I don't know that the Wizard of Oz is very analagous to Doom from a storytelling standpoint. The story of the Wizard of Oz was originally a book, and very likely a political-economic allegory.
The story of Doom, on the other hand, is not only without a literary basis, but virtually non-existant in its own right.
The "repetitive asian crpgs" is right on the money though. They're like a combination of Spagetti Western and Soap Operas with all sorts of freudian hardware (e.g. an angsty teenage boy with a 10 ft. sword...) and Disney-esque talking animals.
Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap for the GBA is an absolutely wonderful example of classic gameplay systems with modern production values. If you like A Link to the Past, I highly reccomend it. There are also an abundance of side scrolling games from the Mario, Mega Man, and Castlevania series.
I completely disagree with your trashing of all 3d games. Mario 64 and the two Zelda games on the N64 stand as three of the best games of all time, an opinion I share with a great majority of the gaming community. To claim that these games are all just clones of Tomb Raider is... just inconcievable.
You're about seven years too late to start complaining about the ubiquity of 3d games.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Your skin color doesn't decide whether or not you're hip hop, your dignity does.
Real MC's DO take themselves seriously, because the music and the culture requires it. It's disrespectful to all who came before to get on stage and think you're hip hop because you found 20 new rhymes for "testicles" or "pentium".
What these guys are doing is no different than what Weird Al does, only less funny. They're about as hip hop as Weird Al is rock and roll.
Hip hop is not rap, but rap is usually hip hop. But not when it's this.
Far be it for a consumer or end-user to request a feature.
Semi-Intelligent AI has been done for years in first-person shooters and real-time strategy with steady improvements through the years... why is it so hard to assume any of that would trickle down in to larger networked games like MMORPGS?
MMORPGS have been using the same basic AI since the 1990's.
You explain to me why it's not possible first, then I'll get to work on my GDC panel, mmkay?
-Character Customization, Crafting, Player Cities/Housing, and Class/Skill System from Star Wars Galaxies
-Combat system from Neocron
-Quest system from World of Warcraft
Eh... it would probably be a good game. I'd personally like to see all that with a seamless world, a dynamic monthly story arc and unique flora and fauna like Asheron's Call (no elves or orcs, please), decent NPC AI, a realistic economy (limited supply, anyone?).
Oh yeah and gameplay good enough to justify paying another monthly bill.
The man who creates a massively multiplayer persistent counterstrike is going to make millions.
I think the whole "mob" concept needs to be drastically reworked. The idea that I can be 51 yards away from something and it can't see me, but if I move one yard closer he and all his buddies charge at me is LUDICROUS.
How about a real AI system? How about mobs with actual line of sight and knowledge of their surroundings and tactics?
I think challenging and intelligent AI would go a long way to alleviating "the grind".
Yes nintendo would never do something like that...
on
Shadowrun for the 360
·
· Score: 1
Lord knows they never turned a beloved 2d franchise into a FPS.
I can't believe all the comments on this story that have already written this game off because it's an FPS instead of an RPG, as though there has never been a decent FPS made.
Aside from the SNES and Genesis Shadowrun games, the games most closely resembling Shadowrun's cyberpunk world have been Deus Ex and System Shock. Suprise surprise... they were first and foremost First Person Shooters.
Don't be so quick to pigeonhole this as another Halo clone (as opposed to a KOTOR clone). Wait and see if it turns out to be a decent game for once.
It's perfectly natural to go out and crap in my front yard. My body has no problem at all laying a big steaming turd on that nice green grass on a hot afternoon.
But I think I'll stick to the toilet. Sometimes justifying acts on the basis of nature clashes with doing the right thing.
100,000 non-insect animals in 1 acre? Maybe in cases where dense rainforest is being destroyed. I'm very skeptical of this claim and I'd like to see you back it up with some evidence. If anything, this is a larger indictment of the agri-business superfarms.
B12 deficiency only occurs in vegan diets. Vegetarians get more than enough Vitamin B12 through dairy and eggs. I agree though, anyone making dramatic changes to their diet should be well informed before doing so.
I congratulate you on caring for your livestock, but I ask: why kill them? You could just as easily use their eggs and milk, and probably have plenty of space and time left for a large garden. If you can live well on that sustenance, what reason remains to justify their death?
In most MMORPG's these days, at least a quarter of every dollar you spend (assuming the rate of $1/hour) is going to be spent on getting from point A to point B, managing your inventory, or trying to get in a group, and generally doing non-fun stuff.
The fact that most MMORPG's haven't been able to eliminate the drudgery only highlights how much they cater to the "hardcore only" crowd.
Aside from the two hypothetical cases I talked about elsewhere in this thread, I've heard horror stories of people being put on sex offender lists for mild offenses like public urination or public nudity.
Considering that the definition of "sex offender" can be so broad, compiling a map from every state and local database (each with its own criteria for listing people) seems like a really really bad idea.
What happens when a teenage boy gets convicted of Statutory rape because his girlfriends's dad walked in on them making hanky panky? Is he just another blip on the map- presumably a target for vigilantes or a scapegoat for community demagogues?
What happens when two consenting homosexual adults get railroaded by some backwater anti-sodomy laws? Now the ignorant have a map to the house for vandalism and hate crime intimidation?
Without context these maps have huge potential to inflict harm upon innocent people. These are just two of the examples that come off the top of my head.
The context of the quote is him waking in convalescence in the company of Alfred and Morgan Freeman's character, a Wayne Industries uberscientist (who invented all the cool batman toys) who's in on the secret.
Wayne says "Am I supposed to know what that means?" after Freeman's character explains the chemical makeup of Scarecrow's fear gas.
So no, it really doesn't fit.
But more than that he doesn't do any detective work at all. No examination of evidence or anything. I mean, he's sharp and catches on fast, but doesn't ever do any analytical thinking that I'd become used to with Batman.
The batman I know and love from comics to cartoons to movies to even the hokey 60's Adam West has always been a brilliant detective and keen scientist.
I loved Batman Begins, but I really think they missed the mark when it comes to Batman's CSI savvy.
My head was spinning when Bruce Wayne says "Am I supposed to know what that means?"
So if you want to be a real Batman, figure in another several hundred thousand dollars for advanced degrees in science and criminology.
(Also... $30,000 + 3 years in China != the ability to fight like the movies, but only the keenly stupid would think otherwise, right?)
Steep learning curves and complexity add a richness to many games, maybe at the price of "pick up and play" qualities.
Tedium, however, sucks the fun out of games and adds no great stimulation to make up for it. Sometimes it's unintentional tedium, like bad inventory management systems or lack of non-repetitive content.
Oftentimes though, the tedium is artificially added. The best examples of this are in MMORPG's where "timesinks" can literally account for DAYS of gameplay over a long enough period. In WoW, for example, you can expect 15-20% of your gaming time being spent travelling.
If you want to make games fun, don't bother with the learning curve- just get rid of the tedium.
Thanks for the link man! Arcanum's music is incredible stuff, and really stands out to me as the high water mark in videogame music. I have yet to see the moody-victorian setting captured so well.
"Name another 'relevant' RPG franchise on a non-Nintendo system, preferably one that was on earlier Nintendo systems. (Given your original point, afterall...)"
The Chrono Series, the Dragon Warrior series, the Secret of Mana Series and the Breath of Fire series... just to name a few.
Slashdot Mirror
At least 2 or 3 articles a day come straight from Gamespot or 1up.com
I don't know that the Wizard of Oz is very analagous to Doom from a storytelling standpoint. The story of the Wizard of Oz was originally a book, and very likely a political-economic allegory.
The story of Doom, on the other hand, is not only without a literary basis, but virtually non-existant in its own right.
The "repetitive asian crpgs" is right on the money though. They're like a combination of Spagetti Western and Soap Operas with all sorts of freudian hardware (e.g. an angsty teenage boy with a 10 ft. sword...) and Disney-esque talking animals.
Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap for the GBA is an absolutely wonderful example of classic gameplay systems with modern production values. If you like A Link to the Past, I highly reccomend it. There are also an abundance of side scrolling games from the Mario, Mega Man, and Castlevania series.
I completely disagree with your trashing of all 3d games. Mario 64 and the two Zelda games on the N64 stand as three of the best games of all time, an opinion I share with a great majority of the gaming community. To claim that these games are all just clones of Tomb Raider is... just inconcievable.
You're about seven years too late to start complaining about the ubiquity of 3d games.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Your skin color doesn't decide whether or not you're hip hop, your dignity does.
Real MC's DO take themselves seriously, because the music and the culture requires it. It's disrespectful to all who came before to get on stage and think you're hip hop because you found 20 new rhymes for "testicles" or "pentium".
What these guys are doing is no different than what Weird Al does, only less funny. They're about as hip hop as Weird Al is rock and roll.
Hip hop is not rap, but rap is usually hip hop. But not when it's this.
Why are we talking about riot control in Iraq? Since when has popular uprising been an issue?
I thought we were only dealing with an insurgency. (And that implying otherwise was treasonous...)
Far be it for a consumer or end-user to request a feature.
Semi-Intelligent AI has been done for years in first-person shooters and real-time strategy with steady improvements through the years... why is it so hard to assume any of that would trickle down in to larger networked games like MMORPGS?
MMORPGS have been using the same basic AI since the 1990's.
You explain to me why it's not possible first, then I'll get to work on my GDC panel, mmkay?
-Character Customization, Crafting, Player Cities/Housing, and Class/Skill System from Star Wars Galaxies
-Combat system from Neocron
-Quest system from World of Warcraft
Eh... it would probably be a good game. I'd personally like to see all that with a seamless world, a dynamic monthly story arc and unique flora and fauna like Asheron's Call (no elves or orcs, please), decent NPC AI, a realistic economy (limited supply, anyone?).
Oh yeah and gameplay good enough to justify paying another monthly bill.
The man who creates a massively multiplayer persistent counterstrike is going to make millions.
I think the whole "mob" concept needs to be drastically reworked. The idea that I can be 51 yards away from something and it can't see me, but if I move one yard closer he and all his buddies charge at me is LUDICROUS.
How about a real AI system? How about mobs with actual line of sight and knowledge of their surroundings and tactics?
I think challenging and intelligent AI would go a long way to alleviating "the grind".
Lord knows they never turned a beloved 2d franchise into a FPS.
I can't believe all the comments on this story that have already written this game off because it's an FPS instead of an RPG, as though there has never been a decent FPS made.
Aside from the SNES and Genesis Shadowrun games, the games most closely resembling Shadowrun's cyberpunk world have been Deus Ex and System Shock. Suprise surprise... they were first and foremost First Person Shooters.
Don't be so quick to pigeonhole this as another Halo clone (as opposed to a KOTOR clone). Wait and see if it turns out to be a decent game for once.
...because I was going to say the same damn thing.
Many countries have banned human cloning... would Neanderthal cloning similarly be banned under the existing legislation?
It's perfectly natural to go out and crap in my front yard. My body has no problem at all laying a big steaming turd on that nice green grass on a hot afternoon.
But I think I'll stick to the toilet. Sometimes justifying acts on the basis of nature clashes with doing the right thing.
100,000 non-insect animals in 1 acre? Maybe in cases where dense rainforest is being destroyed. I'm very skeptical of this claim and I'd like to see you back it up with some evidence. If anything, this is a larger indictment of the agri-business superfarms.
B12 deficiency only occurs in vegan diets. Vegetarians get more than enough Vitamin B12 through dairy and eggs. I agree though, anyone making dramatic changes to their diet should be well informed before doing so.
I congratulate you on caring for your livestock, but I ask: why kill them? You could just as easily use their eggs and milk, and probably have plenty of space and time left for a large garden. If you can live well on that sustenance, what reason remains to justify their death?
In most MMORPG's these days, at least a quarter of every dollar you spend (assuming the rate of $1/hour) is going to be spent on getting from point A to point B, managing your inventory, or trying to get in a group, and generally doing non-fun stuff.
The fact that most MMORPG's haven't been able to eliminate the drudgery only highlights how much they cater to the "hardcore only" crowd.
Aside from the two hypothetical cases I talked about elsewhere in this thread, I've heard horror stories of people being put on sex offender lists for mild offenses like public urination or public nudity.
Considering that the definition of "sex offender" can be so broad, compiling a map from every state and local database (each with its own criteria for listing people) seems like a really really bad idea.
What happens when a teenage boy gets convicted of Statutory rape because his girlfriends's dad walked in on them making hanky panky? Is he just another blip on the map- presumably a target for vigilantes or a scapegoat for community demagogues?
What happens when two consenting homosexual adults get railroaded by some backwater anti-sodomy laws? Now the ignorant have a map to the house for vandalism and hate crime intimidation?
Without context these maps have huge potential to inflict harm upon innocent people. These are just two of the examples that come off the top of my head.
The context of the quote is him waking in convalescence in the company of Alfred and Morgan Freeman's character, a Wayne Industries uberscientist (who invented all the cool batman toys) who's in on the secret.
Wayne says "Am I supposed to know what that means?" after Freeman's character explains the chemical makeup of Scarecrow's fear gas.
So no, it really doesn't fit.
But more than that he doesn't do any detective work at all. No examination of evidence or anything. I mean, he's sharp and catches on fast, but doesn't ever do any analytical thinking that I'd become used to with Batman.
The batman I know and love from comics to cartoons to movies to even the hokey 60's Adam West has always been a brilliant detective and keen scientist.
I loved Batman Begins, but I really think they missed the mark when it comes to Batman's CSI savvy.
My head was spinning when Bruce Wayne says "Am I supposed to know what that means?"
So if you want to be a real Batman, figure in another several hundred thousand dollars for advanced degrees in science and criminology.
(Also... $30,000 + 3 years in China != the ability to fight like the movies, but only the keenly stupid would think otherwise, right?)
Steep learning curves and complexity add a richness to many games, maybe at the price of "pick up and play" qualities.
Tedium, however, sucks the fun out of games and adds no great stimulation to make up for it. Sometimes it's unintentional tedium, like bad inventory management systems or lack of non-repetitive content.
Oftentimes though, the tedium is artificially added. The best examples of this are in MMORPG's where "timesinks" can literally account for DAYS of gameplay over a long enough period. In WoW, for example, you can expect 15-20% of your gaming time being spent travelling.
If you want to make games fun, don't bother with the learning curve- just get rid of the tedium.
The Advantage
Thanks for the link man! Arcanum's music is incredible stuff, and really stands out to me as the high water mark in videogame music. I have yet to see the moody-victorian setting captured so well.
I wish I had mod points.
Awesome games, I agree, but a drop in the ocean as far as market share goes.
"Name another 'relevant' RPG franchise on a non-Nintendo system, preferably one that was on earlier Nintendo systems. (Given your original point, afterall...)"
The Chrono Series, the Dragon Warrior series, the Secret of Mana Series and the Breath of Fire series... just to name a few.
It wasn't required for games, and yet they put it in and the developers that wanted to use it used it.
Developer cost wasn't a factor then for a high-res option... but it is now?