I don't play RPGs for their gameplay though. I play them for the writing and the story. If I absolutely love the characters and I feel like I'm making an actual impact on the ongoing story (and Alpha Protocol pulls this off better than most) then 9 out of 10 times a happy camper.
It's why I prefer Alpha Protocol to Mass Effect 2. ME2's gameplay may be better (save for that whole planet scanning crap), but the overarching story is garbage and does a lot of damage to the universe established in Mass Effect 1. ME2's ending left me going "what the fucking fuck was that?" where as Alpha Protocol's left me going "Holy shit!!!" (all three times even).
The fact that people panned Alpha Protocol just because the gameplay was mediocre shows me just how far the RPG genre has slipped.
Go do another playthrough and don't use any of the OP abilities. You'll find your experience will vastly improve.
All this talk of choices and no one has mentioned Alpha Protocol? Egads, that's a damned travesty.
If you want a game where choices matter, where the conversations are interesting and also how you conduct them matter, where even your play style impacts the game, then get Alpha Protocol. There are so many variables in that game that I'm on my 3rd playthrough and I'm still having a blast. The writing and voice acting is consistently fantastic and it's a shame that more people haven't played it. It's easily one of the best RPGs of last year but then, what else can you expect from Obsidian? Sure their games are glitchy but those guys know how to create an engrossing world better than anyone.
Wins what? Everyone who I've gotten to switch Windows 7 has commented at how easy it is to use and that it "just works."
I haven't used a mac since I was in middle school, but if Itunes is any indication of your current average Apple "experience" then it's safe to say that Apple doesn't know a god damn thing about how to create an intuitive and well layed out UI.
The only solution to that would be to have boxed copies still act like full games, but then we're right back at square one. Granted, it's not like game companies care about people with slow, dodgy internet or even no internet at all. Think about Ubisoft's bullshit and the stupid activation crap that's out there.
The fix to their problems isn't going to be a new selling scheme, but for companies to just ditch DRM entirely and accept that DRM just does not work. If they want to do something productive, they need to release demos on a regular basis again. If they want to do somethng productive they need to stop releasing bullshit, overhyped games. If they want to do something productive they need to lynch Bobby Kotick and Yves Guillemot. Maybe then they'll start seeing some improvements in sales.
That approach would be ok if they initial price of the game was lower. You can't sell a stripped game and then have the balls to charge full price for it (and put the most oppressive, buggy DRM ever made on it). Now, if they want to do it old school where you pay less for your stripped game (let's say 25 bucks) and then via DLC let you unlock the rest of it (let's say another 25 bucks worth of content) then I don't see the problem here.
And it's also an assumption that it'll result in increased sales, just like it's an assumption that piracy is a lost sale. For all you know everyone that heard that performance would just go home and fire up bit torrent to yoink this guy's stuff. The whole argument is pointless because both sides are just endlessly talking out of their asses about hypothetical situations.
Does the media industry in general need to change? Yep. But I'm getting kind of tired of pirates that get on their high horse as if they were protesting the god damn Vietnam war.
And it's what, 4 bucks for that sheet music? She couldn't compromise with him, scrounge up some couch change and mail it to him? It's not going to kill you all to actually pay for some of the stuff out there.
If there's one thing I've learned with Seagate, it's that they're terrible at fixing firmware issues. Their 500GB hard drives for laptops were notorious for having issues caused by crappy firmware that never got resolved by the time I trashed mine.
Yeah, I remember when I was dropped into medical hold (yay for burst appendixes) during Air Force basic training. There were a couple of heavy guys there that were basically told "get in shape, or we'll keep recycling your ass." This was back around 2002, so they're still big on recycling the overweight people through basic as much as possible until they drop the weight.
So on that note, I'm confused. Is there something wrong with this system? IMO that's pretty damned good motivation to get in shape and in a hurry. The Navy shouldn't be coddling these fatassed kids like this.
Yep, the city made out like a bandit and got a convenient excuse.
This also happens to be exactly why I keep my Facebook free of anyone from work. People seem to think that they need to "friend" anyone they met even briefly and then wonder why it gets them into trouble. You can't be fired for things you said on your Facebook page if your page is set to private and nobody from work can read it. It's that damned simple.
Baldur's Gate 1 + Tales of the Sword Coast + Baldur's Gate 2 + Throne of Bhaal = The best summer marathon of gaming I've ever experienced. I really should do that again at some point.
It says a lot that I've played BG more than a couple of times and could only stand Mass Effect once. The depth and scope of BG absolutely annihilates Mass Effect's very very watered down RPG experience.
You're overreacting a hair with your rebuttal. Consider this: In Morrowind you could kill anyone, even if it broke the entire game. You could go do basically what ever you wanted. Hell, I didn't even touch the main quest until after many hours of just dicking around.
Oblivion is horribly closed in and simplified, a trend that has sadly taken off with RPGs. Instead of living worlds like Morrowind and Baldur's Gate, we've instead got tightly directed experiences like Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins. It's a shitty trend and one I'd love to see come to and end, however gamers these days tend to not go for the old style RPGs. They consider them to be too clunky and without the constant carrot on a stick style of modern gameplay, most gamers these days get horribly lost and confused.
Thank god for those crazy Russians and the progressively more and more awesome games they're putting out.
Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some artifacts to go scan down.
I've got a fairly heavy duty cable package as well, but after months of not even watching it, I'll be cutting it completely when I get home.
I've got my old computer hooked to my TV so I can watch anything online or acquired online quite easily on my HDTV. Cable is just not worth the monthly fee considering how absolutely crappy it is.
As we were taught in the Air Force: CYA - COVER YOUR ASS. Assume that your bosses are going to fuck you over when they screw something up horribly. Assume that your superiors will dump the blame on you. Assume that everyone you work with is a retard. If your boss asks for information, give it to him, but get records of what the hell is going on. You can't get in trouble if there's documentation and proof showing it wasn't your fault. Then when it all blows up you can go "ha ha, I told you so."
That said, this never should have gone to court. This whole thing reeks of butthurt office morons flexing their muscle just to feel better about their own incompetence.
The even bigger joke is that they talked about this exact form of censorship a few seasons back and it involved the words the Prophet Muhammed. It just goes to show how on the ball Matt and Trey really are.
Reactor...online...
Sensors...online...
Weapons...online...
All systems...nominal..
Oh hell yes. I own the entire MW4 series, but it'll still be awesome to see MW4 get released like this. MekTek has been fantastic with keeping the community going and with MW4 being green lighted for a free release, I know I'll be eager to introduce a few friends of mine to the game and getting into some heated mech battles.
"Yeah, up up, down down, left right, left right, B A doesn't work in Quake 3. So much for memorization."
You're obviously forgetting to hit start, duh.
"though there clearly is some benefit to prior video game experiences help you learn new video games."
If as you play more and more video games, you actually pay attention to the design of the games as opposed to just blindly playing through the game, you will develop a very keen '6th sense' in video games and it has a lot to do with the fact that you've learned how to get inside the head of the developers who make games. You get a very good sense for the inherent pacing that a lot of games tend to have, so the more games you play, the harder it will be to surprise you. You'll feel a lull in combat for instance and just have that sense that you may be about to hit a sub-boss fight or a big enemy wave.
An excellent example was when me and a few friends were playing through Borderlands and we were coming up on the Roid Rage Psycho boss. Before you get to him there's a hall you have to go down that gets oddly quiet and at the end you have to drop down off a ledge. We all just looked at each other and all remarked that there just "HAD to be a boss fight coming up." Sure enough the Psycho spawned in once we all got down into the boss arena.
Another good example in the opposite spectrum is the opening Marine level of AVP 2. We were so used to playing FPSs that pretty much had you running and gunning from level 1 that when this game came along presented us with an opening level that didn't have any shooting whatsoever, it had a lot of us jumping at shadows and actually getting shaken up by the atmosphere soley because the game was going against everything other video games had taught us pacing wise.
Playing Brain Age might not develop any new thinking skills like playing a really involved RTS would, but much like doing a daily crossword puzzle, it will help to keep your brain from essentially atrophying.
Intel is riding high right now and thinks that everyone will fall right in step no matter what Intel does. They're getting greedy, pure and simple and it's about to bite them in the ass.
I was going to write something completely different after this, and then I read the last line of the article.
"Oh, one last thing: one of our sources states LGA2011 will launch with quad-and six-core CPUs (with Hyper-Threading so eight and 12 execution units) although another source has stated eight-core CPUs are also on their way"
Really? They couldn't do anything else with Socket 1366? Good job Intel, you're going to manage to piss off a lot of people all at once. Oh well, it was time for the playing fields to reverse again. Sure Intel's processors may be the biggest and baddest on the block, but if I have to switch out my motherboard every time they issue a new generation of processors, then I think I'm going to switch back to the AMD camp (I always did have a soft spot for my old Athlon 2800+ rig. That thing was unbreakable.)
Funny how both GPU and CPU leaders seem to swap at the same time. Nvidia just recently shot itself in the foot with their 400 series cards, and Intel is about to do the same with yet another generation of sockets. Meanwhile Radeon is riding high with their latest offerings from the 5000 series and if they play their cards right, AMD is going to end up stomping Intel if only due to the fact that consumers are going to get tired of Intel's shit.
The interesting part here is that Crysis's 'demo' was just an opening chunk of the first level. That cuts out early. Someone more familiar with these sorts of things really needs to explain how a code cut and paste is "prohibitively expensive."
The plan all along was to bring in the actors from the individual movie franchises together for the big Avengers flick. I'm not sure why you'd think otherwise.
Joss Whedon would be a HORRIBLE pick for a movie like this, and I really have to wonder why in the hell they just don't have Jon Favreau direct the damn thing. He's proving to be quite adept at the superhero movie gig.
Joss Whedon on the other hand wouldn't know what to do with an action oriented movie. Characters that, yanno, have to do things besides just talk and talk and talk. Now, dialogue isn't a bad thing at all, lord knows I loves me some well written dialogue, but this is a superhero movie, and superheroes are expected to get out their and beat some ass, and that is definitely not Whedon's bag. Plus, I doubt he's got the force of personality required as a director to wrangle actors like Robert Downey Jr.
He's a bad pick through and through for a project like this.
Ahhh Linux. Old and outdated computer that you don't want to part with? Linux box!
Kid fucked up and bought a Mac and learned to hate it in a hurry? Linux box!
Bricked your Windows PC? Linux box!
Found out that your PS3 isn't as awesome as you originally thought it would be? Linux box!
Linux, making useless computers not suck since 1991.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't play RPGs for their gameplay though. I play them for the writing and the story. If I absolutely love the characters and I feel like I'm making an actual impact on the ongoing story (and Alpha Protocol pulls this off better than most) then 9 out of 10 times a happy camper.
It's why I prefer Alpha Protocol to Mass Effect 2. ME2's gameplay may be better (save for that whole planet scanning crap), but the overarching story is garbage and does a lot of damage to the universe established in Mass Effect 1. ME2's ending left me going "what the fucking fuck was that?" where as Alpha Protocol's left me going "Holy shit!!!" (all three times even).
The fact that people panned Alpha Protocol just because the gameplay was mediocre shows me just how far the RPG genre has slipped.
Go do another playthrough and don't use any of the OP abilities. You'll find your experience will vastly improve.
Apple
Accessibility
Bhahahahahahahahahahah
All this talk of choices and no one has mentioned Alpha Protocol? Egads, that's a damned travesty.
If you want a game where choices matter, where the conversations are interesting and also how you conduct them matter, where even your play style impacts the game, then get Alpha Protocol. There are so many variables in that game that I'm on my 3rd playthrough and I'm still having a blast. The writing and voice acting is consistently fantastic and it's a shame that more people haven't played it. It's easily one of the best RPGs of last year but then, what else can you expect from Obsidian? Sure their games are glitchy but those guys know how to create an engrossing world better than anyone.
It's called Firefall sir. Look it up. :D
Wins what? Everyone who I've gotten to switch Windows 7 has commented at how easy it is to use and that it "just works." I haven't used a mac since I was in middle school, but if Itunes is any indication of your current average Apple "experience" then it's safe to say that Apple doesn't know a god damn thing about how to create an intuitive and well layed out UI.
The only solution to that would be to have boxed copies still act like full games, but then we're right back at square one. Granted, it's not like game companies care about people with slow, dodgy internet or even no internet at all. Think about Ubisoft's bullshit and the stupid activation crap that's out there.
The fix to their problems isn't going to be a new selling scheme, but for companies to just ditch DRM entirely and accept that DRM just does not work. If they want to do something productive, they need to release demos on a regular basis again. If they want to do somethng productive they need to stop releasing bullshit, overhyped games. If they want to do something productive they need to lynch Bobby Kotick and Yves Guillemot. Maybe then they'll start seeing some improvements in sales.
That approach would be ok if they initial price of the game was lower. You can't sell a stripped game and then have the balls to charge full price for it (and put the most oppressive, buggy DRM ever made on it). Now, if they want to do it old school where you pay less for your stripped game (let's say 25 bucks) and then via DLC let you unlock the rest of it (let's say another 25 bucks worth of content) then I don't see the problem here.
And it's also an assumption that it'll result in increased sales, just like it's an assumption that piracy is a lost sale. For all you know everyone that heard that performance would just go home and fire up bit torrent to yoink this guy's stuff. The whole argument is pointless because both sides are just endlessly talking out of their asses about hypothetical situations.
Does the media industry in general need to change? Yep. But I'm getting kind of tired of pirates that get on their high horse as if they were protesting the god damn Vietnam war.
And it's what, 4 bucks for that sheet music? She couldn't compromise with him, scrounge up some couch change and mail it to him? It's not going to kill you all to actually pay for some of the stuff out there.
If there's one thing I've learned with Seagate, it's that they're terrible at fixing firmware issues. Their 500GB hard drives for laptops were notorious for having issues caused by crappy firmware that never got resolved by the time I trashed mine.
38.6% 27/70. Blast, I need to work on my cynicism and inflated ego. Obviously all of you were cheating.
Yeah, I remember when I was dropped into medical hold (yay for burst appendixes) during Air Force basic training. There were a couple of heavy guys there that were basically told "get in shape, or we'll keep recycling your ass." This was back around 2002, so they're still big on recycling the overweight people through basic as much as possible until they drop the weight. So on that note, I'm confused. Is there something wrong with this system? IMO that's pretty damned good motivation to get in shape and in a hurry. The Navy shouldn't be coddling these fatassed kids like this.
Yep, the city made out like a bandit and got a convenient excuse.
This also happens to be exactly why I keep my Facebook free of anyone from work. People seem to think that they need to "friend" anyone they met even briefly and then wonder why it gets them into trouble. You can't be fired for things you said on your Facebook page if your page is set to private and nobody from work can read it. It's that damned simple.
No, but at least we'll have someone closer that we can bomb. Imagine the savings on fuel!
Baldur's Gate 1 + Tales of the Sword Coast + Baldur's Gate 2 + Throne of Bhaal = The best summer marathon of gaming I've ever experienced. I really should do that again at some point.
It says a lot that I've played BG more than a couple of times and could only stand Mass Effect once. The depth and scope of BG absolutely annihilates Mass Effect's very very watered down RPG experience.
You're overreacting a hair with your rebuttal. Consider this: In Morrowind you could kill anyone, even if it broke the entire game. You could go do basically what ever you wanted. Hell, I didn't even touch the main quest until after many hours of just dicking around.
Oblivion is horribly closed in and simplified, a trend that has sadly taken off with RPGs. Instead of living worlds like Morrowind and Baldur's Gate, we've instead got tightly directed experiences like Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins. It's a shitty trend and one I'd love to see come to and end, however gamers these days tend to not go for the old style RPGs. They consider them to be too clunky and without the constant carrot on a stick style of modern gameplay, most gamers these days get horribly lost and confused.
Thank god for those crazy Russians and the progressively more and more awesome games they're putting out.
Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some artifacts to go scan down.
I've got a fairly heavy duty cable package as well, but after months of not even watching it, I'll be cutting it completely when I get home.
I've got my old computer hooked to my TV so I can watch anything online or acquired online quite easily on my HDTV. Cable is just not worth the monthly fee considering how absolutely crappy it is.
As we were taught in the Air Force: CYA - COVER YOUR ASS. Assume that your bosses are going to fuck you over when they screw something up horribly. Assume that your superiors will dump the blame on you. Assume that everyone you work with is a retard. If your boss asks for information, give it to him, but get records of what the hell is going on. You can't get in trouble if there's documentation and proof showing it wasn't your fault. Then when it all blows up you can go "ha ha, I told you so."
That said, this never should have gone to court. This whole thing reeks of butthurt office morons flexing their muscle just to feel better about their own incompetence.
Also, did the remove the ganet from this episode because it wet it's nest?
The even bigger joke is that they talked about this exact form of censorship a few seasons back and it involved the words the Prophet Muhammed. It just goes to show how on the ball Matt and Trey really are.
Reactor...online...
Sensors...online...
Weapons...online...
All systems...nominal..
Oh hell yes. I own the entire MW4 series, but it'll still be awesome to see MW4 get released like this. MekTek has been fantastic with keeping the community going and with MW4 being green lighted for a free release, I know I'll be eager to introduce a few friends of mine to the game and getting into some heated mech battles.
"Yeah, up up, down down, left right, left right, B A doesn't work in Quake 3. So much for memorization."
You're obviously forgetting to hit start, duh.
"though there clearly is some benefit to prior video game experiences help you learn new video games." If as you play more and more video games, you actually pay attention to the design of the games as opposed to just blindly playing through the game, you will develop a very keen '6th sense' in video games and it has a lot to do with the fact that you've learned how to get inside the head of the developers who make games. You get a very good sense for the inherent pacing that a lot of games tend to have, so the more games you play, the harder it will be to surprise you. You'll feel a lull in combat for instance and just have that sense that you may be about to hit a sub-boss fight or a big enemy wave.
An excellent example was when me and a few friends were playing through Borderlands and we were coming up on the Roid Rage Psycho boss. Before you get to him there's a hall you have to go down that gets oddly quiet and at the end you have to drop down off a ledge. We all just looked at each other and all remarked that there just "HAD to be a boss fight coming up." Sure enough the Psycho spawned in once we all got down into the boss arena.
Another good example in the opposite spectrum is the opening Marine level of AVP 2. We were so used to playing FPSs that pretty much had you running and gunning from level 1 that when this game came along presented us with an opening level that didn't have any shooting whatsoever, it had a lot of us jumping at shadows and actually getting shaken up by the atmosphere soley because the game was going against everything other video games had taught us pacing wise.
Playing Brain Age might not develop any new thinking skills like playing a really involved RTS would, but much like doing a daily crossword puzzle, it will help to keep your brain from essentially atrophying.
Intel is riding high right now and thinks that everyone will fall right in step no matter what Intel does. They're getting greedy, pure and simple and it's about to bite them in the ass.
I was going to write something completely different after this, and then I read the last line of the article.
"Oh, one last thing: one of our sources states LGA2011 will launch with quad-and six-core CPUs (with Hyper-Threading so eight and 12 execution units) although another source has stated eight-core CPUs are also on their way"
Really? They couldn't do anything else with Socket 1366? Good job Intel, you're going to manage to piss off a lot of people all at once. Oh well, it was time for the playing fields to reverse again. Sure Intel's processors may be the biggest and baddest on the block, but if I have to switch out my motherboard every time they issue a new generation of processors, then I think I'm going to switch back to the AMD camp (I always did have a soft spot for my old Athlon 2800+ rig. That thing was unbreakable.)
Funny how both GPU and CPU leaders seem to swap at the same time. Nvidia just recently shot itself in the foot with their 400 series cards, and Intel is about to do the same with yet another generation of sockets. Meanwhile Radeon is riding high with their latest offerings from the 5000 series and if they play their cards right, AMD is going to end up stomping Intel if only due to the fact that consumers are going to get tired of Intel's shit.
The interesting part here is that Crysis's 'demo' was just an opening chunk of the first level. That cuts out early. Someone more familiar with these sorts of things really needs to explain how a code cut and paste is "prohibitively expensive."
The plan all along was to bring in the actors from the individual movie franchises together for the big Avengers flick. I'm not sure why you'd think otherwise.
Joss Whedon would be a HORRIBLE pick for a movie like this, and I really have to wonder why in the hell they just don't have Jon Favreau direct the damn thing. He's proving to be quite adept at the superhero movie gig.
Joss Whedon on the other hand wouldn't know what to do with an action oriented movie. Characters that, yanno, have to do things besides just talk and talk and talk. Now, dialogue isn't a bad thing at all, lord knows I loves me some well written dialogue, but this is a superhero movie, and superheroes are expected to get out their and beat some ass, and that is definitely not Whedon's bag. Plus, I doubt he's got the force of personality required as a director to wrangle actors like Robert Downey Jr.
He's a bad pick through and through for a project like this.
Ahhh Linux. Old and outdated computer that you don't want to part with? Linux box!
Kid fucked up and bought a Mac and learned to hate it in a hurry? Linux box!
Bricked your Windows PC? Linux box!
Found out that your PS3 isn't as awesome as you originally thought it would be? Linux box!
Linux, making useless computers not suck since 1991.