Having recently gone back and played some of the classic NES and SNES RPGs I've come to realize another problem with the modern RPG, to me at least. While the length is definitely a large factor as to why I don't complete the majority of modern RPGs the graphics also, for me, hinder the game sucking me in to it. When you look at the Final Fantasy games from 7 on, or really any of the RPGs after the evolution to 3D gaming the imagination aspect of the games have gone missing and with the advent of voice acting it's only gotten worse. No longer do you have representations of your characters left to your imagination to flesh out. No longer do you have maps and stats charts to reference when playing through a game (am I the only one that misses these?). Now RPGs are essentially movies with a small bit of interaction.
Old RPGs you could beat in maybe a dozen hours your first time through. Old games in other genres you could sometimes beat in minutes if you had mastered it and yet those games are still fun today. They had replayability, which new games really lack. And on that topic, what ever happened to the puzzler games. I'm thinking along the lines of Solomon's Key, Adventures of Lolo, etc. That entire genre has died out except for on phones and, to a lesser extent, portable systems (NDS, PSP).
In the last decade it seems the "casual gamer" tag has become something of a dirty word which is rather unfortunate if you ask me.
I agree as well. This is my biggest gripe with modern RPG games. The games have become anywhere from 40 to 100+ hours games for no reason other than taking longer to beat. The story hasn't improved. It doesn't need to be as long to make it fulfilling. For me the older, much shorter, RPGs were better games because they didn't have 80+ hours of fluff added just to make the game longer.
Another thing is the cut scenes. Sure in an action game they can really move the story along or keep a player hooked. The xbox version of Ninja Gaiden did this really well, I think. It was the first game in a long time where I just had to see the next cut scene and get that much further in the game and in the end, putting in 30 hours or so to beat it didn't seem like a waste of time.
I can remember playing through the Sands of Time in one sitting. It was short, and it did get repetitive at the end, but it was to the point. The game was primarily about the puzzles, and while I might argue the puzzles were too simplistic or some poorly designed it for the most part was well done. If this new PoP game improves on that great.
Maybe I'm just more nostalgic than anything but I would love to see a resurgence of the old styles of games. Ones where could could pick them up, play for 20 minutes, and actually get somewhere. Puzzlers like The Adventures of LoLo, or old RPGs that are short enough for a casual gamer to stick with them long enough to beat them. It's telling of the quality of a game when people will still pick up a 15 year old game, play it, and get the same enjoyment out of it even if they've beat it before. With games of the past few years, there's only a handful that maybe fall in to this category and of those they're so reliant on the story that a lot of the fun isn't there once you've beat it the first time.
I can't agree with this more. In the market where I am you find maybe one position every couple of months that will even consider people who are just out of school, even if they have some experience from interships and such and then those jobs pay less than working at a retail store. It seems like there's all these companies have positions they want to fill with people that have 3-5 or even 10 years relevant experience and they're just going unfilled.
When are companies going to realize that just because a person might be a recent graduate does not mean that they are necessarily a poor prospect.
First, you don't need a modchip at all. You can use software exploits to put xbmc on an unmodded xbox. You can also flash the onboard TSOP (if you don't have a v1.6 xbox).
Also, as far as the power button on the dvdremote is concerned that's not entirely true, either. The remote does not have a power button, however there is a no soldering mod called XIR that adds a power on/off button to the remote and only takes a few minutes to install.
I'll grant you that XBMC does crash sometimes, and it does still have a few bugs, but I would not agree it crashes all the time. Actually, I'm running and early June build and have yet to have it crash at all. Besides that it'll just get better as more work is done on it.
On the needing to buy the 802.11, sure you need to buy an adapter IF you want wifi, but it comes with built in ethernet so unless for some reason that's not a viable option I'd say just go with that, or set up the harddrive in a removable rack... that'd be relatively painless. In any event, a number of free/cheaper solutions to this.
I guess for the non-enthusiest or the non-gamer I could see how XBMC wouldn't necc. be the right path, but then nothing will ever work right for everybody.
The lack of installing I can guarantee was due to some incompatible hardware. Up until a few weeks ago when the harddrive went out in my laptop I had been running Libranet on it for over a year and had no problems and this was a P266mmx laptop w/ 96ram. The only thing that Libranet may need more of than a standard debian install, out of the box anyway, is HD space as it installs a few more things by default.
Well actually you are slightly off. There are only 22 episodes per season. Also rarely at least in recent seasons have there been >3 vamps per episode dusted. Even in earlier episodes it was not all that common. In fact this year there has only been about 9 vampires give or take that have been dsuted. That accounts for about 1 per episode. Not to mention last season there were very few vampires dusted (the only two coming to mind being from the halloween episode).
Sure maybe I'm nitpicking, but hey... it's 2 in the morning I have to amuse myself somehow.
I couldnt agree with that more. Ever since the internet started becoming more and more popular and the bbs's started to dwindle I've missed the sense of community that a local bbs had. It really is too bad that almost all of the dialup bbs's, at least in my area, have disappeared. Was nothing like going on a bbs and playing tw2002 or fe with 10 or 20 other people from around the same area instead of just faceless players you'll probably never get to know over the internet.
Many of the points brought up in the article are good points, that could be applied to any program not just one for Mac OSX. One of the complaints I have with a lot of open source software is that it has a sometimes cluttered, non-intuitive, and unprofessional/unpolished feel. If developers in general followed general guidelines like this: use informative error messages and debug messages, or dont cluter the application with lots of small undescriptive icons, but instead make panels grouped together then this would make, I think, the entire computer experience a lot more enjoyable. You wouldn't have to spend as much time learning a particular applications layout and interface just to be able to do something useful.
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Having recently gone back and played some of the classic NES and SNES RPGs I've come to realize another problem with the modern RPG, to me at least. While the length is definitely a large factor as to why I don't complete the majority of modern RPGs the graphics also, for me, hinder the game sucking me in to it. When you look at the Final Fantasy games from 7 on, or really any of the RPGs after the evolution to 3D gaming the imagination aspect of the games have gone missing and with the advent of voice acting it's only gotten worse. No longer do you have representations of your characters left to your imagination to flesh out. No longer do you have maps and stats charts to reference when playing through a game (am I the only one that misses these?). Now RPGs are essentially movies with a small bit of interaction.
Old RPGs you could beat in maybe a dozen hours your first time through. Old games in other genres you could sometimes beat in minutes if you had mastered it and yet those games are still fun today. They had replayability, which new games really lack. And on that topic, what ever happened to the puzzler games. I'm thinking along the lines of Solomon's Key, Adventures of Lolo, etc. That entire genre has died out except for on phones and, to a lesser extent, portable systems (NDS, PSP).
In the last decade it seems the "casual gamer" tag has become something of a dirty word which is rather unfortunate if you ask me.
I agree as well. This is my biggest gripe with modern RPG games. The games have become anywhere from 40 to 100+ hours games for no reason other than taking longer to beat. The story hasn't improved. It doesn't need to be as long to make it fulfilling. For me the older, much shorter, RPGs were better games because they didn't have 80+ hours of fluff added just to make the game longer.
Another thing is the cut scenes. Sure in an action game they can really move the story along or keep a player hooked. The xbox version of Ninja Gaiden did this really well, I think. It was the first game in a long time where I just had to see the next cut scene and get that much further in the game and in the end, putting in 30 hours or so to beat it didn't seem like a waste of time.
I can remember playing through the Sands of Time in one sitting. It was short, and it did get repetitive at the end, but it was to the point. The game was primarily about the puzzles, and while I might argue the puzzles were too simplistic or some poorly designed it for the most part was well done. If this new PoP game improves on that great.
Maybe I'm just more nostalgic than anything but I would love to see a resurgence of the old styles of games. Ones where could could pick them up, play for 20 minutes, and actually get somewhere. Puzzlers like The Adventures of LoLo, or old RPGs that are short enough for a casual gamer to stick with them long enough to beat them. It's telling of the quality of a game when people will still pick up a 15 year old game, play it, and get the same enjoyment out of it even if they've beat it before. With games of the past few years, there's only a handful that maybe fall in to this category and of those they're so reliant on the story that a lot of the fun isn't there once you've beat it the first time.
I can't agree with this more. In the market where I am you find maybe one position every couple of months that will even consider people who are just out of school, even if they have some experience from interships and such and then those jobs pay less than working at a retail store. It seems like there's all these companies have positions they want to fill with people that have 3-5 or even 10 years relevant experience and they're just going unfilled.
When are companies going to realize that just because a person might be a recent graduate does not mean that they are necessarily a poor prospect.
Not all that you type is true.
... that'd be relatively painless. In any event, a number of free/cheaper solutions to this.
First, you don't need a modchip at all. You can use software exploits to put xbmc on an unmodded xbox. You can also flash the onboard TSOP (if you don't have a v1.6 xbox).
Also, as far as the power button on the dvdremote is concerned that's not entirely true, either. The remote does not have a power button, however there is a no soldering mod called XIR that adds a power on/off button to the remote and only takes a few minutes to install.
I'll grant you that XBMC does crash sometimes, and it does still have a few bugs, but I would not agree it crashes all the time. Actually, I'm running and early June build and have yet to have it crash at all. Besides that it'll just get better as more work is done on it.
On the needing to buy the 802.11, sure you need to buy an adapter IF you want wifi, but it comes with built in ethernet so unless for some reason that's not a viable option I'd say just go with that, or set up the harddrive in a removable rack
I guess for the non-enthusiest or the non-gamer I could see how XBMC wouldn't necc. be the right path, but then nothing will ever work right for everybody.
"Bad people are punished by societies laws and good people are punished by Murphy's Law." --George, Dead Like Me
The lack of installing I can guarantee was due to some incompatible hardware. Up until a few weeks ago when the harddrive went out in my laptop I had been running Libranet on it for over a year and had no problems and this was a P266mmx laptop w/ 96ram. The only thing that Libranet may need more of than a standard debian install, out of the box anyway, is HD space as it installs a few more things by default.
Maybe someone should patent "Silly Patents." With all the patents like this one popping up one could really make himself out to be rich.
Well actually you are slightly off. There are only 22 episodes per season. Also rarely at least in recent seasons have there been >3 vamps per episode dusted. Even in earlier episodes it was not all that common. In fact this year there has only been about 9 vampires give or take that have been dsuted. That accounts for about 1 per episode. Not to mention last season there were very few vampires dusted (the only two coming to mind being from the halloween episode).
... it's 2 in the morning I have to amuse myself somehow.
Sure maybe I'm nitpicking, but hey
I couldnt agree with that more. Ever since the internet started becoming more and more popular and the bbs's started to dwindle I've missed the sense of community that a local bbs had. It really is too bad that almost all of the dialup bbs's, at least in my area, have disappeared. Was nothing like going on a bbs and playing tw2002 or fe with 10 or 20 other people from around the same area instead of just faceless players you'll probably never get to know over the internet.
Many of the points brought up in the article are good points, that could be applied to any program not just one for Mac OSX. One of the complaints I have with a lot of open source software is that it has a sometimes cluttered, non-intuitive, and unprofessional/unpolished feel. If developers in general followed general guidelines like this: use informative error messages and debug messages, or dont cluter the application with lots of small undescriptive icons, but instead make panels grouped together then this would make, I think, the entire computer experience a lot more enjoyable. You wouldn't have to spend as much time learning a particular applications layout and interface just to be able to do something useful.
No kidding, I went to the Madison concert and it's a toss up between them and manson for putting on the best show. Damn is all I gotta say
How often to you see the name of a Nine Inch Nails album in a story about computers? This is my first time...