These are just more generalizations. You take Guybrush and compare him to random unnamed military shooters...what? To flip that I could bring up the cast of Mass Effect and say nothing in any of the generic fantasy 2D sidescrollers of the 80s compares to them in character personality.
As for interaction with objects: There are plenty of physics puzzles out there. Launching things from air vents, stacking puzzles...Look at Force Unleashed for beautiful physics applications.
You say nothing amazes you anymore. I say you either aren't looking or you just refuse to like all the newfangled whatchamathingies. I still see plenty of stunning landscapes in new games, with great stories, and characters that I enjoy. To completely dismiss an entire medium based on your poor examples is nothing but willful ignorance.
I think it's funny how the Crotchety Old Man has changed over the years.
"What's all this crap on the radio these days? The 1920s, now that was real music!"
"Movies? Pah! The 50s, now those were real movies!"
"Games? The 90s, now those were good games!"
Every time a game story comes up we get comments about how -all- games today are worthless, and the previous decade was a magical time of awesomeness. I spent a lot of time on my Atari 2600 as a kid, and later my NES, but I like how games have evolved. Sure there are some stinkers out there, but going through a complete library of SNES roms I'm finding a lot of turds in that as well.
Stop being the modern Old Men and realize that the past wasn't as great as you make it out to be and the present ain't so bad.
Doesn't do you any good to know how to build a cooking fire if there's no available wood for it. There are some areas where you'd probably have to fight someone over one of the few trees. Fishing or hunting isn't always an available option either (We're talking about cities, remember?).
While your "everyone should" statements aren't necessarily untrue, you're obviously not considering the large population of apartment-dwelling city folk.
You essentially removed yourself from the mainstream game culture, and now you're wondering why people buy the new stuff when there's so much that -you- haven't played.
You mention that you gave up TV 10 years ago, as well. Why would anyone watch new shows when there are older shows out there? Why watch the new Battlestar Galactica when you can just get a dvd of Buck Rogers, right?
The new content is of interest to people who haven't skipped the past decade or two. With sequels, people might buy them right away because they liked the previous one and are looking forward to the new plot or new features. If you never played Halo 1 or 2 yeah, you probably won't be eagerly awaiting part 3. But there were plenty of people who were.
The answer to all your questions is really that it's a matter of your own perspective.
I think Guild Wars is a good example of the GP's comment on 'free' game communities. Guild Wars doesn't have a monthly fee, so chat channels are full of kids who didn't need to ask parents for credit cards. I ended up just hiding my chat window completely and pretended it was a single-player game.
As someone who has played at least a dozen MMOs, I have to say the difference in communities is noticeable when you're looking at free and fee games.
Yeah, these 'hardcore' PVP players all seem to have the attitude that their way is the only way. This immature elitist way of treating others is the main reason I have no intention of even trying Darkfall. Reading their forums, this is pretty much the main subset of gamer that is flocking to it, guaranteeing I would have a miserable time in that world being surrounded by them.
MMOs are games. 'Hardcore' players take it waaaay too seriously, and treat pvp as an ideal to be pushed on everyone else.
That's not an accurate description of WAR at all. It's not total FFA--It's two sides against each other in a war. You talk about meaningful PVP, but your other game examples are just anyone kills anyone anywhere with no real motivation other than urge to kill. What meaning is there in that? That's not war, that's murder.
People looking for murder simulators will love Darkfall, I guess. As for me, I like to have a reason to fight--And WAR did a great job of providing that, thanks to the background material.
I recently removed Ars Technica from my bookmarks because of articles like this. More and more I was seeing articles that weren't really about anything but getting people to click--he even admits as such in this one.
It's mildly interesting just because of the game's spectacular failure at launch. It's like watching the Special Olympics--Those guys can't compete with other athletes, but you might clap for one as he struggles his way around the track. Good for him!
I played the first several months after FFXI's North American release. As a ranger I would sit in the main city fishing while waiting on a party invite. That could take from 15 min to an hour. After that it would sometimes sill be -literally- hours before a healer or tank was found and we could actually start playing.
I just sat there with a fishing bot running while reading books. I got a lot of reading done during my FFXI days.
I remember having a huge bucket of Tyco bricks when I was a kid, about 20 years ago. Good quality plastic and fit, but I don't know if they would have fit with actual Lego blocks though. Other than possibly the size they were identical.
It only had generic blocks, base plates, and slanted-top ones for roofs. In hindsight that was probably more fun than Lego's specialized space, boat, etc pieces since I had to get more creative to make things look like what I wanted.
I made power armor for my GI Joe figures. That's the creation I'll never forget.
I'm glad someone else made the point about Mac commercials. I remember one several years ago that just featured a blonde girl saying something along the lines of, "Yeah with Windows it was all...bleh. But then I got a Mac and it was sooo much better!"
I was actually insulted by that one. Was -that- supposed to sway me?
If you live in a city that is set up so that you can bike to work, good for you. Many parts of the country aren't like that though. Don't start spouting that elitist crap just because you're lucky enough to live so close to your workplace. I've lived in 9 cities in 6 states, and only ONE of those cities was laid out to be pedestrian-friendly with a good mass transit system.
From my experience, gasoline IS a necessity.
I was with you for the first couple paragraphs, but that post took a nose-dive into conspiracyland after that. When I got to the 9-11 bit I would have laughed if it all weren't so sad.
So it's yet another/. sensationalist, fact-omitting summary, followed by masses of knee-jerk hate-filled responses.
I don't even think the editors here are even trying to foster any real intellectual debate most of the time. They seem to just like setting fires.
"Circling the drain" implies that there's another model getting ready to take over the entire form of business. Things like Apple TV are niche markets, at best. They're nowhere near overtaking and replacing cable TV.
As much as I would love an alternative, there just aren't any solid ones out there yet.
Posts like this are why I even bother to visit/. even with the half-assed sensationalist article postings. Even though the editors have all the credibility and fairness of Fox News, there are a lot of members with genuinely informative or insightful posts.
Thanks 'hellfire' for helping lend reason to these boards.
Slashdot Mirror
These are just more generalizations. You take Guybrush and compare him to random unnamed military shooters...what? To flip that I could bring up the cast of Mass Effect and say nothing in any of the generic fantasy 2D sidescrollers of the 80s compares to them in character personality.
As for interaction with objects: There are plenty of physics puzzles out there. Launching things from air vents, stacking puzzles...Look at Force Unleashed for beautiful physics applications.
You say nothing amazes you anymore. I say you either aren't looking or you just refuse to like all the newfangled whatchamathingies. I still see plenty of stunning landscapes in new games, with great stories, and characters that I enjoy. To completely dismiss an entire medium based on your poor examples is nothing but willful ignorance.
I think it's funny how the Crotchety Old Man has changed over the years.
"What's all this crap on the radio these days? The 1920s, now that was real music!"
"Movies? Pah! The 50s, now those were real movies!"
"Games? The 90s, now those were good games!"
Every time a game story comes up we get comments about how -all- games today are worthless, and the previous decade was a magical time of awesomeness. I spent a lot of time on my Atari 2600 as a kid, and later my NES, but I like how games have evolved. Sure there are some stinkers out there, but going through a complete library of SNES roms I'm finding a lot of turds in that as well.
Stop being the modern Old Men and realize that the past wasn't as great as you make it out to be and the present ain't so bad.
Doesn't do you any good to know how to build a cooking fire if there's no available wood for it. There are some areas where you'd probably have to fight someone over one of the few trees. Fishing or hunting isn't always an available option either (We're talking about cities, remember?).
While your "everyone should" statements aren't necessarily untrue, you're obviously not considering the large population of apartment-dwelling city folk.
Well, police found 14 firearms at the home. Using "nut" loosely defined as "avid collector" yes, I think that's a fair enough basis.
Wall full of Star Wars memorabilia = Star Wars nut. Wall full of guns = gun nut.
You essentially removed yourself from the mainstream game culture, and now you're wondering why people buy the new stuff when there's so much that -you- haven't played.
You mention that you gave up TV 10 years ago, as well. Why would anyone watch new shows when there are older shows out there? Why watch the new Battlestar Galactica when you can just get a dvd of Buck Rogers, right?
The new content is of interest to people who haven't skipped the past decade or two. With sequels, people might buy them right away because they liked the previous one and are looking forward to the new plot or new features. If you never played Halo 1 or 2 yeah, you probably won't be eagerly awaiting part 3. But there were plenty of people who were.
The answer to all your questions is really that it's a matter of your own perspective.
I think Guild Wars is a good example of the GP's comment on 'free' game communities. Guild Wars doesn't have a monthly fee, so chat channels are full of kids who didn't need to ask parents for credit cards. I ended up just hiding my chat window completely and pretended it was a single-player game.
As someone who has played at least a dozen MMOs, I have to say the difference in communities is noticeable when you're looking at free and fee games.
Yeah, these 'hardcore' PVP players all seem to have the attitude that their way is the only way. This immature elitist way of treating others is the main reason I have no intention of even trying Darkfall. Reading their forums, this is pretty much the main subset of gamer that is flocking to it, guaranteeing I would have a miserable time in that world being surrounded by them.
MMOs are games. 'Hardcore' players take it waaaay too seriously, and treat pvp as an ideal to be pushed on everyone else.
That's not an accurate description of WAR at all. It's not total FFA--It's two sides against each other in a war. You talk about meaningful PVP, but your other game examples are just anyone kills anyone anywhere with no real motivation other than urge to kill. What meaning is there in that? That's not war, that's murder.
People looking for murder simulators will love Darkfall, I guess. As for me, I like to have a reason to fight--And WAR did a great job of providing that, thanks to the background material.
I recently removed Ars Technica from my bookmarks because of articles like this. More and more I was seeing articles that weren't really about anything but getting people to click--he even admits as such in this one.
It's mildly interesting just because of the game's spectacular failure at launch. It's like watching the Special Olympics--Those guys can't compete with other athletes, but you might clap for one as he struggles his way around the track. Good for him!
You're 6'6". The car's not tiny, you're just huge.
I played the first several months after FFXI's North American release. As a ranger I would sit in the main city fishing while waiting on a party invite. That could take from 15 min to an hour. After that it would sometimes sill be -literally- hours before a healer or tank was found and we could actually start playing.
I just sat there with a fishing bot running while reading books. I got a lot of reading done during my FFXI days.
I remember having a huge bucket of Tyco bricks when I was a kid, about 20 years ago. Good quality plastic and fit, but I don't know if they would have fit with actual Lego blocks though. Other than possibly the size they were identical. It only had generic blocks, base plates, and slanted-top ones for roofs. In hindsight that was probably more fun than Lego's specialized space, boat, etc pieces since I had to get more creative to make things look like what I wanted. I made power armor for my GI Joe figures. That's the creation I'll never forget.
They've already announced that the cut classes and cities are getting patched in as a free update. It's old news at this point.
I'm glad someone else made the point about Mac commercials. I remember one several years ago that just featured a blonde girl saying something along the lines of, "Yeah with Windows it was all...bleh. But then I got a Mac and it was sooo much better!" I was actually insulted by that one. Was -that- supposed to sway me?
Oh good, it wasn't just me then.
If you live in a city that is set up so that you can bike to work, good for you. Many parts of the country aren't like that though. Don't start spouting that elitist crap just because you're lucky enough to live so close to your workplace. I've lived in 9 cities in 6 states, and only ONE of those cities was laid out to be pedestrian-friendly with a good mass transit system. From my experience, gasoline IS a necessity.
I was with you for the first couple paragraphs, but that post took a nose-dive into conspiracyland after that. When I got to the 9-11 bit I would have laughed if it all weren't so sad.
*shrug* Loads fine for me.
Well if MMO cinematics are making headlines... http://mythicmktg.fileburst.com/war/us/home/flash/WAR_cinematic_08.html Warhammer's got a new one out too.
So it's yet another /. sensationalist, fact-omitting summary, followed by masses of knee-jerk hate-filled responses.
I don't even think the editors here are even trying to foster any real intellectual debate most of the time. They seem to just like setting fires.
"Circling the drain" implies that there's another model getting ready to take over the entire form of business. Things like Apple TV are niche markets, at best. They're nowhere near overtaking and replacing cable TV. As much as I would love an alternative, there just aren't any solid ones out there yet.
Posts like this are why I even bother to visit /. even with the half-assed sensationalist article postings. Even though the editors have all the credibility and fairness of Fox News, there are a lot of members with genuinely informative or insightful posts.
Thanks 'hellfire' for helping lend reason to these boards.