Remember that hand-held "football" game which was just three rows of red LEDs? If you faked all the defense to move to one side, and then quickly darted over to the other side, it would let you run for a TD every single time. Oddly, it remained kind of fun even after figuring out that trick.
When I was a teen, there were three within walking distance of my home. They all went out of business thanks to the rise of consoles and (in particular) on-line PC gaming.
Pay-for-play is a dead model in gaming until somebody comes up with an experience that's worth spending extra on. Why would any kid blow their lunch money on arcade games anymore when they can play for free at their friend's house on the Playstation or X-Box their friend got for Christmas?
Very true. Even for somewhat hard-core cinephiles like me, High-Def DVD formats are not all that compelling.
I've got a 119" projection system, and while DVD's are a lower resolution than HDTV broadcasts, they look terrific, thanks to good "up-scaling" logic. I actually notice the "grain" of the silver beads on the surface of my screen more than the pixel size of the DVDs I'm watching. (And you really gotta look close to even notice those!)
When I cue up the brothel scene from "House of Flying Daggers", and find it hard to imagine the picture looking any better than it already does.
Plus, I prefer to archive my DVD library on hard drives for easy access. Current disks take up 5-8 GB of space. HD disks would cost a fortune to archive that way.
Well in this particular case, it's incorrect because the world you're role playing in already has a well established dialect
I'll say it does! Half the population on my roleplay-only server uses the general chat channel to tell Chuck Norris jokes, and says nearly everything in either '1337 or IM shorthand.
"d00d, u got pwnx0rd!!1! u shoulda called chuck n0rr1s!"
Why is it so many people incorrectly equate RP with Shakespearian old English?
Ren-fests.
Any other questions?
(By the way, what's "incorrect" about it? Everybody looks like people living in the 16th Century, most of the non-magical technology and architecture is from that time period, most of the mystical creatures resemble folklore of medieval Europe... why not talk like you're from that sort of time and place?)
Gay rights activists want all the benefits of marriage without assuming any of the responsibilites (which, IMO, they _cannot_ provide: it isn't their fault, but the way nature's made us means same-sex childraising is just not a scalable, winning strategy).
By your logic, infertile couples should not be given the right to marry either, otherwise disallowing gay marriage on those grounds is entirely unfair.
Getting cars will be harder, none of this 'run up and get car' business. You'll need to learn how to do it. You'll start off on a bike, try to join a gang... eventually get a car, you've got to look after it, or you'll lose it in an accident.
Screw that!
The main thing that made the GTA series fun is the "drive it like you stole it... because you did" recklessness of the whole thing. If swiping cars isn't every bit as easy as stealing apples from a neighbor's tree, then the game has no reason to exist anymore.
In order to truly make the game work as an MMO, everything would need to be more abundant. Design a city with a population of 100,000, only 2000 or so of which will be players (1000 cop/vigilante types, 1000 mobster/gangta types) and intance another city if you need to put more than 2000 players at once on a server.
I said it was a decent run, and I stand by that, 6 to 8 or 9 years, straddling the whole dotcom thing.
Look at it how you like, it's all opinion. Were I on the board of directors for Palm, however, I'd be deeply disapointed in how abruptly the company went from "The Next Big Thing" to "A Small Player In A Niche Market" in such a short span of time.
Of course, the same could be said of Apple right around the time when they fired Steve Jobs from his first reign of leadership.
I loved the series up to that point, but then the first mission on GTA:SA began.
You go through a way-to-long series of really boring cut-scenes (which sadky lack the humor of the preivious two games), and then you find yourself running from a rival drive-by game by riding a bicycle.
Let's stop right there for a moment.
The whole thing that made GTA so beautiful was the open-ended nature of it. If you wanted to take the "obvious" path to complete a mission, you could, but it encouraged lateral thinking.
Classic example: In GTA-III, there's a mission where you are "supposed" to use a sniper rifle to assasinate a rival mob boss as he leaves his favorite restaurant. While there are a couple of vantage points from which you can pull this off, you can also steal a big vehicle (like a bus), go to HIS HOME, block the entry to his garage, and you lob grenades at his entire entourage while they try to pound their way through the driveway.
Back to San Andreas.
So, I'm on this mission where I gotta follow the other kids in my gang on a sad-looking bike, when I decide to say "screw this" and boost a car.
The moment I step off the bike, I can't continue the mission! The little nav guide I was following fanishes, and an urgent "GET BACK ON THE BIKE" message flashes on the screen. To use any means of transport, other than the crappy bike I stole, is forbidden.
Lame, lame, lame.
It's especially lame when you consider that riding little bicycles is BORING. They are slow to begin with, and waaaay slower when you try to take a hill. (Getting off the bike and walking it up is not an option, even though it would sometimes be faster.)
Then, if you want to be able to use these gay-ass bikes with any utility at all, or even if you want to run more than twenty paces or so without grabbing your knees and vomiting, you have to go to a gym and work out!
Who the hell thought it would be fun to play a weight-training simulator???
GTA used to be about being a clever, cold-blooded, hardened mafia goon who would joyride in hot cars and often had to McGuyver his way out of tight scrapes. That was the game I fell in love with.
GTA:SA is about being a mush-mouthed, scrawny, out-of-shape, dead-broke loser thug who needs to do hours of pilates just to pedal a sissy-bar bike up a resivior embankment. Put up with hours and hours of this crap, and you don't get to infiltrate the mob or yakuza or anything nearly that cool... no, you get gain cred with a bunch of california street hoodlums. Yay.
Their games are moving in the wrong direction. The game has become more rigid, less fun, and more reliant on cut-scenes to pad out a game with very little replay value. If this trend continues, their "franchise" will be worth less than that of Duke Nukem.
Since when is six short years considered a "decent run"???
IBM had a "good run."
Oldsmobile had a "good run."
The British Empire had a "good run."
Palm exploded to dominate the market, only to completely lose it almost immediately afterwards, almost as quickly. That's a pathetic, flash-in-the-pan run of Netscape-like proportions.
I know three people who are all romantically involved with each other (1 male, 2 female) who play WoW together.
Two girls at once and they like playing MMORPGs with him!?
Dear Penthouse Forum,
I never believed that the letters in your magazine were true, and certainly never thought anything like this could ever happen to me, but as unlikely as it sounds I assure you this really, really happened...
I thought the/. difference is that it wouldn't expose its readers to these higly vapourous 'fairy articles'.
Have we reached the point where "you must be new here" comments can be shorthanded as "YMBNH"?
Slashdot is a news digest and discussion forum which the editors prefer to run like it's a cute little personal blog, rather than one of the most popular news sites on the Internet. There is no formal criteria for what does and does not get selected.
The site is not slow at all. WebHostingGuy is Karma Whoring to pimp his crappy-ass hosting service via his signature file. Come on, mods. Don't be suckers.
I carry a DS and a PSP with me usually (games are more important than music to me), so every little bit of space helps.
Oh, THAT'S what you meant when you said you needed room in your purse for "gadgets."
Whew! I had steam coming out from under my collar for a moment there. I thought you were talking about a totally different soft of gadget which some women like to own. Never mind.
So, you know that your music taste is exceptionally varied, and you need the spontaneity more than most other folks do, yet you still "can't see" why "anyone" would want a Shuffle?
I have 15 gigs of videos and 4 gigs of space left on my iPod... without it, I don't know how I'd go a day at work. I can't see why anyone would want to bring only 240 songs with them.
And how do you go about listening to more than 240 songs in an 8-hour day, exactly? Do you listen to two minutes of each song?
The full-on iPod is great if, like me, you enjoy selecting albums to listen to on the spur of the moment, but most people just let the MP3 player randomly shuffle their entire playlist, and the iPod shuffle is designed to do exactly that, by pre-caching multiple hours of shuffled music onto the flash drive. It's not for everybody, but I could see how some people would really like it.
It would be just as retarded if we had religious groups in WoW.
We do. Many faith-specific guilds exist.
I really think gay people would have an easier time in society if they'd learn where to shut the hell up about sexuality.
Straight people are not expected to shut up about their sexuality. Many of them perform elaborate marriage ceremonies in the game, and in-character flirting is extremely commonplace between characters. If gay people want to form a little club (as many marginalized groups like to do), then where's the harm in it?
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, nice trip down memory lane there.
Remember that hand-held "football" game which was just three rows of red LEDs? If you faked all the defense to move to one side, and then quickly darted over to the other side, it would let you run for a TD every single time. Oddly, it remained kind of fun even after figuring out that trick.
Have you been to an arcade recently?
Been to? I haven't even seen an arcade recently.
When I was a teen, there were three within walking distance of my home. They all went out of business thanks to the rise of consoles and (in particular) on-line PC gaming.
Pay-for-play is a dead model in gaming until somebody comes up with an experience that's worth spending extra on. Why would any kid blow their lunch money on arcade games anymore when they can play for free at their friend's house on the Playstation or X-Box their friend got for Christmas?
Very true. Even for somewhat hard-core cinephiles like me, High-Def DVD formats are not all that compelling.
I've got a 119" projection system, and while DVD's are a lower resolution than HDTV broadcasts, they look terrific, thanks to good "up-scaling" logic. I actually notice the "grain" of the silver beads on the surface of my screen more than the pixel size of the DVDs I'm watching. (And you really gotta look close to even notice those!)
When I cue up the brothel scene from "House of Flying Daggers", and find it hard to imagine the picture looking any better than it already does.
Plus, I prefer to archive my DVD library on hard drives for easy access. Current disks take up 5-8 GB of space. HD disks would cost a fortune to archive that way.
Well in this particular case, it's incorrect because the world you're role playing in already has a well established dialect
I'll say it does! Half the population on my roleplay-only server uses the general chat channel to tell Chuck Norris jokes, and says nearly everything in either '1337 or IM shorthand.
"d00d, u got pwnx0rd!!1! u shoulda called chuck n0rr1s!"
Why is it so many people incorrectly equate RP with Shakespearian old English?
Ren-fests.
Any other questions?
(By the way, what's "incorrect" about it? Everybody looks like people living in the 16th Century, most of the non-magical technology and architecture is from that time period, most of the mystical creatures resemble folklore of medieval Europe... why not talk like you're from that sort of time and place?)
Gay rights activists want all the benefits of marriage without assuming any of the responsibilites (which, IMO, they _cannot_ provide: it isn't their fault, but the way nature's made us means same-sex childraising is just not a scalable, winning strategy).
By your logic, infertile couples should not be given the right to marry either, otherwise disallowing gay marriage on those grounds is entirely unfair.
Actually, it had two space ships before you get to the droids in the sand. Three, if you count the escape pod.
Oh, and the scene with the droids in the desert was ENTERTAINING, unlike the horse-shit opening to GTA:SA
Either we played a different game, or you got bored and gave up before passing the first tenth or so of the game.
The second one.
Which tells you everything you need to know about how boring that game is.
I finished the other two, and enjoyed every minute of it. With SA, I got tired of waiting for the fun to start after a few hours.
Ooo... I smell a cross-license deal!
"Grand Theft Auto: Falling Down."
Getting cars will be harder, none of this 'run up and get car' business. You'll need to learn how to do it. You'll start off on a bike, try to join a gang ... eventually get a car, you've got to look after it, or you'll lose it in an accident.
Screw that!
The main thing that made the GTA series fun is the "drive it like you stole it... because you did" recklessness of the whole thing. If swiping cars isn't every bit as easy as stealing apples from a neighbor's tree, then the game has no reason to exist anymore.
In order to truly make the game work as an MMO, everything would need to be more abundant. Design a city with a population of 100,000, only 2000 or so of which will be players (1000 cop/vigilante types, 1000 mobster/gangta types) and intance another city if you need to put more than 2000 players at once on a server.
I said it was a decent run, and I stand by that, 6 to 8 or 9 years, straddling the whole dotcom thing.
Look at it how you like, it's all opinion. Were I on the board of directors for Palm, however, I'd be deeply disapointed in how abruptly the company went from "The Next Big Thing" to "A Small Player In A Niche Market" in such a short span of time.
Of course, the same could be said of Apple right around the time when they fired Steve Jobs from his first reign of leadership.
GTASA was a good game
GTA:SA Sucked!!!!
I loved the series up to that point, but then the first mission on GTA:SA began.
You go through a way-to-long series of really boring cut-scenes (which sadky lack the humor of the preivious two games), and then you find yourself running from a rival drive-by game by riding a bicycle.
Let's stop right there for a moment.
The whole thing that made GTA so beautiful was the open-ended nature of it. If you wanted to take the "obvious" path to complete a mission, you could, but it encouraged lateral thinking.
Classic example: In GTA-III, there's a mission where you are "supposed" to use a sniper rifle to assasinate a rival mob boss as he leaves his favorite restaurant. While there are a couple of vantage points from which you can pull this off, you can also steal a big vehicle (like a bus), go to HIS HOME, block the entry to his garage, and you lob grenades at his entire entourage while they try to pound their way through the driveway.
Back to San Andreas.
So, I'm on this mission where I gotta follow the other kids in my gang on a sad-looking bike, when I decide to say "screw this" and boost a car.
The moment I step off the bike, I can't continue the mission! The little nav guide I was following fanishes, and an urgent "GET BACK ON THE BIKE" message flashes on the screen. To use any means of transport, other than the crappy bike I stole, is forbidden.
Lame, lame, lame.
It's especially lame when you consider that riding little bicycles is BORING. They are slow to begin with, and waaaay slower when you try to take a hill. (Getting off the bike and walking it up is not an option, even though it would sometimes be faster.)
Then, if you want to be able to use these gay-ass bikes with any utility at all, or even if you want to run more than twenty paces or so without grabbing your knees and vomiting, you have to go to a gym and work out!
Who the hell thought it would be fun to play a weight-training simulator???
GTA used to be about being a clever, cold-blooded, hardened mafia goon who would joyride in hot cars and often had to McGuyver his way out of tight scrapes. That was the game I fell in love with.
GTA:SA is about being a mush-mouthed, scrawny, out-of-shape, dead-broke loser thug who needs to do hours of pilates just to pedal a sissy-bar bike up a resivior embankment. Put up with hours and hours of this crap, and you don't get to infiltrate the mob or yakuza or anything nearly that cool... no, you get gain cred with a bunch of california street hoodlums. Yay.
Their games are moving in the wrong direction. The game has become more rigid, less fun, and more reliant on cut-scenes to pad out a game with very little replay value. If this trend continues, their "franchise" will be worth less than that of Duke Nukem.
IMHO, YMMV, yadda yadda yadda
Palm had a decent run. 1996-200...3? 4?
Since when is six short years considered a "decent run"???
IBM had a "good run."
Oldsmobile had a "good run."
The British Empire had a "good run."
Palm exploded to dominate the market, only to completely lose it almost immediately afterwards, almost as quickly. That's a pathetic, flash-in-the-pan run of Netscape-like proportions.
Neat gadgets, though. Some of them.
Two girls at once and they like playing MMORPGs with him!?
It's a hard drive, a funny-shaped battery, a microprocessor, and some controls in a white Lexan box.
You think rectangles are funny too? I thought I was the only one.
The history is that Apple created the market and abandoned it, and Palm entered it and briefly succeeded before fizzling out.
There. Fixed it for you.
seriously, who thinks this is funny? how is this funny in any way?
Did anybody else read that comment as "seriously, who thinks this is funky? how is this funky in any way?
LOLOMFGBBQ!!!11!1!!eleventy-one!!
(Make my funny tha P-Funny, kthxbye)
I thought the /. difference is that it wouldn't expose its readers to these higly vapourous 'fairy articles'.
Have we reached the point where "you must be new here" comments can be shorthanded as "YMBNH"?
Slashdot is a news digest and discussion forum which the editors prefer to run like it's a cute little personal blog, rather than one of the most popular news sites on the Internet. There is no formal criteria for what does and does not get selected.
The site is not slow at all. WebHostingGuy is Karma Whoring to pimp his crappy-ass hosting service via his signature file. Come on, mods. Don't be suckers.
I carry a DS and a PSP with me usually (games are more important than music to me), so every little bit of space helps.
Oh, THAT'S what you meant when you said you needed room in your purse for "gadgets."
Whew! I had steam coming out from under my collar for a moment there. I thought you were talking about a totally different soft of gadget which some women like to own. Never mind.
When you say, "Look at my club! We're gay!" I feel the same way toward them as I do toward the Christian guilds.
1. It is more accurate to state that they are saying, "You might want to join my club if you're gay!"
2. I don't have a problem with Christian guilds either.
3. Penny Arcade is rarely, if ever, funny.
So, you know that your music taste is exceptionally varied, and you need the spontaneity more than most other folks do, yet you still "can't see" why "anyone" would want a Shuffle?
That's kind of myopic, isn't it?
I have 15 gigs of videos and 4 gigs of space left on my iPod... without it, I don't know how I'd go a day at work. I can't see why anyone would want to bring only 240 songs with them.
And how do you go about listening to more than 240 songs in an 8-hour day, exactly? Do you listen to two minutes of each song?
The full-on iPod is great if, like me, you enjoy selecting albums to listen to on the spur of the moment, but most people just let the MP3 player randomly shuffle their entire playlist, and the iPod shuffle is designed to do exactly that, by pre-caching multiple hours of shuffled music onto the flash drive. It's not for everybody, but I could see how some people would really like it.
It would be just as retarded if we had religious groups in WoW.
We do. Many faith-specific guilds exist.
I really think gay people would have an easier time in society if they'd learn where to shut the hell up about sexuality.
Straight people are not expected to shut up about their sexuality. Many of them perform elaborate marriage ceremonies in the game, and in-character flirting is extremely commonplace between characters. If gay people want to form a little club (as many marginalized groups like to do), then where's the harm in it?
In the game, they're shooting at *you* ... In a movie... you don't have any control over their actions.
And according to the article, the same neurons fire in your brain whether you are doing or watching, so there's no real difference.