Interesting historical influences of Rez in this review.
Wassily Kandinsky was a brilliant painter, but like many gifted painters, he was also insane; suffering from synaesthesia, a condition affecting the sense and resulting in cross interpolated stimuli, Kandinsky claimed to be able to hear colors and feel sound. It was this idea of interconnected sensory experiences that fueled the development of Rez, simulating synaesthesia though simultaneous sound, sight, and touch.
As cliched as it sounds, the Dreamcast was years ahead of its time
And this still rings true. No system since has been able to reproduce 2D arcade games as well, and its 3D arcade ports can't be beat either. Simply said, the Dreamcast is the ultimate realization of the arcade experience at home. The Dreamcast *should* have been the final deathblow to the waning arcade situation, but for some reason people just didn't want arcade perfect ports... odd.
But all that aside, the Dreamcast continues to stand as my favorite console for a single reason: VGA support. After the VGA box was released for the Dreamcast, I thought to myself, "So this is where console games are going..." Crystal clear visuals just reinforced the system's already amazing graphical prowess. But again I was wrong, and the VGA standard was not adopted even as an option by the current crop of systems. Sure, output to HDTV is nice, but I still don't feel the amazing clarity that comes from a nice monitor.
And while we're at it, my top 5:
1. Phantasy Star Online: First Online Console RPG. I logged over 500 hours on the first version of it, and loved every Rappy beating minute of it. 2. Rez: The PS2 port doesn't do this game's visuals justice in the least. Beautiful wire frame graphics wrapped around the best rail-shooter since Panzer Dragoon Saga, all while thumping to one of the best video game soundtracks ever. 3. Jet Set Radio: Invented the oft-repeated cell shading graphical style, and the game play was brilliant as well. Tony Hawk + Rollerblades + Juvenile Delinquency. 4. Samba de Amigo: I was lucky enough to have pre-ordered this game and a set of official maracas, still one of the best gaming decisions I've ever made. Sure Dance Dance Revolution is a lot of fun, but this is even more fun (and completely playable) when you're drunk, while DDR simply is not. 5. Shenmue: Ground-breaking blah blah blah masterful storytelling blah blah blah cat petting simulator blah blah blah Yu Suzuki is a God.
The $45 at Best Buy gets you a tangible item... you gain a CD, a manual, a snazzy box. Ok, ok, that's weak, but its how games have always been, and it's not likely to change merely because they're massively multiplayer.
I guess my problem with what you said is that you're saying it's acceptable for There Inc. to charge you a one time fee to join the game, but only if you're paying on a monthly basis, and completely ignoring the fact that the people who sign up for a year pay no "activation fee." By that rationale, I should be able to pay for a year of SWG, and not have to purchase the game.
I think that might be the entire point of this review. There is not a game, though/. and the creators (There Inc.) seem to want to believe it, the latter going so far as to market it as such.
The points you make as per it having poor graphics and utilizing IE usher home that sentiment. In all honesty, this article should be on the Slashdot front page or Ask Slashdot instead of further misleading consumers.
The author mentioned Second Life on page three, which is also where the crux of the review lies.
I haven't played Second Life (though I have been accepted into the beta), it seems to offer a lot more gameplay than There does, and looks to be a more innovative title, offering users the ability to edit their world, and create any object they can imagine, given they're adapt and patient enough to work with their rudimentary 3d modeling tools.
My friend and I were able to try out the N-Gage at E3, as well as several games for it (some of which have been released and some not). Even before the system had launched and they were showing it for the first time to a wealth of gamers and industry people, the representatives were told by many people (us included) that the system just wasn't userfriendly and that the games were sorely under-par.
Red Faction: Truly awful. There's just no way to port a PS2 game to a hand-held console. While it does look vaguely like its papa, Red Faction plays like a... well, it doesn't really play. It runs at something like 10 FPS... until you try to use a weapon, and then it drops to about 1 FPS. Seriously, it's more like a crappy slideshow of a game.
There's hardly a point in executing tricks when everything looks like a blob of pixels regardless.
The narrow screen made it annoying to play, and graphically the levels were sparse and boring.
Their failure is most definatly not from lack of pre-release information. I guess they decided that they knew what we wanted more than we did. Miyamoto can pull that off occasionally, but let's not press out luck...
I'm very suprised that the original PSO didn't have higher numbers. I believe it sold somewhere in the range of 250,000 copies, and was quite popular back when it was first released.
One character was a rock star with a guitar, the other was a nurse with a hypodermic needle. And you thought N20 was the only shooter with drug references...
In fact, it's an interesting game to play nowadays, since nothing quite like it is out there anymore; the 3D rail shooter is not a genre that's boomed over the years. (Rez and Panzer Dragoon Orta, the only other entries in recent memories, are also Sega products.)
Space Harrier is hardly an rail shooter, as you move around your character and not mearly your targeting area. This fundimental difference makes Space Harrier an offensive game where as rail shooters are largely a defensive affair. The only game(s) in recent memory to adopt this forward progressing shooter style has been the Iridion 3D games for GBA.
Maybe this little rant has placed me in the category of gamer that the reviewer mentioned in the first paragraph, ever obsessed over minute details...
Having played (and mocked) several instances of the There beta, I have to contend that this news story is even in the right place. There is not a game: there is no score, there is no goal, there is no point. There is merely a chatroom with avatars, vehicles, and pointless crap you can fritter away your money on. Would you call Habbo Hotel a "game," because it's the same thing that There is doing, at what I assume is a fraction of the cost.
If you want the very best example of this, you need not look any further than SCEI's Ico, a brilliantly designed game that clocks in well under 10 hours (most complete it in 6-8 hours of game time in their first run through). While most review outfits gave Ico very high scores, the one stand out complaint that the non-100% scores were that the game was "too short."
While it seems plausable that game reviewers would have oodles of time on their hands to play games for hours and hours, most regular gamers have around 5-20 hours a week to devote to games, in a world that is constantly releasing more and more "must-have" games into our hands. With that rationale, why would one deny themselves an amazing gaming experience that would allow you to prospectively beat a game in enough time that you can actually remember the beginning of the game enough for the whole thing to make sense in the end, let alone beat it at all?
I cannot tell you how many times that I've heard that question, and immediatly perked up, even when not playing the game. It's so ingrained in my psyche and language that it's become even an inside joke with a friend, quoting it with the same intonation as the guards in the game.
back in "the day", it was discovered that you could spoof the tone for creating a long distance phone call with a toy whistle obtained as a prize from a box of Capt. Crunch cereal...
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting historical influences of Rez in this review.
Wassily Kandinsky was a brilliant painter, but like many gifted painters, he was also insane; suffering from synaesthesia, a condition affecting the sense and resulting in cross interpolated stimuli, Kandinsky claimed to be able to hear colors and feel sound. It was this idea of interconnected sensory experiences that fueled the development of Rez, simulating synaesthesia though simultaneous sound, sight, and touch.
As cliched as it sounds, the Dreamcast was years ahead of its time
And this still rings true. No system since has been able to reproduce 2D arcade games as well, and its 3D arcade ports can't be beat either. Simply said, the Dreamcast is the ultimate realization of the arcade experience at home. The Dreamcast *should* have been the final deathblow to the waning arcade situation, but for some reason people just didn't want arcade perfect ports... odd.
But all that aside, the Dreamcast continues to stand as my favorite console for a single reason: VGA support. After the VGA box was released for the Dreamcast, I thought to myself, "So this is where console games are going..." Crystal clear visuals just reinforced the system's already amazing graphical prowess. But again I was wrong, and the VGA standard was not adopted even as an option by the current crop of systems. Sure, output to HDTV is nice, but I still don't feel the amazing clarity that comes from a nice monitor.
And while we're at it, my top 5:
1. Phantasy Star Online: First Online Console RPG. I logged over 500 hours on the first version of it, and loved every Rappy beating minute of it.
2. Rez: The PS2 port doesn't do this game's visuals justice in the least. Beautiful wire frame graphics wrapped around the best rail-shooter since Panzer Dragoon Saga, all while thumping to one of the best video game soundtracks ever.
3. Jet Set Radio: Invented the oft-repeated cell shading graphical style, and the game play was brilliant as well. Tony Hawk + Rollerblades + Juvenile Delinquency.
4. Samba de Amigo: I was lucky enough to have pre-ordered this game and a set of official maracas, still one of the best gaming decisions I've ever made. Sure Dance Dance Revolution is a lot of fun, but this is even more fun (and completely playable) when you're drunk, while DDR simply is not.
5. Shenmue: Ground-breaking blah blah blah masterful storytelling blah blah blah cat petting simulator blah blah blah Yu Suzuki is a God.
Forget Unreal University, I'm more interested in Beer University...
Diablo is "online click-click-click game with persistant characters."
I believe the phrase you're grasping for is "online dungeon crawl" or "rogue clone"...
And who's going to pay for an Ewok character auction on Ebay?
Furries
*shudders*
immediatly set up that account for auction and began work on making another Jedi, keeping the creation secrets to myself?
Way ahead of you
/. seems to think it is...
The $45 at Best Buy gets you a tangible item... you gain a CD, a manual, a snazzy box. Ok, ok, that's weak, but its how games have always been, and it's not likely to change merely because they're massively multiplayer.
I guess my problem with what you said is that you're saying it's acceptable for There Inc. to charge you a one time fee to join the game, but only if you're paying on a monthly basis, and completely ignoring the fact that the people who sign up for a year pay no "activation fee." By that rationale, I should be able to pay for a year of SWG, and not have to purchase the game.
"For those who might actually be interested in what There is, it's a half-finished..."
Funny that they're charging $49.99 a year to play a half-finished game. Even funnier is that you (and many other people) have bought into it.
But I guess that's the state of many online games...
I think that might be the entire point of this review. There is not a game, though /. and the creators (There Inc.) seem to want to believe it, the latter going so far as to market it as such.
The points you make as per it having poor graphics and utilizing IE usher home that sentiment. In all honesty, this article should be on the Slashdot front page or Ask Slashdot instead of further misleading consumers.
called Project Entropia (except for the chick, of course ^_-.)
Another start-up that's much more interesting than There.
The author mentioned Second Life on page three, which is also where the crux of the review lies.
I haven't played Second Life (though I have been accepted into the beta), it seems to offer a lot more gameplay than There does, and looks to be a more innovative title, offering users the ability to edit their world, and create any object they can imagine, given they're adapt and patient enough to work with their rudimentary 3d modeling tools.
Wouldn't that make starting the arguement/discussion with the Nazi comparison create some sort of opposite effect?
Something like... I don't know... satire?
Hot chick? I could have sworn that was the dude from 3rd Rock From the Sun.
My friend and I were able to try out the N-Gage at E3, as well as several games for it (some of which have been released and some not). Even before the system had launched and they were showing it for the first time to a wealth of gamers and industry people, the representatives were told by many people (us included) that the system just wasn't userfriendly and that the games were sorely under-par.
Red Faction: Truly awful. There's just no way to port a PS2 game to a hand-held console. While it does look vaguely like its papa, Red Faction plays like a... well, it doesn't really play. It runs at something like 10 FPS... until you try to use a weapon, and then it drops to about 1 FPS. Seriously, it's more like a crappy slideshow of a game.
There's hardly a point in executing tricks when everything looks like a blob of pixels regardless.
The narrow screen made it annoying to play, and graphically the levels were sparse and boring.
Their failure is most definatly not from lack of pre-release information. I guess they decided that they knew what we wanted more than we did. Miyamoto can pull that off occasionally, but let's not press out luck...
I'm very suprised that the original PSO didn't have higher numbers. I believe it sold somewhere in the range of 250,000 copies, and was quite popular back when it was first released.
Planet Harrier.
One character was a rock star with a guitar, the other was a nurse with a hypodermic needle. And you thought N20 was the only shooter with drug references...
In fact, it's an interesting game to play nowadays, since nothing quite like it is out there anymore; the 3D rail shooter is not a genre that's boomed over the years. (Rez and Panzer Dragoon Orta, the only other entries in recent memories, are also Sega products.)
Space Harrier is hardly an rail shooter, as you move around your character and not mearly your targeting area. This fundimental difference makes Space Harrier an offensive game where as rail shooters are largely a defensive affair. The only game(s) in recent memory to adopt this forward progressing shooter style has been the Iridion 3D games for GBA.
Maybe this little rant has placed me in the category of gamer that the reviewer mentioned in the first paragraph, ever obsessed over minute details...
Having played (and mocked) several instances of the There beta, I have to contend that this news story is even in the right place. There is not a game: there is no score, there is no goal, there is no point. There is merely a chatroom with avatars, vehicles, and pointless crap you can fritter away your money on. Would you call Habbo Hotel a "game," because it's the same thing that There is doing, at what I assume is a fraction of the cost.
If you want the very best example of this, you need not look any further than SCEI's Ico, a brilliantly designed game that clocks in well under 10 hours (most complete it in 6-8 hours of game time in their first run through). While most review outfits gave Ico very high scores, the one stand out complaint that the non-100% scores were that the game was "too short."
While it seems plausable that game reviewers would have oodles of time on their hands to play games for hours and hours, most regular gamers have around 5-20 hours a week to devote to games, in a world that is constantly releasing more and more "must-have" games into our hands. With that rationale, why would one deny themselves an amazing gaming experience that would allow you to prospectively beat a game in enough time that you can actually remember the beginning of the game enough for the whole thing to make sense in the end, let alone beat it at all?
I cannot tell you how many times that I've heard that question, and immediatly perked up, even when not playing the game. It's so ingrained in my psyche and language that it's become even an inside joke with a friend, quoting it with the same intonation as the guards in the game.
Left out because they either suck (Raiden) or would kick everyone's ass (basically everyone else in the Metal Gear universe)
...or laughable?
geez, kids these days...