This story is extremely stupid. Anyone who thinks they're anonymous on the Internet is an idiot. I mean come on, anyone with an ounce of technical knowledge knows there is no anonymity on the net, and to have a headline claiming the end of it is retarded, since there never was any in the first place.
EVERYONE email them saying "WE WANT SAM & MAX 2" and then when they get deluged with a million emails they go "There IS a market" and release it.
Then we don't buy it...
I personally think the point and click adventure is dead. It's sad. I loved Lucas' earlier games, but in todays environment, with the growing cases of "consoleitis" on the PC, I don't think there is much market for them now sadly. Sure, there's hardcore fans, but game companies don't give a toss. They want mass market appeal, and screw originality, gameplay etc...
Funny. I was going to post pretty much this exact same comment, and figured I'd be modded as a troll but was going to do it anyway since free speech rules:)
I have no problem with this. I wish more areas would do this. Rather than whine about the games themselves, go after the fucking bastards who sell extremely violent video games to 10 year olds. Hit them in the wallet where it hurts.
I mean credit to the ESRB thing, but a certificate is only useful if it actually does anything. As it is now, the "M" certificate isn't a warning, it's a selling point. If there's an existing structure in place for movies and it can be legally applied to video games, so be it. Start fining these stores that sell these games to kids large chunks of money and perhaps they may start enforcing the ratings.
A similar approach has worked to a certain degree to stop kids buying cigarettes.
And if you've not seen the movies, rent them too:)
Games are what you make of them these days. You want hard? Load up Warcraft 3 and choose 11 AI, team them up against you... Now THAT is hard.
All this whining about games these days is nostalgia and nothing else. Don't get me wrong, going back to the old 8 bit days, games like Auf Wiedersehn Monty were INSANELY hard, but games have gone from being the obsession of the stereotypical loser geek in his bedroom to being a leisure pastime for the majority of people who play them now. If the games were as tough as they were back then, games would not be as big as they are today I don't think.
The fact of the matter is games are more well rounded these days and can be made excruciatingly hard if you want. (Try Doom on "Nightmare" level for an older example.)
It seems every few month some cranky old bastard comes out of the woodwork, rattles his walking frame at you, puffs on his pipe, adjusts his glasses and says "Games were tougher in my day sonny" as if that somehow makes them better than newer ones.
"Don't worry granpa, we'll get you all the help you need..."
Doom was shareware. You got episode 1 for free, and episode 2 and 3 you got when you paid. Just dig out an old copy and run it, it'll say about registering when you quit or finish the game.
Demos in general are pointless in my experience. I've played demos which sucked for games that ultimately rocked. I've played demos that rocked for games that ultimately sucked.
About the only use for demos in my experience is to see how the game will run on your machine.
I don't know why the author of the piece is complaining about packaging. I mean really, who the hell cares? Now if they were selling empty packaging, fair play. "Gaming history"? Don't be so melodramatic...
As for what I do, I keep all the boxes games come in, but I flatten them. That way I can still check out the box (since box art is as fun for me today as album art used to be), but it takes up virtually no space.
Only box I have right now that isn't flattened is Neverwinter Nights and it's expansions. Those boxes are just too purty to destroy:)
EA haven't put out an original game since "No World Order" back before Win95. (It wouldn't even work on Win95, but they didn't mention that on the box when I bought it in 1997... Wankers.)
Desert Srike was a great game. Highly original, and the Amiga version looked fantastic for the time! Syndicate is an absolute classic too. (My Dad completed it but I never did. BAH!) Both should either be remade? NO THEY SHOULD NOT!
It took Hollywood 40 or so years to go "screw originals, let's remake old shit and not put any effort in". It's taken the software industry less than half the time to reach the same point.
Then some guy mows down a bunch of pedestrians in his car, and not only do Rockstar get sued, but the car maker as well since they're now linked to it... In the lawsuit happy US, I can't see any car makers legal department saying "This is a good idea!"
It'll be a cold day in hell before licensed cars are in GTA.
Given the steadily building controversy with GTA, I doubt any car manufacturer would want to associate with them.
Back with Need for Speed 3: Hot Pursuit (and High Stakes), unless you downloaded a hack, you couldn't race the Ferrari and... Mercedes? (Ferrari for sure) in the mode where you escape from the police because they didn't want the car associated with illegal acts.
I can only imagine their reaction to Rockstar saying "Say, can we put out your car in Grand Theft Auto?"
Back when one of the anti-cheat thing came out, I had trouble due to having modified some music or something in game. Can't remember what it was, but because the file didn't match, even though it was an irrelevant file, I still got booted.
Other than that I've had no problems. Of course I don't believe they work either. Just like Securom and friends continue to update their "protections" (I use that term loosely), crackers are one step ahead. Same with cheats, when a new Punkbuster is out or whatever, the scumbag cheaters just find a new way to avoid it.
Of course, the alternative is rampant cheating, so something is better than nothing. I think with CDKEY's, being caught cheating should get your key banned for good. (And I mean real evidence, not just some twat saying "He cheated").
I prefer realism. Okay, CS isn't exactly realistic, but I got bored of the Quake series. Still have a soft spot for UT though. Why? Two words. "The Redeemer".
Of course then it goes the other extreme, with Call of Duty... One shot often kills. Harsh.
Actually, the first game to announce it was Unreal Tournament. While headshots have always been in CS, the voice that announces it on some servers is stolen from Unreal Tournament. (Also "Multikill", "Monsterkill", "Ultrakill" and "Godlike". Think that's all of them.)
And Counterstrike is about getting pwn3d by cheaters:)
EA are money hungry pigs anyway, so anything for a buck is hardly surprising.
This is why I like period stuff or fantasy stuff like LOTR. Kinda hard to make Aragorn say "You know, I just defended Helms Deep against the massed hordes of Sauron... I need a Mountain Dew!" without completely selling out your integrity.
The piracy figures are most likely bogus. With the cdkeys, people are prevented from playing online. With the Mac it seems there is no such device so EVERYONE can play online. All the cdkey is doing is skewing the PC piracy figures. I know plenty of people who have pirated Halo, but because they don't try and play online, there's no way of tracking the stats, whereas with the Mac, if you sell 5000 units, and 5500 play online, you know the piracy:)
Take a look at Quake. The reason it was such a huge success was piracy.
Co-op would be good, as would bots for multiplayer. The single player in Halo is a bit dull. The multiplayer would be good, except for having to play with the great unwashed. Besides, bot teammates don't tend to get pissed when you shoot them:)
Halo is too little, too late really. If it had come out when it was supposed too, it would have been great, but then MS bought Bungie and it all went to hell. Still, at least Bungie are more than capable of making a good game. (Made my favourite of all time: Myth 2). And yes, I know Gearbox did the PC version.
First game of Magic I ever played, a friend busted out a Mountain Goat and cast Flying on it. For me, the dreaded "Flying Mountain Goat" sums up everything that makes Magic a real laugh:)
Main reason I've collected the cards though is for the art.
Luck plays a big part. The draw you get. As I said in another post (though maybe the one that disappeared on me), in Poker, you get a bad hand, you can bluff and maybe still win. In Magic, you get a bad hand, it's game over.
I disagree about it being for idiots who buy the best card. Everything the previous poster said is correct.
It's a fun game, and the poker comparison is accurate, but it's a LOT more luck based than Poker ever is. If you get mana screwed (have no lands to play), you could be the best player in the world, and you're still fucked. You get a bad hand in Poker and you can at least bluff.
If you want to play in the tournaments, you have to spend a fortune as there's a new expansion every 3-4 months, and expansions are removed from the tournament cycle with regularity. To stay competitive, you have to keep buying new cards. I had a friend who played tournaments and he'd buy two BOXES of booster packs every time a new expansion came out. That's about $200 I think. Maybe more now. It's a complete money pit, but hey, if you have fun and can afford it, good luck to you.
I used to collect the cards, have over 6000 of them. The aforementioned friend used to send me his doubles of his common cards (there's common, uncommon and rare. The rare cards go for a quite a price in some cases. I have single cards worth over $10). I used to wind up with 6-8 of each common. That was after he had taken enough for his deck building needs.
It's definitely fun to play, but bear in mind a lot of kids play it too. Finding mature players may be a trick.
Slashdot Mirror
hehehe
This story is extremely stupid. Anyone who thinks they're anonymous on the Internet is an idiot. I mean come on, anyone with an ounce of technical knowledge knows there is no anonymity on the net, and to have a headline claiming the end of it is retarded, since there never was any in the first place.
Well that explains not having it in the release, but why not in a future patch then?
This smells like bollocks to me. Microsoft leveraging their shitty little console and getting exclusive features.
Wasn't Doom 3 rumoured to be XBox only at one point?
We should punish Lucasarts.
EVERYONE email them saying "WE WANT SAM & MAX 2" and then when they get deluged with a million emails they go "There IS a market" and release it.
Then we don't buy it...
I personally think the point and click adventure is dead. It's sad. I loved Lucas' earlier games, but in todays environment, with the growing cases of "consoleitis" on the PC, I don't think there is much market for them now sadly. Sure, there's hardcore fans, but game companies don't give a toss. They want mass market appeal, and screw originality, gameplay etc...
Funny. I was going to post pretty much this exact same comment, and figured I'd be modded as a troll but was going to do it anyway since free speech rules:)
I have no problem with this. I wish more areas would do this. Rather than whine about the games themselves, go after the fucking bastards who sell extremely violent video games to 10 year olds. Hit them in the wallet where it hurts.
I mean credit to the ESRB thing, but a certificate is only useful if it actually does anything. As it is now, the "M" certificate isn't a warning, it's a selling point. If there's an existing structure in place for movies and it can be legally applied to video games, so be it. Start fining these stores that sell these games to kids large chunks of money and perhaps they may start enforcing the ratings.
A similar approach has worked to a certain degree to stop kids buying cigarettes.
In short, kudos to Ontario!
And if you've not seen the movies, rent them too:)
Games are what you make of them these days. You want hard? Load up Warcraft 3 and choose 11 AI, team them up against you... Now THAT is hard.
All this whining about games these days is nostalgia and nothing else. Don't get me wrong, going back to the old 8 bit days, games like Auf Wiedersehn Monty were INSANELY hard, but games have gone from being the obsession of the stereotypical loser geek in his bedroom to being a leisure pastime for the majority of people who play them now. If the games were as tough as they were back then, games would not be as big as they are today I don't think.
The fact of the matter is games are more well rounded these days and can be made excruciatingly hard if you want. (Try Doom on "Nightmare" level for an older example.)
It seems every few month some cranky old bastard comes out of the woodwork, rattles his walking frame at you, puffs on his pipe, adjusts his glasses and says "Games were tougher in my day sonny" as if that somehow makes them better than newer ones.
"Don't worry granpa, we'll get you all the help you need..."
Doom was shareware. You got episode 1 for free, and episode 2 and 3 you got when you paid. Just dig out an old copy and run it, it'll say about registering when you quit or finish the game.
Demos in general are pointless in my experience. I've played demos which sucked for games that ultimately rocked. I've played demos that rocked for games that ultimately sucked.
About the only use for demos in my experience is to see how the game will run on your machine.
I don't know why the author of the piece is complaining about packaging. I mean really, who the hell cares? Now if they were selling empty packaging, fair play. "Gaming history"? Don't be so melodramatic...
As for what I do, I keep all the boxes games come in, but I flatten them. That way I can still check out the box (since box art is as fun for me today as album art used to be), but it takes up virtually no space.
Only box I have right now that isn't flattened is Neverwinter Nights and it's expansions. Those boxes are just too purty to destroy:)
EA haven't put out an original game since "No World Order" back before Win95. (It wouldn't even work on Win95, but they didn't mention that on the box when I bought it in 1997... Wankers.)
Desert Srike was a great game. Highly original, and the Amiga version looked fantastic for the time! Syndicate is an absolute classic too. (My Dad completed it but I never did. BAH!) Both should either be remade? NO THEY SHOULD NOT!
It took Hollywood 40 or so years to go "screw originals, let's remake old shit and not put any effort in". It's taken the software industry less than half the time to reach the same point.
Great, I can see it now... Some actor in a game and say "Well one day I want to direct..."
Get them Visual Basic, see what they can do:)
Then some guy mows down a bunch of pedestrians in his car, and not only do Rockstar get sued, but the car maker as well since they're now linked to it... In the lawsuit happy US, I can't see any car makers legal department saying "This is a good idea!"
It'll be a cold day in hell before licensed cars are in GTA.
Given the steadily building controversy with GTA, I doubt any car manufacturer would want to associate with them.
Back with Need for Speed 3: Hot Pursuit (and High Stakes), unless you downloaded a hack, you couldn't race the Ferrari and... Mercedes? (Ferrari for sure) in the mode where you escape from the police because they didn't want the car associated with illegal acts.
I can only imagine their reaction to Rockstar saying "Say, can we put out your car in Grand Theft Auto?"
LOL! Great design then:)
Back when one of the anti-cheat thing came out, I had trouble due to having modified some music or something in game. Can't remember what it was, but because the file didn't match, even though it was an irrelevant file, I still got booted.
Other than that I've had no problems. Of course I don't believe they work either. Just like Securom and friends continue to update their "protections" (I use that term loosely), crackers are one step ahead. Same with cheats, when a new Punkbuster is out or whatever, the scumbag cheaters just find a new way to avoid it.
Of course, the alternative is rampant cheating, so something is better than nothing. I think with CDKEY's, being caught cheating should get your key banned for good. (And I mean real evidence, not just some twat saying "He cheated").
I prefer realism. Okay, CS isn't exactly realistic, but I got bored of the Quake series. Still have a soft spot for UT though. Why? Two words. "The Redeemer".
Of course then it goes the other extreme, with Call of Duty... One shot often kills. Harsh.
It's all good:)
Actually, the first game to announce it was Unreal Tournament. While headshots have always been in CS, the voice that announces it on some servers is stolen from Unreal Tournament. (Also "Multikill", "Monsterkill", "Ultrakill" and "Godlike". Think that's all of them.)
And Counterstrike is about getting pwn3d by cheaters:)
He says he plays tennis...
I wonder if he blasts one into his opponents skull if he yells "HEADSHOT!"
EA are money hungry pigs anyway, so anything for a buck is hardly surprising.
This is why I like period stuff or fantasy stuff like LOTR. Kinda hard to make Aragorn say "You know, I just defended Helms Deep against the massed hordes of Sauron... I need a Mountain Dew!" without completely selling out your integrity.
The piracy figures are most likely bogus. With the cdkeys, people are prevented from playing online. With the Mac it seems there is no such device so EVERYONE can play online. All the cdkey is doing is skewing the PC piracy figures. I know plenty of people who have pirated Halo, but because they don't try and play online, there's no way of tracking the stats, whereas with the Mac, if you sell 5000 units, and 5500 play online, you know the piracy:)
Take a look at Quake. The reason it was such a huge success was piracy.
Co-op would be good, as would bots for multiplayer. The single player in Halo is a bit dull. The multiplayer would be good, except for having to play with the great unwashed. Besides, bot teammates don't tend to get pissed when you shoot them:)
Halo is too little, too late really. If it had come out when it was supposed too, it would have been great, but then MS bought Bungie and it all went to hell. Still, at least Bungie are more than capable of making a good game. (Made my favourite of all time: Myth 2). And yes, I know Gearbox did the PC version.
That's a dumb analogy. If nothing else there's a hell of a lot of reading involved in MTG, trying to figure out what the fuck a card does:)
First game of Magic I ever played, a friend busted out a Mountain Goat and cast Flying on it. For me, the dreaded "Flying Mountain Goat" sums up everything that makes Magic a real laugh:)
Main reason I've collected the cards though is for the art.
Too bad they don't let Unglued in:)
Luck plays a big part. The draw you get. As I said in another post (though maybe the one that disappeared on me), in Poker, you get a bad hand, you can bluff and maybe still win. In Magic, you get a bad hand, it's game over.
I disagree about it being for idiots who buy the best card. Everything the previous poster said is correct.
So now I guess the BBC have joined the ranks of CNN, Fox etc... Engaging in revisionist "news" reporting... Nasty...
What amuses me is the opening part.
The MyDoom virus represents a new level of sophistication in attacks on company websites.
How is it anymore sophisticated than the last 20 viruses down the pipe that DoS sites?
Methinks SCO has a journo at the BBC bought and paid for...
It's a fun game, and the poker comparison is accurate, but it's a LOT more luck based than Poker ever is. If you get mana screwed (have no lands to play), you could be the best player in the world, and you're still fucked. You get a bad hand in Poker and you can at least bluff.
If you want to play in the tournaments, you have to spend a fortune as there's a new expansion every 3-4 months, and expansions are removed from the tournament cycle with regularity. To stay competitive, you have to keep buying new cards. I had a friend who played tournaments and he'd buy two BOXES of booster packs every time a new expansion came out. That's about $200 I think. Maybe more now. It's a complete money pit, but hey, if you have fun and can afford it, good luck to you.
I used to collect the cards, have over 6000 of them. The aforementioned friend used to send me his doubles of his common cards (there's common, uncommon and rare. The rare cards go for a quite a price in some cases. I have single cards worth over $10). I used to wind up with 6-8 of each common. That was after he had taken enough for his deck building needs.
It's definitely fun to play, but bear in mind a lot of kids play it too. Finding mature players may be a trick.
Halo is overrated. I've been playing it. Yeah it's fun. But doesn't offer much over Quake!
$100 should get you every decent Mac game. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)