Countless times playing City of Heroes, I've wanted to hear SOMETHING other than blips and zaps and pows. Hearing the enemies call out and taunt you, or hear NPCs thanking you for rescuing them, or even screams of terror when people run around... voice beats no voice, hands down. As long as the acting is reasonably good and doesn't stand out for being Resident Evil levels of horribleness then it can add to the atmosphere in the same way great graphics do.
An MMORPG which nails great graphics, an interactive musical score ala old Lucasarts games, and good voice acting... well, then you've got one heck of an experience. As is MMORPGs seem to focus completely on the graphics. The audio side gets third billing at best.
That PA cartoon sums up while I STOPPED paying for X-Box Live. It wasn't the money, the DRM, the hatred of MS, or anything like that -- it was my fellow players.
I never had a single session of XBL where I wasn't subjected to some of the worst filth the human race has to offer. Cheap players, cheaters, droppers, and countless trashtalkers. What fun is it to play a game when the other players are complete and total assholes? What's worse, because *gasp!* I'm not a particularly amazing gamer, I'd lose a lot -- and that meant being mocked and humiliated and treated like elementary school playground trash.
Eventually I decided that I wasn't actually having any fun, and I cancelled my X-Box Live. Huzzah.
This isn't limited to X-Box Live. My first online game, Tony Hawk 4 on the PS2 (with keyboard chat, not voice!) not a single session would go by where I wasn't called a faggot and had to put up with endless stupidity.
I'm aware the standard defense for acting like a complete dick is "Dude, it's just trash talking, so what?" but not everybody ENJOYS declaring the skewed lineage their opponent's family line. All I want to do is play games, not constantly be reminded why we could use another forty days and forty nights of worldwide flooding, you know?
Online gaming is in severe need of some player moderation -- some way of getting a rundown on what other people think of that player. If I saw that the folks who were challenging me were flagged as being immature bastards, I'd avoid them. True, that might mean only 5% of the total online population would be worthy, but at least I'd know I wouldn't have to worry about that 5% and could have a smooth gaming experience.
I hadn't played NWN in a while (my copy is out on loan for months now) so I hadn't been visiting the great Bioware forums,and hadn't heard of DA. I had heard they were going to do there own thing. Good for them. Never liked them having to clear everything through the Wotc and having Atari as a distrubuter. Atari really didn't seem to care about customers at all.
As big a DnD fan as I am, I am a bigger fan of Bioware. These guys rock IMO. Go DA go!
And that's one of the big reasons why I'm instantly a bit hostile towards NWN2 -- no Bioware, plenty of Hasbro. I'm very liable to be declared a Bioware fanboy (they DID give me the computer I'm typing on) but their support of the community in general is nothing short of phenominal. They're making their next game with community in mind, and they're doing it free of the shackles that were binding them before. At WORST it'll be on par with NWN1's support, including some of its faults; at best it'll get even better.
On the other hand, what do we have? Hasbro and Atari and WotC lording over the IP as usual. Obsidian, who I have no doubt will make an excellent single player adventure, just like they're going to do with KOTOR2. But they're the contractor here, taking not only IP from someone else, but IP based on other's IP. I have a doubt that they'd be that committed to modding. It won't be a simple transition of the community from NWN1 to NWN2, who is in charge is what matters more for community support -- if Half-Life 2 was being done by a small hungarian developer contracted by Sierra, I doubt its modding community would thrive either.
Now, I'm making a LOT of conjecture here. A lot of assumptions. I'll admit that up front. But way I see it, they're ones with some basis in reality, and until they're disproven I'm going to remain a skeptic. I'd love to see them disproven, frankly... see NWN2 be a great platform.
But for the time being I'm sticking by the devil I know rather than the devil I don't.
I've written a number of mods for NWN, including Penultima, Penultima ReRolled, Elegia Eternum, and Excrucio Eternum. And... I'm very leery of NWN2's prospects.
Are they seriously going to support the modding community to the extent NWN1 did? NWN1 was basically a pile of resources for you to build your own adventure; the game that came with it was so-so. Is NWN2 going to do skimp on the resources in favor of the more profitable single player adventure, or will it focus on toolsetting?
Also, regardless of how in-depth the toolset is... you're still saddled with D&D and all the baggage that comes with it. NWN had too many corporate overlords dictating how the game rules must work in order to make them accurate to the pen and paper game -- even when it made no sense on a computer! (Paladins are weak because the game couldn't replace P&P systems with more computer-saavy ones, for instance.) Many of the flaws in NWN arise from all the multi-step lawyer based approval processes to allow for any deviation from the D&D standards. I don't want that mess following me into my next platform.
Frankly, NWN2 does nothing that Dragon Age isn't already doing. DA is going to have massive toolset support, a design philosophy that's learned from NWN1, and Bioware's name behind it -- and it's independent of all the corps watching over the D&D franchise. When it comes to picking a platform to move my game authoring work to, I'd rather go with what feels right.
NWN2 feels like Atari and Hasbro wanting to cash in on the property. Unless new info arises to show why NWN2 is superior for me to develop my own original game worlds within, I'll stick with Dragon Age.
The poster was asking what games which were choppy or nasty on yesterday's hardware stand the test of time on modern hardware. You can reference Tempest or Asteroids or Chrono Trigger all you want but these games don't scale upward. They're locked on static hardware.
A lot of games of yesteryear claimed that they were designed with tomorrow's hardware in mind, that their highest quality settings with unachievable on then-modern computers. Well, have they hit that peak? For instance, I remember Shiny braggging about the millions of polys in Messiah characters, how it'd scale up. Does it?
We're going to be asking this same question once machines that are capable of running Doom 3 in "ultra" mode become commonplace.
i recommend CoH to people that are into hero based action and FFXI to RPGers but i would have though that CoH had a player base of almost double that
City of Heroes has been out for two months. FFXI's been out for MUCH longer than that, already has an expansion with another on the way, has a lisence that makes it lucious to both japanese gamers and western ones. I don't think the figures are any surprise.
That said, I prefer CoH. I think there's a distinct reason why it's more than double the base of Lineage 2, which launched at the same time with the same amount of press. It can only go up from here. Will it beat out FFXI's numbers? Probably not. But it's still quite good.
I have to echo this. A game you like for 150 can be worse than a game you like for 20, because not everybody HAS 150 hours to play games.
I work 9-to-5, have to deal with running errands, have social contacts I kinda like hanging out with, books I want to read, TV I want to watch, etc, etc... my time for playing video games is very limited. I PURPOSEFULLY look for games which are short, as a result. Games I can beat and clear in the time I have available, before the next game comes out. (A 150 hour game would take me a year, and there's too many good games in a year to pass them all up just to finish that monster.)
I'm tired of longer = better. I can't play RPGs anymore because they're ridiculously long and space out save points so harshly that I could end up playing a half an hour past when I NEED to get to sleep just to get the game to let me stop. Give me short, replayable, pickupable/putdownable games and I'll be a happy camper, dammit. Even RPGs could be like this is they weren't so harsh on the saves and focused more on replayability than sheer length and bashing 2000 orcs when you could bash 20 of them and have the same amount of fun!
True to a certain extent, but to me it seems that some MMOG developers don't pay the current game enough attention. Rather, they have most of their guys work on a bloody expansion pack which people have to pay for, while they only fix some bugs and address some balance-issues every now and then.
It depends on the game, and this is also part of the balance of whether or not you keep paying them the 15. If you're not seeing results for your money, they stand a chance at losing a customer; this is good and normal and in keeping with things. If they're doing their job and you see routine attention paid to issues, even if it's not 100% bug free and perfect, then they're using your money wisely.
City of Heroes is using the money wisely. Developers post every day and recently they've been starting open discussion threads for suggestions of how to balance the classes, what the players want to see. Changes occur frequently. Even with an expansion on the way regular content pushes are in the works.
Then you have the Star Wars Galaxies. Eek. There's no rhyme or reason to why they address some issues and ignore others, and some (smugglers) have been shoved back repeatedly and even told directly that they wouldn't be addressed in favor of the expansion.
The money issue is one of service, and if service isn't what you're getting, money isn't what they're going to get in return.
The harsh reality of the matter is that MMORPGs cost a metric ton of money to develop and maintain. You can't just push the boxed product out and then maybe do a few bug fix patches, you have to actively develop new content for it over the span of multiple years, while paying your bandwidth bill, and supporting the massive customer service department you have to have. So, I don't think it's too much to ask for a boxed copy fee, PLUS a monthly. That's the extra cost of playing a game experience that goes beyond what you got in your initial money dump. Some smaller MMOs which can't support huge audiences can charge nothing or next to nothing, and you've got Guild Wars which is ostensibly free but asks for money to access certain content -- but you're never going to get a truly free MMO.
But that said, look at the economics of it; a 15 a month subscription is the absolute maximum, and that's assuming you don't play any other MMORPGs. (I can't see a casual player playing more than 1-2 of them, anyway. There's just not enoguh hours in the day.) 15 is not that much of a step up from 13. All you have to do to make the extra two bucks is not supersize it once a month.:) After 15, you're pushing it, since most luxury monthly-fee services like Tivo and such tend to pile up and are all in the same 15 range. You want to keep them small enough, or folks will start looking for ways to trim the fat.
I've been interested in switching browsers for awhile now -- particularly since my windows is borked and despite owning it legitimately (won in a contest) it think it's pirated and refuses to get any IE security patches.
But a few confusion points are holding me back. Likely holding back a lot of folks who might switch, so if you know, dive in and lay down some evidence...
1. Which of the two browsers is simpler / less bulky, Mozilla, or Firebox? I don't want something slow loading, bloated with features, and overcomplicated. You know, IE.
2. Can either of them merge with Windows the way IE does? Running URLs from the Run box, for instance. I don't want to accidentally launch IE by the old methods.
3. Does Mozilla still have that stupid "download manager"? How do I turn it off? Every time I wanted to save a file that thing would pop up when I just wanted the simple windows of an IE download that go away when done.
Obviously, I am t3h n00b. But that means I'm the audience you need to sell on the idea of ditching Microsoft the most -- and I plan to pass it on to friends, coworkers, etc.
There are plenty of "casual games" that are puzzle based out on the market. Heck, research says they're the dominant economic power in gaming, not EverQuest. But tied to a story / adventure game? Not anymore, not since marketing flacks decided the adventure genre was "dead".
Frankly, the 7th Guest series hasn't helped. 11th Hour was just pathetic. Terrible merging of puzzles and story with the little "PDA" showing all the cutscenes; it wasn't mixed into the surreal astmophere of the original game very well, where the puzzles were blocking your progress because of the nature of what was happening.
The best you can do right now is the Myst games, which carry on the notion of merging adventure with puzzles. Uru does a decent job of it and Myst IV is coming down the pipe.
Nope. I have a questionable windows copy -- I won this computer in a legit contest STRAIGHT from Intel itself, and it didn't come with any documentation or keys. When I go to Windows Update, it refuses to work because it thinks I have a pirated key.
Needless to say, isntalling individual hotfixes like these is a PITA.
I don't know about this. Most of the games being cited are Windows ports, or involve design studios that heavily work on Windows games. Of course they'd eyeball the X-Box, not because it holds some excusive domain they want access to, but because it's what they're familiar with; work on the machine is a lot easier to them than taking on the alien monstrosity known as the PS2 dev kit. A lot of them have ties to Microsoft through their windows work (see: Bioware) and thus are more likely to do a console game period when they know the hardware and have a relationship with the manufacturer already.
It's no surprise to see this, and it's not really a trend, it's just a natural side effect of the X-Boxen's nature.
"However, we can definitely say that we really appreciate the great members of the BioWare Community and our goal is to continue supporting them with exciting new content in the future!" This does not contradict any previous statements."
Translation:
Bioware's been kicking around ideas in their forums for a 'Digital Download' service, which would let people buy new content and modules online to expand Neverwinter Nights. That's what they're probably talking about here, not that they're making an NWN sequel; hence 'this does not contradict any previous statements' jiving with both 'we're pondering DD content' and 'there is no NWN2 from us'.
NWN2 would probably be Atari's bizniz, passed on to some other developer and I doubt it'd have the same extensibility NWN has.
I gots me a hankering for the classics one day, and went on a crazed eBay spending spree. Got an NES and a bunch of good titles: Contra, Mario 3, Zelda, Ice Climbers, etc. Nothing beats the original hardware playing the original games on the original controllers...
Except that I can't get the blasted thing to work. It's got Grey Blinky Syndrome, a common ailment because the pin connectors are too lose... I cleaned my carts and got a shiny new 72-pin connector, but after installing it, now the thing's got a vice-like grip on my carts to the point where a grown man can't pull them out without yanking the 72-pin free. Agh.
A) Anybody got any suggestions? B) Maybe getting them emulated on your GBA isn't such a crazy idea...
With the evergrowing list of capabilities of the DS, it seems like it's reaching well beyond being a supposed "third pillar" of the Nintendo empire.
Originally it was pitched as a machine that you'd want to have ALONGSIDE your Gamecube and Gameboy, that it'd provide some seperate function which the other two didn't and vice versa and versa vice. But what it sounds like is an all-around superior portable gaming machine to the GBA... why would you want a GBA when you have a more powerful, more versatile machine available? That smells of 'replacement' to me, not 'supplemental'.
The X-Arcade cab is basically just a big wooden box, plus a nastily looking inserted X-Arcade double stick. (You can see the outlines of the arcade-shaped panel in the giant blocky panel. Ugh.) No PC or monitor are included. All that for 1000 bucks.
You might be better off buying an ancient cab and gutting it, or building your own. I built a wooden cab right to my size (I have a physical disability, dwarfism) and it kicks much booty as a result. Having a customized cab, or an authentic cab with new guts, seems a better way to go than a generic black cab branded with X-Arcade logos and a somewhat questionable price tag.
For just $50 more (thats like just #30, not much) you get 10 times the space
Assuming you have Firewire. I'm going to bet that a lot of Windows folks, myself included, do not -- USB is where we're at. And since the iPod Mini supports USB right out of the box, it's good to go... but the iPod regular does not, you have to buy a $20 cable in addition to the $50 extra you're spending.
I went with a 15gb, and I ended up paying $70 more than the mini, and just for laughs my iPod arrived 5 days before the cable did. It sat around on my desk looking stylish and aesthetically pleasing and making no sound whatsoever until the stupid cable showed up. Rats.
I'm not sure it's possible to make Bloodrayne's concept any stupider than it already is (skintight leather wearing nazi eating vampire vixen), so I think it's Uwe-safe.
But Alone in the Dark, man... that's sad. It's bad enough the games themselves have tailspinned into crapdom after the atmospheric first outing, now we have to have a wire stunt kung fu shooting zombie action movie with the name as well?
Why does Uwe have such a hardon for video game lisences when he doesn't actually bother making the movie anything like the game whatsoever? He could've stuck some other title on House of the Dead and nobody would have noticed.
One, the distribution costs fall through the floor. Less money required to distribute the game means more money to develop it -- or it could give games which might not be blockbusters a chance to appeal to their niche market without having to produce a limited-yet-expensive run of boxed games just for those people who want the game. Online distribution is cheap and the savings are passed on to you in one form or another.
Two, it eliminates the middleman -- the one step that prevents independent game developers from making mad money is that they can't afford to get a box onto the shelves. If you sell content online then you control every aspect from front to back of your game's distribution. Cheaper, more flexible, more suitable for a smaller company. Even if the company contracts out to an 'online distributor', it's still good for independent game developers since you could easily take your hobby and go professional with it via services offered by an online distribution center.
Now, the disadvantages.
One, ensuring that you can re-install the game or transfer it to a new machine. This is solvable by having a key system that makes sense -- allowing you to re-download games, allowing you to burn games to a CD, allowing you to jot down an easily accessible game key for later use. It's a minor, minor hurdle and one that can be surmounted if you're willing to loosen (useless) piracy controls. People who want a physical CD can make one themselves and do it for less money.
Two, you can't include Infocom-esque extras. Except nobody does this anymore. Your average PC game comes with a paper-sleeved CD, a manual (which is duplicated in PDF format on the CD anyway) and a bunch of pack-in glossy paper promotional flyers. When I get home from the store the first thing I do is throw everything but the disc itself and the manual away. I only keep the manual if there's a key printed in it and there's no electronic copy provided, and even then they tend to pile up on my desk in a useless, rarely accessed stack of booklets.
Three, advertising your product can be tricky since people aren't used to seeking things out online yet, and there's no universally known system for doing so. Steam's trying to become that system and failing horribly. This is an area that needs to be focused on, getting people aware of how online content sales works, making it easier for them to work it, and making sure they know your product is available.
Four, people who go "Nyaaah! I'll never buy virtual content! It's evil! Away from me, foul beast!" will not buy your game. There's not much you can do about this, until public attitudes change... no thanks to Steam and Real screwing things up and souring people on what would otherwise be a workable concept.
Imagine a future where you can publish your own games, you own music, your own writing, anything you want -- online for less money than ye traditionale retaile systems, without needing massive industry connections and layer upon layer of production systems. Once the technical details and business models are tested and smoothed out, it can be a reality.
The problem with this announcement is that it's basically nothing new, nothing interesting, nothing that hasn't been done before. Any schmuck can take a handful of premade music tracks across a bunch of marketable genres and shoehorn them into a game. Tony Hawk's been doing it for years; when THPS3 hit, it stopped being about 'skate culture music' and started being a commercial.
If they really want to integrate and crosspromote effectively, then they have to do one of two things...
1. Actually pick a genre or artist that makes sense for the game and be consistent about it! DDR works great because it uses dance music for a dancing game -- go figure. Same goes with the Wipeout series, which presented a techno style from the soundtrack right on down to the visuals. Wipeout wouldn't have been as good if you got Fluke and the Chemical Brothers next to Sum 41, Linkin Park, Snoop Dogg and Enya...
2. Create NEW MUSIC just for the game, specifically for the game. Sign an artist and have them work the soundtrack for you. NIN's collaboration with id for Quake produced an amazing ambient score -- more projects like that, where the music is completely tied into the concept, would sell both the game AND a soundtrack full of this never-before-sold material. This doesn't just mean get them to record any old original song, it has to integrate perfectly into the game to justify the process.
Of course, the easiest and cheapest solution is to just use the game as a dumping ground for bands the label wants to promote. And the end result is a completely forgettable, bloated, schizophrenic game soundtrack -- which looks groovy on the back of the box and sells the thing, which is all that matters. And hey, if they just care about making money (which is reasonable & proper in a capitalistic society), that's fine... but it's empty, too. Very empty.
If you can buy it in different configurations it is most likely a modular system.
No dice; earlier interviews were bragging about how the case is 'tamper proof' and glued shut. They don't want you monkeying with the innards of the thing because of the marketing pitch of having foolproof digital rights management -- at best there'd have to be add-on parts that slide and lock into place like the PS2 network adapter and hard drive. And those traditionally bomb in the console market.
So, the writer says it's a good deal, because a PC plus video card that you have to routinely upgrade will cost you more than the 300-500 dollar phantom plus 10 dollar monthly obligatory subscription (on top of which you add even more charges for game lisences).
In short: You don't have to constantly replace and upgrade your PC anymore! You play your phantom forever!
Except, of course, that PC games scale up and up as the years go by, demanding newer and more powerful hardware... while the Phantom remains a single closed box you can't upgrade at all. The best you can do is buy a 'Phantom 2' or whatever they'll call it in 2008, just like you'd buy a PS3, X-Box Next, or Gamecube Part Deux.
How exactly does that make this a bargain when the only advantage -- a closed, upgradeless PC -- is its primary disadvantage for the types of games you're gonna play? All you're doing is buying a low-cost PC and then constantly paying monthlies for the honor of using it, then repeating the cycle every few years as usual.
If I'm wrong, please, tell me I'm wrong and why; I would like to see something like this succeed, I just don't see this particular example working...
I'm a disabled gamer, and I face no end of frustration when playing modern games. And that's with use of BOTH my hands.
The problem is that I brace the controller against a table, rather than hold it in a two handed grip -- therefore those ergonomically placed shoulder buttons and triggers are difficult for me to access quickly. Holding down R1 while manuvering and shooting in Resident Evil? No. Using triggers for gas/brake while flipping gears with buttons and steering? No. Playing Hunter: The Reckoning which requires use of both analogs, all face buttons and both triggers simultaneously? HELL no! How about fighting games which use six buttons? Forget it, unless you can find a controller which sticks L1 and R1 on the face (which thankfully I have, for the PS2 at least).
What's worse, it seems that game designers have been REMOVING button remap features lately. Often games will give you 'Type A', 'Type B' and 'Type C' controls -- all of which map critical features to hard to reach buttons, none of which you can customize to your liking. A few years back I could at least shuffle the less useful map button somewhere distant and the critical 'aim weapon' button to a face button...
But the absolute worst offender, and my favorite anecdote, was trying to play Goldeneye on the N64 at a party. The N64 had analogs, face buttons, shoulder buttons, AND the z-trigger on the BOTTOM of the controller. I had no hope in hell of properly playing, particualrly with 'shoot gun' being mapped to the z-trigger, so I asked if they had an ordinary flat control pad.
They did. And the ordinary flat SNES style control pad... had a z-trigger on the bottom, against all design common sense. That blew my mind, man.
I don't think designers have to to take the disabled into account, but it would be nice if some third party controller manufacturers did. It'd also be nice if the game coders didn't limit how customizable their controls were in-software. Those two things alone would solve all the problems.
Actually, I really enjoy Cinematech on G4 -- the 'all cut scene' show.
First of all, over half the games they show are edited highlights set to music, not just spooled cut scene footage. Second, it's a great way to get visual previews of a game without having to download hundreds of megs of trailers online from sites like IGN and Gamespot which lock down their downloads as much as possible. Very handy if you want to know what a game looks like, and sometimes even what it plays like when they don't edit a lot and just show someone playing the thing.
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Countless times playing City of Heroes, I've wanted to hear SOMETHING other than blips and zaps and pows. Hearing the enemies call out and taunt you, or hear NPCs thanking you for rescuing them, or even screams of terror when people run around... voice beats no voice, hands down. As long as the acting is reasonably good and doesn't stand out for being Resident Evil levels of horribleness then it can add to the atmosphere in the same way great graphics do.
An MMORPG which nails great graphics, an interactive musical score ala old Lucasarts games, and good voice acting... well, then you've got one heck of an experience. As is MMORPGs seem to focus completely on the graphics. The audio side gets third billing at best.
That PA cartoon sums up while I STOPPED paying for X-Box Live. It wasn't the money, the DRM, the hatred of MS, or anything like that -- it was my fellow players.
I never had a single session of XBL where I wasn't subjected to some of the worst filth the human race has to offer. Cheap players, cheaters, droppers, and countless trashtalkers. What fun is it to play a game when the other players are complete and total assholes? What's worse, because *gasp!* I'm not a particularly amazing gamer, I'd lose a lot -- and that meant being mocked and humiliated and treated like elementary school playground trash.
Eventually I decided that I wasn't actually having any fun, and I cancelled my X-Box Live. Huzzah.
This isn't limited to X-Box Live. My first online game, Tony Hawk 4 on the PS2 (with keyboard chat, not voice!) not a single session would go by where I wasn't called a faggot and had to put up with endless stupidity.
I'm aware the standard defense for acting like a complete dick is "Dude, it's just trash talking, so what?" but not everybody ENJOYS declaring the skewed lineage their opponent's family line. All I want to do is play games, not constantly be reminded why we could use another forty days and forty nights of worldwide flooding, you know?
Online gaming is in severe need of some player moderation -- some way of getting a rundown on what other people think of that player. If I saw that the folks who were challenging me were flagged as being immature bastards, I'd avoid them. True, that might mean only 5% of the total online population would be worthy, but at least I'd know I wouldn't have to worry about that 5% and could have a smooth gaming experience.
I hadn't played NWN in a while (my copy is out on loan for months now) so I hadn't been visiting the great Bioware forums,and hadn't heard of DA. I had heard they were going to do there own thing. Good for them. Never liked them having to clear everything through the Wotc and having Atari as a distrubuter. Atari really didn't seem to care about customers at all.
As big a DnD fan as I am, I am a bigger fan of Bioware. These guys rock IMO. Go DA go!
And that's one of the big reasons why I'm instantly a bit hostile towards NWN2 -- no Bioware, plenty of Hasbro. I'm very liable to be declared a Bioware fanboy (they DID give me the computer I'm typing on) but their support of the community in general is nothing short of phenominal. They're making their next game with community in mind, and they're doing it free of the shackles that were binding them before. At WORST it'll be on par with NWN1's support, including some of its faults; at best it'll get even better.
On the other hand, what do we have? Hasbro and Atari and WotC lording over the IP as usual. Obsidian, who I have no doubt will make an excellent single player adventure, just like they're going to do with KOTOR2. But they're the contractor here, taking not only IP from someone else, but IP based on other's IP. I have a doubt that they'd be that committed to modding. It won't be a simple transition of the community from NWN1 to NWN2, who is in charge is what matters more for community support -- if Half-Life 2 was being done by a small hungarian developer contracted by Sierra, I doubt its modding community would thrive either.
Now, I'm making a LOT of conjecture here. A lot of assumptions. I'll admit that up front. But way I see it, they're ones with some basis in reality, and until they're disproven I'm going to remain a skeptic. I'd love to see them disproven, frankly... see NWN2 be a great platform.
But for the time being I'm sticking by the devil I know rather than the devil I don't.
I've written a number of mods for NWN, including Penultima, Penultima ReRolled, Elegia Eternum, and Excrucio Eternum. And... I'm very leery of NWN2's prospects.
Are they seriously going to support the modding community to the extent NWN1 did? NWN1 was basically a pile of resources for you to build your own adventure; the game that came with it was so-so. Is NWN2 going to do skimp on the resources in favor of the more profitable single player adventure, or will it focus on toolsetting?
Also, regardless of how in-depth the toolset is... you're still saddled with D&D and all the baggage that comes with it. NWN had too many corporate overlords dictating how the game rules must work in order to make them accurate to the pen and paper game -- even when it made no sense on a computer! (Paladins are weak because the game couldn't replace P&P systems with more computer-saavy ones, for instance.) Many of the flaws in NWN arise from all the multi-step lawyer based approval processes to allow for any deviation from the D&D standards. I don't want that mess following me into my next platform.
Frankly, NWN2 does nothing that Dragon Age isn't already doing. DA is going to have massive toolset support, a design philosophy that's learned from NWN1, and Bioware's name behind it -- and it's independent of all the corps watching over the D&D franchise. When it comes to picking a platform to move my game authoring work to, I'd rather go with what feels right.
NWN2 feels like Atari and Hasbro wanting to cash in on the property. Unless new info arises to show why NWN2 is superior for me to develop my own original game worlds within, I'll stick with Dragon Age.
Did anybody RTFA/P?
The poster was asking what games which were choppy or nasty on yesterday's hardware stand the test of time on modern hardware. You can reference Tempest or Asteroids or Chrono Trigger all you want but these games don't scale upward. They're locked on static hardware.
A lot of games of yesteryear claimed that they were designed with tomorrow's hardware in mind, that their highest quality settings with unachievable on then-modern computers. Well, have they hit that peak? For instance, I remember Shiny braggging about the millions of polys in Messiah characters, how it'd scale up. Does it?
We're going to be asking this same question once machines that are capable of running Doom 3 in "ultra" mode become commonplace.
i recommend CoH to people that are into hero based action and FFXI to RPGers but i would have though that CoH had a player base of almost double that
City of Heroes has been out for two months. FFXI's been out for MUCH longer than that, already has an expansion with another on the way, has a lisence that makes it lucious to both japanese gamers and western ones. I don't think the figures are any surprise.
That said, I prefer CoH. I think there's a distinct reason why it's more than double the base of Lineage 2, which launched at the same time with the same amount of press. It can only go up from here. Will it beat out FFXI's numbers? Probably not. But it's still quite good.
I have to echo this. A game you like for 150 can be worse than a game you like for 20, because not everybody HAS 150 hours to play games.
I work 9-to-5, have to deal with running errands, have social contacts I kinda like hanging out with, books I want to read, TV I want to watch, etc, etc... my time for playing video games is very limited. I PURPOSEFULLY look for games which are short, as a result. Games I can beat and clear in the time I have available, before the next game comes out. (A 150 hour game would take me a year, and there's too many good games in a year to pass them all up just to finish that monster.)
I'm tired of longer = better. I can't play RPGs anymore because they're ridiculously long and space out save points so harshly that I could end up playing a half an hour past when I NEED to get to sleep just to get the game to let me stop. Give me short, replayable, pickupable/putdownable games and I'll be a happy camper, dammit. Even RPGs could be like this is they weren't so harsh on the saves and focused more on replayability than sheer length and bashing 2000 orcs when you could bash 20 of them and have the same amount of fun!
True to a certain extent, but to me it seems that some MMOG developers don't pay the current game enough attention. Rather, they have most of their guys work on a bloody expansion pack which people have to pay for, while they only fix some bugs and address some balance-issues every now and then.
It depends on the game, and this is also part of the balance of whether or not you keep paying them the 15. If you're not seeing results for your money, they stand a chance at losing a customer; this is good and normal and in keeping with things. If they're doing their job and you see routine attention paid to issues, even if it's not 100% bug free and perfect, then they're using your money wisely.
City of Heroes is using the money wisely. Developers post every day and recently they've been starting open discussion threads for suggestions of how to balance the classes, what the players want to see. Changes occur frequently. Even with an expansion on the way regular content pushes are in the works.
Then you have the Star Wars Galaxies. Eek. There's no rhyme or reason to why they address some issues and ignore others, and some (smugglers) have been shoved back repeatedly and even told directly that they wouldn't be addressed in favor of the expansion.
The money issue is one of service, and if service isn't what you're getting, money isn't what they're going to get in return.
The harsh reality of the matter is that MMORPGs cost a metric ton of money to develop and maintain. You can't just push the boxed product out and then maybe do a few bug fix patches, you have to actively develop new content for it over the span of multiple years, while paying your bandwidth bill, and supporting the massive customer service department you have to have. So, I don't think it's too much to ask for a boxed copy fee, PLUS a monthly. That's the extra cost of playing a game experience that goes beyond what you got in your initial money dump. Some smaller MMOs which can't support huge audiences can charge nothing or next to nothing, and you've got Guild Wars which is ostensibly free but asks for money to access certain content -- but you're never going to get a truly free MMO.
:) After 15, you're pushing it, since most luxury monthly-fee services like Tivo and such tend to pile up and are all in the same 15 range. You want to keep them small enough, or folks will start looking for ways to trim the fat.
But that said, look at the economics of it; a 15 a month subscription is the absolute maximum, and that's assuming you don't play any other MMORPGs. (I can't see a casual player playing more than 1-2 of them, anyway. There's just not enoguh hours in the day.) 15 is not that much of a step up from 13. All you have to do to make the extra two bucks is not supersize it once a month.
I've been interested in switching browsers for awhile now -- particularly since my windows is borked and despite owning it legitimately (won in a contest) it think it's pirated and refuses to get any IE security patches.
But a few confusion points are holding me back. Likely holding back a lot of folks who might switch, so if you know, dive in and lay down some evidence...
1. Which of the two browsers is simpler / less bulky, Mozilla, or Firebox? I don't want something slow loading, bloated with features, and overcomplicated. You know, IE.
2. Can either of them merge with Windows the way IE does? Running URLs from the Run box, for instance. I don't want to accidentally launch IE by the old methods.
3. Does Mozilla still have that stupid "download manager"? How do I turn it off? Every time I wanted to save a file that thing would pop up when I just wanted the simple windows of an IE download that go away when done.
Obviously, I am t3h n00b. But that means I'm the audience you need to sell on the idea of ditching Microsoft the most -- and I plan to pass it on to friends, coworkers, etc.
There are plenty of "casual games" that are puzzle based out on the market. Heck, research says they're the dominant economic power in gaming, not EverQuest. But tied to a story / adventure game? Not anymore, not since marketing flacks decided the adventure genre was "dead".
Frankly, the 7th Guest series hasn't helped. 11th Hour was just pathetic. Terrible merging of puzzles and story with the little "PDA" showing all the cutscenes; it wasn't mixed into the surreal astmophere of the original game very well, where the puzzles were blocking your progress because of the nature of what was happening.
The best you can do right now is the Myst games, which carry on the notion of merging adventure with puzzles. Uru does a decent job of it and Myst IV is coming down the pipe.
Nope. I have a questionable windows copy -- I won this computer in a legit contest STRAIGHT from Intel itself, and it didn't come with any documentation or keys. When I go to Windows Update, it refuses to work because it thinks I have a pirated key.
Needless to say, isntalling individual hotfixes like these is a PITA.
I don't know about this. Most of the games being cited are Windows ports, or involve design studios that heavily work on Windows games. Of course they'd eyeball the X-Box, not because it holds some excusive domain they want access to, but because it's what they're familiar with; work on the machine is a lot easier to them than taking on the alien monstrosity known as the PS2 dev kit. A lot of them have ties to Microsoft through their windows work (see: Bioware) and thus are more likely to do a console game period when they know the hardware and have a relationship with the manufacturer already.
It's no surprise to see this, and it's not really a trend, it's just a natural side effect of the X-Boxen's nature.
"However, we can definitely say that we really appreciate the great members of the BioWare Community and our goal is to continue supporting them with exciting new content in the future!"
This does not contradict any previous statements."
Translation:
Bioware's been kicking around ideas in their forums for a 'Digital Download' service, which would let people buy new content and modules online to expand Neverwinter Nights. That's what they're probably talking about here, not that they're making an NWN sequel; hence 'this does not contradict any previous statements' jiving with both 'we're pondering DD content' and 'there is no NWN2 from us'.
NWN2 would probably be Atari's bizniz, passed on to some other developer and I doubt it'd have the same extensibility NWN has.
I gots me a hankering for the classics one day, and went on a crazed eBay spending spree. Got an NES and a bunch of good titles: Contra, Mario 3, Zelda, Ice Climbers, etc. Nothing beats the original hardware playing the original games on the original controllers...
Except that I can't get the blasted thing to work. It's got Grey Blinky Syndrome, a common ailment because the pin connectors are too lose... I cleaned my carts and got a shiny new 72-pin connector, but after installing it, now the thing's got a vice-like grip on my carts to the point where a grown man can't pull them out without yanking the 72-pin free. Agh.
A) Anybody got any suggestions?
B) Maybe getting them emulated on your GBA isn't such a crazy idea...
With the evergrowing list of capabilities of the DS, it seems like it's reaching well beyond being a supposed "third pillar" of the Nintendo empire.
Originally it was pitched as a machine that you'd want to have ALONGSIDE your Gamecube and Gameboy, that it'd provide some seperate function which the other two didn't and vice versa and versa vice. But what it sounds like is an all-around superior portable gaming machine to the GBA... why would you want a GBA when you have a more powerful, more versatile machine available? That smells of 'replacement' to me, not 'supplemental'.
The X-Arcade cab is basically just a big wooden box, plus a nastily looking inserted X-Arcade double stick. (You can see the outlines of the arcade-shaped panel in the giant blocky panel. Ugh.) No PC or monitor are included. All that for 1000 bucks.
You might be better off buying an ancient cab and gutting it, or building your own. I built a wooden cab right to my size (I have a physical disability, dwarfism) and it kicks much booty as a result. Having a customized cab, or an authentic cab with new guts, seems a better way to go than a generic black cab branded with X-Arcade logos and a somewhat questionable price tag.
For just $50 more (thats like just #30, not much) you get 10 times the space
Assuming you have Firewire. I'm going to bet that a lot of Windows folks, myself included, do not -- USB is where we're at. And since the iPod Mini supports USB right out of the box, it's good to go... but the iPod regular does not, you have to buy a $20 cable in addition to the $50 extra you're spending.
I went with a 15gb, and I ended up paying $70 more than the mini, and just for laughs my iPod arrived 5 days before the cable did. It sat around on my desk looking stylish and aesthetically pleasing and making no sound whatsoever until the stupid cable showed up. Rats.
I'm not sure it's possible to make Bloodrayne's concept any stupider than it already is (skintight leather wearing nazi eating vampire vixen), so I think it's Uwe-safe.
But Alone in the Dark, man... that's sad. It's bad enough the games themselves have tailspinned into crapdom after the atmospheric first outing, now we have to have a wire stunt kung fu shooting zombie action movie with the name as well?
Why does Uwe have such a hardon for video game lisences when he doesn't actually bother making the movie anything like the game whatsoever? He could've stuck some other title on House of the Dead and nobody would have noticed.
Let's look at the advantages of ditching the box.
One, the distribution costs fall through the floor. Less money required to distribute the game means more money to develop it -- or it could give games which might not be blockbusters a chance to appeal to their niche market without having to produce a limited-yet-expensive run of boxed games just for those people who want the game. Online distribution is cheap and the savings are passed on to you in one form or another.
Two, it eliminates the middleman -- the one step that prevents independent game developers from making mad money is that they can't afford to get a box onto the shelves. If you sell content online then you control every aspect from front to back of your game's distribution. Cheaper, more flexible, more suitable for a smaller company. Even if the company contracts out to an 'online distributor', it's still good for independent game developers since you could easily take your hobby and go professional with it via services offered by an online distribution center.
Now, the disadvantages.
One, ensuring that you can re-install the game or transfer it to a new machine. This is solvable by having a key system that makes sense -- allowing you to re-download games, allowing you to burn games to a CD, allowing you to jot down an easily accessible game key for later use. It's a minor, minor hurdle and one that can be surmounted if you're willing to loosen (useless) piracy controls. People who want a physical CD can make one themselves and do it for less money.
Two, you can't include Infocom-esque extras. Except nobody does this anymore. Your average PC game comes with a paper-sleeved CD, a manual (which is duplicated in PDF format on the CD anyway) and a bunch of pack-in glossy paper promotional flyers. When I get home from the store the first thing I do is throw everything but the disc itself and the manual away. I only keep the manual if there's a key printed in it and there's no electronic copy provided, and even then they tend to pile up on my desk in a useless, rarely accessed stack of booklets.
Three, advertising your product can be tricky since people aren't used to seeking things out online yet, and there's no universally known system for doing so. Steam's trying to become that system and failing horribly. This is an area that needs to be focused on, getting people aware of how online content sales works, making it easier for them to work it, and making sure they know your product is available.
Four, people who go "Nyaaah! I'll never buy virtual content! It's evil! Away from me, foul beast!" will not buy your game. There's not much you can do about this, until public attitudes change... no thanks to Steam and Real screwing things up and souring people on what would otherwise be a workable concept.
Imagine a future where you can publish your own games, you own music, your own writing, anything you want -- online for less money than ye traditionale retaile systems, without needing massive industry connections and layer upon layer of production systems. Once the technical details and business models are tested and smoothed out, it can be a reality.
The problem with this announcement is that it's basically nothing new, nothing interesting, nothing that hasn't been done before. Any schmuck can take a handful of premade music tracks across a bunch of marketable genres and shoehorn them into a game. Tony Hawk's been doing it for years; when THPS3 hit, it stopped being about 'skate culture music' and started being a commercial.
If they really want to integrate and crosspromote effectively, then they have to do one of two things...
1. Actually pick a genre or artist that makes sense for the game and be consistent about it! DDR works great because it uses dance music for a dancing game -- go figure. Same goes with the Wipeout series, which presented a techno style from the soundtrack right on down to the visuals. Wipeout wouldn't have been as good if you got Fluke and the Chemical Brothers next to Sum 41, Linkin Park, Snoop Dogg and Enya...
2. Create NEW MUSIC just for the game, specifically for the game. Sign an artist and have them work the soundtrack for you. NIN's collaboration with id for Quake produced an amazing ambient score -- more projects like that, where the music is completely tied into the concept, would sell both the game AND a soundtrack full of this never-before-sold material. This doesn't just mean get them to record any old original song, it has to integrate perfectly into the game to justify the process.
Of course, the easiest and cheapest solution is to just use the game as a dumping ground for bands the label wants to promote. And the end result is a completely forgettable, bloated, schizophrenic game soundtrack -- which looks groovy on the back of the box and sells the thing, which is all that matters. And hey, if they just care about making money (which is reasonable & proper in a capitalistic society), that's fine... but it's empty, too. Very empty.
If you can buy it in different configurations it is most likely a modular system.
No dice; earlier interviews were bragging about how the case is 'tamper proof' and glued shut. They don't want you monkeying with the innards of the thing because of the marketing pitch of having foolproof digital rights management -- at best there'd have to be add-on parts that slide and lock into place like the PS2 network adapter and hard drive. And those traditionally bomb in the console market.
So, the writer says it's a good deal, because a PC plus video card that you have to routinely upgrade will cost you more than the 300-500 dollar phantom plus 10 dollar monthly obligatory subscription (on top of which you add even more charges for game lisences).
In short: You don't have to constantly replace and upgrade your PC anymore! You play your phantom forever!
Except, of course, that PC games scale up and up as the years go by, demanding newer and more powerful hardware... while the Phantom remains a single closed box you can't upgrade at all. The best you can do is buy a 'Phantom 2' or whatever they'll call it in 2008, just like you'd buy a PS3, X-Box Next, or Gamecube Part Deux.
How exactly does that make this a bargain when the only advantage -- a closed, upgradeless PC -- is its primary disadvantage for the types of games you're gonna play? All you're doing is buying a low-cost PC and then constantly paying monthlies for the honor of using it, then repeating the cycle every few years as usual.
If I'm wrong, please, tell me I'm wrong and why; I would like to see something like this succeed, I just don't see this particular example working...
I'm a disabled gamer, and I face no end of frustration when playing modern games. And that's with use of BOTH my hands.
The problem is that I brace the controller against a table, rather than hold it in a two handed grip -- therefore those ergonomically placed shoulder buttons and triggers are difficult for me to access quickly. Holding down R1 while manuvering and shooting in Resident Evil? No. Using triggers for gas/brake while flipping gears with buttons and steering? No. Playing Hunter: The Reckoning which requires use of both analogs, all face buttons and both triggers simultaneously? HELL no! How about fighting games which use six buttons? Forget it, unless you can find a controller which sticks L1 and R1 on the face (which thankfully I have, for the PS2 at least).
What's worse, it seems that game designers have been REMOVING button remap features lately. Often games will give you 'Type A', 'Type B' and 'Type C' controls -- all of which map critical features to hard to reach buttons, none of which you can customize to your liking. A few years back I could at least shuffle the less useful map button somewhere distant and the critical 'aim weapon' button to a face button...
But the absolute worst offender, and my favorite anecdote, was trying to play Goldeneye on the N64 at a party. The N64 had analogs, face buttons, shoulder buttons, AND the z-trigger on the BOTTOM of the controller. I had no hope in hell of properly playing, particualrly with 'shoot gun' being mapped to the z-trigger, so I asked if they had an ordinary flat control pad.
They did. And the ordinary flat SNES style control pad... had a z-trigger on the bottom, against all design common sense. That blew my mind, man.
I don't think designers have to to take the disabled into account, but it would be nice if some third party controller manufacturers did. It'd also be nice if the game coders didn't limit how customizable their controls were in-software. Those two things alone would solve all the problems.
Actually, I really enjoy Cinematech on G4 -- the 'all cut scene' show.
First of all, over half the games they show are edited highlights set to music, not just spooled cut scene footage. Second, it's a great way to get visual previews of a game without having to download hundreds of megs of trailers online from sites like IGN and Gamespot which lock down their downloads as much as possible. Very handy if you want to know what a game looks like, and sometimes even what it plays like when they don't edit a lot and just show someone playing the thing.