I think Mr. Yak's problems are that he has an uncanny knack of choosing hardware platforms which are doomed to utter failure.
This is very possible... I've met a number of people who made and continue to make all the wrong choices. One kid I met in a gameshop had gotten a Saturn, Virtual Boy, Dreamcast, and was picking up an XBOX, convinced that this would be the #1 console. (This was back when the XBOX was pretty new.)
On one hand, you want to feel sorry; on the other, you have to wonder at what point the person said "this is going to win!" and wonder if they make their decisions based on their favorite color being on the box, or what.
I concur, although I play/played FFXI (and pay $12+/mo to do so), the experience is wonderful. THUG is the biggest non-sub game I've played; I have had no problems with service or connectivity. And it's all free.
Square's POL is a work of art. Very simple, very accessible. I was more than a little disappointed in the registration/signon process of WoW by comparison.
One thing to note about Raven is that they're very art-focused. They concept out everything -- maps, levels, weapons, monsters, and so on.
I wish someone would hire some architects to design the levels, not your run-of-the-mill artists. I don't think I'm the only one who thinks level design has been subpar for years now. Bring back levels that are well-designed by people who know how to make them and think broad architecture, not what this scene or that scene will look like.
We play these games, you know---interact with them, explore them---we don't just watch them.
I have a PSP (two now, actually), and took it on a recent cross-country flight.
Personally, I think the PSP is the best portable gaming device to hit the market yet. A big part of this is one single underrated and underpublicized feature: instant-sleep. I can be in the middle of a level, hacking away at something, dropping bricks, navigating a maze... and if I have to pick up and go, I flick the power switch and it goes to sleep. Later I flick it and it wakes up in under a second to exactly where I was.
Plus, the lineup, while not yet extreme, should offer something for everyone. You've got puzzle games (Lumines, Mercury), RPGs (Rengoku which I don't recommend, and Untold Legends which is OK if you expect a hack'n'slash game with some minor story), TRPGs (Metal Gear Acid, which has a great story and gameplay), racing (NFSU, Wipeout Prime, Ridge Racer, etc.), shooting (Rengoku, Twisted Metal), platforming (Ape Escape), sports, extreme sports (THUG2), fighting, etc. There's probably something you'll enjoy. The only game I think really sucks so far (and I haven't played the sports/fighting stuff) is Ren Goku.
Battery life isn't really a problem. I used one battery my entire coast-to-coast flight and only was down 1/3 bars. I didn't play the entire time. Someone else I know did play fulltime on a coast-to-coast and didn't run out.
Honestly the main problem is someone needs to release a UMD sleeve so carrying 5-10 UMDs doesn't involve silly hacks like sticking 4 in 1 case.
This sounds like an architectural change rather than a "we added lots of optimizations" change. Perhaps if he implemented some aggressive compiler optimizations it would be fair.:-)
This is the stupidest review of GCC4 I can imagine. I won't go so far as to say typical gentoo stereotype focusing on lots of flags to get "really fast" results, but you know some people are thinking it.
Where are the C++ benchmarks? That's what's supposed to be big in GCC4. Compiling C++, and doing it faster than GCC3 did (which isn't hard). How fast does this compile KDE? Qt? How big are the binaries? etc. I see all of ONE compile time statistic, and that's on the linux kernel.
WTF is this? Can someone with a clue please do a real review?
Hmm, babelfish is a good idea. Perhaps some other language, like German, can clear up matters. Since I don't speak German, though, I'll have to translate it back to English again and see:
The court sinks to shift the audition. Accordingly IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the ex Parte movement SCO's IS REFUSED for shifting April 21, 2005 argument on SCO's Zusatzantrag its objection. Additional to the auxiliary request of the audition SCO's its objection and SCO's signs it, around the joggle of Samuel Palmisano at April 21, 2005 to force audition, the involved ones COMMUNICATED hereby that the court is also concerning the argument the involved one hears, the orders specifying be suggested.
So, the court is sinking to shift an audition. This must mean Battleship, because in Battleship you sink things. That ought to Zusatzantrag SCO's joggle. I'm not sure this is clear enough. Let's get a few more languages' opinions:
As for courthouse? ' Capacity of ? ' Move? ' It goes. As for that following to the , the EX moving SCO' of this Parte of the C$par; It is ordered; April 21st, 2005 years? ' The S SCO' which it moves; Argument; The s-Zusatzantrag is refused objection. SCO' ' In addition to the demand for addition ones of the capacity which you hear; As for S in sign objection and SCO' It does; Is fixing of the contract where the judgment place is proposed or, in the question which everyone's authorized personnel hears discussion theory and thing S April 21 when is, as for you to the power which it should run to 2005 from the Samuel Palmisano densely due to the ? ' Capacity of the , the authorized personnel to transmit.
Aha! With German, French, and Japanese combines, this appears to be a message... from the FUTURE! Unfortunately some information appears to have been lost, but from this it looks like the courthouse is gone ("As for the courthouse? [...] It goes."), perhaps from battleship? 2005 years in the future, on April 21st, SCO has given an order of some kind. An unknown entity, S (or "Thing S"), is involved. It seems a contract is involved, with a theory of some sort, and they're running from Samuel Palmisano (who has perhaps travelled into the future to take care of this). Unfortunately the last line is garbled, or we'd know exactly how many more people SCO intends to transmit from the future.
Maybe they just took it down because it was a crappy review. It is a crappily-written review; you realize that, right?
Your examples all tend to be weak and opinionated without reason. Your example of Lumines, for instance... "value beyond trying to improve your high score". Let's take a game a few people might have played, like, say, Tetris. Not much replay value beyond trying to get more lines! This oversimplification can be applied to any game. RPGs, play 'em once, not much replay beyond the story and getting more experience points. This is poor writing.
And there are contradictions. "The screen is big and beautiful" vs "doesn't this thing basically look like a GBA?" Battery life "??/10"... but it hasn't been an issue. Couldn't come up with a number? Most of your other areas are "well, I don't like it" or "it doesn't suit me personally"---that's nice, but I don't care. Does it suit me? You don't give examples or reasons, you just say you don't like it ("I really don't like the way this thing looks") or that you don't like them (" I wouldn't recommend any of them myself"). Why wouldn't you recommend them? Is the gameplay poor? Do they lack replay value? Are the graphics muddy? What, exactly, do you have a problem with, so that I, the reader, can decide if I would also have the same problem with the unit?
To sum it up: you write a heavily-opinionated review with few facts, making it worthless to the general reader, and wonder why GameFAQs takes it down to make room for another one? Why?
(Now how's this: will my comment get taken down because it's a comment that rates your rating poorly?)
Now, I've seen some less-than-stellar reviews on GameFAQs, but this is definitely bottom-of-the-barrel. And GameFAQs doesn't arbitrarily post anything they get. But if this were a glitzy gushing review with the same level of content (i.e., none), I would hope GameFAQs would take it down too!
"You can compete with me, but you can't do so by riding on my coat-tails. Solve the problems on your own, and compete _honestly_. Don't compete by looking at my solution."
Honestly, he didn't see this coming? This is Linux we're talking about here. You know, the one where Linus looked at unix and decided to write his own version...
Even if you take these highly replayable games, can you still imagine yourself playing them twenty years from now?
I still on occasion play NES and SNES games today. I know people who still play Atari games. In fact, in many cases, I've got more motivation to play older games because I never finished them. Or perhaps some new interesting thing has been discovered. (Finding interesting "glitches" that lead to various odd areas, for instance... this happened in Metroid.)
Even aside from this, there's just as much reason to replay a game as there is to listen to music again or read a book again. Nostalgia is a wonderful thing.
"Obvious propaganda" etc. my ass. Just because it's not "promote the democrats!" it's eeeevil propaganda, right?
Wrong. Now it's fairly obvious that the Republicans want to win, and they change their tune when losing like anyone, but you hardly know the situation up here. It's much different than the national election; the Democrats have locally held the office for a long time, and we're in need of serious change. The business law up here is terrible, the economy is going to crap, the corruption at the upper levels is rampant, and the overspending is ridiculous. (Check out our "light rail" project sometime.)
I'm not a Republican. I'm an independent. I'm even fairly anti-Republican in many respects (especially as it relates to corporate law and big business). But the local government here needs change, and a Republican term or two would do us some good. Besides, there were some serious problems with the election: take time to actually read the posted facts before being blinded by your partisan-fanboy judgement.
Besides, the Dems had a chance to investigate things in the national election. Everyone seems to know there were serious problems there, too. There was barely anything done. So what gives?
Hmm not sure if you like or dislike MG:A; your summary is very accurate, so you're probably like me and like to poke fun even at things you like.
Straying a bit tangential (although Katamari -> Sony -> PSP isn't that far, is it?), MG:A is definitely a very good game, despite the IGN review. There are times when I'm itching to play a "regular" MGS game, but I've already got 3+ other titles for that.
But bringing it back on-topic, I thought the original comment was hilarious.
Yeah on further close reading of the CNN text I guess they did. Sorry, only looked at the Lawyer's words... the only ones you can really trust. How's that for irony?
Anyhow... you'd think at very least slashdot could get it right. Irony abounds today.
Yes, yes you do. A quick glance at the article shows they have it right. Trademark is significantly different than copyright; and this seems to me to be a significant decision, but then I'm not a lawyer or anything.
I happen to know Chris personally, and his background is as a games programmer (you know, actually writing code).
He's worked his way up through the ranks, and is now a general manager at Microsoft (deservedly so, in my opinion).
Slashdot Mirror
This is very possible... I've met a number of people who made and continue to make all the wrong choices. One kid I met in a gameshop had gotten a Saturn, Virtual Boy, Dreamcast, and was picking up an XBOX, convinced that this would be the #1 console. (This was back when the XBOX was pretty new.)
On one hand, you want to feel sorry; on the other, you have to wonder at what point the person said "this is going to win!" and wonder if they make their decisions based on their favorite color being on the box, or what.
Square's POL is a work of art. Very simple, very accessible. I was more than a little disappointed in the registration/signon process of WoW by comparison.
I wish someone would hire some architects to design the levels, not your run-of-the-mill artists. I don't think I'm the only one who thinks level design has been subpar for years now. Bring back levels that are well-designed by people who know how to make them and think broad architecture, not what this scene or that scene will look like.
We play these games, you know---interact with them, explore them---we don't just watch them.
Preferably one that runs on Linux...
Er, also, a 2GB CF card is a few hundred bucks. A 1.8GB UMD is probably $2.
I have a PSP (two now, actually), and took it on a recent cross-country flight.
Personally, I think the PSP is the best portable gaming device to hit the market yet. A big part of this is one single underrated and underpublicized feature: instant-sleep. I can be in the middle of a level, hacking away at something, dropping bricks, navigating a maze... and if I have to pick up and go, I flick the power switch and it goes to sleep. Later I flick it and it wakes up in under a second to exactly where I was.
Plus, the lineup, while not yet extreme, should offer something for everyone. You've got puzzle games (Lumines, Mercury), RPGs (Rengoku which I don't recommend, and Untold Legends which is OK if you expect a hack'n'slash game with some minor story), TRPGs (Metal Gear Acid, which has a great story and gameplay), racing (NFSU, Wipeout Prime, Ridge Racer, etc.), shooting (Rengoku, Twisted Metal), platforming (Ape Escape), sports, extreme sports (THUG2), fighting, etc. There's probably something you'll enjoy. The only game I think really sucks so far (and I haven't played the sports/fighting stuff) is Ren Goku.
Battery life isn't really a problem. I used one battery my entire coast-to-coast flight and only was down 1/3 bars. I didn't play the entire time. Someone else I know did play fulltime on a coast-to-coast and didn't run out.
Honestly the main problem is someone needs to release a UMD sleeve so carrying 5-10 UMDs doesn't involve silly hacks like sticking 4 in 1 case.
This is why: pdaXrom
This sounds like an architectural change rather than a "we added lots of optimizations" change. Perhaps if he implemented some aggressive compiler optimizations it would be fair. :-)
This is the stupidest review of GCC4 I can imagine. I won't go so far as to say typical gentoo stereotype focusing on lots of flags to get "really fast" results, but you know some people are thinking it.
Where are the C++ benchmarks? That's what's supposed to be big in GCC4. Compiling C++, and doing it faster than GCC3 did (which isn't hard). How fast does this compile KDE? Qt? How big are the binaries? etc. I see all of ONE compile time statistic, and that's on the linux kernel.
WTF is this? Can someone with a clue please do a real review?
COMICS you say? Where can one acquire said artifacts? ;-)
The entire library of networked DS games. And you'd still have time for 59 seconds of pictochat.
So, the court is sinking to shift an audition. This must mean Battleship, because in Battleship you sink things. That ought to Zusatzantrag SCO's joggle. I'm not sure this is clear enough. Let's get a few more languages' opinions:
Aha! With German, French, and Japanese combines, this appears to be a message... from the FUTURE! Unfortunately some information appears to have been lost, but from this it looks like the courthouse is gone ("As for the courthouse? [...] It goes."), perhaps from battleship? 2005 years in the future, on April 21st, SCO has given an order of some kind. An unknown entity, S (or "Thing S"), is involved. It seems a contract is involved, with a theory of some sort, and they're running from Samuel Palmisano (who has perhaps travelled into the future to take care of this). Unfortunately the last line is garbled, or we'd know exactly how many more people SCO intends to transmit from the future.
Stay tuned!
I left the following comment for the author.
Now, I've seen some less-than-stellar reviews on GameFAQs, but this is definitely bottom-of-the-barrel. And GameFAQs doesn't arbitrarily post anything they get. But if this were a glitzy gushing review with the same level of content (i.e., none), I would hope GameFAQs would take it down too!
This sounds like the beginning of another crappy TV movie...
Honestly, he didn't see this coming? This is Linux we're talking about here. You know, the one where Linus looked at unix and decided to write his own version...
I still on occasion play NES and SNES games today. I know people who still play Atari games. In fact, in many cases, I've got more motivation to play older games because I never finished them. Or perhaps some new interesting thing has been discovered. (Finding interesting "glitches" that lead to various odd areas, for instance... this happened in Metroid.)
Even aside from this, there's just as much reason to replay a game as there is to listen to music again or read a book again. Nostalgia is a wonderful thing.
"Obvious propaganda" etc. my ass. Just because it's not "promote the democrats!" it's eeeevil propaganda, right?
Wrong. Now it's fairly obvious that the Republicans want to win, and they change their tune when losing like anyone, but you hardly know the situation up here. It's much different than the national election; the Democrats have locally held the office for a long time, and we're in need of serious change. The business law up here is terrible, the economy is going to crap, the corruption at the upper levels is rampant, and the overspending is ridiculous. (Check out our "light rail" project sometime.)
I'm not a Republican. I'm an independent. I'm even fairly anti-Republican in many respects (especially as it relates to corporate law and big business). But the local government here needs change, and a Republican term or two would do us some good. Besides, there were some serious problems with the election: take time to actually read the posted facts before being blinded by your partisan-fanboy judgement.
Besides, the Dems had a chance to investigate things in the national election. Everyone seems to know there were serious problems there, too. There was barely anything done. So what gives?
Hmm not sure if you like or dislike MG:A; your summary is very accurate, so you're probably like me and like to poke fun even at things you like.
Straying a bit tangential (although Katamari -> Sony -> PSP isn't that far, is it?), MG:A is definitely a very good game, despite the IGN review. There are times when I'm itching to play a "regular" MGS game, but I've already got 3+ other titles for that.
But bringing it back on-topic, I thought the original comment was hilarious.
Yeah on further close reading of the CNN text I guess they did. Sorry, only looked at the Lawyer's words... the only ones you can really trust. How's that for irony?
Anyhow... you'd think at very least slashdot could get it right. Irony abounds today.
Copyright... on a name? You mean Trademark?
Yes, yes you do. A quick glance at the article shows they have it right. Trademark is significantly different than copyright; and this seems to me to be a significant decision, but then I'm not a lawyer or anything.
So... is this is a good thing or a bad thing?
As long as you steal a million of them.
I thought we all knew that clock speed comparisons across platforms were pointless...
That said, with the SNES you could hand-code assembler to get every cycle out of the CPU, GPU, and SPU. Not quite the case with Java.
Smart people find wheels that haven't been invented.