I'd disagree completely. I know that the gameplay is pure shooter, but that is definitely a Good Thing. Afterburner didn't have the flexibility of the other two games (or, indeed very much going for it at all apart from a fancy hydraulic cab) and even though Panzer is wonderful I prefer the pacing and heavier emphasis on lock-on multipliers in Rez.
Just because its a genre you personally dislike doesn't mean it is unworthy of praise as the high-spot of its kind (even Orta is just not quite there for me).
Korean games market in "closer to Japan than the US" shocker!
The PS2 outsells the XBox roughly 10 to 1 worldwide, why shouldn't it do so in Korea? They may have had high expectations, but those expectations were frankly unrealistic.
Rez is one of the greatest things ever, in my opinion; I absolutely adore the game. However, I know that it sold pitifully small numbers, and when shown to idiots regularly gets ridiculed because the abstract presentation is seen as a step back in comparison to the latest boring quest for realism.
A lot of these people reacted really negatively to cel-shading as well, so its not just Rez - we all know what 'real' should look like, so its a lot easier to say whether someone has done well at it, rather than you just not liking the aesthetic that has been chosen.
Mind you, this goes further than just visuals; a quick look down this week's chart shows it full of games like Medal Of Honor and Need For Speed - the fantastic seems less popular than the "realistic" in game setting as well.
The Samsung isn't a flat plasma TV though; its a DLP rear projection that, since the single DLP unit is much smaller than the multiple bulbs of a traditional CRT rear-pro, they've hollowed out the stand to the bare minimum for maximum cool looks.
If you want flat plasma, then get flat plasma. I wouldn't hang one on my wall though, as not only do I need the stand space underneath it to house DVD, Laserdisc, Amplifier, Satellite decoder, VHS recorder, Minidisc player and multiple consoles, but the sheer weight of a 43" plasma screen means you need blooming great bolts in it to ensure it doesn't fall off.
"why didn't they denounce GTA as some half-baked game that gets old once you've finished picking up hookers for extra life and shooting transients in the head with a sniper rifle?"
Because its not, probably.
I've been playing GTA games on and off ever since the original on the PC, and I've not once done either of those things.
The most telling thing I find with it, though, is that Simpsons Hit 'n' Run is currently riding high in the charts. Since the entire premise is to take all the elements unsuitable for kids out of GTA and replacing them with Simpsons references, and still manages to be both a big seller and great fun despite some of the handling getting a bit of a mangle along the way is as good a demonstration as any that the fundamental gameplay stands up.
Have I missed them, then? I wasn't aware that the nominations for the 2004 Academy Awards were announced yet. Its worth noting that the first Matrix film did indeed take the effects Oscar.
I'd also question your second statement - I found the CG battle scenes in Revolutions to be decidedly hit-and-miss, and on other levels they weren't really doing a huge amount over and above what they won that first Oscar for. I'd be nominating X2 (for the stunning work on Nightcrawler), Return Of The King (Gollum is as much improved on Two Towers as he was there from Fellowship, even before you look at the battle scenes) and perhaps even Kill Bill's gore work over the new Matrix films.
Re:What was so good about the battles?
on
Message in a Battle
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
"None of the battle scenes impressed me. I mean this was no matrix or crouching tiger hidden dragon. The battle scenes were typical CG crap."
Leaving aside the obvious troll answer of just how monumentally dire the CG 'defense of Zion' scenes were in Matrix Revolutions, and for that matter the 'burly brawl' in Reloaded, there is a very big difference here.
The above two films had stunning one-on-one fights by fighters with (for one reason or another) supernatural abilities. The main battle scenes in Return Of The King are all about open warfare between ranks of blokes and orcs. No-one would bother arguing the relative merits of Warcraft and Soul Calibur as they are so very different, so why complain about their film equivalents?
'Forget that "it's not financially viable" bullshit.'
No bullshit here. The significant technical questions of getting GTA3 onto the Cube almost certainly outweigh the benefits they could get. Cube owners without either of the other current consoles are not a big market (as dire sales of multiplatform GC titles demonstrate on a regular basis), and Cube-only owners who want to play GTA3 are probably even smaller.
Its still used; the reason for it mainly being older shows you see these on is down to the old shows only having masters available with the tag on, while a new show might have one without still.
Actually, there is a time and a place for ironic soundtrack selections. Whether its tricking your way down the mountain in Amped to beach house, or a nice bit of Dean Martin on Project Gotham, sometimes you need that chilled out stuff to keep your cool.
Largely, the UK release of wipEout for PS had the same Cold Storage soundtrack that the PC, Saturn and rest of the world's PS got.
There were three licensed tracks, though; Orbital's P.E.T.R.O.L. (which turned up on In Sides later), and an easily found track each from the Chems and Prodigy, but my memory has gone as to what they were; sorry. All three tracks are present on the wipEout 2097 soundtrack album, along with the licensed stuff that made it to that game, in any case.
Personally, I'm no fan of the Cold Storage tracks, and preferred to replace the PC release of 2097's music with that soundtrack album, until I gave in and bought a PS.
Don't go trying to play 2097/XL on the PC now however - the game isn't clock-locked, and merely assumed that, since the mighty 3DFX Voodoo card could only manage 30fps nothing would ever go faster. On a modern PC you've got about 5 seconds to complete an entire lap before the clock runs out; its hilarious.
The first two GTA games may have been entirely original tunes (who can forget that insane country song from the original GTA!) but a lot of the stuff in GTA3 is indeed licensed from places like Moving Shadow and so on. Just a lot more obscure places than Vice City, really.
"Some of the newer games though...eh wouldn't work to well."
I'll certainly give you 'some', but I'm only on an Athlon 900 with GeForce 2 Pro myself, and both Call Of Duty and Max Payne (the two most recent games I've tried on it) run perfectly fine as long as you're prepared so sacrifice a few of the high-end twiddly graphics options.
In fact the only game I have that does really bog down is Live For Speed, because that wants a lot more CPU for the physics engine.
Arrgh. Well, that explains why I can't see it. swf files don't play on my IE - every time I try the installer, it goes off to the Macromedia site, and comes back with an error. Nothing informative about it, no option to just download the whole thing, so I'm stuffed.
I've had a complete console set for a while now, and it does make life much nicer on the gaming front; no more worrying about if the title you want is coming to the platform you own. If you've got broadband then Live is a must too - because everyone has a headset you have the of other players being much more social. Plus, when you're being owned by some 15-year-old, at least you know its because they are really good, not just because they are running on better hardware or running a wallhacked graphics driver.
You've specifically mentioned MM3 (which is brilliant, by the way) so I'm assuming you like racing games. If thats the case, then buy one now - Project Gotham Racing was possibly my favorite driving game anyway, and now the sequel has Live support its even better.
A lot of people will preach the joys of modding your machine, as there are all sorts of fancy things it can then do. I would caution against it though, myself - if you've got a decent PC about the only thing a modded XBox will do over that is play pirated games, which I wouldn't recommend, and you'll get banned from Live if you accidentally forget to turn it off before connecting.
These links are to buy films from Hong Kong that happen to merely share a similiar title (give or take translation) and much of the same footage. Since Miramax will not be releasing the film you can buy in the rest of the world to US cinemas, but rather a total re-edit, why should they care?
Far more damaging than simply getting things late is Miramax's technique of utterly mangling these films beyond all recognition. I wouldn't mind half as much about the wait if I knew I was going to get the actual film at the end of it, rather than some hack job. What is next? Getting in trouble for pointing out where to buy Total Recall, as some people might buy it rather than go see Paycheck?
Re:And who pays for this? Seems different.
on
Smart Billboards
·
· Score: 1
On the bright side, you weren't the evil being responsible for designing the Focus's light brackets (front and rear, but mainly front). I hate them with a vengeance beyond their mere ugliness, for reasons I don't quite understand.
"Are my wife and I the only people who think that the Lord of the Rings is the most boring movie of all time???"
$920M worldwide boxoffice kind of points to the answer "yes, you are". On the other hand, I suppose Titanic managed double that, and had its fair share of people bored by it too.
Its not a question of if the hero pokes fun, but that the tone of the piece is completely different.
GTA has always been at pains to be sufficiently silly that the violence takes place in a cartoon world; even the most nasty thing you could do is not on the scale of the kind of things that Itchy and Scratchy get up to, and is taken about as seriously. Manhunt, however, revels in sadism for its own sake. The whole aim of the game is to be as vindictively cruel in your violence as possible.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd disagree completely. I know that the gameplay is pure shooter, but that is definitely a Good Thing. Afterburner didn't have the flexibility of the other two games (or, indeed very much going for it at all apart from a fancy hydraulic cab) and even though Panzer is wonderful I prefer the pacing and heavier emphasis on lock-on multipliers in Rez.
Just because its a genre you personally dislike doesn't mean it is unworthy of praise as the high-spot of its kind (even Orta is just not quite there for me).
Korean games market in "closer to Japan than the US" shocker!
The PS2 outsells the XBox roughly 10 to 1 worldwide, why shouldn't it do so in Korea? They may have had high expectations, but those expectations were frankly unrealistic.
Rez is one of the greatest things ever, in my opinion; I absolutely adore the game. However, I know that it sold pitifully small numbers, and when shown to idiots regularly gets ridiculed because the abstract presentation is seen as a step back in comparison to the latest boring quest for realism.
A lot of these people reacted really negatively to cel-shading as well, so its not just Rez - we all know what 'real' should look like, so its a lot easier to say whether someone has done well at it, rather than you just not liking the aesthetic that has been chosen.
Mind you, this goes further than just visuals; a quick look down this week's chart shows it full of games like Medal Of Honor and Need For Speed - the fantastic seems less popular than the "realistic" in game setting as well.
The Samsung isn't a flat plasma TV though; its a DLP rear projection that, since the single DLP unit is much smaller than the multiple bulbs of a traditional CRT rear-pro, they've hollowed out the stand to the bare minimum for maximum cool looks.
If you want flat plasma, then get flat plasma. I wouldn't hang one on my wall though, as not only do I need the stand space underneath it to house DVD, Laserdisc, Amplifier, Satellite decoder, VHS recorder, Minidisc player and multiple consoles, but the sheer weight of a 43" plasma screen means you need blooming great bolts in it to ensure it doesn't fall off.
"Postal 2 is as focused on wonton violence"
I'm sure there's a John Woo joke in there somewhere, if only I was awake enough to find it...
"why didn't they denounce GTA as some half-baked game that gets old once you've finished picking up hookers for extra life and shooting transients in the head with a sniper rifle?"
Because its not, probably.
I've been playing GTA games on and off ever since the original on the PC, and I've not once done either of those things.
The most telling thing I find with it, though, is that Simpsons Hit 'n' Run is currently riding high in the charts. Since the entire premise is to take all the elements unsuitable for kids out of GTA and replacing them with Simpsons references, and still manages to be both a big seller and great fun despite some of the handling getting a bit of a mangle along the way is as good a demonstration as any that the fundamental gameplay stands up.
Have I missed them, then? I wasn't aware that the nominations for the 2004 Academy Awards were announced yet. Its worth noting that the first Matrix film did indeed take the effects Oscar.
I'd also question your second statement - I found the CG battle scenes in Revolutions to be decidedly hit-and-miss, and on other levels they weren't really doing a huge amount over and above what they won that first Oscar for. I'd be nominating X2 (for the stunning work on Nightcrawler), Return Of The King (Gollum is as much improved on Two Towers as he was there from Fellowship, even before you look at the battle scenes) and perhaps even Kill Bill's gore work over the new Matrix films.
"None of the battle scenes impressed me. I mean this was no matrix or crouching tiger hidden dragon. The battle scenes were typical CG crap."
Leaving aside the obvious troll answer of just how monumentally dire the CG 'defense of Zion' scenes were in Matrix Revolutions, and for that matter the 'burly brawl' in Reloaded, there is a very big difference here.
The above two films had stunning one-on-one fights by fighters with (for one reason or another) supernatural abilities. The main battle scenes in Return Of The King are all about open warfare between ranks of blokes and orcs. No-one would bother arguing the relative merits of Warcraft and Soul Calibur as they are so very different, so why complain about their film equivalents?
'Forget that "it's not financially viable" bullshit.'
No bullshit here. The significant technical questions of getting GTA3 onto the Cube almost certainly outweigh the benefits they could get. Cube owners without either of the other current consoles are not a big market (as dire sales of multiplatform GC titles demonstrate on a regular basis), and Cube-only owners who want to play GTA3 are probably even smaller.
"They also went to the moon but it seems when they are somewhere they do nothing, a long time passes"
Aaah. So that explains why the physicist in Quantum Leap was called Sam Beckett.
"However, popcorn movies don't get the awards"
Gladiator. Titanic. I can continue if you want...
Its still used; the reason for it mainly being older shows you see these on is down to the old shows only having masters available with the tag on, while a new show might have one without still.
Actually, there is a time and a place for ironic soundtrack selections. Whether its tricking your way down the mountain in Amped to beach house, or a nice bit of Dean Martin on Project Gotham, sometimes you need that chilled out stuff to keep your cool.
Largely, the UK release of wipEout for PS had the same Cold Storage soundtrack that the PC, Saturn and rest of the world's PS got.
There were three licensed tracks, though; Orbital's P.E.T.R.O.L. (which turned up on In Sides later), and an easily found track each from the Chems and Prodigy, but my memory has gone as to what they were; sorry. All three tracks are present on the wipEout 2097 soundtrack album, along with the licensed stuff that made it to that game, in any case.
Personally, I'm no fan of the Cold Storage tracks, and preferred to replace the PC release of 2097's music with that soundtrack album, until I gave in and bought a PS.
Don't go trying to play 2097/XL on the PC now however - the game isn't clock-locked, and merely assumed that, since the mighty 3DFX Voodoo card could only manage 30fps nothing would ever go faster. On a modern PC you've got about 5 seconds to complete an entire lap before the clock runs out; its hilarious.
The first two GTA games may have been entirely original tunes (who can forget that insane country song from the original GTA!) but a lot of the stuff in GTA3 is indeed licensed from places like Moving Shadow and so on. Just a lot more obscure places than Vice City, really.
"My mom's shitty 355 MHz comp with like an 8 meg vid card can play Quake"
Err, my old AMD at 90MHz and 8 meg _total_ played a perfectly good game of Quake, so I'd certainly hope so...
"Some of the newer games though...eh wouldn't work to well."
I'll certainly give you 'some', but I'm only on an Athlon 900 with GeForce 2 Pro myself, and both Call Of Duty and Max Payne (the two most recent games I've tried on it) run perfectly fine as long as you're prepared so sacrifice a few of the high-end twiddly graphics options.
In fact the only game I have that does really bog down is Live For Speed, because that wants a lot more CPU for the physics engine.
Quote the AC: "Here's a solution: use Windows. Works out of the box"
Sorry, wrong answer. Win2000 Pro and IE 6 here. Its just that the Flash player install doesn't play well with proxies.
"When will this trailer be in theatres? What movies will it be playing before?"
Both rumour and plain logic says Rings on Wednesday - certainly, there is little else that you'd want to attach it to this week.
Arrgh. Well, that explains why I can't see it. swf files don't play on my IE - every time I try the installer, it goes off to the Macromedia site, and comes back with an error. Nothing informative about it, no option to just download the whole thing, so I'm stuffed.
Well done, Macromedia.
I've had a complete console set for a while now, and it does make life much nicer on the gaming front; no more worrying about if the title you want is coming to the platform you own. If you've got broadband then Live is a must too - because everyone has a headset you have the of other players being much more social. Plus, when you're being owned by some 15-year-old, at least you know its because they are really good, not just because they are running on better hardware or running a wallhacked graphics driver.
You've specifically mentioned MM3 (which is brilliant, by the way) so I'm assuming you like racing games. If thats the case, then buy one now - Project Gotham Racing was possibly my favorite driving game anyway, and now the sequel has Live support its even better.
A lot of people will preach the joys of modding your machine, as there are all sorts of fancy things it can then do. I would caution against it though, myself - if you've got a decent PC about the only thing a modded XBox will do over that is play pirated games, which I wouldn't recommend, and you'll get banned from Live if you accidentally forget to turn it off before connecting.
These links are to buy films from Hong Kong that happen to merely share a similiar title (give or take translation) and much of the same footage. Since Miramax will not be releasing the film you can buy in the rest of the world to US cinemas, but rather a total re-edit, why should they care?
Far more damaging than simply getting things late is Miramax's technique of utterly mangling these films beyond all recognition. I wouldn't mind half as much about the wait if I knew I was going to get the actual film at the end of it, rather than some hack job. What is next? Getting in trouble for pointing out where to buy Total Recall, as some people might buy it rather than go see Paycheck?
On the bright side, you weren't the evil being responsible for designing the Focus's light brackets (front and rear, but mainly front). I hate them with a vengeance beyond their mere ugliness, for reasons I don't quite understand.
"Are my wife and I the only people who think that
the Lord of the Rings is the most boring movie
of all time???"
$920M worldwide boxoffice kind of points to the answer "yes, you are". On the other hand, I suppose Titanic managed double that, and had its fair share of people bored by it too.
Its not a question of if the hero pokes fun, but that the tone of the piece is completely different.
GTA has always been at pains to be sufficiently silly that the violence takes place in a cartoon world; even the most nasty thing you could do is not on the scale of the kind of things that Itchy and Scratchy get up to, and is taken about as seriously. Manhunt, however, revels in sadism for its own sake. The whole aim of the game is to be as vindictively cruel in your violence as possible.