Not a popcap game, but one of my favorites is Oasis. While it is essentially a puzzle game, the use of the Egyptian setting and the exploration, empire building flavor make it a lot more interesting than countless click on colored blocks puzzle games. I don't think it's a clone of other games, although I could be wrong.
"What this huge rant is getting to is: the same applies to any other game. If DDO will be the better game, it _will_ unseat WoW, just like WoW has unseated the established names and franchises before it."
Yes, WoW is the biggest. Yes, WoW booted EQ out of the top spot as EQ did to Ultima Online earlier. Yes, WoW has had a far larger subscriber base than EQ ever did. But an MMO doesn't need 4 million subscribers to be profitable. The greatest thing about WoW is that it has achieved a very broad range of appeal with lots of gamers who have never played an MMO before jumping in. WoW is the second MMO I've ever seriously played, having spent close to a year on City of Heroes before. Yet City of Heroes/City of Villains was not put out of business by WoW. Different gamers want different experiences. Someone who loved Eve Online may not think WoW is the greatest game of all time. I think that you may see a lot of ex-WoW players in 2006 trying out new MMOs. Not everyone wants to be raiding Molten Core in hopes of getting a purple item. Not everyone wants to run the same dungeons over an over again. Some people love it, and for others it gets boring. The decision to leave an MMO can be a bit difficult as well. You have your guildmates and friends, you have the character(s) you've spent endless hours building up to the highest levels. But there comes a time when you just need to do something else. I know I'll be taking a break from WoW soon to check out City of Villains. I don't think I will spend a year with CoV having grinded City of Heroes to level cap though. The thing is, there are a lot of new MMOs hitting the market in 2006, DDO, Lord of the Rings online, the Conan one, Auto Assault, Pirates of the Burning Seas etc. I think I'm likely to find myself a year from now exploring yet another MMO world.
Civ 3 came out in 2001. I started this job in 1999. I played Civ 1 over 14 years ago. Man, you are making me feel REALLY old. Young whipper snappers don't even know that proper consoles have an artifical wood grain finish to match the paneling on your station wagon.
I'm not a Mac user but I feel I should point out that a large portion of "hit" PC games do get ported to the Mac. The ports tend to come out 6 months to a year after the PC version however. Some even later. Battlefield 1942 made it to the Mac only slightly before Battlefield 2 was released for the PC. There is also almost no MMO support the one exception being World of Warcraft. Big games like Civ 4 will wander over to the Mac eventually.
The Movies is not a sequel to anything. In some ways it builds on previous games Peter Molyneaux has worked on (i.e. Theme Park and Theme Hospital) but it also adds the complete tool set for making your own movies.
Looks like they really did mess up on the minimum requirements. I've been playing it on a 3.2GHz P4, 1GB ram and Nvidia 6800GT without any problems except slight slowdown on the AI turns in the very late portion of the game (which is to be expected).
The Pepper Pad looks pretty neat. The one thing is that it sure costs quite a bit. $850 is more than double the cost of the PDA - although you do get a much bigger screen and 20gig hard drive.
The CPU cores do not support out of order execution. This means that the processor will be more likely to blow extra cycles when used in an unoptimized environment (as on a desktop PC). Whether that would negate the overall benefit of having 3 fast cores, I have no idea.
"but what can these consoles really give me that my PC can't?"
Well, nothing you can't get working on a PC with effort - but a console setup is geared for ease of use while sitting on the couch. Also head to head gameplay. Huddling around the PC is not so great for that family and friends videogaming experience. One reason I like using emulators on the Xbox, they are designed to be easy to use with a controller sitting on a couch. No mouse and keyboard required.
What gaming do you expect to do on a four-inch touchscreen?
Well you can do plenty of gaming on a 4 inch touchscreen. There are tons of great PDA games available that use a stylus. Not just puzzle ones like Bejeweled and Bookworm but stuff like Age of Empires.
But yeah as for "dual booting into XP for gaming", I sure the poster was a troll, I can't imagine being that stupid.
Well, it is ok spec wise - but aside from the nice big screen most common PDAs have more powerful CPUs. My Asus 716 which is almost two years old has a 400MHz Xscale in it as well as being easy to expand via a SD and compact flash slots. At time of purchase is was less than $400. Just making a quick look - $400 for the top of the line Dell Axim gives you:
624MHz Xscale 64MB SDRAM 16MB video RAM 256MB Flash memory built in VGA resolution screen (640x480) Expandable via SD, Compact flash Integrated bluetooth and wifi 802.11b
Yes it doesn't run Linux. But strictly as a hardware comparison the only thing the 770 has going for it is the bigger screen and landscape orientation. I'd love to see a nice PDA styled more like a PSP with a bigger screen. Tapwave tried to do this but failed. I'm looking at the GP2x for Linux based goodness, but this is more of a media/gaming device, no provision for wireless networking as far as I can tell.
I didn't find any of the animation to be distractingly bad. If anything the worst effects were some of the plastic monster masks on the horde of baddies in the end battle. Overall though there was nothing so jarring that it ruined my enjoyment of the film. The beavers were a hell of a lot better than the beaver suits in the BBC version. Maybe having just watched the BBC version made me appreciate this one SO much more.
It's certainly no worse than the morality displayed in the Star Wars films. Turn evil, kill your wife, murder children, slaughter billions but hey you saved your son so it's all forgiven and you can appear in the mystical blue glow of immortality after you die.
Aslan death is Edmund's redemption - just as in Christian belief through accepting Jesus you become redemned in the eyes of God. Aslan comes back as in the resurrection of Christ. Aslan's breath on the statues of those turned to stone by the which is a metaphor for the promise that through belief in Christ you will live forever. Lewis did not create Aslan as a straight version of Christ, rather he posed the question - in a different world such as Narnia what form would Christ present to a world in need of redemption. So it's maybe not quite correct to say Aslan=Jesus but rather to say Aslan is Narnia's Jesus.
"They really tamed things down in regards to blood and especially so in the sacrafice of Aslan. But looking at the intended audience and the rating this is understandable."
Yes it was toned down, but I think the scene still cared a great deal of emotional weight. We had one little girl in our theater bawling when he was killed, I think there were probably plenty of not-so-dry eyes in the house. I thought the beginning with the bombers and the corresponding rock dropping griffons actually worked ok a as a reflection of how Peter would look at war, and also a reminder that a child of his age in that time period would probably be a bit more familiar with battlefield tactics than one might be today. Especially given that his father and just about every eligible male in England at the time was in the war.
I would recommend watching the BBC version complete with animatronic Aslan, actors in wolf and beaver costumes and cartoon animated griffins, unicorns and monsters before going to see this movie. It will make you much less critical of the special fx.
As for the poor reviews. Well, the only comment I can make was that at the end of the film the audience I was with cheered and gave thunderous applause. Something I rarely see happen in a movie. I think the last time was with Lord of the Rings.
I'd agree with you there. I can't help but notice some effects errors as I've worked with imaging for a large portion of my life, but honestly I didn't anything so jarring that it ruined the movie for me. It's a fantasy movie, in that old fauns in the woods and unicorns style. It isn't Lord of the Rings and neither are the books. They are much more like fairy tales. You ruin it if you start to try to over analyze the story. I quite enjoyed it and thought it was very true to the book. My son enjoyed it as well, being of the age where he just started reading the series this year. I know that he wasn't thinking "bah crap green screen work" when he was watching it.
"If something like a centaur or minotuar looks fake, it might be because they don't really exist."
Actually I thought the centaurs and minotaurs looked pretty good. The ones that looked fake were the real animals such as the beavers and to a lesser degree the wolves. Maybe they looked extra fake precisely for the reason that they DO exist and hence we have an expectation of what a real beaver or wolf looks like.
Re:Education decaying into retold legends of glory
on
Why We Fight
·
· Score: 1
Civ is kind of the last great hold out of turn based strategy games these days. I think for open ended gameplay and catering to multiple styles of play (from warlord to diplomat) it's the best thing out there. If you like turn based strategy games with a broad scope, you're likely to enjoy Civ. Someone once explained to me that the Sims is basically a digital doll house. The focus is on dress up, socializing and interior decoration. I found it horribly boring and tedious - I mean having to tell your Sims to pee? Obviously a lot of people love the game, it has to be about the most successful computer game series ever judging by it's constant appearance on the top 10 sales charts. Interestingly enough Restaurant Empire has a similar interface and look to the Sims. Even some similar elements such as building and decorating your restaurants. The difference is that these elements are not cosmetic. You can't have a five star restaurant if it looks like a dump. I quite enjoyed the game, which can either be played in a series of "missions" following your progression as a cook and restaurant owner, or sandbox style. The gameplay revolves around building your restaurant, hiring and managing staff, learning new styles of cuisine, creating your menus and sourcing ingrediants. Like any economic sim there are plenty of spreadsheet types of decisions to make. Do you go high class and buy the best ingrediants but have to make everything more expensive? Is there a better profit margin in making a solid two star restaurant that get's heavy traffic? I wouldn't recommend it for the twitch gamer crowd, but if business sims interest you, I think it's worth a go. There is a demo available and if you like it the game sells pretty cheap, with a jewelbox only version going for $10. The game was designed by Trevor Chan who is known for the Capitalism games. It's a lot more accessible than those (although narrower in focus) and I thought it was superior to the Hotel Giant business sim his company also released.
Slashdot Mirror
Not a popcap game, but one of my favorites is Oasis. While it is essentially a puzzle game, the use of the Egyptian setting and the exploration, empire building flavor make it a lot more interesting than countless click on colored blocks puzzle games.
I don't think it's a clone of other games, although I could be wrong.
"What this huge rant is getting to is: the same applies to any other game. If DDO will be the better game, it _will_ unseat WoW, just like WoW has unseated the established names and franchises before it."
Yes, WoW is the biggest. Yes, WoW booted EQ out of the top spot as EQ did to Ultima Online earlier. Yes, WoW has had a far larger subscriber base than EQ ever did.
But an MMO doesn't need 4 million subscribers to be profitable. The greatest thing about WoW is that it has achieved a very broad range of appeal with lots of gamers who have never played an MMO before jumping in.
WoW is the second MMO I've ever seriously played, having spent close to a year on City of Heroes before. Yet City of Heroes/City of Villains was not put out of business by WoW. Different gamers want different experiences. Someone who loved Eve Online may not think WoW is the greatest game of all time.
I think that you may see a lot of ex-WoW players in 2006 trying out new MMOs. Not everyone wants to be raiding Molten Core in hopes of getting a purple item. Not everyone wants to run the same dungeons over an over again. Some people love it, and for others it gets boring.
The decision to leave an MMO can be a bit difficult as well. You have your guildmates and friends, you have the character(s) you've spent endless hours building up to the highest levels. But there comes a time when you just need to do something else.
I know I'll be taking a break from WoW soon to check out City of Villains. I don't think I will spend a year with CoV having grinded City of Heroes to level cap though. The thing is, there are a lot of new MMOs hitting the market in 2006, DDO, Lord of the Rings online, the Conan one, Auto Assault, Pirates of the Burning Seas etc. I think I'm likely to find myself a year from now exploring yet another MMO world.
Civ 3 came out in 2001. I started this job in 1999. I played Civ 1 over 14 years ago. Man, you are making me feel REALLY old.
Young whipper snappers don't even know that proper consoles have an artifical wood grain finish to match the paneling on your station wagon.
I'm not a Mac user but I feel I should point out that a large portion of "hit" PC games do get ported to the Mac. The ports tend to come out 6 months to a year after the PC version however. Some even later. Battlefield 1942 made it to the Mac only slightly before Battlefield 2 was released for the PC.
There is also almost no MMO support the one exception being World of Warcraft.
Big games like Civ 4 will wander over to the Mac eventually.
Per this announcement on the Firaxis Games site - Civ 4 will be released for the Mac in 2006.
The Movies is not a sequel to anything. In some ways it builds on previous games Peter Molyneaux has worked on (i.e. Theme Park and Theme Hospital) but it also adds the complete tool set for making your own movies.
Looks like they really did mess up on the minimum requirements. I've been playing it on a 3.2GHz P4, 1GB ram and Nvidia 6800GT without any problems except slight slowdown on the AI turns in the very late portion of the game (which is to be expected).
The Pepper Pad looks pretty neat. The one thing is that it sure costs quite a bit. $850 is more than double the cost of the PDA - although you do get a much bigger screen and 20gig hard drive.
The CPU cores do not support out of order execution. This means that the processor will be more likely to blow extra cycles when used in an unoptimized environment (as on a desktop PC). Whether that would negate the overall benefit of having 3 fast cores, I have no idea.
"but what can these consoles really give me that my PC can't?"
Well, nothing you can't get working on a PC with effort - but a console setup is geared for ease of use while sitting on the couch. Also head to head gameplay. Huddling around the PC is not so great for that family and friends videogaming experience.
One reason I like using emulators on the Xbox, they are designed to be easy to use with a controller sitting on a couch. No mouse and keyboard required.
Are there any reasons to get an Xbox 360 over PS3?"
Uh you can buy an Xbox 360 now and you can't buy a PS3.
Some people would like a nice HD outputting console to use with their nice HD screens now.
What gaming do you expect to do on a four-inch touchscreen?
Well you can do plenty of gaming on a 4 inch touchscreen. There are tons of great PDA games available that use a stylus. Not just puzzle ones like Bejeweled and Bookworm but stuff like Age of Empires.
But yeah as for "dual booting into XP for gaming", I sure the poster was a troll, I can't imagine being that stupid.
Well, it is ok spec wise - but aside from the nice big screen most common PDAs have more powerful CPUs.
My Asus 716 which is almost two years old has a 400MHz Xscale in it as well as being easy to expand via a SD and compact flash slots. At time of purchase is was less than $400.
Just making a quick look - $400 for the top of the line Dell Axim gives you:
624MHz Xscale
64MB SDRAM
16MB video RAM
256MB Flash memory built in
VGA resolution screen (640x480)
Expandable via SD, Compact flash
Integrated bluetooth and wifi 802.11b
Yes it doesn't run Linux. But strictly as a hardware comparison the only thing the 770 has going for it is the bigger screen and landscape orientation.
I'd love to see a nice PDA styled more like a PSP with a bigger screen. Tapwave tried to do this but failed.
I'm looking at the GP2x for Linux based goodness, but this is more of a media/gaming device, no provision for wireless networking as far as I can tell.
Between SW Episode 1, Batman Begins and now Aslan, looks like he's going to be playing mentor roles for the rest of his career.
I didn't find any of the animation to be distractingly bad. If anything the worst effects were some of the plastic monster masks on the horde of baddies in the end battle.
Overall though there was nothing so jarring that it ruined my enjoyment of the film. The beavers were a hell of a lot better than the beaver suits in the BBC version.
Maybe having just watched the BBC version made me appreciate this one SO much more.
It's certainly no worse than the morality displayed in the Star Wars films.
Turn evil, kill your wife, murder children, slaughter billions but hey you saved your son so it's all forgiven and you can appear in the mystical blue glow of immortality after you die.
Very true. And Aslan is the "what if there was a world like Narnia in need of redemption? How would Christ manifest in such a world?"
Aslan death is Edmund's redemption - just as in Christian belief through accepting Jesus you become redemned in the eyes of God. Aslan comes back as in the resurrection of Christ. Aslan's breath on the statues of those turned to stone by the which is a metaphor for the promise that through belief in Christ you will live forever.
Lewis did not create Aslan as a straight version of Christ, rather he posed the question - in a different world such as Narnia what form would Christ present to a world in need of redemption.
So it's maybe not quite correct to say Aslan=Jesus but rather to say Aslan is Narnia's Jesus.
"They really tamed things down in regards to blood and especially so in the sacrafice of Aslan. But looking at the intended audience and the rating this is understandable."
Yes it was toned down, but I think the scene still cared a great deal of emotional weight. We had one little girl in our theater bawling when he was killed, I think there were probably plenty of not-so-dry eyes in the house.
I thought the beginning with the bombers and the corresponding rock dropping griffons actually worked ok a as a reflection of how Peter would look at war, and also a reminder that a child of his age in that time period would probably be a bit more familiar with battlefield tactics than one might be today. Especially given that his father and just about every eligible male in England at the time was in the war.
I would recommend watching the BBC version complete with animatronic Aslan, actors in wolf and beaver costumes and cartoon animated griffins, unicorns and monsters before going to see this movie. It will make you much less critical of the special fx.
As for the poor reviews. Well, the only comment I can make was that at the end of the film the audience I was with cheered and gave thunderous applause. Something I rarely see happen in a movie. I think the last time was with Lord of the Rings.
I'd agree with you there. I can't help but notice some effects errors as I've worked with imaging for a large portion of my life, but honestly I didn't anything so jarring that it ruined the movie for me.
It's a fantasy movie, in that old fauns in the woods and unicorns style. It isn't Lord of the Rings and neither are the books. They are much more like fairy tales. You ruin it if you start to try to over analyze the story.
I quite enjoyed it and thought it was very true to the book. My son enjoyed it as well, being of the age where he just started reading the series this year. I know that he wasn't thinking "bah crap green screen work" when he was watching it.
"If something like a centaur or minotuar looks fake, it might be because they don't really exist."
Actually I thought the centaurs and minotaurs looked pretty good. The ones that looked fake were the real animals such as the beavers and to a lesser degree the wolves. Maybe they looked extra fake precisely for the reason that they DO exist and hence we have an expectation of what a real beaver or wolf looks like.
I think Penny Arcade hit this one on the head with this comic regarding steel thongs.
What about:
PS2 and Xbox vs Gamecube?
Civ is kind of the last great hold out of turn based strategy games these days. I think for open ended gameplay and catering to multiple styles of play (from warlord to diplomat) it's the best thing out there. If you like turn based strategy games with a broad scope, you're likely to enjoy Civ.
Someone once explained to me that the Sims is basically a digital doll house. The focus is on dress up, socializing and interior decoration. I found it horribly boring and tedious - I mean having to tell your Sims to pee? Obviously a lot of people love the game, it has to be about the most successful computer game series ever judging by it's constant appearance on the top 10 sales charts.
Interestingly enough Restaurant Empire has a similar interface and look to the Sims. Even some similar elements such as building and decorating your restaurants. The difference is that these elements are not cosmetic. You can't have a five star restaurant if it looks like a dump. I quite enjoyed the game, which can either be played in a series of "missions" following your progression as a cook and restaurant owner, or sandbox style. The gameplay revolves around building your restaurant, hiring and managing staff, learning new styles of cuisine, creating your menus and sourcing ingrediants. Like any economic sim there are plenty of spreadsheet types of decisions to make. Do you go high class and buy the best ingrediants but have to make everything more expensive? Is there a better profit margin in making a solid two star restaurant that get's heavy traffic? I wouldn't recommend it for the twitch gamer crowd, but if business sims interest you, I think it's worth a go. There is a demo available and if you like it the game sells pretty cheap, with a jewelbox only version going for $10. The game was designed by Trevor Chan who is known for the Capitalism games. It's a lot more accessible than those (although narrower in focus) and I thought it was superior to the Hotel Giant business sim his company also released.