I would spend a lot more time watching TV if I could, as there's a few channels I really miss watching in the 2+ years i've gone with no TV service to speak of.
However, I have horrible antenna reception, I can't put up a satellite dish (living in an apartment facing the wrong direction), and Time Warner wants the ridiculous price of something like $50-60 per month for a basic channel package when i'm already paying $44.95 for Roadrunner.
So, until I move or TW decides to stop trying to rape my wallet, the only use my TV will get is purchased DVDs, console games, or stuff downloaded via Bittorrent.
Quite a shame for the cable company - were their prices around the level of most current satellite packages, I probably would have signed up the day I moved in.
Which game did you see, and how long did you watch it for?
Several of the games have openings in a "shiny metallic environment", and quickly move into much more organic environments, with hordes of non-robotic enemies.
This is especially true with Super Metroid and Metroid Prime, which both begin on a spaceship/station, and then move onto a planetary environment where the bounty hunter heroine is pretty much in a "survive and discover what's on this hostile planet, you're not getting any help from the authorities or any other living person, if you get in over your head you're SOL." type of situation.
but the gameplay I've seen so far is just a shiny robot type of person, even shooting or roll into a metal ball, in a shiny metallic environment, thus I dont see any horror from it.
Again, it sounds like you either played or watched someone play the opening sequence from (probably) Metroid Prime or Super Metroid, and then quit.
People like you are the absolute worst when it comes to making judgements about games - you saw one short part of a game or games, and you're making sweeping judgements about the rest with that limited experience.
Do yourself a favor and actually play (for example) Metroid Prime past the opening area on the shiny metal spaceship and into the main game where you start exploring Tallon IV. You might be suprised.
what would be the horror of metroid? isnt there just robots fighting some robots etc?
Errrm....No? I'm not sure if you're serious, but if you are, try actually playing a couple of the games before you comment on it:)
Metroid would make an excellent horror movie, what with the theme of one woman taking on a whole planet's worth of unknown challenges, with no hope of backup or assistance from anyone except the relics of a dead race that are found during her travels.
Of course, the ultimate question is if such a movie could break the curse that's plagued such attempts before. I believe it could be done, but only by a group that actually cares about staying faithful to the elements of the series and making a good movie, not slapping things together willy-nilly just to make it look cool and create merchandising opportunities.
If I disagree with my religion's teachings and am simply afraid of being sent to *a place of eternal suffering*, then perhaps I should be questioning my choice of religions.
Yeah, that's pretty much what I was getting at.
The minute you start following a religion's precepts out of fear ( or forcing others to change because of a fear/need to "save" them ), then something is very wrong.
but Are we playing god. I dont think so personally.
Of course, this assumes that there's a god (or gods) in the first place. Which, as someone already said, there is no scientifically provable evidence for.
Isnt it true that there is so much medical science today that is ethically questionable?
Well, leading from your "playing god" mention...Are people objecting to some of these things because it really conflicts with their personal ethics, or because it conflicts with what their religion mandates and they're afraid of being sent to *insert place of eternal suffering here*?
So how would you like to write an apology to 1billion+ people? Perhaps a mass email?
They deserve nothing. As compared to administrators in the US and Canada that i've had to deal with, admin types in China/Korea/Taiwan have been useless when dealing with spam.
In fact, I don't think i've ever recieved a single piece of return communication when trying to resolve an unsolicited-mail problem with someone in those areas - the crap mail just keeps coming, and I finally had to go ahead and summarily reject or delete any mail I recieved from the aforementioned countries.
The fact that the idiots send a lot of it in a language I can't even read makes it a lot easier to filter, too.
No such luck. The "alarm" is a special mode you put it in. While the "alarm" is active, you can't do anything else with the machine. It just displays the current time and the time the "alarm" will go off.
Handheld game system (or just about any console game system, for that matter) != PDA. You use it for one discrete function at a time.
Want to PictoChat? The chatting's nice, but if you want to exit to the main menu you have to reset the machine. If you then want to check the time and date you have to reset the machine. If you change any of the user settings, like which screen GBA games will show up on when you run them, you have to reset the machine. If you're in Pictochat and you want to change your background color you'll end up resetting the machine twice!
Again, not a PDA. I'm curious, which game systems besides a PC or PDA/Pocket PC/etc. have you actually had extended contact with?
Every time you reset it displays a several second startup screen and a health warning you have to click through.
I've seen a lot of other people say the reboot cycle is on the order of 2 or 3 seconds, but since I don't actually own one myself, not going to argue for the moment.
What they had described was a multitasking system that would keep an eye out for other players, do the alarm stuff, and sleep when you weren't using it.
Did they? Or was that just what you wanted it to be? Again, every handheld or console system i've ever used does one thing at a time. If you want to switch games, play DVDs, enter a browser, etc., you either power cycle or reset. This shouldn't be a suprise to anyone who's gamed with anything besides a PC or PC variant.
The game functionality is very nice if you just want to pop in a GBA or a DS game and play, but the bells and whistles are refugees from a 1994 handheld PC. So no, I really don't think a PDA card would work. A PDA requires an uninterrupted background OS of some sort to be watching out for your appointments. The DS just can't do that.
Guess that's good, then, because (for the third time) it is not meant to be a full-on PDA and from all indications is not being marketed as such, only as a gaming machine with some neat side bonuses.
2. You can avoid emissions and horsepower limitations (these are imposed at the federal level on manufacturers - build for yourself and you're not regulatable.)
Right. Have fun (if you live in a state that requires them by law) not passing your yearly inspection and getting a fine the next time you get stopped.
3. You can be selective about the equipment. Not a fan of seatbelts? Don't install them. Don't like the idea of an airbag in the face making you loose control of your car after the first bump in a possible 10 car pile-up? Don't install it. (Drive at your own risk.)
Okay, now you're just getting silly. Unless you live in New Hampshire, this isn't a "drive at your own risk" thing, this is a "not wearing a seatbelt is illegal" thing. Not to mention the fact that if you get into any sort of non-trivial accident, you have a fairly good chance of sustaining serious injury.
Sorry, but the open source build-your-own, include the safety equipment if you feel like it mentality you seem to be describing just doesn't fit with constructing a modern automobile in today's society.
I'm not saying there's no way anyone could build their own car, but there are some things you just can't leave out.
Realize this device for what it is and not what refined old implementations it competes with now. This is a bona fide mobile communications/entertainment platform that also happens to play games.
Funny, the N-Gage tried to be something like that, and look what happened - it crashed and burned for the most part, and the GBA didn't slow down one bit.
Granted, Sony doesn't have the insulting PR nightmare and subsequent backlash to deal with that Nokia did, but still...
Metroid Prime - I pull the R button, and then tilt the left stick in the direction of "down". I let go of the R button and... Oops. Spring-look. Okay, I pull the R button, tilt the left stick in the direction of down, and pull the L button to lock my view. Shoot, I'm not quite lined up with the jump, so I need to turn my body. I turn left... oh, wait, I just strafed left (and fell off the platform) because I was still holding L. Start over, adjust my angle of attack first and then go through the R button mayhem. Now I can move, so I run forward with the left thumbstick and jump. Once I land, I don't want to continue looking at my feet so I let go of the L button. Of course, if I want to look around (ie, up or down), I have to pull the R button again. String a couple jumps together in a row and you've got a recipe for tedium.
In Prime, you don't have to look down every blasted time you jump. Maybe you're just really bad at judging distances or something, but as far as myself, anyone else I know that's played the game, or any professional reviews i've read of the game...None have mentioned a problem like the giant rant above.
I'd venture a guess that you're confusing "The control scheme is bad" with "I'm trying to play the game like something it's not and it's not working".
Believe me, if you're not trying to shoehorn things into a different control style, it's very easy to just bound through 4 or 5 quick jumps in a row...And do midair jumps, even!:)
Which would you prefer?
Aside from Ocarina of Time, where you jump automatically, Prime is the easiest 3D first-person game to control that i've ever played.
I strafe all the time. Pay attention to your day-to-day movements, and you'll find that you even do it in real life. However, strafing wasn't my biggest complaint. It was jumping. If you're going to put me in a first-person perspective and then throw jumping puzzles at me, let me look down!
Maybe i'm just different than everyone else, but i'm about 75% and 13 hours into the game, and I have not yet run into a single situation where I had to look down to make a jump sucessfully.
People justify Prime's control scheme by pointing out it's not a shooter. That doesn't mean you should make it more difficult for me to move, especially if you're going to make me jump.
As the previous poster was saying, the only people who seem to complain about this are those that play lots and lots of dual-analog twitchy FPS games like Halo, and seem to suffer a sort of brain meltdown if they're forced to use anything else.
What a lame excuse for a broken control scheme, especially when you have to "get used to it" all over again if you stop playing the game for a week or two.
Has anyone else had to do this? I know I sure haven't, and I went about 6 months inbetween plays once.
I'll bet used copies of Prime will be easy to come by.
AFAIK, it's part of the Player's Choice lineup now, which means even a new copy should only be $19.99+tax at most. No reason to get it used, really, unless it's only $5 or something.
I'm upset that people cant mind their own business anymore. THAT is my issue with this. Everyone thinks they need to go out and stir up trouble and stick their nose where it doesn't belong.
Seems a lot of people have a different definition of "where it doesn't belong" than you do.
Personally, I don't play silly video games, so people making money off counterfeit Nintendo products doesn't really bother me a bit. And if I remember correctly, they used illegal tactics to get to where they are anyway, and shouldn't be in business. ( they lost the case brought against them some time ago for what they did in the 80's to the other game makers such as Atari and Sega )
They did wrong, paid for it, and that means they shouldn't be in business? Right.
When the RIAA or MPAA tries to recruit an army of snitches, everybody here cries foul, but when Nintendo fans rat each other out, it's seen as something noble. Nintendorks indeed!
I'd do it much less enthusiastically, but If someone was actually selling pirated movie or music discs instead of free sharing, i'd report them too.
People do these things for Nintendo because they truly support the company, and don't want to see them losing money to blatantly pirated knockoff crap.
Re:What do you guys think?
on
Halo 2 Reviews
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· Score: 1
There are a lot of amazing games for Xbox. My favorites are Ninja Gaiden, Knights of the Old Republic, and Prince of Persia.
As someone has already pointed out, only Ninja Gaiden is an exclusive. KotOR is also available on the PC ( and I already own it, in fact ), and Prince of Persia is available on all 3 major systems, the GBA, AND a PC version.
For a list of great games, check out Ign games with a 9+ rating
Again, somewhat the same problem. The majority of the games on that list are not exclusive to the XBox at all. More specifically, the following games from that list are (to the best of my knowledge) only released on the XBox:
Halo Halo 2 DoA 3 DoA Ultimate DoA Volleyball Deathrow Fable MechAssault Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Tides of War Panzer Dragoon Orta RalliSport Challenge 2 Unreal Championship Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge Jet Set Radio Future GUNVALKYRIE Amped 2
And even from that list, some of the games are simply remakes of or sequels to titles from other platforms.
This only reinforces the fact that with a GC, a PS2, and a PC, there's really no reason for me to buy an XBox.
Re:What do you guys think?
on
Halo 2 Reviews
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Do you think that people buy the Xbox just for Halo?
Hard to say. I do know that just about everyone who's tried to convince me to buy an XBox has done so by touting Halo as the best thing since sliced bread.
I don't own an XBox yet.
At any rate, i'd like the XBox a whole lot more if the "must-buy" list was bigger than just Halo and a small number of other games.
Re:I've never understood the obsession with Halo
on
Halo 2 Reviews
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· Score: 5, Insightful
. A good console FPS is one where the control scheme sort of makes up for the fact that only an idiot would want to play an FPS with a console gamepad as opposed to a keyboard/mouse combo.
See my other post on this subject.
Metroid Prime is another great example of this. It took all the fun out of FPS gaming by slowing the game down, crippled the AI and added in auto-aim, and replaced big levels with levels that require endless backtracking across jumping puzzles to keys and switches. In short, it was just a typical platform jumping game from a first-person perspective.
Metroid Prime is NOT meant to be played as an FPS or "typical platform jumping game". If you did, you're missing the whole point of the game and, dare I say, the entire Metroid series (if you've even played any of the others, which I doubt).
Re:I've never understood the obsession with Halo
on
Halo 2 Reviews
·
· Score: 1
I don't know what has all these console gamers fooled, but you simply can NOT create a good shooter without mouse and keyboard.
I think you're forgetting about (for example) Perfect Dark and Timesplitters 2, along with (as you mentioned) Goldeneye. Why do you consider said games not to be worthy, other than "no mouse and keyboard = automatic doom"?
There may not be many good console FPS's out there, but they do exist.
Try actually following the links or spending about 10 seconds searching on Google...Crazy concept, isn't it?
Google for "nintendo DS". 3rd result on the first page -
"USATODAY.com - Nintendo unveiling a new portable... The Nintendo DS -- short for dual-screen -- will be unveiled Tuesday morning at the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo game industry gathering.... "
Slashdot Mirror
I would spend a lot more time watching TV if I could, as there's a few channels I really miss watching in the 2+ years i've gone with no TV service to speak of.
However, I have horrible antenna reception, I can't put up a satellite dish (living in an apartment facing the wrong direction), and Time Warner wants the ridiculous price of something like $50-60 per month for a basic channel package when i'm already paying $44.95 for Roadrunner.
So, until I move or TW decides to stop trying to rape my wallet, the only use my TV will get is purchased DVDs, console games, or stuff downloaded via Bittorrent.
Quite a shame for the cable company - were their prices around the level of most current satellite packages, I probably would have signed up the day I moved in.
Which game did you see, and how long did you watch it for?
Several of the games have openings in a "shiny metallic environment", and quickly move into much more organic environments, with hordes of non-robotic enemies.
This is especially true with Super Metroid and Metroid Prime, which both begin on a spaceship/station, and then move onto a planetary environment where the bounty hunter heroine is pretty much in a "survive and discover what's on this hostile planet, you're not getting any help from the authorities or any other living person, if you get in over your head you're SOL." type of situation.
but the gameplay I've seen so far is just a shiny robot type of person, even shooting or roll into a metal ball, in a shiny metallic environment, thus I dont see any horror from it.
Again, it sounds like you either played or watched someone play the opening sequence from (probably) Metroid Prime or Super Metroid, and then quit.
People like you are the absolute worst when it comes to making judgements about games - you saw one short part of a game or games, and you're making sweeping judgements about the rest with that limited experience.
Do yourself a favor and actually play (for example) Metroid Prime past the opening area on the shiny metal spaceship and into the main game where you start exploring Tallon IV. You might be suprised.
what would be the horror of metroid? isnt there just robots fighting some robots etc?
:)
Errrm....No? I'm not sure if you're serious, but if you are, try actually playing a couple of the games before you comment on it
Metroid would make an excellent horror movie, what with the theme of one woman taking on a whole planet's worth of unknown challenges, with no hope of backup or assistance from anyone except the relics of a dead race that are found during her travels.
Of course, the ultimate question is if such a movie could break the curse that's plagued such attempts before. I believe it could be done, but only by a group that actually cares about staying faithful to the elements of the series and making a good movie, not slapping things together willy-nilly just to make it look cool and create merchandising opportunities.
OC Remix
There is a lot of game music out there that's amazingly good, especially from the PSX era onwards.
A lot of the Squaresoft RPGs on the SNES had awesome music as well. RPGs in general tend to have pretty good soundtracks, in fact.
If I disagree with my religion's teachings and am simply afraid of being sent to *a place of eternal suffering*, then perhaps I should be questioning my choice of religions.
Yeah, that's pretty much what I was getting at.
The minute you start following a religion's precepts out of fear ( or forcing others to change because of a fear/need to "save" them ), then something is very wrong.
but Are we playing god. I dont think so personally.
Of course, this assumes that there's a god (or gods) in the first place. Which, as someone already said, there is no scientifically provable evidence for.
Isnt it true that there is so much medical science today that is ethically questionable?
Well, leading from your "playing god" mention...Are people objecting to some of these things because it really conflicts with their personal ethics, or because it conflicts with what their religion mandates and they're afraid of being sent to *insert place of eternal suffering here*?
So how would you like to write an apology to 1billion+ people? Perhaps a mass email?
They deserve nothing. As compared to administrators in the US and Canada that i've had to deal with, admin types in China/Korea/Taiwan have been useless when dealing with spam.
In fact, I don't think i've ever recieved a single piece of return communication when trying to resolve an unsolicited-mail problem with someone in those areas - the crap mail just keeps coming, and I finally had to go ahead and summarily reject or delete any mail I recieved from the aforementioned countries.
The fact that the idiots send a lot of it in a language I can't even read makes it a lot easier to filter, too.
No such luck. The "alarm" is a special mode you put it in. While the "alarm" is active, you can't do anything else with the machine. It just displays the current time and the time the "alarm" will go off.
Handheld game system (or just about any console game system, for that matter) != PDA. You use it for one discrete function at a time.
Want to PictoChat? The chatting's nice, but if you want to exit to the main menu you have to reset the machine. If you then want to check the time and date you have to reset the machine. If you change any of the user settings, like which screen GBA games will show up on when you run them, you have to reset the machine. If you're in Pictochat and you want to change your background color you'll end up resetting the machine twice!
Again, not a PDA. I'm curious, which game systems besides a PC or PDA/Pocket PC/etc. have you actually had extended contact with?
Every time you reset it displays a several second startup screen and a health warning you have to click through.
I've seen a lot of other people say the reboot cycle is on the order of 2 or 3 seconds, but since I don't actually own one myself, not going to argue for the moment.
What they had described was a multitasking system that would keep an eye out for other players, do the alarm stuff, and sleep when you weren't using it.
Did they? Or was that just what you wanted it to be? Again, every handheld or console system i've ever used does one thing at a time. If you want to switch games, play DVDs, enter a browser, etc., you either power cycle or reset. This shouldn't be a suprise to anyone who's gamed with anything besides a PC or PC variant.
The game functionality is very nice if you just want to pop in a GBA or a DS game and play, but the bells and whistles are refugees from a 1994 handheld PC. So no, I really don't think a PDA card would work. A PDA requires an uninterrupted background OS of some sort to be watching out for your appointments. The DS just can't do that.
Guess that's good, then, because (for the third time) it is not meant to be a full-on PDA and from all indications is not being marketed as such, only as a gaming machine with some neat side bonuses.
2. You can avoid emissions and horsepower limitations (these are imposed at the federal level on manufacturers - build for yourself and you're not regulatable.)
Right. Have fun (if you live in a state that requires them by law) not passing your yearly inspection and getting a fine the next time you get stopped.
3. You can be selective about the equipment. Not a fan of seatbelts? Don't install them. Don't like the idea of an airbag in the face making you loose control of your car after the first bump in a possible 10 car pile-up? Don't install it. (Drive at your own risk.)
Okay, now you're just getting silly. Unless you live in New Hampshire, this isn't a "drive at your own risk" thing, this is a "not wearing a seatbelt is illegal" thing. Not to mention the fact that if you get into any sort of non-trivial accident, you have a fairly good chance of sustaining serious injury.
Sorry, but the open source build-your-own, include the safety equipment if you feel like it mentality you seem to be describing just doesn't fit with constructing a modern automobile in today's society.
I'm not saying there's no way anyone could build their own car, but there are some things you just can't leave out.
Realize this device for what it is and not what refined old implementations it competes with now. This is a bona fide mobile communications/entertainment platform that also happens to play games.
Funny, the N-Gage tried to be something like that, and look what happened - it crashed and burned for the most part, and the GBA didn't slow down one bit.
Granted, Sony doesn't have the insulting PR nightmare and subsequent backlash to deal with that Nokia did, but still...
Metroid Prime - I pull the R button, and then tilt the left stick in the direction of "down". I let go of the R button and ... Oops. Spring-look. Okay, I pull the R button, tilt the left stick in the direction of down, and pull the L button to lock my view. Shoot, I'm not quite lined up with the jump, so I need to turn my body. I turn left ... oh, wait, I just strafed left (and fell off the platform) because I was still holding L. Start over, adjust my angle of attack first and then go through the R button mayhem. Now I can move, so I run forward with the left thumbstick and jump. Once I land, I don't want to continue looking at my feet so I let go of the L button. Of course, if I want to look around (ie, up or down), I have to pull the R button again. String a couple jumps together in a row and you've got a recipe for tedium.
:)
In Prime, you don't have to look down every blasted time you jump. Maybe you're just really bad at judging distances or something, but as far as myself, anyone else I know that's played the game, or any professional reviews i've read of the game...None have mentioned a problem like the giant rant above.
I'd venture a guess that you're confusing "The control scheme is bad" with "I'm trying to play the game like something it's not and it's not working".
Believe me, if you're not trying to shoehorn things into a different control style, it's very easy to just bound through 4 or 5 quick jumps in a row...And do midair jumps, even!
Which would you prefer?
Aside from Ocarina of Time, where you jump automatically, Prime is the easiest 3D first-person game to control that i've ever played.
I strafe all the time. Pay attention to your day-to-day movements, and you'll find that you even do it in real life. However, strafing wasn't my biggest complaint. It was jumping. If you're going to put me in a first-person perspective and then throw jumping puzzles at me, let me look down!
Maybe i'm just different than everyone else, but i'm about 75% and 13 hours into the game, and I have not yet run into a single situation where I had to look down to make a jump sucessfully.
People justify Prime's control scheme by pointing out it's not a shooter. That doesn't mean you should make it more difficult for me to move, especially if you're going to make me jump.
As the previous poster was saying, the only people who seem to complain about this are those that play lots and lots of dual-analog twitchy FPS games like Halo, and seem to suffer a sort of brain meltdown if they're forced to use anything else.
What a lame excuse for a broken control scheme, especially when you have to "get used to it" all over again if you stop playing the game for a week or two.
Has anyone else had to do this? I know I sure haven't, and I went about 6 months inbetween plays once.
I'll bet used copies of Prime will be easy to come by.
AFAIK, it's part of the Player's Choice lineup now, which means even a new copy should only be $19.99+tax at most. No reason to get it used, really, unless it's only $5 or something.
I'm upset that people cant mind their own business anymore. THAT is my issue with this. Everyone thinks they need to go out and stir up trouble and stick their nose where it doesn't belong.
Seems a lot of people have a different definition of "where it doesn't belong" than you do.
Personally, I don't play silly video games, so people making money off counterfeit Nintendo products doesn't really bother me a bit. And if I remember correctly, they used illegal tactics to get to where they are anyway, and shouldn't be in business. ( they lost the case brought against them some time ago for what they did in the 80's to the other game makers such as Atari and Sega )
They did wrong, paid for it, and that means they shouldn't be in business? Right.
Take them out back, and teach them to mind their own damned business.
One of the main problems of todays world, people ( and governments ) cant keep their nose out of others affairs..
Little upset that you might have to pay full price for something and actually support the company that made it?
When the RIAA or MPAA tries to recruit an army of snitches, everybody here cries foul, but when Nintendo fans rat each other out, it's seen as something noble. Nintendorks indeed!
I'd do it much less enthusiastically, but If someone was actually selling pirated movie or music discs instead of free sharing, i'd report them too.
People do these things for Nintendo because they truly support the company, and don't want to see them losing money to blatantly pirated knockoff crap.
So...
Did I miss something? Is Winamp going to suddenly disappear from computers around the world?
Host a copy yourself if you're really worried, but I doubt it will be hard to find for a long, long time.
The only decent FPS for a console system is Metroid Prime. Unfortunately, even that suffered from console controller syndrome.
Metroid Prime is not and never was meant to be an FPS. If you tried to play it as a twitchy run-and-gun shooter, then you missed the point entirely.
The focus is much more on exploring and gathering information than on simply blasting everything in sight, much like the other games in the series.
I think you missed my point. Scorn away, though.
There are a lot of amazing games for Xbox. My favorites are Ninja Gaiden, Knights of the Old Republic, and Prince of Persia.
As someone has already pointed out, only Ninja Gaiden is an exclusive. KotOR is also available on the PC ( and I already own it, in fact ), and Prince of Persia is available on all 3 major systems, the GBA, AND a PC version.
For a list of great games, check out Ign games with a 9+ rating
Again, somewhat the same problem. The majority of the games on that list are not exclusive to the XBox at all. More specifically, the following games from that list are (to the best of my knowledge) only released on the XBox:
Halo
Halo 2
DoA 3
DoA Ultimate
DoA Volleyball
Deathrow
Fable
MechAssault
Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Tides of War
Panzer Dragoon Orta
RalliSport Challenge 2
Unreal Championship
Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge
Jet Set Radio Future
GUNVALKYRIE
Amped 2
And even from that list, some of the games are simply remakes of or sequels to titles from other platforms.
This only reinforces the fact that with a GC, a PS2, and a PC, there's really no reason for me to buy an XBox.
Do you think that people buy the Xbox just for Halo?
Hard to say. I do know that just about everyone who's tried to convince me to buy an XBox has done so by touting Halo as the best thing since sliced bread.
I don't own an XBox yet.
At any rate, i'd like the XBox a whole lot more if the "must-buy" list was bigger than just Halo and a small number of other games.
. A good console FPS is one where the control scheme sort of makes up for the fact that only an idiot would want to play an FPS with a console gamepad as opposed to a keyboard/mouse combo.
See my other post on this subject.
Metroid Prime is another great example of this. It took all the fun out of FPS gaming by slowing the game down, crippled the AI and added in auto-aim, and replaced big levels with levels that require endless backtracking across jumping puzzles to keys and switches. In short, it was just a typical platform jumping game from a first-person perspective.
Metroid Prime is NOT meant to be played as an FPS or "typical platform jumping game". If you did, you're missing the whole point of the game and, dare I say, the entire Metroid series (if you've even played any of the others, which I doubt).
I don't know what has all these console gamers fooled, but you simply can NOT create a good shooter without mouse and keyboard.
I think you're forgetting about (for example) Perfect Dark and Timesplitters 2, along with (as you mentioned) Goldeneye. Why do you consider said games not to be worthy, other than "no mouse and keyboard = automatic doom"?
There may not be many good console FPS's out there, but they do exist.
"Would adding the words "Nintendo DS handheld..." really have been that hard?"
Would (as I just posted farther down) taking a few seconds to Google the name really have been that hard?
If you can take the time to make a post whining about the blurb not having enough info, you can take the time to find it out for yourself.
Try actually following the links or spending about 10 seconds searching on Google...Crazy concept, isn't it?
... The Nintendo DS -- short for dual-screen -- will be unveiled Tuesday morning at the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo game industry gathering. ... "
Google for "nintendo DS". 3rd result on the first page -
"USATODAY.com - Nintendo unveiling a new portable