having new music and art the game is fully playable online using the excellent latency compensating GGPO, and is completely rebalanced, this game took a long time to develop because of that.
With your premise of a game being an update making it unqualified to be Game of the Year that disqualifies some pretty major titles from past years. Are you saying that a game like Starcraft: Broodwar shouldn't have been considered for Game of the Year when it came out because it was simply an expansion pack? On the surface it might look like they only added a couple of new units and threw in three new campaigns. But to the most hardcore player of Starcraft the new strategies and competitive depth introduced with new units and abilities (and maps) created a new opportunity for strategies and build orders and macro that only the most hardcore could ever appreciate.
Guspaz (556486): Don't get me wrong, SF2HD is an excellent product, giving the fans what they want and updating an old favourite.
But it's not just any fans. It's the HARDCORE following. The legion of people who travel to arcades and tournaments around the world. The people who keep arcade cabinets in their own houses. Capcom only consulted those fans for this game.
There are not many companies that are willing to listen to the most rabid fans. Just take one look at Nintendo's emphasis on producing softcore games that have an extremely casual appeal to them. Sure they make a lot of money because children play them, but for adults, the games fail to be intellectually satisfying.
Even NAMCO with Soul Calibur keeps shutting its hardcore fans out by, instead of balancing the game and structuring a sold online net code, they spend the money obtaining a license for a Darth Vader character. The game was dumbed down so that the Star Wars brand could help move copies. Money was spent not on balance but on a Star Wars license.
Would you want Unreal Tournament? Starcraft? Fallout 3? Metal Gear Solid? etc. toned down and dumbed down not just concerning content but concerning difficulty as well just so they could sell more copies to younger and casual fans?
There were a ton of really great original games out this year, and the vast majority of them are better than SF2HD simply because they're original.
I'm sorry but you contradict yourself excessively here. ST:HD Remix should be disqualified because it's not original? Because it's a remake? But nearly all of the games you listed above as contenders for Game of the Year are sequels and remakes of older versions...let's have a look at that list:
Smash Bros. Brawl
GTA4
MGS4
Burnout Paradise
Disgaea 3
Army of Two
Condemned 2
Quake Wars
R6 Vegas 2
Rock Band 2
UT3
Battlefield: Bad Company
Dragon Quest V
Soul Calibur IV
Fatal Frame 4
Saints Row 2
Fable II
Guitar Hero World Tour
Red Alert 3
Fallout 3
Yes, those games are highly original. Even Dead Space is just Resident Evil 4 in space with shinier guns...
I mean, if you want to say that an update of an old game is the best game of the year, I could probably just say "Chronotrigger DS" and end it there.
But that's where Squaresoft doesn't listen to the hardcore community of fans and produces something for the softcore and younger generation.
The fans who played Chrono Trigger now don't want Chrono Trigger DS, they want Chrono Trigger II and they want it on the PS3 or Wii, they want a true sequel for the current or next generation. Square instead took the nearly the same game and merely ported it over to a new system not out of demand at all (no one was pounding down the door saying "WE WANT CHRONO TRIGGE
Capcom really outdid the competition with this game. Taking an idea from a hardcore fan, David Sirlin (who produced Capcom Classics Collection and some other stuff for Capcom), to take Street Fighter 2 and update the game with 1080p graphics and new rebalanced moves was something the entire fighting game community wanted like crazy and no surprise the game has come out fantastically. This is easily a sleeper for best game of 2008 on any platform.
Capcom hired not just OCRemix to do the soundtrack, but they hired UDON Comics (guys who drew SF comics previously), and David Sirlin (a tournament level SF player) to oversee and rebalance the entire game, and they had fans play test the game constantly in local matches in California, and had a beta test for the 360 version to test the net code. And speaking of net code, Capcom consulted the creator of GGPO (a man who also help found the EVOLUTION Fighting Game tournaments) to smooth out the online component of ST:HD Remix. This was basically an all star effort of Street Fighter fans and Capcom to produce something that would appeal to the most rabid hardcore fighting game enthusiast.
Street Fighter came out in 1987 (SF2 in 1991)...and two decades later the brand is strong as ever because the hardcore fans kept the momentum alive all of these years. And Capcom recognized the overwhelming support from the hardcore faithful and geared the entire game (HD Remix) to the hardcore audience.
Put some major points on the board for Capcom this week, some other studios should be paying attention, in fact ALL studios should open their eyes up and start moving back to the hardcore fan.
No retailer would ever offer a full refund for an opened game. The only way to circumnavigate a full refund is of course to pirate a retail version of the game on a different platform. In my case, I will be keeping my PS3 version, collecting dust in its case, and then pirating the PC version to play.
And because the PS3 version has no DLC available I will without question be pirating the DLC for the PC unless Bethesda decides to violate the ridiculous cartel that is Microsoft and actually go multi-platform with add-on content.
And companies wonder why we don't pay for their games.
I pre-ordered a BRAND NEW copy of Fallout 3 for my PS3 (Survival Edition from Amazon) the day it first became available.
It arrived at my doorstep the same day that the first reviews started appearing, reviews like the one at IGN where they said that the PS3 version was riddled with bugs and glitches and made parts of the game unplayable...of course IGN is in the pocket of the game companies so the PS3 version was given a ridiculous 9.4 out of 10.
Really 9.4 out of 10 when the game has massive glitches, bugs, and freezes constantly? Many quests cannot be completed due to glitches including sometimes the final quest. 9.4 for that? No ending to the game? NO downloadble content? This is a 9.4?
So the 360/PC versions get a 9.6/10 meaning that all of these things: massive glitches, tons of bugs, terrible draw distance, no downloadable content whatsoever...........are all worth a combined score .2 out of 10.
I thought, "ok be optimistic, so I might encounter some glitches that's fine," but before I had even left vault 101 I had to HARD reboot my PS3 not once but three times as the game froze THREE times while I was taking the g.o.a.t. at school. Did Bethesda test the PS3 version? (Rhetorical question. Answer: no)
Now that the PS3 won't be getting down-loadable content I will be downloading a PC copy and playing that.
If I had known during my pre-order of Fallout 3 for the PS3 that the game would be nearly unplayable without encountering massive problems and that the game would have no ending to the story...and no DLC to resolve the story in the future...I would have opted to just avoid the game entirely.
I know some people are going to respond, "you should have gotten the PC version" but as a hardcore PS2 fan (Metal Gear, Final Fantasy, God of War), unless a game is exclusive to the PC (Starcraft II!), if it's multi-platform I usually go for the PS3 version (like I did with Dead Space).
IGN :
"Fallout 3 is a top notch shooter-RPG that fails to disappoint in any substantial way. There are minor problems with the game -- issues such as clipping, the occasional framerate chug, and some questionable animation (especially in third-person view) -- but nothing that takes away from the overarching enjoyment you should derive from even a few hours of gameplay."
This is from the PS3 review. Top notch? No. Better than average. Yes. Worth $60 on the PS3. No way.
I didn't know you could boot Vista on a PII 233mHz 64mb RAM PC...
Wow those plagiarists...what next are you going to tell me that the Holy Grail movie was based on ancient stories as well? Or Life of Brian? Are you telling me that Jesus wasn't an original character?
I received three packages from Amazon.com today and one of them was not properly sealed and it was heavily damaged. The box contained some books .....all of the books fell out of the box because there was only a single layer of thin tape holding the entire cardboard box together......so I got an empty box today from Amazon.com because they are cutting back on packaging materials. I guess this is what you get with "FREE SUPER SHIPPING SAVING" or whatever.
Thankfully my package consisting of the collector's guide for Fallout 3 and Dead Space arrived perfectly, but my political science readings are in mail heaven (or hell) right now.
Smash Brothers is not a fighting game. It's a beat 'em up. Virtua Fighter, Street Fighter, Tekken, Guilty Gear, CvS, etc. are fighting games.
I'm sure Firefox 3 has some marvelous upgrades, but I cannot be bothered to reinstall my plug-ins, create a new profile, retype in every single password, and do a thousand other things that running FF3 instead of FF2 would force me to.
What logic the police have. Let me write a short play on what police conversation must be like in the office: Officer John Smith: "If someone researches terrorism, that means that they MUST be a terrorist!" Officer Jack White: "Brilliant thinking John, that must mean...that if someone researches professional baseball...that they MUST be a PRO-BASEBALL PLAYER!!" Officer John Smith: "And...if someone researchers about geese...then....they must be a GOOSE!" - - - Seriously, this logic reminds me of the scene from Monty Python's Holy Grail where they determine that a woman is a witch because she's 'made of wood'. Go police! 1984!
I'm surprised at this statistic as I thought that it required a Machine > $1000 to run Windows Vista efficiently, which is what most PCs ship with currently. I can't believe people are buying cheap machines to run the system hog Vista on.