The Final Fantasy movie had some problems but I wouldn't call it bad. Although I wouldn't call it good either. It had a weak story and score that combined with lack of attention to the supporting characters overshadowed the excellent visual direction and solid voice acting.
I agree that this showed poor judgement on the part of Square but not for the same reasons. The real issue is that management "bet the farm" on a title with a niche audience. They would have had more success if they had worried more about creating a movie with broad appeal instead of a 90 minute cut-scene.
I have several computers at home and hardly use them except for evaluating software I may deploy at work. If that wasn't a consideration, I would seriously think about going without a home computer. There are many special purpose devices that perform all of the necessary functions without needing a PC. Gaming? Console of your choice. No need to download 100+ MB patches as soon as you open the box either. Web Surfing? WebTV. Email? WebTV. Movies? DVD player, Amp, Speakers and 16:9 TV. Music? same sans TV. The price of the components versus a computer is fairly comparable. The difference is that you plug in components and they work. No driver updates. No patches. No IRQ conflicts. No Plug-n-Pray. No crashes from using an AMD CPU with a 686B southbridge and a Sound Blaster card.
Sure a PC is more powerful, but frankly it can be more trouble than it's worth when it comes to entertainment purposes.
Actually the goal is to maximise short-term shareholder value regardless of any long-term opportunities. This increases the stock price enough for senior management to make a fortune off the options they granted themselves. This continues until the long term survivability is in jeopardy and then the company restructures.
The creature is really the only reason to play the game. Unfortunately, there are some fairly big problems with creature training. Many actions have a different result if you punish your creature before he does something instead of after. If you punish your creature while he is thinking of food, he will eat that type of food less often. If you punish your creature afterwards, it usually causes your creature to be less hungry. The game doesn't tell you what he's thinking of eating, so if he's running towards a field worked by villagers near a herd of animals, you don't know which he's going after.
Then there is the reason why the creature is eating. Usually it's because he's hungry but sometimes it's because he's depressed. If you don't want your creature to eat because he's depressed, you need to punish him. The problem is that you have to guess that that is why he's eating.
Then there is the whole good/evil thing. I trained a creature to do nothing but help villagers. His every waking thought was "I want to be nice to people." He healed villagers, planted/harvested trees, watered crops, anything helpful he could think of. He was also 100% evil because rather than hand feed him, I trained him to eat fish. This was seen as evil either because it was stealing from the villagers or because it was gluttonous to eat that much fish at once (I had a full grown tiger). The evil from eating to replenish all the energy spent helping the village accumulated faster than the good from helping the village. Meanwhile, I'm sacrificing newborns to power miracles and I'm 100% good because the good from casting mass heal accumulated faster than the evil from human sacrifice. Go figure.
The game had huge potential. It just didn't live up to it. I guess they figured they'd patch it later.
GTA3: Buy it. Best. Game. Ever.
MGS2: Rent it. The gameplay, what there was of it, was good. The story was a mixed bag. It started out well, but somehow devolved into Jerry Springer crossed with a truly terrible spy novel. Eye candy aside, MGS was much better.
Devil May Cry: Buy it. I can't say enough good things about this game.
In a related note, does anyone know of any good party style games for the PS2?
Wars: Wars are much more realistic in this go around. They are much more difficult. You have to use actual planning and strategy and concentrate on specific goals (like one city).
No, not really. You have to concentrate on producing mass quantities of cheap 2+ move units. Watch the AI strategy on this. It's very effective. As for realistic, how realistic is it for my mechanized infantry to get slaughtered by jaguar warriors while fortified in my city? Of course I didn't have artillery in the city. It was out in the field trying to bombard an enemy city. The only viable way to use artillery in this game is city defense.
Strategic Resources: There add an entire new element to the game, and give much historically realistic reasons for wars. You might finally find yourself sympathizing with the Japenese in WWII when you're playing the game and another civilzation will just not trade you for an important strategic resource you need that is just outside your borders.
It's not that the other civilization won't trade, it's that they can't. They either don't know about the resource or they only have one. Trade requires 2+ resources of the same type. The absolute worst is coal. Generate a huge map for 16 civilizations. Count the coal. There might be 7-8.
I don't feel the resources actually add anything to the game. In a Deity game on standard or smaller maps, a conquest victory is possible somewhen in the vicinity of 0 BC. The only resources that come into play are horses and iron. On a large map, a conquest victory is questionable and on a huge map the only chance of winning is through the UN because the rival civilizations keep respawning.
Culture: This one kicked my ass to there and back and is the biggest change you have to get used to in the game, but the culture in the game accurately reflects the influence it has in the real world. One only has to look at the pervasiveness of American "culture" today to see how it really has an influence on geopolitics.
The only real effect of culture in the game is borders. Sure, rival cities can convert if you have enough culture, but it's somewhat rare and not reliable. For example, I let a rival civilization build several cities next to my capitol figuring I would have easy time converting them given that I had several wonders and all the infrastructure buildings in my capitol. 50 turns later, one of them finally changes over.
A few things you left out.
AI: the AI expands to fill any and all available space as rapidly as possible. It will do nothing else unless war is declared and then will try to end the war quickly so it can get back to expansion. Once all available space is taken, then and only then will the AI focus on other activities.
Diplomacy: under various conditions, the AI can create money and units out of thin air. There are also real problems with the system for determining the value of a trade. In addition, when considering how relative military might affects the terms, the main factor seems to simply be the number of units rather than how powerful each one is.
Lack of choices: From the start, I felt like I was being forced into particular playstyles sanctioned by the designers. Many otherwise viable approaches are nullified by the fact that every AI civilization is ruthlessly expansionistic even on the easiest level. On higher difficulty levels, the production and research bonuses mean that the only way to win is conquest/domination or the UN.
Patrolling: The AI feels the need to move every unit every turn. In end games on huge maps, this can equate to several minutes between turns while the enemy moves (AMD 1.4GHz). The better your visibility of the enemy, the longer it takes.
In all, it is much more realistic and deep advancement on Civ II. Take a step back and come back to it with fresh eyes. The hype and the wait probably did the same thing to you as it did to me.
I did take a step back. After soundly defeating the AI in 530 BC on Deity the first week I had the game, I went back and played Civ2 and SMAC just to make sure I wasn't being overly harsh. What I found was that I wasn't being harsh enough. The AI in SMAC is light years beyond Civ3. Different factions with differing goals behave in different fashions while still presenting a challenge. The care and attention to every conceivable detail that's displayed in SMAC compared to Civ3 speaks for itself.
Is it an OK game? Yes. Is even as good as CTP? No. Was it worth $50? No.
Civ3 is to Civ2 as X-Com Enforcer is to X-Com Apocalypse.
That's a nice solution. The problem is that in real life, you rarely get to be in charge of both server administration and network architecture. Besides, that only works for smaller operations. My servers need to be available to internal staff in 80 countries. The odds of getting the network guys to correctly configure everything is about the same as winning the lottery.
Hell, I've lost count of how many calls I've gotten because the network admin at one site or another had hard coded ips into his firewall accept rules and ours weren't included. The reasoning being that staff at that site should only be connecting to internal addresses and nobody had asked to connect to ours. Deity forfend that the firewall be set up to allow access to either of the two class B addresses we own. That would be too simple.
The point is that if you are a SQL Sever admin in a corporate environment, you probably have little control of anything other than SQL Server.
What you are suggesting is interesting and even possible. However, our government is specifically designed to NOT be a democracy. It is, in fact, a republic. The purpose is to prevent tyranny of the masses. A democracy requires that the majority of citizens are willing to put the best interests of the nation before their own. I very much doubt that was true at that time, and I'm quite certain it isn't now. A republic was seen as the best compromise. The masses had some influence but the real decisions were made by men willing to make personal sacrifices in order to guide the nation.
Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. The government has grown to where being a member of the legislature is a full time position with substantial compensation. Further, we allow our legislaters to receive large sums in "campaign contributions", "speaking fees", and so forth from special interest groups in return for voting a particular way on a particular issue. Even if the citizens at large would oppose such a bill, how many of them will even know?
As for a constitutional amendment, the process requires either a 2/3rds majority vote in both the house and senate or a constitutional convention called by 2/3rds of the state legislatures just to propose. It then requires ratification by 3/4ths of the states. I strongly suspect until such time as the citizenry at large is truly ready for democracy, the elected legislators will not allow a proposal that would so reduce their power to pass.
Slashdot Mirror
The Final Fantasy movie had some problems but I wouldn't call it bad. Although I wouldn't call it good either. It had a weak story and score that combined with lack of attention to the supporting characters overshadowed the excellent visual direction and solid voice acting.
I agree that this showed poor judgement on the part of Square but not for the same reasons. The real issue is that management "bet the farm" on a title with a niche audience. They would have had more success if they had worried more about creating a movie with broad appeal instead of a 90 minute cut-scene.
I have several computers at home and hardly use them except for evaluating software I may deploy at work. If that wasn't a consideration, I would seriously think about going without a home computer. There are many special purpose devices that perform all of the necessary functions without needing a PC. Gaming? Console of your choice. No need to download 100+ MB patches as soon as you open the box either. Web Surfing? WebTV. Email? WebTV. Movies? DVD player, Amp, Speakers and 16:9 TV. Music? same sans TV. The price of the components versus a computer is fairly comparable. The difference is that you plug in components and they work. No driver updates. No patches. No IRQ conflicts. No Plug-n-Pray. No crashes from using an AMD CPU with a 686B southbridge and a Sound Blaster card.
Sure a PC is more powerful, but frankly it can be more trouble than it's worth when it comes to entertainment purposes.
Actually the goal is to maximise short-term shareholder value regardless of any long-term opportunities. This increases the stock price enough for senior management to make a fortune off the options they granted themselves. This continues until the long term survivability is in jeopardy and then the company restructures.
The creature is really the only reason to play the game. Unfortunately, there are some fairly big problems with creature training. Many actions have a different result if you punish your creature before he does something instead of after. If you punish your creature while he is thinking of food, he will eat that type of food less often. If you punish your creature afterwards, it usually causes your creature to be less hungry. The game doesn't tell you what he's thinking of eating, so if he's running towards a field worked by villagers near a herd of animals, you don't know which he's going after.
Then there is the reason why the creature is eating. Usually it's because he's hungry but sometimes it's because he's depressed. If you don't want your creature to eat because he's depressed, you need to punish him. The problem is that you have to guess that that is why he's eating.
Then there is the whole good/evil thing. I trained a creature to do nothing but help villagers. His every waking thought was "I want to be nice to people." He healed villagers, planted/harvested trees, watered crops, anything helpful he could think of. He was also 100% evil because rather than hand feed him, I trained him to eat fish. This was seen as evil either because it was stealing from the villagers or because it was gluttonous to eat that much fish at once (I had a full grown tiger). The evil from eating to replenish all the energy spent helping the village accumulated faster than the good from helping the village. Meanwhile, I'm sacrificing newborns to power miracles and I'm 100% good because the good from casting mass heal accumulated faster than the evil from human sacrifice. Go figure.
The game had huge potential. It just didn't live up to it. I guess they figured they'd patch it later.
GTA3: Buy it. Best. Game. Ever.
MGS2: Rent it. The gameplay, what there was of it, was good. The story was a mixed bag. It started out well, but somehow devolved into Jerry Springer crossed with a truly terrible spy novel. Eye candy aside, MGS was much better.
Devil May Cry: Buy it. I can't say enough good things about this game.
In a related note, does anyone know of any good party style games for the PS2?
Try Gauntlet: Dark Legacy.
No, not really. You have to concentrate on producing mass quantities of cheap 2+ move units. Watch the AI strategy on this. It's very effective. As for realistic, how realistic is it for my mechanized infantry to get slaughtered by jaguar warriors while fortified in my city? Of course I didn't have artillery in the city. It was out in the field trying to bombard an enemy city. The only viable way to use artillery in this game is city defense.
Strategic Resources: There add an entire new element to the game, and give much historically realistic reasons for wars. You might finally find yourself sympathizing with the Japenese in WWII when you're playing the game and another civilzation will just not trade you for an important strategic resource you need that is just outside your borders.
It's not that the other civilization won't trade, it's that they can't. They either don't know about the resource or they only have one. Trade requires 2+ resources of the same type. The absolute worst is coal. Generate a huge map for 16 civilizations. Count the coal. There might be 7-8.
I don't feel the resources actually add anything to the game. In a Deity game on standard or smaller maps, a conquest victory is possible somewhen in the vicinity of 0 BC. The only resources that come into play are horses and iron. On a large map, a conquest victory is questionable and on a huge map the only chance of winning is through the UN because the rival civilizations keep respawning.
Culture: This one kicked my ass to there and back and is the biggest change you have to get used to in the game, but the culture in the game accurately reflects the influence it has in the real world. One only has to look at the pervasiveness of American "culture" today to see how it really has an influence on geopolitics.
The only real effect of culture in the game is borders. Sure, rival cities can convert if you have enough culture, but it's somewhat rare and not reliable. For example, I let a rival civilization build several cities next to my capitol figuring I would have easy time converting them given that I had several wonders and all the infrastructure buildings in my capitol. 50 turns later, one of them finally changes over.
A few things you left out.
AI: the AI expands to fill any and all available space as rapidly as possible. It will do nothing else unless war is declared and then will try to end the war quickly so it can get back to expansion. Once all available space is taken, then and only then will the AI focus on other activities.
Diplomacy: under various conditions, the AI can create money and units out of thin air. There are also real problems with the system for determining the value of a trade. In addition, when considering how relative military might affects the terms, the main factor seems to simply be the number of units rather than how powerful each one is.
Lack of choices: From the start, I felt like I was being forced into particular playstyles sanctioned by the designers. Many otherwise viable approaches are nullified by the fact that every AI civilization is ruthlessly expansionistic even on the easiest level. On higher difficulty levels, the production and research bonuses mean that the only way to win is conquest/domination or the UN.
Patrolling: The AI feels the need to move every unit every turn. In end games on huge maps, this can equate to several minutes between turns while the enemy moves (AMD 1.4GHz). The better your visibility of the enemy, the longer it takes.
In all, it is much more realistic and deep advancement on Civ II. Take a step back and come back to it with fresh eyes. The hype and the wait probably did the same thing to you as it did to me.
I did take a step back. After soundly defeating the AI in 530 BC on Deity the first week I had the game, I went back and played Civ2 and SMAC just to make sure I wasn't being overly harsh. What I found was that I wasn't being harsh enough. The AI in SMAC is light years beyond Civ3. Different factions with differing goals behave in different fashions while still presenting a challenge. The care and attention to every conceivable detail that's displayed in SMAC compared to Civ3 speaks for itself.
Is it an OK game? Yes. Is even as good as CTP? No. Was it worth $50? No.
Civ3 is to Civ2 as X-Com Enforcer is to X-Com Apocalypse.
That's a nice solution. The problem is that in real life, you rarely get to be in charge of both server administration and network architecture. Besides, that only works for smaller operations. My servers need to be available to internal staff in 80 countries. The odds of getting the network guys to correctly configure everything is about the same as winning the lottery.
Hell, I've lost count of how many calls I've gotten because the network admin at one site or another had hard coded ips into his firewall accept rules and ours weren't included. The reasoning being that staff at that site should only be connecting to internal addresses and nobody had asked to connect to ours. Deity forfend that the firewall be set up to allow access to either of the two class B addresses we own. That would be too simple.
The point is that if you are a SQL Sever admin in a corporate environment, you probably have little control of anything other than SQL Server.
What you are suggesting is interesting and even possible. However, our government is specifically designed to NOT be a democracy. It is, in fact, a republic. The purpose is to prevent tyranny of the masses. A democracy requires that the majority of citizens are willing to put the best interests of the nation before their own. I very much doubt that was true at that time, and I'm quite certain it isn't now. A republic was seen as the best compromise. The masses had some influence but the real decisions were made by men willing to make personal sacrifices in order to guide the nation.
Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. The government has grown to where being a member of the legislature is a full time position with substantial compensation. Further, we allow our legislaters to receive large sums in "campaign contributions", "speaking fees", and so forth from special interest groups in return for voting a particular way on a particular issue. Even if the citizens at large would oppose such a bill, how many of them will even know?
As for a constitutional amendment, the process requires either a 2/3rds majority vote in both the house and senate or a constitutional convention called by 2/3rds of the state legislatures just to propose. It then requires ratification by 3/4ths of the states. I strongly suspect until such time as the citizenry at large is truly ready for democracy, the elected legislators will not allow a proposal that would so reduce their power to pass.
Regards,
Chazmyrr