Trade Wars 2000 was really good back in the day. I know there are still some fringe games running over telnet on emulated BBS OSs (legacy hosting of sorts). I tried playing recently for old time's sake and found myself realizing it was cool back then but EVE would probably keep my interests better since my expectations have jumped up a few notches in ~15 years.
That's a great point about "talking through them". I didn't even *think* of that as a time-shifting feature. You made me realize that DVRs eliminate the immediacy of media. Hmm.
Like all pixelated as if the real ET movie hadn't been made? Now, that I'd see. It's like translated text back and forth. English -> Japanese -> English ET Movie -> ET Game -> ET Movie
Or maybe you mean this sarcasticlly. In which case I offer another OT jewel: I had a roommate back in college who was really into Star Wars. He had the books. He had the collectible plates. He watched QVC buying Star Wars collectibles. One day while he was buying Star Wars loot on QVC I said, "Hey. I know you have the cards, books, plates, toys and posters... but did you ever see the movie? The Star Wars movie? It's pretty good."
He stared at me.
"You should see it... the Star Wars movie. They made a few."
He didn't laugh. I think he was deeply offended. He didn't his renew his stay in the dorm and moved somewhere else on campus.
Hrm, considering that the hardware itself is no cash cow I wouldn't strategize at all on the hardware side. I'd want to get as much hardware crap out there as I can and establish the platform. Sony is sorta-kinda doing that. PS2s exceeded 360 sales even through the 360 launch (which is personally unbelievable). Sony sold 100M PS2s and the PS3 is majorly backwards compatible, now one could argue that the PS2 is $129 and the PS3 is much more at ~$600. But the fact remains that most people already are into the IP that Sony has. Of course one piece of that is GTA which isn't exclusive anymore (this is huge). That combined with the whole center-of-the-living room mess that the 360/PS3 is pimping it's going to be hard to compare the ps2 & ps3. It'll be interesting to see this thing play out.
There are 1500 ps2 titles listed on wikipedia and I'd estimate an equal amount of ps1 titles. So if they continue, you'd have 1500 * 3 platforms = 4500 titles (just listing quantity not quality). Not that it's apples to apples but the Xbox had about 700, the 360 has about 300 so far. Sony is an electronics and entertainment company first, whereas MS was (and is) trying to break into the market. That's just the reality of the situation.
I have a 360. But when FF13, Gran Turismo, Metal Gear Solid and especially White Knight (assuming the videos aren't pre-vis) are released you better believe the demand will be there. Although the price is a bit steep and it's so much more complicated than the ps2 was. It's early, hard to say. PS2 launch was the same imho, all that is different is the pricey High-Def age. Tivo Series 3(HD) is $700, Series2(non HD) was $399 at launch. HD just costs a lot, ps3 is right in there. I'd be curious to know if anyone has any old HiFi (audio) war stories?
I'm with you. I better get this out of my system while I have the freedom to: "Die in a fire fueled by cow crap, you just cost me $7.95 today to take advantage of free speech before it gets shut down for yet more generic security reasons".
Well since the Air Force thinks their target audience is wasting their life in online rpgs, why not create an Army RPG! =^o^=
You could have: - Grinding to level 99 to uber on the terrorist swarms - Medivac dispensed potions - Mana Points renamed to Patriotism Points - MASSIVE DAMAGE for 9999 - Bin Laden boss fight with awesome 5 minute Bush summon animations - 1984 story excerpts that you skip with (X). "War is peace, ignorance is.." (X)(X)(X) "Come on! Moar fighting plz!" - Fire spell renamed to "Fox One" - Fira spell renamed to "Foxera Onera" - Firaga spell renamed to "Foxeraga Oneraga" <('-'<)
Of course then you'd have gameplay issues with the above. For example, casting "Fox One" (fire) on the enemy would reduce Patriotism Points (mana), which is either a deep and suiting statement of how warfare is or it's a game design flaw. Ah, I can't figure it out, better release a beta and have someone else work on it.:)
"The PlayStation 2 is the most popular console with 57% of gamers owning one compared to 39% with an Xbox and 27% with a Gamecube. A small, fanatical number, 8%, own all three consoles." BBC News: 8 April, 2005 - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4423365.stm
Using IGN I got the PS2 launch list. Using metacritic, I got the aggregate scores of today. So two things to consider: - TFA uses a single source where metacritic would churn that into a greater aggregation. - Present-day scores over a longer period of time for the PS2 VS present-day scores over a short period of time on the PS3. - There's no accounting for taste, ok three things.:P
OMG PS2 Launch List ------------------- Armored Core 2 - 78 DOA2: Hardcore - 91 Dynasty Warriors 2 - 75 ESPN International Track and Field - 72 ESPN X-Games Snowboarding - 73 Eternal Ring - 62 Evergrace - 59 FantaVision - 72 Gun Griffon Blaze - 73 Kessen - 75 Madden NFL 2001 - 91 Midnight Club - 78 Moto GP - 77 NHL 2001 - 85 Orphen - 54 Q-Ball Billiards Master - 65 Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2 - 75 Ridge Racer V - 78 Silent Scope - 63 Smuggler's Run - 79 SSX - 93 Street Fighter EX3 - 64 Summoner - 74 Swing Away - 78 Tekken Tag Tournament - 85 TimeSplitters - 81 Unreal Tournament - 77 Wild Wild Racing - 64 X-Squad - 64
I think I'm going to play/dev/ils/advocate and say that MS improved boot times in XP in a major way. I don't know if this is the Apple feature I'd talk about, maybe nice and standard S.M.A.R.T. support (you can check failing status and health of drives in Disk Utility). Meh, even that's a stretch. Heat and failure management is pretty close on both OS's because most of it is handled in hardware (CPU scaling, auto-shut off, SMART).
imho... Blizzard is the massive exception to the rule. They write amazing code, they run an amazing operation. Of course, they also stay behind the tech curve (smart). Blizzard, Google (for how long I wonder), Apple (much lesser extent), ID did well with the Doom RPG but I don't know where they are heading... it's odd, they need new IP or something.
Back on topic, they are a massive exception to the rule. WoW is a AAA title can run OpenGL (mac/windows) and DX (windows), has very few bugs in constant change and has a subscriber base of 6+ million. I'd say there only one title that does that and one company that could pull it off. Not to mention the infrastructure, the tools, the customer service, the community, the vision of not punishing the player (ignore the official forums) all while not selling out too much. They use bittorrent (good and bad), use XML in the UI, use linux clustering (shards) for hosting, have a public API for community UI extensibility and even don't auto-renew your trial subscription behind your back (refer-a-friend).
Sure, they use OracleDB and they exploit MMOs addictive qualities. So they might do some evil now and again. Angel of Heaven who has to sell crack to buy harp polish? Derailed here.
how many company's do you know of whose business model included a goal or contingency to be bought out by Microsoft?
A couple. First, promised Unix integration in a domain. A product that would serve up/etc/passwd accounts to 2000 domains was brought to its knees by promised vaporware and then MS bought them out. Why would I buy a "Unix connector" when 2000 is promising to have it? Killed their revenue stream, was easy to make an offer. Classic vaporware, second-hand story.
Next, not so harsh, MS approached our company saying they would develop their own cost auditing software for telcos. It didn't happen and I wonder if they were just willing to see how much we'd play ball. I don't have as much details on this one. But this was first-hand.
PA is funny, I love their strip. After reading that I thought a Wii-centered LAN party would be like the last "couch" frame in the PA strip. But it turned out we all really got into it and were sliding across the floor bowling, being silly, etc. My right arm feels like I played baseball yesterday (except a bit worse). See, the wiimote has no weight behind it. So it's like waving your arm around as fast as you can, you get those tingles that you don't get with real baseball. Sure, you whip the wiimote from the wrist but I found some Wii Sports that seem to track movement across the room better so I'd give it a real-life motion.
And now my arm is super sore. Even in the elbow, like tennis.
Man, you guys make me look like a lightweight. I was in college and had a week of no class (was helping with events). This was my chance to try no sleep before getting into an unending 9-5 career schedule (hey, I was right).
63 hours straight, very little coffee, nothing else. First day was rough. After that it was just weird. Skin felt dead. I was going to keep going but then I literally saw gray spots (maybe 10 or so random overlay type). Afraid of long-term effects, I went to bed, slept 24 hours and then some powernaps to sync up with the Sun.
As far as REM being active, I'm pretty good at lucid dreaming and (not related) have woken up in full REM on accident (extremely memorable and painful). A variety of colors, sharp white-red and brown noise, scalp was tingling, eyes were tense, body paralyzed and when I was typing the experience as fast as I could, random sentences ended up in the document as the experience faded that I only later read as "who typed that?". I'd agree with the posts that say REM is active, it's scary how much we miss every night.
I definitely appreciate the deep eyesight analysis that dwarfs my own speculation but I can't wave the flag with you. Human eyesight to me is non-predator cow-eye mush. When I am in bed and my cat is warming my feet, I can't see her _at all_. Zero. Black on black for all I know. When I pass my hand near her, she sees my hand and precisely rubs her face against it every time. All I have to do is place her in a larger Tiger context and me in the absence of civilization and I see that I'm an easy meal every 24 hours.
Actually if we want to talk economics (which I am not an expert), I was wondering something. Essentially the PS3 is a computer that runs software. It's $600 (for simplicity) but the amount of software it can run is limited. People are eBay'ing theirs for very high prices and yet there are very few titles out for it.
So essentially this is a hammer that can hammer a few nails. So it should be cheaper because in a about a year it can hammer more nails, have more flexibility and thus should be more valuable. But this is probably moot because the supply is low and demand is high(the main price driver?)
I jumped rope in 9 for a bit but just recently bought it. I think I might wait for the PS3 because my mem card is kinda flaky. 9 started off bad but I need to give it a shot.:)
Some perspective first. I'm taking a break from WoW (fun but um, need a break), hated FFXI, I'm not an elistist (cept Apple stuff), I loved FFVII, I hated FFX-2, I loved FFX, I meh'd FFVIII and I've played a few other RPGs but I like the idealism-feel that FF has. So now that's out of the way.
First few days, I was literally jumping up and down in my seat as I played it. FFVII was good maybe because of the timing and "firsts". FFXII is good in this same way because it feels like an anti-MMO. A few times, I've wanted to go back to FFXI (online) just to if anything has changed, but 12 has filled that need to see the Mandy/Yag mobs (similar looking and acting creatures). So in a way, I think 12 plays a little bit like 11 does but obviously you progress faster because they don't want a monthly fee from you. MMOs are what they are, 12 can't replace it but 12 does feel a little bit like 11 in some respects.
Now that I'm 30 hours into it, my guys are starting to develop a little bit more. I'm trying to keep everyone in their typical rpg roles (healer, nuker, tank, etc) and it's a lot of fun doing that. And as the story moves on, you realize that you don't have to grind too, too much (unless you are super-OC about these things) and you also begin to see how 12 is going to go down in the history books. It's a rapid departure, sure, but it's really cool. I'll try to get more specific here:
- Selling loot takes on a whole new dimension. When you sell the right combos of things, vendors make things out of them and then you can buy these special items from them. This new feature has me wondering what the FF1-11 vendors were doing with the trash loot you funded yourself with.:) - The gambit system is not annoying. It is not easy-mode. It is what you were going to cast/use anyway. I turn it off or micro-manage it in boss-fights. - There is zoning. There is aggro range. There are adds. I've had 4 mobs aggro me and I zoned like in 11. Annoying sometimes but not nearly as bad as in MMOs. You can strategize and save up abilities to clear out zones pretty quick as you get farther in the game (quickenings/summoning). - The story is really great so far. This isn't Tolkien material but I'm paying attention and not chuckling at forced drama or overly fantasy-styled acting. The story is approachable and thought-out. - I know this is minor but the crystals (where you teleport and save) just floor me. I love the little bit of black opacity on the edges. I hope they keep this style for the PS3. I can almost touch it, looks very glassy and exactly what a huge crystal-minereal shard should look like. Yum. - When you pause the game, all sound instantly cuts out and it goes to a very black and simple pause screen. This needs to be standard in video games. Don't continue to play the music. Cut out instantly. FF12 has the best pause I've ever seen (I know, so minor). - You can skip cutscenes. - They try to warn you when a long cutscene is coming up (so it seems), they might ask "are you sure you want to talk to King Blah?". That's kind of a hint that the story is going to progress and don't continue if you're about to go out to a movie, etc.
Now, the bad. - I really wish I could customize or even see my gear. Vaan is a paladin in my game and I want him to be in all shiney-white armor like the guy in the opening scene! I hear lots of people saying this. - Spells I can't use in the menu. Again, Vaan is my Pally. He can't cast black magic (mmm Satan \m/). So hide the black magic menu please! It's an extra thing I have to navigate. - Music volume. I want to listen to my own music, kthx.
It's a fantastic question. I know my own answer but I can't answer for everyone. My 360 checkout was $722 with wireless ($99) and other things. MS really nickels and dimes you to death. But that doesn't make the PS3 cheap.
Yes, this is the rare occasion that I mean when I say "PCs sometimes aren't as upgradable as people think". I'm not hating on PCs. They are kind of like cars, sometimes you need to start over instead of replacing parts. That's just the reality of it.
On the flipside though, the refresh cycle is much shorter in the PC world. The 360 has the r500 with unified shaders and lo and behold the r600/g80 are coming/out, evening the playing field (in a way). I'm hoping the r600 pushes the general computing nature of the PC up to where the 360 is. It's like leapfrog. The 360 does HDR+AA in Oblivion, few PC cards can. Now the 8800 series can. The 360 probably won't do D3D10 so where there's some trick in D3D10 that wows the player, it will be years before the console refresh can catch up.
There's modularity and economies of scale at work here too. But I'm really getting off-topic. Everyone here probably knows these things already.
That's interesting. My video card was $600, my entire system was $3000. I don't run Oblivion at max quality. You're either lying or working some magic. $8000 systems won't run Oblivion nicely at max quality. Nothing does. That's why Oblivion is described as "recklessly agressive" (please don't argue on this quote, my friend worked on Oblivion).
I threw away my last system that lines up with your current system (yes this is proof of choice and not much else). I agree on the flexibility bit but in real-world terms, sometimes things won't work out because of the ever increasing marriage between video cards and cpu platform. For example, the 8800gtx card probably won't be released as AGP so now you need to ditch your motherboard, possibly memory, possibly CPU just to get to PCI-E. Or maybe you want to switch cpu vendors for quad-core Intel (sans brand loyalty), it's a whole new rig for ya.
However, your last sentence describing "general purpose computing" is both the biggest strength and a minor weakness of the PC. The general use almost always outweighs the small gaming/cost performance pentalty of having large memory buckets and small parallelism. But that's not my main point, my main point is that PCs aren't as throw-away-proof as I/we think. But certainly less fork-lift upgrade prone than consoles.
Argh, you're right. All of his posts are pretty bias imho. Some disclosure on his part would have been nice. Although, he could be a doppelgänger, setting up a classic line for the Good Dr Marks, "that was the Evil Dr Marks!"
Slashdot Mirror
Trade Wars 2000 was really good back in the day. I know there are still some fringe games running over telnet on emulated BBS OSs (legacy hosting of sorts). I tried playing recently for old time's sake and found myself realizing it was cool back then but EVE would probably keep my interests better since my expectations have jumped up a few notches in ~15 years.
That's a great point about "talking through them". I didn't even *think* of that as a time-shifting feature. You made me realize that DVRs eliminate the immediacy of media. Hmm.
Like all pixelated as if the real ET movie hadn't been made? Now, that I'd see. It's like translated text back and forth.
... but did you ever see the movie? The Star Wars movie? It's pretty good."
English -> Japanese -> English
ET Movie -> ET Game -> ET Movie
Or maybe you mean this sarcasticlly. In which case I offer another OT jewel:
I had a roommate back in college who was really into Star Wars. He had the books. He had the collectible plates. He watched QVC buying Star Wars collectibles. One day while he was buying Star Wars loot on QVC I said, "Hey. I know you have the cards, books, plates, toys and posters
He stared at me.
"You should see it... the Star Wars movie. They made a few."
He didn't laugh. I think he was deeply offended. He didn't his renew his stay in the dorm and moved somewhere else on campus.
Hrm, considering that the hardware itself is no cash cow I wouldn't strategize at all on the hardware side. I'd want to get as much hardware crap out there as I can and establish the platform. Sony is sorta-kinda doing that. PS2s exceeded 360 sales even through the 360 launch (which is personally unbelievable). Sony sold 100M PS2s and the PS3 is majorly backwards compatible, now one could argue that the PS2 is $129 and the PS3 is much more at ~$600. But the fact remains that most people already are into the IP that Sony has. Of course one piece of that is GTA which isn't exclusive anymore (this is huge). That combined with the whole center-of-the-living room mess that the 360/PS3 is pimping it's going to be hard to compare the ps2 & ps3. It'll be interesting to see this thing play out.
There are 1500 ps2 titles listed on wikipedia and I'd estimate an equal amount of ps1 titles. So if they continue, you'd have 1500 * 3 platforms = 4500 titles (just listing quantity not quality). Not that it's apples to apples but the Xbox had about 700, the 360 has about 300 so far. Sony is an electronics and entertainment company first, whereas MS was (and is) trying to break into the market. That's just the reality of the situation.
I have a 360. But when FF13, Gran Turismo, Metal Gear Solid and especially White Knight (assuming the videos aren't pre-vis) are released you better believe the demand will be there. Although the price is a bit steep and it's so much more complicated than the ps2 was. It's early, hard to say. PS2 launch was the same imho, all that is different is the pricey High-Def age. Tivo Series 3(HD) is $700, Series2(non HD) was $399 at launch. HD just costs a lot, ps3 is right in there. I'd be curious to know if anyone has any old HiFi (audio) war stories?
I'm with you. I better get this out of my system while I have the freedom to:
"Die in a fire fueled by cow crap, you just cost me $7.95 today to take advantage of free speech before it gets shut down for yet more generic security reasons".
Oops, major error. Well in that case, it's a better comparison! Thanks.
You could have:
- Grinding to level 99 to uber on the terrorist swarms
- Medivac dispensed potions
- Mana Points renamed to Patriotism Points
- MASSIVE DAMAGE for 9999
- Bin Laden boss fight with awesome 5 minute Bush summon animations
- 1984 story excerpts that you skip with (X). "War is peace, ignorance is
- Fire spell renamed to "Fox One"
- Fira spell renamed to "Foxera Onera"
- Firaga spell renamed to "Foxeraga Oneraga" <('-'<)
Of course then you'd have gameplay issues with the above. For example, casting "Fox One" (fire) on the enemy would reduce Patriotism Points (mana), which is either a deep and suiting statement of how warfare is or it's a game design flaw. Ah, I can't figure it out, better release a beta and have someone else work on it.
"The PlayStation 2 is the most popular console with 57% of gamers
owning one compared to 39% with an Xbox and 27% with a Gamecube. A
small, fanatical number, 8%, own all three consoles."
BBC News: 8 April, 2005 - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4423365.stm
Damn it, I'm a generic fanatic apparently.
Fine. I'll do the legwork. :)
:P
Using IGN I got the PS2 launch list. Using metacritic, I got the aggregate scores of today. So two things to consider:
- TFA uses a single source where metacritic would churn that into a greater aggregation.
- Present-day scores over a longer period of time for the PS2 VS present-day scores over a short period of time on the PS3.
- There's no accounting for taste, ok three things.
OMG PS2 Launch List
-------------------
Armored Core 2 - 78
DOA2: Hardcore - 91
Dynasty Warriors 2 - 75
ESPN International Track and Field - 72
ESPN X-Games Snowboarding - 73
Eternal Ring - 62
Evergrace - 59
FantaVision - 72
Gun Griffon Blaze - 73
Kessen - 75
Madden NFL 2001 - 91
Midnight Club - 78
Moto GP - 77
NHL 2001 - 85
Orphen - 54
Q-Ball Billiards Master - 65
Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2 - 75
Ridge Racer V - 78
Silent Scope - 63
Smuggler's Run - 79
SSX - 93
Street Fighter EX3 - 64
Summoner - 74
Swing Away - 78
Tekken Tag Tournament - 85
TimeSplitters - 81
Unreal Tournament - 77
Wild Wild Racing - 64
X-Squad - 64
PS2 Launch List Average Score: 74.31 (and change)
If you take whirling apart, you get hrlng wii. And we all know how that pertains to current events . :)
I think I'm going to play /dev/ils/advocate and say that MS improved boot times in XP in a major way. I don't know if this is the Apple feature I'd talk about, maybe nice and standard S.M.A.R.T. support (you can check failing status and health of drives in Disk Utility). Meh, even that's a stretch. Heat and failure management is pretty close on both OS's because most of it is handled in hardware (CPU scaling, auto-shut off, SMART).
imho ... Blizzard is the massive exception to the rule. They write amazing code, they run an amazing operation. Of course, they also stay behind the tech curve (smart). Blizzard, Google (for how long I wonder), Apple (much lesser extent), ID did well with the Doom RPG but I don't know where they are heading ... it's odd, they need new IP or something.
Back on topic, they are a massive exception to the rule. WoW is a AAA title can run OpenGL (mac/windows) and DX (windows), has very few bugs in constant change and has a subscriber base of 6+ million. I'd say there only one title that does that and one company that could pull it off. Not to mention the infrastructure, the tools, the customer service, the community, the vision of not punishing the player (ignore the official forums) all while not selling out too much. They use bittorrent (good and bad), use XML in the UI, use linux clustering (shards) for hosting, have a public API for community UI extensibility and even don't auto-renew your trial subscription behind your back (refer-a-friend).
Sure, they use OracleDB and they exploit MMOs addictive qualities. So they might do some evil now and again. Angel of Heaven who has to sell crack to buy harp polish? Derailed here.
A couple. First, promised Unix integration in a domain. A product that would serve up
Next, not so harsh, MS approached our company saying they would develop their own cost auditing software for telcos. It didn't happen and I wonder if they were just willing to see how much we'd play ball. I don't have as much details on this one. But this was first-hand.
PA is funny, I love their strip. After reading that I thought a Wii-centered LAN party would be like the last "couch" frame in the PA strip. But it turned out we all really got into it and were sliding across the floor bowling, being silly, etc. My right arm feels like I played baseball yesterday (except a bit worse). See, the wiimote has no weight behind it. So it's like waving your arm around as fast as you can, you get those tingles that you don't get with real baseball. Sure, you whip the wiimote from the wrist but I found some Wii Sports that seem to track movement across the room better so I'd give it a real-life motion.
And now my arm is super sore. Even in the elbow, like tennis.
Man, you guys make me look like a lightweight. I was in college and had a week of no class (was helping with events). This was my chance to try no sleep before getting into an unending 9-5 career schedule (hey, I was right).
63 hours straight, very little coffee, nothing else. First day was rough. After that it was just weird. Skin felt dead. I was going to keep going but then I literally saw gray spots (maybe 10 or so random overlay type). Afraid of long-term effects, I went to bed, slept 24 hours and then some powernaps to sync up with the Sun.
As far as REM being active, I'm pretty good at lucid dreaming and (not related) have woken up in full REM on accident (extremely memorable and painful). A variety of colors, sharp white-red and brown noise, scalp was tingling, eyes were tense, body paralyzed and when I was typing the experience as fast as I could, random sentences ended up in the document as the experience faded that I only later read as "who typed that?". I'd agree with the posts that say REM is active, it's scary how much we miss every night.
I definitely appreciate the deep eyesight analysis that dwarfs my own speculation but I can't wave the flag with you. Human eyesight to me is non-predator cow-eye mush. When I am in bed and my cat is warming my feet, I can't see her _at all_. Zero. Black on black for all I know. When I pass my hand near her, she sees my hand and precisely rubs her face against it every time. All I have to do is place her in a larger Tiger context and me in the absence of civilization and I see that I'm an easy meal every 24 hours.
Actually if we want to talk economics (which I am not an expert), I was wondering something. Essentially the PS3 is a computer that runs software. It's $600 (for simplicity) but the amount of software it can run is limited. People are eBay'ing theirs for very high prices and yet there are very few titles out for it.
So essentially this is a hammer that can hammer a few nails. So it should be cheaper because in a about a year it can hammer more nails, have more flexibility and thus should be more valuable. But this is probably moot because the supply is low and demand is high(the main price driver?)
I jumped rope in 9 for a bit but just recently bought it. I think I might wait for the PS3 because my mem card is kinda flaky. 9 started off bad but I need to give it a shot. :)
Some perspective first. I'm taking a break from WoW (fun but um, need a break), hated FFXI, I'm not an elistist (cept Apple stuff), I loved FFVII, I hated FFX-2, I loved FFX, I meh'd FFVIII and I've played a few other RPGs but I like the idealism-feel that FF has. So now that's out of the way.
:)
First few days, I was literally jumping up and down in my seat as I played it. FFVII was good maybe because of the timing and "firsts". FFXII is good in this same way because it feels like an anti-MMO. A few times, I've wanted to go back to FFXI (online) just to if anything has changed, but 12 has filled that need to see the Mandy/Yag mobs (similar looking and acting creatures). So in a way, I think 12 plays a little bit like 11 does but obviously you progress faster because they don't want a monthly fee from you. MMOs are what they are, 12 can't replace it but 12 does feel a little bit like 11 in some respects.
Now that I'm 30 hours into it, my guys are starting to develop a little bit more. I'm trying to keep everyone in their typical rpg roles (healer, nuker, tank, etc) and it's a lot of fun doing that. And as the story moves on, you realize that you don't have to grind too, too much (unless you are super-OC about these things) and you also begin to see how 12 is going to go down in the history books. It's a rapid departure, sure, but it's really cool. I'll try to get more specific here:
- Selling loot takes on a whole new dimension. When you sell the right combos of things, vendors make things out of them and then you can buy these special items from them. This new feature has me wondering what the FF1-11 vendors were doing with the trash loot you funded yourself with.
- The gambit system is not annoying. It is not easy-mode. It is what you were going to cast/use anyway. I turn it off or micro-manage it in boss-fights.
- There is zoning. There is aggro range. There are adds. I've had 4 mobs aggro me and I zoned like in 11. Annoying sometimes but not nearly as bad as in MMOs. You can strategize and save up abilities to clear out zones pretty quick as you get farther in the game (quickenings/summoning).
- The story is really great so far. This isn't Tolkien material but I'm paying attention and not chuckling at forced drama or overly fantasy-styled acting. The story is approachable and thought-out.
- I know this is minor but the crystals (where you teleport and save) just floor me. I love the little bit of black opacity on the edges. I hope they keep this style for the PS3. I can almost touch it, looks very glassy and exactly what a huge crystal-minereal shard should look like. Yum.
- When you pause the game, all sound instantly cuts out and it goes to a very black and simple pause screen. This needs to be standard in video games. Don't continue to play the music. Cut out instantly. FF12 has the best pause I've ever seen (I know, so minor).
- You can skip cutscenes.
- They try to warn you when a long cutscene is coming up (so it seems), they might ask "are you sure you want to talk to King Blah?". That's kind of a hint that the story is going to progress and don't continue if you're about to go out to a movie, etc.
Now, the bad.
- I really wish I could customize or even see my gear. Vaan is a paladin in my game and I want him to be in all shiney-white armor like the guy in the opening scene! I hear lots of people saying this.
- Spells I can't use in the menu. Again, Vaan is my Pally. He can't cast black magic (mmm Satan \m/). So hide the black magic menu please! It's an extra thing I have to navigate.
- Music volume. I want to listen to my own music, kthx.
A real blast. I hope FF13 stays in this style.
It's a fantastic question. I know my own answer but I can't answer for everyone. My 360 checkout was $722 with wireless ($99) and other things. MS really nickels and dimes you to death. But that doesn't make the PS3 cheap.
Fine, then I bet you my own $50 that you don't have the $89,000,050 to start this process to begin with.
Yes, this is the rare occasion that I mean when I say "PCs sometimes aren't as upgradable as people think". I'm not hating on PCs. They are kind of like cars, sometimes you need to start over instead of replacing parts. That's just the reality of it.
On the flipside though, the refresh cycle is much shorter in the PC world. The 360 has the r500 with unified shaders and lo and behold the r600/g80 are coming/out, evening the playing field (in a way). I'm hoping the r600 pushes the general computing nature of the PC up to where the 360 is. It's like leapfrog. The 360 does HDR+AA in Oblivion, few PC cards can. Now the 8800 series can. The 360 probably won't do D3D10 so where there's some trick in D3D10 that wows the player, it will be years before the console refresh can catch up.
There's modularity and economies of scale at work here too. But I'm really getting off-topic. Everyone here probably knows these things already.
That's interesting. My video card was $600, my entire system was $3000. I don't run Oblivion at max quality. You're either lying or working some magic. $8000 systems won't run Oblivion nicely at max quality. Nothing does. That's why Oblivion is described as "recklessly agressive" (please don't argue on this quote, my friend worked on Oblivion).
I threw away my last system that lines up with your current system (yes this is proof of choice and not much else). I agree on the flexibility bit but in real-world terms, sometimes things won't work out because of the ever increasing marriage between video cards and cpu platform. For example, the 8800gtx card probably won't be released as AGP so now you need to ditch your motherboard, possibly memory, possibly CPU just to get to PCI-E. Or maybe you want to switch cpu vendors for quad-core Intel (sans brand loyalty), it's a whole new rig for ya.
However, your last sentence describing "general purpose computing" is both the biggest strength and a minor weakness of the PC. The general use almost always outweighs the small gaming/cost performance pentalty of having large memory buckets and small parallelism. But that's not my main point, my main point is that PCs aren't as throw-away-proof as I/we think. But certainly less fork-lift upgrade prone than consoles.
Argh, you're right. All of his posts are pretty bias imho. Some disclosure on his part would have been nice. Although, he could be a doppelgänger, setting up a classic line for the Good Dr Marks, "that was the Evil Dr Marks!"
360 hips. With a HD-DVD fanny pack.