I'd pay $500 at the very least for a copy of Virtua Fighter 5R or a sequel to Chrono Trigger.
Starcraft, Unreal Tournament, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, Super Turbo, Virtua Fighter. These games and series I've gotten thousands upon thousands of hours playing single-player or with others either locally or online. The measly $20-$60 I paid for those games has been overly worth it if you consider how many hours I got worth of entertainment out of those. I might spend $15 on a movie (NYC prices) at the theater and never see it again. My copy of Final Fantasy X was $55 new the day it came out and I've played 500 hours beating the game multiple times and writing an extended FAQ for it.
But for shorter games, or multi-player games with little variety that get very boring quickly, the cost of paying full price for them is just simply not worth it. I'll use Dead Space as an example. I was sold on the hype of the game, and paid $60 in full for a console version of the game. After the first playthrough, through extremely exciting, I new I wouldn't return to play the game probably ever again. So for one playthrough was $60 worth it? Probably not. I could have rented it and then returned it after beating it in two or three days.
But for Virtua Fighter 5? I specifically purchased an X-box 360 and multiple arcade sticks for the game, grand total let's say $1,000 between XBL gold over the years, 360 and accessories, and the game and DLC. But was it worth it? For me absolutely. I play the game for hours upon hours every week. I have people over to my house, I've even flown to other countries to play the game against international players which brings the grand total to even more (yikes).
How about Starcraft II? There are some people (including myself) who have been waiting for Starcraft II for a decade. When Starcraft: Ghost was canceled, part of my soul died. But now with SCII right around the corner, I'll be building an adequate gaming rig to play the game. Let's say that with the monitor and speakers the total cost to play SCII is $1,500. Worth it? For me, absolutely without question. After playing SC:BW and WCIII:TFT for years I am fully confident that Blizzard will deliver a long lasting and timeless RTS for the community to play for years. Also I'm sure my rig will get loads of Diablo III in it as well.
Lastly I'd rather pay for game than have it for free but chalked full of advertisements. I don't want to see any advertisements in-game in a respectable series like Virtua Fighter or Starcarft.
My point is that if you get hundreds or thousands of hours out of game it's easily worth the entrance fee of $60 if not way more than that. If you play a game for a couple of hours and then it's over...probably needs to cost less at retail. I always found it annoying that a game designed to be played in under ten hours was the same retail price as something designed to have unlimited replay value or extensive multi-player.
I loved the plots of Grand Theft Auto IV and Final Fantasy X, and that you could do a myriad of side activities within the game world before completing the story mode (and in the case of GTAIV continue playing the game free roam) but ultimately as a narrative experience you are bound to the plot.
In Grand Theft Auto IV if you want to unlock the other islands etc. you must progress through the story, so the world is only open (from the start) so much. In Final Fantasy X you are limited very much where you can travel until you have progressed up to a significant point in the story where you are finally given the option of roaming the world at your own leisure.
Fallout III actually had a more correct approach to giving the player a true open world choice in that the entire landscape was available to be explored the moment you exile yourself from the vault. And every sidequest and other task is available to be completed as the player's own judgment and they can go in any direction and order. You can even choose your character's name, gender, race, and some facial features.
But what all three of these games have in common is that no matter how open the worlds are at any point, in order to complete the game, at least as the developers designed, is to conform to the character's pre-written closed world and isolated story.
In GTAIV, you cannot become a cop or a taxi driver, or a motorcycle racer, you must find the military men who betrayed you back home to find closure for your character. But the game, once you have beaten it, gives you the brilliant option of playing the conquered world completely freely including finishing the side tasks. Though to unlock this complete sandbox you've had to assume the scripted and not open-ended role of the main character. The story is GTAIV is excellent, but the focus and enticement of having a large sandbox to explore and fiddle with, is usually the driving force for people to complete the game.
In Final Fantasy X, once you beat the game, that's it, it goes to the final cut scenes and wraps up the story. The only way to replay it is to either start a new game, or to load an older save file. Of course this is the way the developers planned the game, you are meant to finish the game, there is a story and it is the main focus of the game despite you being in a sandbox world at one point the developers are pushing you to finish the story, the game. FFX had such a tragic ending and fans screamed so loudly and furiously for more story, and therefore more gameplay, that Square (who makes the FF games) created FFX-2, or the first true sequel to any FF game in history. So even though at some point the game was open-ended, once you are done doing every side-task, all that is left is the story. But completing the game 100% is no small task.
Fallout III, you get the entire world open from the beginning, you can lead a good karma life, a neutral karma life, or a bad karma life. But no matter how good, indifferent, or neutral you are, your world is always the same, the quest is always the same, The Waters Of Life. In Fallout III they give the character the choice of being whoever they want. In GTAIV you are Niko the insane immigrant seeking vengeance and retribution at all costs. In FFX you are Tidus and company ridding the world of the giant monster Sin. In Fallout III you can be whoever you want in terms of looks, and even karma, but no matter who you think you may be...you are forced into the Waters Of Life Quest.
Even if the Waters Of Life Quest can be ended in different ways, the developers force you to help your father in a task that has little emotional connection to you the main character. You have to join project purity. You could blow up Megaton, enslave children, kill the ghouls, enslave the replicant, and become the devil of the wasteland...but when daddy says he needs help with the water filter and fuse box running the generator guess who has to become a handy man taking time off from savagely raping and brutalizing the world. I could understand if
If MS takes Yahoo! over they succeed in their long term goal of a takeover.
If MS fails, like what happened here, there was still a short term gain for MS, as Yahoo! was 'forced' to spend $79 million on keeping MS at bay. Regardless of how people fell about Yahoo! overspending for their consultants, they still would have had to allocate some money that would have been used for other services or generating new content and ideas.
This means Yahoo! was forced to expend a significant amount of money and that they take a moderate hit in the media publicity wise as this brings up the news that Yahoo! faltered enough to have a takeover a possibility, and it shows that Yahoo! might have used erroneous amounts of funds warding off said takeover. Though perhaps any amount of money is worth it to keep MS from taking over your company.
Writer Dawn Kawamoto from CNet sums the situation up nicely:
For Yahoo, however, the true cost was much greater than just $79 million.
In the process, Yahoo founder and CEO Jerry Yang stepped down after enduring the brunt of shareholder anger and has since resumed his role as chief Yahoo. Sue Decker, who was Yahoo's president during the tumultuous year, lost out her bid to become the next CEO when Yahoo's board named former Autodesk chief Carol Bartz to oversee the troubled Internet company. And Yahoo saw an exodus of executives in June 2008.
Climate change hasn't affected bushfire occurrences significantly in any way. This is all speculation and from a very unscientific standpoint as far as I can tell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushfire#Significant_bushfires Notice where many of these fires occur...Australia. And the documented dates go back to 1851. Climate change has nothing to do with anything, a bushfire is longstanding and naturally occurring event, and has been observed that way for 150 years on record.
Where is the data that shows that fires have occurred more often and burn longer and stronger AND the reason so is climate change and not the fact that suburban sprawl introduces woodland areas to power lines, lit cigarettes as litter, and other human fire related causes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_wildfire There is the same issue with wildfires occurring in California. And an even bigger threat or cause of wildfires than global climate change is still lit cigarettes being discarded in woodland areas. More on that later.
* During Santa Ana conditions, fires can be easily ignited by nature, in the case of lightning, or by humans. Some are arson, while others can be sparked by machinery operated near dry brush, campfires or carelessly tossed cigarettes. Downed power lines also pose a fire hazard. Once the wildfires are whipped by the winds, they spread quickly and are extremely dangerous and difficult to fight.
* "Fire Season" officially begins in early summer and lasts through October, though officials say that as the state suffers through cyclical drought conditions, they consider the season to be almost year-round in Southern California.
In September 2002, a wildfire that scorched 247 acres on the Camp Pendleton, California base was started by a cigarette butt tossed by a passing motorist.
In January 2001, a motorist driving along Interstate 8 in San Diego County flicked a cigarette butt onto the center median, sparking a fire that burned more than 10,000 acres, destroyed 16 homes and charred 64 vehicles.
In Texas, people cause 95 percent of wildfires. The Texas Forest Service says residents should not engage in activities, such as throwing out lit cigarettes, welding and burning debris, that could lead to an accidental wildfire start.
So we are causing a vast amount of wildfires. In some places even 95 percent.
Maybe climate change plays a large role in bushfires, but I need way more evidence to convince me that it's not people being careless with litter, downed power lines, or household electrical fires, etc. causing the majority of these fires.
During LOST on ABC this week my cable cut out five times....in the first fifteen minutes of the show.
I instead just waited for the show to be over, then downloaded the HD scene release from one of those internet sets that let's you do that, instead of watching the choppy version from my digital cable box that I pay a lot for per month.
Time Warner customer service is terrible also. They had no idea what was wrong with my box. Replaced it. And the same thing happened this morning when I watching the news....so I just listened to news radio this morning instead of local TV news.
If Time Warner and these other companies expand into the online realm of audio video media entertainment are they going to carry the baggage and problems that they have on cable already? Are we going to have to pay for 1,000 internet channels when we only watch at most ten of them? Is the digital cable guide never going to be available? When will they start upping the subscription rates and not telling anyone? Will they force the user to purchase a CD from Time Warner with the software installed to watch the online videos so that they can charge an installation fee?
I pay for cable but I almost download everything I watch now besides live sports events, and even then with the reliability of my cable box, I've been turning to radio more often than ever.
Maybe people have other experiences with different cable and satellite TV providers, but Time Warner is tremendously horrible. And why do I keep Time Warner? They are the only cable and internet provider around me, for real. Ugh.
The one thing I still use my Nintendo Wii for is Resident Evil 4. I couldn't believe the difference the motion control scheme made in terms of offering such refreshing game play for a survival-horror style game. I had played RE4 on the PS2 and enjoyed it but the Wii version shames the previous platform releases overwhelmingly.
Literally pointing and shooting at the screen for Resident Evil 4 on the Wii has spoiled my expectations for what Resident Evil 5 was going to be on the PS3/360.
Even if they improve the control scheme (I've played the demo, hate the controls) it's not going to be as fluid and fun (at least in my opinion) as the Wii version of RE4.
Sony and MS need some better wireless guns and controllers for games like this. If fighting games get arcade sticks, racing games get steering wheels, where are the rail gun controllers?
They also suggest that improved Blu-ray technology, which allows much more storage, will pave the way for even bigger and better looking games.
I wasn't aware that we were hitting the 50Gb limit of today's BR-DL disks. To my knowledge, only one game has even come close (MGS4) and even then, it apparently only uses about 31Gb.
I think that the expanded capacity for Blu-Ray discs will hardly have an impact on how games are produced unless they are Blu-Ray disc, or Playstation 3 exclusive. And yes, the only game to come close to using an entire BD is Metal Gear Solid 4. And even then, size doesn't mean a good game, Chrono Trigger is only a few megabytes in a SNES cartridge and I play that game more often these new 10GB and up games. And tons of digitally distributed games are tiny in comparison to disc based games but they play just as well. And Metal Gear Solid had gigantic budget to get those 31GB on the disc, most AAA game companies are downsizing or lack the budget to make a 100GB+ game.
What expanded Blu-Ray Disc is really going to affect is movies and television shows. Imagine Lord of The Ring extended editions, all three movies with the special features in HD video and audio, and on one single Blu-Ray Disc? How about the Alien Quadrilogy? Star Wars episodes 1-6 on a single disc? All of the Star Trek movies? Pretty excellent potential.
But now imagine this, entire television shows on a single disc, you could purchase every season of LOST, every episode, on a single disc. Or The Sopranos, The Office, South Park, or even Anime shows on a single disc. Futurama entire series on a single disc? Please sign me up, immediately.
For people who collect a lot of DVDs for movies and television shows this is going to hopefully be a reality soon enough. And should movies and television shows start migrating to expanded Blu-Ray discs I might actually start using my PS3 for something other than Metal Gear Online or various Street Fighter games.
Astronaut: Moon, Mars and Beyond will be a 'first-person-exploration' game that will also include traditional role-playing game (RPG) elements for both single-player and team-based space exploration, but with a realistic twist.
By "traditional RPG elements" they must mean goblins and wizards and the most absurd J-Pop characters creatively possible...how they plan this with a realistic twist is beyond me.
Sounds to me like Final Fantasy in Space. Can't wait. Elder Scrolls Moon Landing perhaps?
Way to see our government dollars and manpower hard at work!!
How many times has the MPAA or RIAA been linked with hiring hackers to DOS attack torrent websites or upload releases that contain viruses or malformed software in them?
The hackers are only responding appropriately in this case.
The Swedish government put The Pirate Bay in court and TPB responded appropriately by hiring lawyers and civilly appearing for trial.
The MPAA and RIAA hacked and disrupted P2P networks and so hackers fought back using the same exact methods.
Is hacking the MPAA or RIAA good? Not at all. But they started this nonsense both in and out of court with lawsuits and hiring people to illegally hack and disrupt networks.
I commute long distances upstate and in NYC very often by car, here's some of the oddities I've encountered on the road:
- dozens of guys shaving with a portable electric razor while driving - people reading books when stopped at a red light...never heard of audio books you idiots? - people eating food...but with a plastic forks and knives out of containers at red lights - several cab drivers drinking beer while driving... - a guy swerving through traffic as his dog climbed under the pedals once...
But nothing tops the guy I saw who was typing on a laptop going at least 70mph on the thruway...he had the laptop resting on his lap and he would switch between looking at the road and his monitor every nanosecond. It looked like the head shaking effect from the film Jacob's Ladder. Those must have been some important.txt files to risk near death.
I watch the ABC show LOST fanatically on TV. I Had a psychology night class that ran late until 10:30 pm. Got home. Downloaded the latest episode of LOST from TPB. Watching it now. God I hope they win.
The New York Yankees are getting $1.312 billion from tax-free bonds for financing their new stadium this year. The New York Mets are getting a mere $636 million from tax-free bonds to finance their new stadium this year as well. That's only $2 billion in tax-free bonds for professional baseball teams that New York City has given out this year.
Overall, this is costing New York taxpayers alone, $1.2 billion, which includes lost revenue and infrastructure improvements (such as improving public transportation).
Everyone is complaining that New York State taxes everything (an 18% soda tax was proposed by our governor recently) but we know that the government loves giving major giant corporations like the Yankees and Mets tons of tax-free money. - - - - Anyways, regarding online pornography, the industry brought in $2.84 billion in 2006. The cable, pay-per-view and phone sex industries brought in $2.19 billion that year. The governor merely looked at data of what business made good money (this also applies to all digital music and movie downloads) and said "how can we take some of their money for ourselves?" to his advisers. He did the same thing for online retailers like Amazon and NewEgg and said "New York State wants their money".
And the reason that some of the government heads are objecting to taxing porno...
"By taxing it you're legitimizing it," said Michael Long, chairman of New York's Conservative Party. "You're sending a message to the children, you're sending a message to the teenagers, if you're taxing it -- how can it be wrong? I don't know how you can sink much deeper."
So by that logic, you shouldn't tax fatty foods, soda, beer, or cigarettes as those things are actually physically harmful but because they've been taxed, teenagers think they are legitimate and not harmful. I know when I was young, the moment I heard that they taxed cigarettes and they were legitimate (whatever the hell that means) I said "I have got to smoke me some".
And yes, pornography is extremely harmful to all of our teenagers, my eye exams have gotten worse and worse since I first discovered adults films and other activities.
Half of this post is serious, half is in sarcasm. Either way I haven't liked hearing the words 'New York' and 'tax' within fifteen sentences of each other for a long time. Go Mets (and tax free this season!).
The bulk of the article compares the iPod with Satellite Radio and says they're competing for the same market. Hmmm. Maybe so, but how many people have iPod docks in their car?
You don't need an I-Pod dock in your car. Any MP3 player and a small FM transmitter with a stereo headphone jack can play your MP3 player over the air into your car's radio. There are also devices to convert stereo headphone out from an MP3 or CD player into a cassette tape that can be played in a car's cassette player. And even then, some cars have a stereo line in, you can plug any device such as an MP3 player into the stereo jack in your car's radio. And even then, a stand alone CD or tape functions just as well as an MP3 player in the car for most people.
Approximately 25% of Americans own portable standalone MP3 players, 76% of households in the U.S. own a portable electronic device many of which are capable of playing music (such as a PSP, phone, blackberry, etc.), 99% of American households have televisions in them, Americans own more than 1 billion radios with free AM/FM broadcasts to receive, Americans also play tons of video and computer games, Americans go to the movies, and the form of entertainment that Americans prefer most according to most recent studies...reading.
Sirius-XM has to compete with EVERYTHING, not just other forms of audio broadcasts like internet radio or over the air AM/FM radio. Every activity you do other than listen to Sirius-XM is in direct competition with Sirius-XM, the less you find yourself using the service, the less likely you are to renew the service, and that's if you get it in the first place.
If you have a short commute to work, is paying for a monthly radio fee worth it? Probably not if you only listen to a few minutes of radio. And if your commute is long, is satellite radio better than free radio? The talk shows have commercials on both, so unless you really want to listen to a Sirius-XM exclusive broadcaster, the answer is no again. But what about music? Sirius-XM has commercial free (for the most part) music, AM-FM does not. But with CDs and I-PODs (through car speakers) you can play your own music and audio books or whatever commercial free and you control the entire play list.
And once you leave your car, Sirius-XM offers almost nothing that is worth paying a monthly fee for, unless you crave their exclusive talk radio content like Howard Stern. All of the sports game radio broadcasts can be gotten with a superior service (like MLB.TV for professional baseball) or for free over AM-FM. And out of your car you've got the other alternatives, TV, movies, video games, reading, that studies show most Americans prefer over listening to any form of radio whether it's AM-FM or satellite.
Sirius-XM also spent enormous amounts of money securing exclusive contracts with radio businesses and entities. Howard Stern cost Sirius over $500 million ALONE and they gave him over $100 million in stocks that is now worth next to nothing. Factor in the costs of hiring Oprah, Martha Stewart, Jamie Foxx, the NFL, MLB, NASCAR, etc. and you have another major reason why the business is going under. Even more ironic was that Sirius and XM when they were competing against each other spent so money to OUTBID each other for these exclusives and now that they are MERGED TOGETHER they are stuck with each others' MASSIVE DEBT from taking on these insanely burdening contracts and the entire reason that they spent so much money in the first place is not a factor any longer. Sirius spent $500 million to get Howard Stern instead of XM (who offered significantly less according to Stern) but now Sirius-XM is the same company.
Another reason that Sirius-XM is in the tank is because car sales are down. Many car dealerships had deals with either Sirius or XM (and now with the new merged company Sirius-XM) to include a satellite radio with a new car with two or three free months subscription. The idea was that people would get used to having the satellite radio in their vehicle and they would continue to subscribe. But auto sales are down and this model of placing radio units in news cars has gone away for the most part leaving another dead end for Sirius.
With the economy going sour continually, how many extra subscribers does Sirius think it's going to get? Mel Karmazin, CEO of Sirius, keeps lowering projections of new subscribers every month. And the number of users canceling their subscriptions must also be getting higher considering the economy as well.
Fact is that Sirius has $3.5 billion in debt. If they declare bankruptcy is allows them to void their expensive c
So the armor emits an electromagnetic signal that can detect, instantly, the movement of a bullet, can calculate the trajectory of said bullet, and somehow ensure that the user is warned enough to move out of the way of the bullet. In the example that they give, the bullet is traveling at 625 meters per second, the size of a bullet coming from a typical sniper rifle is very small. So this armor can detect, say the size of a small marble, from 2500 meters away?
Assuming that this armor can perfect and accurately detect incoming small arms projectiles and warn the user in time, how can the armor know the ground terrain that the wearer has to physically negotiate? Say the person is standing in two feet of snow, or in sand in the desert, perhaps the person is in two feet of water, or they are walking down stairs? The armor requires the user to be an acrobat from what I can tell. And no matter what, unless the armor can fully mobilize the wearer and move them automatically, this system still leaves room for grave human error, meaning it's hardly reliable.
And won't people figure out a way to beat the armor, or beat the system. Imagine a sniper rifle that fires a decoy bullet, that knocks the target down (as he evades the first bullet) and puts the armor wearer in a prone position on the ground, making him or her easy to target. Or perhaps a decoy bullet is shot from one barrel and the real bullet follows in a pre-calculated trajectory requiring no manual aiming for the sniper. Perhaps a bullet can be made undetectable to the electromagnetic pulse that the armor gives off. Maybe the armor can be jammed? You fire a bullet with an electromagnetic pulse destabilizer and then pick off your target when the armor fails.
I should mention that I live like three or four miles from IBM's headquarters in the Hudson Valley, so I hope they let my friends who work there bring in their buddies (or just me) for some live fire demonstrations where we can snipe at blowup dolls wearing million dollar armor with some high tech rifles.
...but in combat situations in Half-Life 2, Fallout 3, or Metal Gear Solid 4......it is.
The mood of Half-Life 2 is a doom and gloom apocalyptic atmosphere where soldiers and aliens are enslaving mankind. In Fallout 3 the world is a desert of death and nuclear radiation, violence, chaos, it's part of the atmosphere, part of the immersion. In Metal Gear Solid 4 you are dropped off in the middle of a bloody war between private soldiers for hire and nationalists guerrillas, violence, gunfire, explosions, nanobots and killbots (with preset kill limits), are part of the world that is the turmoil enveloped earth.
If was playing any of those games and there was no violence, no blood, no swearing, no aggression of any kind, I would probably not even play the games in the first place. They are rated M, they are adult games, made by adults for adults. No need to strip them down and make them for children.
Are they honestly trying to say that something like Grand Theft Auto would be fun without in game crime, violence, or swearing? Maybe it would be...but that's not the point of GTA. It aims to be violent to create an atmosphere of crime. Just like crime movies and TV shows, Training Day, The Sopranos, also portray violence. It's realistic within the context of portraying criminal behavior with a reasonable creative license.
Why not conduct a study to say that all R-Rated movies are unnecessary? Or that violent TV shows should be toned down to exclude violence? Surely Saving Private Ryan (Rated R for graphic violence) and Band of Brothers (rated TV-MA for the same) could have been just as effective as cinema with a complete lack of violence and cursing. Is violence necessary in those movies? No. It is necessary to make the movies compelling and also historically accurate? Yes.
"A common belief held by many gamers and many in the video game industry -- that violence is what makes a game fun -- is strongly contradicted by these studies," comments Craig Anderson, a psychologist who directs the Center for the Study of Violence at Iowa State University in Ames.
What empirical data is he possibly referring to? I have yet to see the survey where significance testing was passed that conclusively shows that 'many' gamers think violence is solely what makes games fun.
This is just another barely scientific study where the researcher wants to get water cooler points with his colleagues and say "hey I got published about video-game violence!" and while in the short term this research might turn a few heads, another book like Grand Theft Childhood will put this study in the negative in the history books.
Virtua Fighter 5, Virtua Tennis 3, and Outrun 2006
How can you claim these are "excellent"? They're trash! Maybe they would have been acceptable 6 or 7 years ago, but not to today's gamer.
Virtua Fighter 5 is the sequel to Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution, generally considered to be the greatest fighting game of all time and one of the greatest games in the history of gaming.
Virtua Fighter was the first 3D fighter and is a legendary franchise. Even now years and sequels later, Virtua Fighter 5: Online for the X360 has gotten excellent reviews and it's arcade only sequel, Virtua Fighter 5R (only in Japan) has been in the top five most played arcade games since it was released in Japanese arcades and has gotten tremendous acclaim. The Virtua Fighter series always sets the standard for fighting games each generation and this one was no exception.
Virtua Fighter 4 and Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution have a 94 and 93 respective scores on MetaCritic. Virtua Fighter 5 has a score of 85 on the PS3 and 89 on the 360 according to Metacritic.
So you are comparing golf to all other sports and saying that all games are like golf? Wrong.
How about some games are like football, rugby, baseball, and soccer in the world of sports, games like Starcraft, Virtua Fighter, Half Life, Unreal Tournament, in the world of games. What football and soccer (those are different sports in America) have in terms of athleticism, Starcraft and Virtua Fighter have in terms of artistic design.
Then there are games like golf, and bowling, and darts or whatever in the world of sports, and there are the comparable games in the world of gaming, that aren't created with an ounce of care of any level of production. What gold and bowling lack in terms of athleticism, many games lack in terms of artistic design.
Football, baseball, soccer; athletic and tough sports. Golf, darts; easy and barely considered sports.
Starcraft, Virtua Fighter, Metal Gear Solid; works of art in gaming. Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, Dragon Booster, Hooters Road Trip; not art, hell barely considered games.
Slashdot Mirror
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation
The safer people think they are the more carelessly they will drive.
Unreal Tournament III is getting a huge and free expansion pack this month.
The Titan Pack, with some new upgrades, 16 new maps, and a new game type.
I'd pay $500 at the very least for a copy of Virtua Fighter 5R or a sequel to Chrono Trigger.
Starcraft, Unreal Tournament, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, Super Turbo, Virtua Fighter. These games and series I've gotten thousands upon thousands of hours playing single-player or with others either locally or online. The measly $20-$60 I paid for those games has been overly worth it if you consider how many hours I got worth of entertainment out of those. I might spend $15 on a movie (NYC prices) at the theater and never see it again. My copy of Final Fantasy X was $55 new the day it came out and I've played 500 hours beating the game multiple times and writing an extended FAQ for it.
But for shorter games, or multi-player games with little variety that get very boring quickly, the cost of paying full price for them is just simply not worth it. I'll use Dead Space as an example. I was sold on the hype of the game, and paid $60 in full for a console version of the game. After the first playthrough, through extremely exciting, I new I wouldn't return to play the game probably ever again. So for one playthrough was $60 worth it? Probably not. I could have rented it and then returned it after beating it in two or three days.
But for Virtua Fighter 5? I specifically purchased an X-box 360 and multiple arcade sticks for the game, grand total let's say $1,000 between XBL gold over the years, 360 and accessories, and the game and DLC. But was it worth it? For me absolutely. I play the game for hours upon hours every week. I have people over to my house, I've even flown to other countries to play the game against international players which brings the grand total to even more (yikes).
How about Starcraft II? There are some people (including myself) who have been waiting for Starcraft II for a decade. When Starcraft: Ghost was canceled, part of my soul died. But now with SCII right around the corner, I'll be building an adequate gaming rig to play the game. Let's say that with the monitor and speakers the total cost to play SCII is $1,500. Worth it? For me, absolutely without question. After playing SC:BW and WCIII:TFT for years I am fully confident that Blizzard will deliver a long lasting and timeless RTS for the community to play for years. Also I'm sure my rig will get loads of Diablo III in it as well.
Lastly I'd rather pay for game than have it for free but chalked full of advertisements. I don't want to see any advertisements in-game in a respectable series like Virtua Fighter or Starcarft.
My point is that if you get hundreds or thousands of hours out of game it's easily worth the entrance fee of $60 if not way more than that. If you play a game for a couple of hours and then it's over...probably needs to cost less at retail. I always found it annoying that a game designed to be played in under ten hours was the same retail price as something designed to have unlimited replay value or extensive multi-player.
If only they had aimed for their head...
Movies have star power. The general public doesn't care who made the game.
Whoah whoah whoah...I think we all remember when John Romero was going to "make us his bitch!" with Daikatana.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana#Controversy
Suck It Down /.
I loved the plots of Grand Theft Auto IV and Final Fantasy X, and that you could do a myriad of side activities within the game world before completing the story mode (and in the case of GTAIV continue playing the game free roam) but ultimately as a narrative experience you are bound to the plot.
In Grand Theft Auto IV if you want to unlock the other islands etc. you must progress through the story, so the world is only open (from the start) so much. In Final Fantasy X you are limited very much where you can travel until you have progressed up to a significant point in the story where you are finally given the option of roaming the world at your own leisure.
Fallout III actually had a more correct approach to giving the player a true open world choice in that the entire landscape was available to be explored the moment you exile yourself from the vault. And every sidequest and other task is available to be completed as the player's own judgment and they can go in any direction and order. You can even choose your character's name, gender, race, and some facial features.
But what all three of these games have in common is that no matter how open the worlds are at any point, in order to complete the game, at least as the developers designed, is to conform to the character's pre-written closed world and isolated story.
In GTAIV, you cannot become a cop or a taxi driver, or a motorcycle racer, you must find the military men who betrayed you back home to find closure for your character. But the game, once you have beaten it, gives you the brilliant option of playing the conquered world completely freely including finishing the side tasks. Though to unlock this complete sandbox you've had to assume the scripted and not open-ended role of the main character. The story is GTAIV is excellent, but the focus and enticement of having a large sandbox to explore and fiddle with, is usually the driving force for people to complete the game.
In Final Fantasy X, once you beat the game, that's it, it goes to the final cut scenes and wraps up the story. The only way to replay it is to either start a new game, or to load an older save file. Of course this is the way the developers planned the game, you are meant to finish the game, there is a story and it is the main focus of the game despite you being in a sandbox world at one point the developers are pushing you to finish the story, the game. FFX had such a tragic ending and fans screamed so loudly and furiously for more story, and therefore more gameplay, that Square (who makes the FF games) created FFX-2, or the first true sequel to any FF game in history. So even though at some point the game was open-ended, once you are done doing every side-task, all that is left is the story. But completing the game 100% is no small task.
Fallout III, you get the entire world open from the beginning, you can lead a good karma life, a neutral karma life, or a bad karma life. But no matter how good, indifferent, or neutral you are, your world is always the same, the quest is always the same, The Waters Of Life. In Fallout III they give the character the choice of being whoever they want. In GTAIV you are Niko the insane immigrant seeking vengeance and retribution at all costs. In FFX you are Tidus and company ridding the world of the giant monster Sin. In Fallout III you can be whoever you want in terms of looks, and even karma, but no matter who you think you may be...you are forced into the Waters Of Life Quest.
Even if the Waters Of Life Quest can be ended in different ways, the developers force you to help your father in a task that has little emotional connection to you the main character. You have to join project purity. You could blow up Megaton, enslave children, kill the ghouls, enslave the replicant, and become the devil of the wasteland...but when daddy says he needs help with the water filter and fuse box running the generator guess who has to become a handy man taking time off from savagely raping and brutalizing the world. I could understand if
If MS takes Yahoo! over they succeed in their long term goal of a takeover.
If MS fails, like what happened here, there was still a short term gain for MS, as Yahoo! was 'forced' to spend $79 million on keeping MS at bay. Regardless of how people fell about Yahoo! overspending for their consultants, they still would have had to allocate some money that would have been used for other services or generating new content and ideas.
This means Yahoo! was forced to expend a significant amount of money and that they take a moderate hit in the media publicity wise as this brings up the news that Yahoo! faltered enough to have a takeover a possibility, and it shows that Yahoo! might have used erroneous amounts of funds warding off said takeover. Though perhaps any amount of money is worth it to keep MS from taking over your company.
Writer Dawn Kawamoto from CNet sums the situation up nicely:
For Yahoo, however, the true cost was much greater than just $79 million.
In the process, Yahoo founder and CEO Jerry Yang stepped down after enduring the brunt of shareholder anger and has since resumed his role as chief Yahoo. Sue Decker, who was Yahoo's president during the tumultuous year, lost out her bid to become the next CEO when Yahoo's board named former Autodesk chief Carol Bartz to oversee the troubled Internet company. And Yahoo saw an exodus of executives in June 2008.
Climate change hasn't affected bushfire occurrences significantly in any way. This is all speculation and from a very unscientific standpoint as far as I can tell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushfire#Significant_bushfires
Notice where many of these fires occur...Australia. And the documented dates go back to 1851. Climate change has nothing to do with anything, a bushfire is longstanding and naturally occurring event, and has been observed that way for 150 years on record.
Where is the data that shows that fires have occurred more often and burn longer and stronger AND the reason so is climate change and not the fact that suburban sprawl introduces woodland areas to power lines, lit cigarettes as litter, and other human fire related causes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_wildfire
There is the same issue with wildfires occurring in California. And an even bigger threat or cause of wildfires than global climate change is still lit cigarettes being discarded in woodland areas. More on that later.
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2327145120071023
Here's a short article from Reuters discussing some basic wildfire facts in California.
* During Santa Ana conditions, fires can be easily ignited by nature, in the case of lightning, or by humans. Some are arson, while others can be sparked by machinery operated near dry brush, campfires or carelessly tossed cigarettes. Downed power lines also pose a fire hazard. Once the wildfires are whipped by the winds, they spread quickly and are extremely dangerous and difficult to fight.
* "Fire Season" officially begins in early summer and lasts through October, though officials say that as the state suffers through cyclical drought conditions, they consider the season to be almost year-round in Southern California.
http://ca.prweb.com/releases/20061010/6/prweb393120.htm
In September 2002, a wildfire that scorched 247 acres on the Camp Pendleton, California base was started by a cigarette butt tossed by a passing motorist.
In January 2001, a motorist driving along Interstate 8 in San Diego County flicked a cigarette butt onto the center median, sparking a fire that burned more than 10,000 acres, destroyed 16 homes and charred 64 vehicles.
http://www.kbtx.com/home/headlines/40452047.html
In Texas, people cause 95 percent of wildfires. The Texas Forest Service says residents should not engage in activities, such as throwing out lit cigarettes, welding and burning debris, that could lead to an accidental wildfire start.
So we are causing a vast amount of wildfires. In some places even 95 percent.
Maybe climate change plays a large role in bushfires, but I need way more evidence to convince me that it's not people being careless with litter, downed power lines, or household electrical fires, etc. causing the majority of these fires.
During LOST on ABC this week my cable cut out five times....in the first fifteen minutes of the show.
I instead just waited for the show to be over, then downloaded the HD scene release from one of those internet sets that let's you do that, instead of watching the choppy version from my digital cable box that I pay a lot for per month.
Time Warner customer service is terrible also. They had no idea what was wrong with my box. Replaced it. And the same thing happened this morning when I watching the news....so I just listened to news radio this morning instead of local TV news.
If Time Warner and these other companies expand into the online realm of audio video media entertainment are they going to carry the baggage and problems that they have on cable already? Are we going to have to pay for 1,000 internet channels when we only watch at most ten of them? Is the digital cable guide never going to be available? When will they start upping the subscription rates and not telling anyone? Will they force the user to purchase a CD from Time Warner with the software installed to watch the online videos so that they can charge an installation fee?
I pay for cable but I almost download everything I watch now besides live sports events, and even then with the reliability of my cable box, I've been turning to radio more often than ever.
Maybe people have other experiences with different cable and satellite TV providers, but Time Warner is tremendously horrible. And why do I keep Time Warner? They are the only cable and internet provider around me, for real. Ugh.
The one thing I still use my Nintendo Wii for is Resident Evil 4. I couldn't believe the difference the motion control scheme made in terms of offering such refreshing game play for a survival-horror style game. I had played RE4 on the PS2 and enjoyed it but the Wii version shames the previous platform releases overwhelmingly.
Literally pointing and shooting at the screen for Resident Evil 4 on the Wii has spoiled my expectations for what Resident Evil 5 was going to be on the PS3/360.
Even if they improve the control scheme (I've played the demo, hate the controls) it's not going to be as fluid and fun (at least in my opinion) as the Wii version of RE4.
Sony and MS need some better wireless guns and controllers for games like this. If fighting games get arcade sticks, racing games get steering wheels, where are the rail gun controllers?
http://games.kikizo.com/features/50-hottest-things-in-2009-gaming-p1.asp
The 50 Hottest Things in Gaming in 2009
Here's another list, much more expanded, in case you don't like the watered down version IGN is offering.
They also suggest that improved Blu-ray technology, which allows much more storage, will pave the way for even bigger and better looking games.
I wasn't aware that we were hitting the 50Gb limit of today's BR-DL disks. To my knowledge, only one game has even come close (MGS4) and even then, it apparently only uses about 31Gb.
I think that the expanded capacity for Blu-Ray discs will hardly have an impact on how games are produced unless they are Blu-Ray disc, or Playstation 3 exclusive. And yes, the only game to come close to using an entire BD is Metal Gear Solid 4. And even then, size doesn't mean a good game, Chrono Trigger is only a few megabytes in a SNES cartridge and I play that game more often these new 10GB and up games. And tons of digitally distributed games are tiny in comparison to disc based games but they play just as well. And Metal Gear Solid had gigantic budget to get those 31GB on the disc, most AAA game companies are downsizing or lack the budget to make a 100GB+ game.
What expanded Blu-Ray Disc is really going to affect is movies and television shows. Imagine Lord of The Ring extended editions, all three movies with the special features in HD video and audio, and on one single Blu-Ray Disc? How about the Alien Quadrilogy? Star Wars episodes 1-6 on a single disc? All of the Star Trek movies? Pretty excellent potential.
But now imagine this, entire television shows on a single disc, you could purchase every season of LOST, every episode, on a single disc. Or The Sopranos, The Office, South Park, or even Anime shows on a single disc. Futurama entire series on a single disc? Please sign me up, immediately.
For people who collect a lot of DVDs for movies and television shows this is going to hopefully be a reality soon enough. And should movies and television shows start migrating to expanded Blu-Ray discs I might actually start using my PS3 for something other than Metal Gear Online or various Street Fighter games.
Astronaut: Moon, Mars and Beyond will be a 'first-person-exploration' game that will also include traditional role-playing game (RPG) elements for both single-player and team-based space exploration, but with a realistic twist.
By "traditional RPG elements" they must mean goblins and wizards and the most absurd J-Pop characters creatively possible...how they plan this with a realistic twist is beyond me.
Sounds to me like Final Fantasy in Space. Can't wait. Elder Scrolls Moon Landing perhaps?
Way to see our government dollars and manpower hard at work!!
Grand Theft Auto III, Doom, Mortal Kombat II, Resident Evil 4, Super Mario Galaxy, Pong....let's show these uptight bastards!!
How many times has the MPAA or RIAA been linked with hiring hackers to DOS attack torrent websites or upload releases that contain viruses or malformed software in them?
RIAA hired hackers to infect P2P users and websites
http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2003/01/15/riaa-denounces-claim-it-hired-hackers-to-attack-p2p-systems
TorrentSpy says MPAA paid man $15,000 to hack and disrupt TorrentSpy's network
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/7583.cfm
The hackers are only responding appropriately in this case.
The Swedish government put The Pirate Bay in court and TPB responded appropriately by hiring lawyers and civilly appearing for trial.
The MPAA and RIAA hacked and disrupted P2P networks and so hackers fought back using the same exact methods.
Is hacking the MPAA or RIAA good? Not at all. But they started this nonsense both in and out of court with lawsuits and hiring people to illegally hack and disrupt networks.
I commute long distances upstate and in NYC very often by car, here's some of the oddities I've encountered on the road:
- dozens of guys shaving with a portable electric razor while driving
- people reading books when stopped at a red light...never heard of audio books you idiots?
- people eating food...but with a plastic forks and knives out of containers at red lights
- several cab drivers drinking beer while driving...
- a guy swerving through traffic as his dog climbed under the pedals once...
But nothing tops the guy I saw who was typing on a laptop going at least 70mph on the thruway...he had the laptop resting on his lap and he would switch between looking at the road and his monitor every nanosecond. It looked like the head shaking effect from the film Jacob's Ladder. Those must have been some important .txt files to risk near death.
I watch the ABC show LOST fanatically on TV. I Had a psychology night class that ran late until 10:30 pm. Got home. Downloaded the latest episode of LOST from TPB. Watching it now. God I hope they win.
The New York Yankees are getting $1.312 billion from tax-free bonds for financing their new stadium this year. The New York Mets are getting a mere $636 million from tax-free bonds to finance their new stadium this year as well. That's only $2 billion in tax-free bonds for professional baseball teams that New York City has given out this year.
Overall, this is costing New York taxpayers alone, $1.2 billion, which includes lost revenue and infrastructure improvements (such as improving public transportation).
Everyone is complaining that New York State taxes everything (an 18% soda tax was proposed by our governor recently) but we know that the government loves giving major giant corporations like the Yankees and Mets tons of tax-free money.
- - - -
Anyways, regarding online pornography, the industry brought in $2.84 billion in 2006. The cable, pay-per-view and phone sex industries brought in $2.19 billion that year. The governor merely looked at data of what business made good money (this also applies to all digital music and movie downloads) and said "how can we take some of their money for ourselves?" to his advisers. He did the same thing for online retailers like Amazon and NewEgg and said "New York State wants their money".
And the reason that some of the government heads are objecting to taxing porno...
"By taxing it you're legitimizing it," said Michael Long, chairman of New York's Conservative Party. "You're sending a message to the children, you're sending a message to the teenagers, if you're taxing it -- how can it be wrong? I don't know how you can sink much deeper."
So by that logic, you shouldn't tax fatty foods, soda, beer, or cigarettes as those things are actually physically harmful but because they've been taxed, teenagers think they are legitimate and not harmful. I know when I was young, the moment I heard that they taxed cigarettes and they were legitimate (whatever the hell that means) I said "I have got to smoke me some".
And yes, pornography is extremely harmful to all of our teenagers, my eye exams have gotten worse and worse since I first discovered adults films and other activities.
Half of this post is serious, half is in sarcasm. Either way I haven't liked hearing the words 'New York' and 'tax' within fifteen sentences of each other for a long time. Go Mets (and tax free this season!).
The bulk of the article compares the iPod with Satellite Radio and says they're competing for the same market. Hmmm. Maybe so, but how many people have iPod docks in their car?
You don't need an I-Pod dock in your car. Any MP3 player and a small FM transmitter with a stereo headphone jack can play your MP3 player over the air into your car's radio. There are also devices to convert stereo headphone out from an MP3 or CD player into a cassette tape that can be played in a car's cassette player. And even then, some cars have a stereo line in, you can plug any device such as an MP3 player into the stereo jack in your car's radio. And even then, a stand alone CD or tape functions just as well as an MP3 player in the car for most people.
Approximately 25% of Americans own portable standalone MP3 players, 76% of households in the U.S. own a portable electronic device many of which are capable of playing music (such as a PSP, phone, blackberry, etc.), 99% of American households have televisions in them, Americans own more than 1 billion radios with free AM/FM broadcasts to receive, Americans also play tons of video and computer games, Americans go to the movies, and the form of entertainment that Americans prefer most according to most recent studies...reading.
Sirius-XM has to compete with EVERYTHING, not just other forms of audio broadcasts like internet radio or over the air AM/FM radio. Every activity you do other than listen to Sirius-XM is in direct competition with Sirius-XM, the less you find yourself using the service, the less likely you are to renew the service, and that's if you get it in the first place.
If you have a short commute to work, is paying for a monthly radio fee worth it? Probably not if you only listen to a few minutes of radio. And if your commute is long, is satellite radio better than free radio? The talk shows have commercials on both, so unless you really want to listen to a Sirius-XM exclusive broadcaster, the answer is no again. But what about music? Sirius-XM has commercial free (for the most part) music, AM-FM does not. But with CDs and I-PODs (through car speakers) you can play your own music and audio books or whatever commercial free and you control the entire play list.
And once you leave your car, Sirius-XM offers almost nothing that is worth paying a monthly fee for, unless you crave their exclusive talk radio content like Howard Stern. All of the sports game radio broadcasts can be gotten with a superior service (like MLB.TV for professional baseball) or for free over AM-FM. And out of your car you've got the other alternatives, TV, movies, video games, reading, that studies show most Americans prefer over listening to any form of radio whether it's AM-FM or satellite.
Sirius-XM also spent enormous amounts of money securing exclusive contracts with radio businesses and entities. Howard Stern cost Sirius over $500 million ALONE and they gave him over $100 million in stocks that is now worth next to nothing. Factor in the costs of hiring Oprah, Martha Stewart, Jamie Foxx, the NFL, MLB, NASCAR, etc. and you have another major reason why the business is going under. Even more ironic was that Sirius and XM when they were competing against each other spent so money to OUTBID each other for these exclusives and now that they are MERGED TOGETHER they are stuck with each others' MASSIVE DEBT from taking on these insanely burdening contracts and the entire reason that they spent so much money in the first place is not a factor any longer. Sirius spent $500 million to get Howard Stern instead of XM (who offered significantly less according to Stern) but now Sirius-XM is the same company.
Another reason that Sirius-XM is in the tank is because car sales are down. Many car dealerships had deals with either Sirius or XM (and now with the new merged company Sirius-XM) to include a satellite radio with a new car with two or three free months subscription. The idea was that people would get used to having the satellite radio in their vehicle and they would continue to subscribe. But auto sales are down and this model of placing radio units in news cars has gone away for the most part leaving another dead end for Sirius.
With the economy going sour continually, how many extra subscribers does Sirius think it's going to get? Mel Karmazin, CEO of Sirius, keeps lowering projections of new subscribers every month. And the number of users canceling their subscriptions must also be getting higher considering the economy as well.
Fact is that Sirius has $3.5 billion in debt. If they declare bankruptcy is allows them to void their expensive c
http://www.salon.com/tech/giga_om/online_video/2009/02/15/the_definitive_primer_to_the_pirate_bay_trial/index.html?source=rss&aim=/tech/giga_om/online_video
Janko Roettgers for Salon.com wrote an excellent summary of previous events and a preview of what to expect regarding the trial of the Pirate Bay. Should bring anyone up to speed on the trial.
So the armor emits an electromagnetic signal that can detect, instantly, the movement of a bullet, can calculate the trajectory of said bullet, and somehow ensure that the user is warned enough to move out of the way of the bullet. In the example that they give, the bullet is traveling at 625 meters per second, the size of a bullet coming from a typical sniper rifle is very small. So this armor can detect, say the size of a small marble, from 2500 meters away?
Assuming that this armor can perfect and accurately detect incoming small arms projectiles and warn the user in time, how can the armor know the ground terrain that the wearer has to physically negotiate? Say the person is standing in two feet of snow, or in sand in the desert, perhaps the person is in two feet of water, or they are walking down stairs? The armor requires the user to be an acrobat from what I can tell. And no matter what, unless the armor can fully mobilize the wearer and move them automatically, this system still leaves room for grave human error, meaning it's hardly reliable.
And won't people figure out a way to beat the armor, or beat the system. Imagine a sniper rifle that fires a decoy bullet, that knocks the target down (as he evades the first bullet) and puts the armor wearer in a prone position on the ground, making him or her easy to target. Or perhaps a decoy bullet is shot from one barrel and the real bullet follows in a pre-calculated trajectory requiring no manual aiming for the sniper. Perhaps a bullet can be made undetectable to the electromagnetic pulse that the armor gives off. Maybe the armor can be jammed? You fire a bullet with an electromagnetic pulse destabilizer and then pick off your target when the armor fails.
I should mention that I live like three or four miles from IBM's headquarters in the Hudson Valley, so I hope they let my friends who work there bring in their buddies (or just me) for some live fire demonstrations where we can snipe at blowup dolls wearing million dollar armor with some high tech rifles.
...but in combat situations in Half-Life 2, Fallout 3, or Metal Gear Solid 4......it is.
The mood of Half-Life 2 is a doom and gloom apocalyptic atmosphere where soldiers and aliens are enslaving mankind. In Fallout 3 the world is a desert of death and nuclear radiation, violence, chaos, it's part of the atmosphere, part of the immersion. In Metal Gear Solid 4 you are dropped off in the middle of a bloody war between private soldiers for hire and nationalists guerrillas, violence, gunfire, explosions, nanobots and killbots (with preset kill limits), are part of the world that is the turmoil enveloped earth.
If was playing any of those games and there was no violence, no blood, no swearing, no aggression of any kind, I would probably not even play the games in the first place. They are rated M, they are adult games, made by adults for adults. No need to strip them down and make them for children.
Are they honestly trying to say that something like Grand Theft Auto would be fun without in game crime, violence, or swearing? Maybe it would be...but that's not the point of GTA. It aims to be violent to create an atmosphere of crime. Just like crime movies and TV shows, Training Day, The Sopranos, also portray violence. It's realistic within the context of portraying criminal behavior with a reasonable creative license.
Why not conduct a study to say that all R-Rated movies are unnecessary? Or that violent TV shows should be toned down to exclude violence? Surely Saving Private Ryan (Rated R for graphic violence) and Band of Brothers (rated TV-MA for the same) could have been just as effective as cinema with a complete lack of violence and cursing. Is violence necessary in those movies? No. It is necessary to make the movies compelling and also historically accurate? Yes.
"A common belief held by many gamers and many in the video game industry -- that violence is what makes a game fun -- is strongly contradicted by these studies," comments Craig Anderson, a psychologist who directs the Center for the Study of Violence at Iowa State University in Ames.
What empirical data is he possibly referring to? I have yet to see the survey where significance testing was passed that conclusively shows that 'many' gamers think violence is solely what makes games fun.
This is just another barely scientific study where the researcher wants to get water cooler points with his colleagues and say "hey I got published about video-game violence!" and while in the short term this research might turn a few heads, another book like Grand Theft Childhood will put this study in the negative in the history books.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Childhood
Virtua Fighter 5, Virtua Tennis 3, and Outrun 2006
How can you claim these are "excellent"? They're trash! Maybe they would have been acceptable 6 or 7 years ago, but not to today's gamer.
Virtua Fighter 5 is the sequel to Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution, generally considered to be the greatest fighting game of all time and one of the greatest games in the history of gaming.
Virtua Fighter was the first 3D fighter and is a legendary franchise. Even now years and sequels later, Virtua Fighter 5: Online for the X360 has gotten excellent reviews and it's arcade only sequel, Virtua Fighter 5R (only in Japan) has been in the top five most played arcade games since it was released in Japanese arcades and has gotten tremendous acclaim. The Virtua Fighter series always sets the standard for fighting games each generation and this one was no exception.
Virtua Fighter 4 and Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution have a 94 and 93 respective scores on MetaCritic. Virtua Fighter 5 has a score of 85 on the PS3 and 89 on the 360 according to Metacritic.
http://www.metacritic.com/search/process?sort=relevance&termType=all&ts=virtua+fighter&ty=3&x=0&y=0
You're talking out your ass.
Yup, and golf is a sport. Golfers are athletes.
So you are comparing golf to all other sports and saying that all games are like golf? Wrong.
How about some games are like football, rugby, baseball, and soccer in the world of sports, games like Starcraft, Virtua Fighter, Half Life, Unreal Tournament, in the world of games. What football and soccer (those are different sports in America) have in terms of athleticism, Starcraft and Virtua Fighter have in terms of artistic design.
Then there are games like golf, and bowling, and darts or whatever in the world of sports, and there are the comparable games in the world of gaming, that aren't created with an ounce of care of any level of production. What gold and bowling lack in terms of athleticism, many games lack in terms of artistic design.
Football, baseball, soccer; athletic and tough sports. Golf, darts; easy and barely considered sports.
Starcraft, Virtua Fighter, Metal Gear Solid; works of art in gaming. Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, Dragon Booster, Hooters Road Trip; not art, hell barely considered games.