I too loved Conker, and especially loved the ending. That they managed to pull a genuine and moving ending out of a crass parody of platformers and action movies just proves how brilliant that game was.
I'm not sure why but I never got too far in the remake though. I always meant to pick it back up, but I only got a couple hours into it. They somehow managed to create the most convoluted and confusing interface for the multiplayer ever... it might be the most fun XBL game ever made but I wouldn't know since I couldn't even figure out what my goals were in the matches.
...including the Virtual Boy, the fear of drought is enough to make me wait. The DS, Gamecube, and N64 all had significant post-launch droughts.
I agree the Wii has a lot of well-regarded launch titles, but apart from Zelda there's an awful lot of minigame collections in that list (Trauma, Rayman, Wii Sports) so I worry about how long those games will last. It's a problem with a lot of the DS' library too - there's a good number of good games but they tend to be on the shallow side in terms of lasting value.
Or maybe when he said "...it was the first shooter I played that had some substance" he meant that it was the first shooter he had played that had some substance.
I don't see anywhere where he indicates that it was the first shooter EVER with some substance.
Seriously though, at some point gaming became like sports teams and pickup trucks.
I half expect to start seeing 360 faceplates that say "Sony Sucks" and DS stickers that show Calvin pissing on a PSP. Gamers seem to be so caught up in the rhetoric these days that it's getting harder and harder to find sites where people are actually discussing... what are those things called.... oh yeah, games.
While I find it cute that you think the opinions of people on those sites is somehow reflective of those of the general market, you're way off base. The vast, vast majority of the market has never even heard of a rootkit and probably think that Lik-Sang is a euphemism for fellatio.
You're using an extremely biased sample - people who are passionate enough about their consumer goods and electronics that they bother coming onto the internet to discuss them. If you made all market judgements by polling the sites you mentioned, you'd come away thinking that the next Madden will sell 3 copies, that the Wii will dominate console sales next generation by extreme margins, and that no one on the face of the planet owns a PSP.
Just order one and enjoy it. I agree that it's exclusion is mysterious, and makes me worry that people will stop making games that take advantage of it. It's closer in experience to an analog stick than the PSP nub - it's possible to get nearly as good at Mario 64 with it as it is with an analog stick.
Seriously, I don't know why people are so hesitant to use it. I can't imagine playing Mario 64, Metroid Prime Hunters, or Star Fox Command any other way.
More like $22 each
on
USB Batteries
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· Score: 4, Funny
The little "L" like symbol means pounds not dollars.
Erm, too bad I already have a DVD player that does 720p.
You may have a DVD player that upscales to 720p, but that isn't really the same thing as what you're saying. I mean, I can take my 1 megapixel camera and scale an image from it to 5 megapixels - but that doesn't mean i suddenly have a 5 megapixel camera. Upscaling DVD players don't magically make the content be 720p.
I don't really care about 1080p anyway, which is the only real advantage of BluRay.
HD-DVD does 1080p as well. I think you're confusing the fact that the PS3 is capable of 1080p (though games aren't required to support that resolution and most probably won't) with the fact that the Xbox 360 isn't. In terms of resolution, HD-DVD and BluRay share the same capabilities; the main difference between them is disc capacity.
Re:All new 3D Shooters are missing one thing...
on
Prey Review
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Perfect Dark Zero offers an excellent online coop mode. It's probably the most innovative part of the game, but didn't get a lot of fanfare.
In a lot of ways it's much better than the flawed single-player mode.
One of the things that's interesting about why Eisenhower pushed for the highway system was that he saw the Autobahn system in Germany during the occupation post-WWII and knew that that was one of the things that United States needed to develop.
Too bad he didn't notice their train system while he was over there too. Our lack of a national public transportation system is wasteful and embarassing.
In other words, I think this is a specialized path, which only appeals to the high end consumer and won't get any broad market penetration. Even if Blu-Ray "wins" by piggy-backing on the PS3's market penetration, I don't think it will ever get much in terms of consumer acceptance.
But you're also talking about a very very lossy compression scheme (DVD) vs. a much lower loss compression scheme (HDDVD and BluRay) for both video and audio.
I'm not saying people will care, but the difference isn't just in resolution. The compression artifacts on DVD are a big part of the reason DVD's don't look so great on HDTV's.
> Since commercial BluRay players already exists it is doubtful > Sony will have any problem in manufacturing them.
Oh, really? Because they've made a few thousand of these they'll have no problem making a million? In just a few months?
>...with retail units hitting the shelves around June/July in Japan. > And most likely September in the US. $349/399.
What - exactly - are you basing this on and which oriface did it come from?
> Don't worry, if you get your order in you'll almost certainly be playing > the fantastic PS3 title currently in development long before the > 2006 holidays.
No, that doesn't sound like shilling at all.
I'm not saying there is or is not a delay. The only thing anyone outside of Sony can say with any degree of confidence is "We don't know."
So either you're a shill, or you're talking out of your ass.
It's for watching movies. No one has to support it. This is a convergence thing, most HDTV's only have a single DVI or HDMI input on them. It makes sense to have a single box that provides all your HD content since it's so much easier to run out of inputs.
I like it because it will take up one shelf in my entertainment center instead of 2 (console + HDDVD player).
Thanks for that fabulous insight!!!!!!!
on
DOA Ships Today
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· Score: 2, Funny
So do you have that now, slashdot admins? Anything that doesn't interest user mmaddox is heretofore deemed irrelevant and non-newsworthy. I hope you got that down, or you may receive more scathing, edgy comments from him!!! And no one wants that!
Independent films come along all the time that are shot in video, or cheap DV, with mono sound. Blair Witch isn't a great example (being that it's a terrible movie) but it ought to prove my point. El Mariachi was ugly, sounded bad, and had poor special effects. Few of its reviews dwelled on these things.
Likewise, lots of independent music is recorded on cheap 4-track recorders and cheaper microphones. Some of my favorite CDs are awful, awful recordings. It doesn't make them any less brilliant.
As for your first point, I never said fun was a poor quality by which to judge art. Fun is a feeling that art can evoke, just like sadness or happiness.
Every single comment so far is about Ebert. Attacking him for being fat, or for having a stupid opinion.
I think we can all agree that games can be art. We can all site anecdotal examples of games that raised goosebumps, made us laugh, or made us cry. Ebert is not the world's definitive voice on aesthetics, and to his credit he made a very qualified statement there - games are not art to him.
But that's all beside the point. Ebert's comments provide context for a very good article here, one that raises a lot of excellent points. The video game press is extraordinarily pathetic. Something won't be considered "serious" art unless it evokes intelligent critical discussion, not fanboy-esque 8 page reviews that focus on the graphics, speculate on the frame rate, and the quality of the sound.
Imagine if all art were reviewed the way video games were. If Premiere gave movies ratings on their special effects, if Rolling Stone scored music according to the sound quality of the recording, if the New York times spent long periods of time talking about how good the typeset was of the new Phillip Roth novel. Who would read such garbage? Why do we?
Great art - perhaps even true art - transcends its medium. Its fans and evangilists don't get caught up in the nuts and bolts. We can acknowledge and admire the Mona Lisa's revolutionary use of perspective, but that's not what stirs our emotioins when we look at it.
I agree, but think you disproved your own metaphor
on
PS3 To Run At 120 FPS?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I agree - this is completely silly.
But your CD / Vinyl metaphor is actually more appropriate when you talk about the 60 FPS thing - 60 FPS is beyond what is perceptible yet you admit it looked silky smooth. Sampling above 16-bit / 44khz is beyond what is perceptible to the average listener, (not really, but was the best compromise back then); vinyl sounds silky smooth.
That said, arguing this on Slashdot is pointless; Slashdot readers seem to have this wierd thing against analog audio. I can only assume that they either have average listening skills or have just never bothered to actually do a double-blind listening test to support their own vitriol.
No, people don't use it because it's a sketchy Russian site of dubious legality. Why pay someone money for music when the artist isn't getting compensated anyway?
Slashdot Mirror
I too loved Conker, and especially loved the ending. That they managed to pull a genuine and moving ending out of a crass parody of platformers and action movies just proves how brilliant that game was.
I'm not sure why but I never got too far in the remake though. I always meant to pick it back up, but I only got a couple hours into it. They somehow managed to create the most convoluted and confusing interface for the multiplayer ever... it might be the most fun XBL game ever made but I wouldn't know since I couldn't even figure out what my goals were in the matches.
...including the Virtual Boy, the fear of drought is enough to make me wait. The DS, Gamecube, and N64 all had significant post-launch droughts.
I agree the Wii has a lot of well-regarded launch titles, but apart from Zelda there's an awful lot of minigame collections in that list (Trauma, Rayman, Wii Sports) so I worry about how long those games will last. It's a problem with a lot of the DS' library too - there's a good number of good games but they tend to be on the shallow side in terms of lasting value.
No, the problem is that they don't support 1080i. The PS3 should be scaling from 720p to 1080i (which the 360 does), not 1080i to 720p.
The issue here is that older HDTV's only support 480p, 480i, and 1080i - not 720p. This is all stated very clearly in the article.
I know that commentors don't seem to read the articles on Slashdot, but shouldn't the submitters?
Or maybe when he said "...it was the first shooter I played that had some substance" he meant that it was the first shooter he had played that had some substance.
I don't see anywhere where he indicates that it was the first shooter EVER with some substance.
Seriously though, at some point gaming became like sports teams and pickup trucks.
I half expect to start seeing 360 faceplates that say "Sony Sucks" and DS stickers that show Calvin pissing on a PSP. Gamers seem to be so caught up in the rhetoric these days that it's getting harder and harder to find sites where people are actually discussing... what are those things called.... oh yeah, games.
While I find it cute that you think the opinions of people on those sites is somehow reflective of those of the general market, you're way off base. The vast, vast majority of the market has never even heard of a rootkit and probably think that Lik-Sang is a euphemism for fellatio.
You're using an extremely biased sample - people who are passionate enough about their consumer goods and electronics that they bother coming onto the internet to discuss them. If you made all market judgements by polling the sites you mentioned, you'd come away thinking that the next Madden will sell 3 copies, that the Wii will dominate console sales next generation by extreme margins, and that no one on the face of the planet owns a PSP.
But it's only $4.
Just order one and enjoy it. I agree that it's exclusion is mysterious, and makes me worry that people will stop making games that take advantage of it. It's closer in experience to an analog stick than the PSP nub - it's possible to get nearly as good at Mario 64 with it as it is with an analog stick.
Thumb strap.
Seriously, I don't know why people are so hesitant to use it. I can't imagine playing Mario 64, Metroid Prime Hunters, or Star Fox Command any other way.
The little "L" like symbol means pounds not dollars.
It's what those crazy Brits use as money.
You may have a DVD player that upscales to 720p, but that isn't really the same thing as what you're saying. I mean, I can take my 1 megapixel camera and scale an image from it to 5 megapixels - but that doesn't mean i suddenly have a 5 megapixel camera. Upscaling DVD players don't magically make the content be 720p.
HD-DVD does 1080p as well. I think you're confusing the fact that the PS3 is capable of 1080p (though games aren't required to support that resolution and most probably won't) with the fact that the Xbox 360 isn't. In terms of resolution, HD-DVD and BluRay share the same capabilities; the main difference between them is disc capacity.
Perfect Dark Zero offers an excellent online coop mode. It's probably the most innovative part of the game, but didn't get a lot of fanfare.
In a lot of ways it's much better than the flawed single-player mode.
Too bad he didn't notice their train system while he was over there too. Our lack of a national public transportation system is wasteful and embarassing.
I was referring to CED Videodisc.
I owned and loved a laserdisc player as well. It was a great technology for the time.
You forgot about Videodisc. It was probably the only home format with any kind of penetration before VHS / Beta. And it sucked. Badly.
I don't think this analogy fits with those examples anyway. This is more akin to the following:
Stereo LP -> Quadrophonic LP
VHS -> Laserdisc
Cassette -> DCC
CD -> SACD / DVD-Audio
In other words, I think this is a specialized path, which only appeals to the high end consumer and won't get any broad market penetration. Even if Blu-Ray "wins" by piggy-backing on the PS3's market penetration, I don't think it will ever get much in terms of consumer acceptance.
DVD is here for at least a few more years.
But you're also talking about a very very lossy compression scheme (DVD) vs. a much lower loss compression scheme (HDDVD and BluRay) for both video and audio.
I'm not saying people will care, but the difference isn't just in resolution. The compression artifacts on DVD are a big part of the reason DVD's don't look so great on HDTV's.
> Since commercial BluRay players already exists it is doubtful
...with retail units hitting the shelves around June/July in Japan.
> Sony will have any problem in manufacturing them.
Oh, really? Because they've made a few thousand of these they'll have no problem making a million? In just a few months?
>
> And most likely September in the US. $349/399.
What - exactly - are you basing this on and which oriface did it come from?
> Don't worry, if you get your order in you'll almost certainly be playing
> the fantastic PS3 title currently in development long before the
> 2006 holidays.
No, that doesn't sound like shilling at all.
I'm not saying there is or is not a delay. The only thing anyone outside of Sony can say with any degree of confidence is "We don't know."
So either you're a shill, or you're talking out of your ass.
I'm guessing the latter.
It's for watching movies. No one has to support it. This is a convergence thing, most HDTV's only have a single DVI or HDMI input on them. It makes sense to have a single box that provides all your HD content since it's so much easier to run out of inputs.
I like it because it will take up one shelf in my entertainment center instead of 2 (console + HDDVD player).
So do you have that now, slashdot admins? Anything that doesn't interest user mmaddox is heretofore deemed irrelevant and non-newsworthy. I hope you got that down, or you may receive more scathing, edgy comments from him!!! And no one wants that!
Who knew that an article called "The 5 Biggest Gaming Mistakes of the Year" would fail to accentuate the positive!!!!!1!one!!!
Independent films come along all the time that are shot in video, or cheap DV, with mono sound. Blair Witch isn't a great example (being that it's a terrible movie) but it ought to prove my point. El Mariachi was ugly, sounded bad, and had poor special effects. Few of its reviews dwelled on these things.
Likewise, lots of independent music is recorded on cheap 4-track recorders and cheaper microphones. Some of my favorite CDs are awful, awful recordings. It doesn't make them any less brilliant.
As for your first point, I never said fun was a poor quality by which to judge art. Fun is a feeling that art can evoke, just like sadness or happiness.
Every single comment so far is about Ebert. Attacking him for being fat, or for having a stupid opinion. I think we can all agree that games can be art. We can all site anecdotal examples of games that raised goosebumps, made us laugh, or made us cry. Ebert is not the world's definitive voice on aesthetics, and to his credit he made a very qualified statement there - games are not art to him.
But that's all beside the point. Ebert's comments provide context for a very good article here, one that raises a lot of excellent points. The video game press is extraordinarily pathetic. Something won't be considered "serious" art unless it evokes intelligent critical discussion, not fanboy-esque 8 page reviews that focus on the graphics, speculate on the frame rate, and the quality of the sound.
Imagine if all art were reviewed the way video games were. If Premiere gave movies ratings on their special effects, if Rolling Stone scored music according to the sound quality of the recording, if the New York times spent long periods of time talking about how good the typeset was of the new Phillip Roth novel. Who would read such garbage? Why do we?
Great art - perhaps even true art - transcends its medium. Its fans and evangilists don't get caught up in the nuts and bolts. We can acknowledge and admire the Mona Lisa's revolutionary use of perspective, but that's not what stirs our emotioins when we look at it.
I agree - this is completely silly.
But your CD / Vinyl metaphor is actually more appropriate when you talk about the 60 FPS thing - 60 FPS is beyond what is perceptible yet you admit it looked silky smooth. Sampling above 16-bit / 44khz is beyond what is perceptible to the average listener, (not really, but was the best compromise back then); vinyl sounds silky smooth.
That said, arguing this on Slashdot is pointless; Slashdot readers seem to have this wierd thing against analog audio. I can only assume that they either have average listening skills or have just never bothered to actually do a double-blind listening test to support their own vitriol.
The PS2 offers texture smoothing for PSOne games. That's an upgrade.
Nintendo has said they're considering giving the retro downloads for the Revolution upgraded graphics.
This isn't anything unusual. It's part of scaling older lower-resolution media to a newer higher-res medium.
Oh, well I guess I don't really care then.
No, people don't use it because it's a sketchy Russian site of dubious legality. Why pay someone money for music when the artist isn't getting compensated anyway?