If you rely on slashdot for news updates, you're doing it wrong. Its primary usefulness is a comments section that isn't full of retarded shit you find in youtube comments (or if it is, they get modded down and you don't have to see them). As a news aggregator, it's pretty poor. As a site to find semi-intelligent conversation about the news stories featured, I haven't seen much better in the past 12 years or so (at least with free registration and anonymous posting).
Cars need giant warnings painted on the driver's side door about the dangers of driving. And there should be a huge penalty for painting over or removing the warning after you buy it. They kill a fuckload more people than "simulated violence" does.
When I read posts like this, or hear people say something like this, I HONESTLY think they are lying to themselves. I saw Avatar in 3D. I was not impressed by the 3D. I was glad that someone finally realized that if you did want to make a movie 3D, you had to make it like an aquarium or diorama, and throw things at the audience's face, but to me this was fucking common sense. After about 30 minutes, I already was unimpressed enough that I had wished I had seen it in 2D because I was CONSTANTLY aware that I was watching a stereoscopic movie and it became distracting. I didn't get headaches or anything, but there was just a certain awareness. I couldn't get drawn in and just enjoy the fucking movie. I saw Tron2 in 2D and I enjoyed it. I will admit that watching the closing credits, I thought that might have looked cool in 3D. But it was the fucking credits.
And what about scratch and sniff cards? Just because you can name some things that turned out not to be mere novelties does not mean that all future predictions of novelty wearing off are false.
Quake was a better *game*, as in it had better level design, more interesting enemy AI, better weapon balance, etc. Duke 3D had more humor, unique or interesting (but often impractical or useless) weapons, and levels that were made to look like real places, and for some people this made it more fun. But if you took the two and turned all the levels, models, and monsters into the equivalent of untextured grids, Quake would still be fun while I don't think I could say the same for Duke. That's not to say that Duke didn't have good levels or that Quake didn't have bad levels or whatever, just on the whole I felt like the average quality level of them was higher in Quake.
And finally, once you learned to use the mouse and mouselook in Quake, there was just no going back. It was simply a superior control mechanism that you couldn't match in Duke.
And before anyone speaks up about the AI comment, I don't mean the monsters were smart, because in fact they were quite dumb. I mean that their AI allowed the player to feel smart by out maneuvering them etc. and that each monster behaved different enough from the other monsters that it didn't just feel like a model swap.
If it's an option, I usually put my first pet. Let's say you had a hamster named Fluffy when you were 6 (and before stupid people made facebook pages for their fucking pets). How the hell is anyone other than perhaps your childhood friends going to know it existed? It likely died/ran away 15+ years ago, and unless you're a crazy person you didn't go around telling everyone about it, writing books about it, etc.
Of course, it'd have to be a pet that didn't have a ridiculously obvious name like "Fluffy" because someone might just guess that randomly.
I've actually misspelled my non-crazy secret question before. The first time I needed to use it to verify the account was over the phone, so I didn't even know it was spelled wrong (and apparently, neither did the customer service girl). The second time, it took me like 4 attempt to realize that maybe I'd spelled it wrong (it was a word I knew that I sometimes spelled wrong).
Now I like to pretend I did it on purpose as an added layer of security!
SUPER old news. Like 1000+ years old. Here's Carl Sagan mentioning it back in the 70's: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iunr4B4wfDA and even then he mentions they've been wrong for 1000 years.
Yes, after the fact. I'm talking about there not being an explanation in-game that going to the dormant reaper will only allow you to do 2 more missions, regardless of how many you've already done or are remaining, before you are forced to save your crew immediately or have some of them die. I went to the dormant reaper early because it seemed like a cool mission. I later had to reload my save when I found out that going to that mission early meant I was screwed. Either I'd be able to do 1-2 loyalty missions and have one half my crew die, or do more/all loyalty missions and have the other half die.
The problem with ME2 is that the mission that triggers the end game timer does not appear to the player to have any more significance than the other main storyline missions. The only way you'd know that that mission triggered the end game ahead of time is by reading spoilers, and, if I remember correctly, you can access that end-game triggering mission after having done hardly any of the loyalty missions (actually, I think it's possible to do it with none) and without even having all of your crew members yet.
Further, it's the only time in both games where you're not allowed to simply play randomly at your own pace, and there's really no in-game-world reason that this mission should be any more urgent than any other main story-line missions. Not to mention the fact that you can scan worlds for minerals for MONTHS, but step on a planet for a couple hours and OH NO! It's inconsistent with the rest of the game.
A proper game would give you a game over screen after the door closed. Remember how in HL1 when you killed a scientist that was required to progress past a door in a level, the screen faded to black and gave you a message about "not using human resources properly" or something? If you truly could not progress past those blast doors (it's been way too long for me to remember if there was some alternate method past them), then there needed to be one of those game over screens if you failed to make it past them.
I hadn't read anything about the plot before I played this game, and when I was forced into the cut scene that wrecks your ship, and when I realized that it was not part of the quest I was trying to complete, but a time based event after having completed another event and then some N number of side quests, I actually did reload to my save before the original triggering event. I hadn't completed all the side quests, and I found out that, basically, for every side quest I continued to go on from that point without going to the end-game event, people on my crew were going to die. I decided that was some BULL SHIT. I had done the event that leads up to the end game sequence because I was interested in the plot. But I was also interested in the plot of the majority of the side quests. I didn't want to be punished for WANTING TO PLAY THE GAME.
Playing one and three quarters of a game's storyline (ME1 and 3/4 of ME2) where time literally means nothing and you can gallivant across the universe at your own pace, only for time to suddenly have meaning, but the game not communicating it to you in any reasonable fashion, is bullshit. If there had been sequences like this in the previous game, or previous parts of this game, or if the urgency was actually put on the player using some kind of UI or explicit dialog (and no, "we need to do this right now!" coming out of a character's mouth in an RPG does not constitute explicit dialog, because they say that shit about their mission all the fucking time and then let you waste hours on end raising chocobos and racing them with no punishment whatsoever, so the character would have to say something like "oh shit, we only have time for maybe ONE MORE MISSION before we need to deal with this" or something equally explicit and possibly 4th-wall-breaking).
They're certifying games for the exact same market/culture that the television industry is creating television shows for. Why the hell would they follow a different cultural standard than television?
Slashdot Mirror
IIRC they actually use a tweaked version for their season prediction simulation that's more realistic than the one released to the general public.
If you rely on slashdot for news updates, you're doing it wrong. Its primary usefulness is a comments section that isn't full of retarded shit you find in youtube comments (or if it is, they get modded down and you don't have to see them). As a news aggregator, it's pretty poor. As a site to find semi-intelligent conversation about the news stories featured, I haven't seen much better in the past 12 years or so (at least with free registration and anonymous posting).
It's called Gamefly.
Cars need giant warnings painted on the driver's side door about the dangers of driving. And there should be a huge penalty for painting over or removing the warning after you buy it. They kill a fuckload more people than "simulated violence" does.
Correction: "and NOT throw things in the audience's face"
When I read posts like this, or hear people say something like this, I HONESTLY think they are lying to themselves. I saw Avatar in 3D. I was not impressed by the 3D. I was glad that someone finally realized that if you did want to make a movie 3D, you had to make it like an aquarium or diorama, and throw things at the audience's face, but to me this was fucking common sense. After about 30 minutes, I already was unimpressed enough that I had wished I had seen it in 2D because I was CONSTANTLY aware that I was watching a stereoscopic movie and it became distracting. I didn't get headaches or anything, but there was just a certain awareness. I couldn't get drawn in and just enjoy the fucking movie. I saw Tron2 in 2D and I enjoyed it. I will admit that watching the closing credits, I thought that might have looked cool in 3D. But it was the fucking credits.
And what about scratch and sniff cards? Just because you can name some things that turned out not to be mere novelties does not mean that all future predictions of novelty wearing off are false.
True, but I was just trying to compare the base games as released.
Quake was a better *game*, as in it had better level design, more interesting enemy AI, better weapon balance, etc. Duke 3D had more humor, unique or interesting (but often impractical or useless) weapons, and levels that were made to look like real places, and for some people this made it more fun. But if you took the two and turned all the levels, models, and monsters into the equivalent of untextured grids, Quake would still be fun while I don't think I could say the same for Duke. That's not to say that Duke didn't have good levels or that Quake didn't have bad levels or whatever, just on the whole I felt like the average quality level of them was higher in Quake.
And finally, once you learned to use the mouse and mouselook in Quake, there was just no going back. It was simply a superior control mechanism that you couldn't match in Duke.
And before anyone speaks up about the AI comment, I don't mean the monsters were smart, because in fact they were quite dumb. I mean that their AI allowed the player to feel smart by out maneuvering them etc. and that each monster behaved different enough from the other monsters that it didn't just feel like a model swap.
Oh wait, looking at the video instead of the screenshot, those are sc2 icons. MY BAD
Don't be coy, they stole assets from WoW in the process. That's not Kosher in modding.
If it's an option, I usually put my first pet. Let's say you had a hamster named Fluffy when you were 6 (and before stupid people made facebook pages for their fucking pets). How the hell is anyone other than perhaps your childhood friends going to know it existed? It likely died/ran away 15+ years ago, and unless you're a crazy person you didn't go around telling everyone about it, writing books about it, etc.
Of course, it'd have to be a pet that didn't have a ridiculously obvious name like "Fluffy" because someone might just guess that randomly.
I've actually misspelled my non-crazy secret question before. The first time I needed to use it to verify the account was over the phone, so I didn't even know it was spelled wrong (and apparently, neither did the customer service girl). The second time, it took me like 4 attempt to realize that maybe I'd spelled it wrong (it was a word I knew that I sometimes spelled wrong).
Now I like to pretend I did it on purpose as an added layer of security!
You are correct, I confused it with this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQPFoDkGFrU&feature=related by Bill Nye.
SUPER old news. Like 1000+ years old. Here's Carl Sagan mentioning it back in the 70's: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iunr4B4wfDA and even then he mentions they've been wrong for 1000 years.
Like I told the other poster, it's going to the dormant reaper that triggers the series of events without informing you of the risk.
Yes, after the fact. I'm talking about there not being an explanation in-game that going to the dormant reaper will only allow you to do 2 more missions, regardless of how many you've already done or are remaining, before you are forced to save your crew immediately or have some of them die. I went to the dormant reaper early because it seemed like a cool mission. I later had to reload my save when I found out that going to that mission early meant I was screwed. Either I'd be able to do 1-2 loyalty missions and have one half my crew die, or do more/all loyalty missions and have the other half die.
The problem with ME2 is that the mission that triggers the end game timer does not appear to the player to have any more significance than the other main storyline missions. The only way you'd know that that mission triggered the end game ahead of time is by reading spoilers, and, if I remember correctly, you can access that end-game triggering mission after having done hardly any of the loyalty missions (actually, I think it's possible to do it with none) and without even having all of your crew members yet.
Further, it's the only time in both games where you're not allowed to simply play randomly at your own pace, and there's really no in-game-world reason that this mission should be any more urgent than any other main story-line missions. Not to mention the fact that you can scan worlds for minerals for MONTHS, but step on a planet for a couple hours and OH NO! It's inconsistent with the rest of the game.
A proper game would give you a game over screen after the door closed. Remember how in HL1 when you killed a scientist that was required to progress past a door in a level, the screen faded to black and gave you a message about "not using human resources properly" or something? If you truly could not progress past those blast doors (it's been way too long for me to remember if there was some alternate method past them), then there needed to be one of those game over screens if you failed to make it past them.
I hadn't read anything about the plot before I played this game, and when I was forced into the cut scene that wrecks your ship, and when I realized that it was not part of the quest I was trying to complete, but a time based event after having completed another event and then some N number of side quests, I actually did reload to my save before the original triggering event. I hadn't completed all the side quests, and I found out that, basically, for every side quest I continued to go on from that point without going to the end-game event, people on my crew were going to die. I decided that was some BULL SHIT. I had done the event that leads up to the end game sequence because I was interested in the plot. But I was also interested in the plot of the majority of the side quests. I didn't want to be punished for WANTING TO PLAY THE GAME.
Playing one and three quarters of a game's storyline (ME1 and 3/4 of ME2) where time literally means nothing and you can gallivant across the universe at your own pace, only for time to suddenly have meaning, but the game not communicating it to you in any reasonable fashion, is bullshit. If there had been sequences like this in the previous game, or previous parts of this game, or if the urgency was actually put on the player using some kind of UI or explicit dialog (and no, "we need to do this right now!" coming out of a character's mouth in an RPG does not constitute explicit dialog, because they say that shit about their mission all the fucking time and then let you waste hours on end raising chocobos and racing them with no punishment whatsoever, so the character would have to say something like "oh shit, we only have time for maybe ONE MORE MISSION before we need to deal with this" or something equally explicit and possibly 4th-wall-breaking).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_the_Buggalo_Roam
are idiots.
This is why we hate you.
Eating a stake will give you splinters. Try steak instead.
They're certifying games for the exact same market/culture that the television industry is creating television shows for. Why the hell would they follow a different cultural standard than television?