Symphony of the Night and Aria of Sorrow (the best Metroid-style CVs) wouldn't make the list however, not because they aren't great but because Metroid's already there, having pioneered their innovation years ahead of time.
Castlevania introduced on-the-fly variable difficulty (RPG-style levelling system) and moderately independent computer-controlled allies (familiars), as well as demonstrating how a wide range of playstyles, including dozens of very different weapons, fighting game-style magic attacks, and even multiple different character transformations could work well together. It not only introduced a lot of new things to the 2D sidescroller, but is arguably still ahead of its time, because even the new Castlevania GBA games haven't demonstrated the same depth and wide range of play styles that Symphony of the Night did.
Not only should SotN have been in that list, but it should've been displayed very prominently. The creators of modern 2D sidescrollers still haven't learned many of the lessons that it had to offer, nor have they created anything that's half as ambitious.
No one found the entry "Thunderbolt (Colonel)" interesting? Colonel Roy Campbell, much like Revolver Ocelot, would've been a young man in the 1960s, and he probably would've been a military man since the age of 18. And it's not unlikely that someone overseeing a highly secret military group (Foxhound) would've been a former member, probably with his own codename...
Then again, Campbell never seemed to regard Revolver Ocelot with any suspicion while Ocelot was a legitimate member of Foxhound, so there would be kind of a continuity gap there.
La Pucelle isn't a sequel to Disgaea, it was created and released before Disgaea in Japan and they're unconnected (though Pucelle is supposed to make a cameo in Disgaea, I haven't seen her).
In the last few chapters of Disgaea, options will open up in the Dark Congress that allow you to enter a series of hidden worlds. The really, really high level ones that I can't even get to yet contain some La Pucelle characters. You have to have an obscenely high level though, so in order to get them, I'd go straight to GameFAQs as soon as you beat the story portion of the game.
"Windwaker to be cel-shaded," we whined. "I'd rather the original Zelda any day, but they won't sell it to me!"
Now Nintendo is offering its old games in a variety of formats. What happens? More whining. First, we whine that it's only releasing them in Japan. "Bring them stateside!"
Now they bring it stateside. "They aren't selling it cheap enough," we whine. "They should be bundling more together," we whine. And worst of all, "they already gave this to us free!"
Please do not make the mistake of thinking that all English-speaking gamers are some sort of multi-headed squealing beast that changes its mind every few minutes. Many people asked for these rereleases and now many people are complaining about the price, but they aren't necessarily the same people. The community of English-speaking gamers is one of millions, not a handful, and even just Slashdot Games probably has hundreds or more.
not to troll, but this seems a little fishy. not the fact that they are being released, but the quote from kaplin. she is always well spoken, and that quote is out of character. plus the box art is off. take a good look at that dk box. since when is luigi taking on dk?
I believe that Perrin Kaplin was simply making a joke, using lame '80s slang to kick off their new retro release. This either soared far over the head of the IGN writer or they simply forgot to point out the joke.
Surelly you could still access the data and copy it onto another Hard disk, burn it to CD or copy it to a USB pen by running Knoppix.
The "first few sectors --- making the machine unbootable" part appears to be an error. According to most of the virus reports, it actually detects a random physical disk and writes 64k of data to a random location every time it finishes sending a set of 20,000 packets. Eventually, its random target ends up being the boot sector, but by that time the machine is fubar anyway.
I haven't seen the videos yet, but the way you describe it doesn't seem that inventive. In Ultima Online, when you die, you become a ghost and have to wonder around and look for a healer to bring you back to life. Once brought back to life, you can go back to your corpse and grab your stuff, assuming someone else hasn't looted it.
According to the design plan for WoW's final death system, dying will resurrect you as a ghost in a complete "ghost world", which will look slightly different from the normal world and be populated by not only your fellow ghost players, but also ghost NPCs, some of which can send you on ghost quests. In other words, they're trying to make it interesting enough that you not only won't mind dying, but you'll be interested in dying in new and different places, and will often be convinced to stay there and hang out for awhile if you don't have anything better to do. Also, if I remember correctly, they're also thinking about giving some classes the ability to see ghosts while using certain spells, which would let them interact with both worlds simultaneously.
Blizzard seems to be planning on having a few of these "alternate worlds" (so to speak) by making separate areas that certain players can only visit under certain circumstances. In addition to the ghost world and the basic separation between Horde and Alliance cities, the underwater areas are another semi-restricted area. The Undead are the only ones that can hang out underwater unassisted, which means that there will be plenty of them under there, but Warlocks (the wizards of evil and death and such) of all races will be able to cast a spell that lets them and their friends travel underwater.
So yeah, the ghost thing is an old idea, but in typical Blizzard fashion, they've polished it into something much more complex and useful.
Well, you sum up one of the problems with MMORPGs - when everyone is a hero, no one is a hero.
This is absolutely not true. There is no logical reason, besides laziness, for why MMORPG characters take thousands of hours and dozens of levels to be anything like what Cloud or Squall are in the first few minutes of a console RPG. Console RPGs start you off with a reasonably powerful, flexible character and let you eventually become a God of War. MMORPGs start you off with the sort of character that a Peon from Warcraft could beat the crap out of in two seconds and then let you, over the course of many months, develop a reasonably powerful, flexible character... i.e., Cloud and Squall at Level 1.
This is why I actually have some hope for World of Warcraft. The previews and now the beta writeups have given me a lot of hope for the game, because they show that you can actually start with a character who is reasonably powerful and flexible. One writer on Warbucket.com explained how, over the course of just five hours, he attained a character with a decent ranged attack spell, a must-have defensive spell, a DOT (Damage Over Time) spell, and a cool little minion who is perpetually on fire. All that, and now he's only a few hours away from having another pet, which is a hulking mass of shadows that can fight for him and act as a meat shield. He's not a god, but he has a lot more flexibility than the Star Wars Galaxies players, who had to wait many months just to get a lightsaber and some basic force powers. This is the way that it SHOULD be, with the developers taking the time to design and balance a happy medium between a world of worthless, bored peons and a world of immortal super-gods.
It's the same with most games. People keep saying "This game sucks worse than anything else I have ever played! I should know, I play it 24/7!". One can only speculate as to why people keep playing games they allegedly hate so much...
The same reason people complain about tons of other things that they still use every day: They're problems, but not deal breakers. For instance, DirecTV does a lot of things that annoy me. They force well over one hundred pay-per-view advertisement channels onto my service, they send me "mail" that causes the green mail light to light up, but the mail is never anything more than pay-per-view advertisements, and they leave channels that are inaccessible in my channel list just so I'll see their little advertisement that tells me that I could have the channel if I paid more. All of it is very annoying and I've definitely griped about it a couple of times. But am I going back to cable? Hell no. It's still WAY better than cable, and even though those little problems are annoying, the rest of the service is still excellent.
That's probably the same way it works with Star Wars Galaxies. Most of the people that complain about the way Jedis are implemented are probably still enjoying the other fighting classes a whole lot. That enjoyment is enough to keep them playing, even though they wish the game were a little more polished.
Will there ever be a speed run record for people who play through getting the bare minimum items? At least in the Metroid games, you don't need to get all the items especially considering with 100% you'd end up with over 100 missles and 1000 energy..
Just as a quick side note, the new Metroid game, Metroid: Zero Mission for the GBA, has special endings for players that beat the game with 15% or less on Normal or Hard mode. So at the very least, the games' developers are taking notice of the players that try those runs.
What do you think of hardware manufacturers locking in games to certain platforms, whether a territorial decision or a universal one?
In the case of territorial decisions, I think that all it does is convince the average person to ask their friend (or friend of a friend, or friend of a friend of a friend, etc.), "So, that whole pirating games thing... how do I do that?"
These game companies bitch endlessly to lawmakers and the press in multiple nations that mod chips, piracy, and imported games are ruining their industry, but then they go and make decisions that give more of their customers a reason to stab to them in the back just to get the products they want. Sony Europe may make a quick buck on these deals, but when Microsoft's European branch secures a similar deal, more people will be convinced to mod chip their PS2s, and then Sony Europe's money will start flowing to Sony America or Sony Japan. And then they'll whine more about mod chips, but this time it won't just be the fault of Sony as a whole for setting up a business model that is hurt by imports. It will be Sony Europe's fault, specifically, for ruining their own market.
The PC game industry already has a problem with piracy that is, in large part, their own damn fault. Their copy protection mechanisms have ruined their games on certain systems and they've annoyed the Hell out of all of their customers by making them jump through hoops just to enjoy their games. So more average, normally law-abiding PC gamers go out and get cracks for their own games, which puts more bandwidth in the game crack torrents and more copies of the cracks in people's P2P folders, which makes it much easier for the people that are just flat-out pirating the game. Now Sony Europe has figured out a way to give that same "I'm getting screwed, so I can do what I want now" justification to console gamers. And they will pay for it.
The more hoops European gamers have to jump through to play their favorite games, the fewer hoops they'll have to jump through to pirate them. It's the simple supply and demand principle of game piracy.
I really wish that one of these days, a reporter from a mainstream news outlet would actually do their own reporting on the topic of game ratings instead of deferring to some parental group that tries its best to distort the facts. If an unbiased observer took a serious look at the ESRB ratings, they would realize that the inaccuracy goes both ways.
The ratings aren't just applied loosely, which infers that certain game publishers might be getting favors from the ESRB or that the ESRB just has a vested interest in stamping an "M" on fewer games every year. The ratings are just applied inaccurately all across the board. This article mentions all of the cases where the ratings were applied too loosely, but what about where they're applied too harshly? Ico, for instance, is rated Teen. Anyone that has actually played the game knows that that's like stamping a PG-13 on The Lion King or The Never-Ending Story. It's ludicrous, but it's done because the ESRB only looks at selected scenes from the games that they rate, and someone in this case looked at the ONE moment where there is any blood or violence in the game and said, "Oh, no, this isn't for kids." And the same applies to Maximo. Maximo is also rated Teen, but the entire game is cartoonish. It's probably less violent than the Spider-Man cartoons from the '90s and it's certainly no darker than Count Duckula.
A lot of stuff falls through the cracks at the ESRB, but it's not just in favor of the game companies. The inaccuracy goes both ways.
There *ARE* significant world problems around today which don't get solved because of passive, spectator, 'entertainment-centric' societies which refuse to take responsibility for such things...
Its something the Romans taught us. Or, some of us. Kind of.
What the Romans, at their lowest points, have to teach us is that not all time should be spent on entertaining one's self. This should not be confused, however, with the idea that zero time should be spent on entertainment. Human beings need at least SOME time for entertainment or they become burned-out husks that cannot do half the work of a healthy individual. And if all entertainment is, as we both agree, wanking, then I don't see the point in saying that one wanking technique is better or worse than another.
And I seriously doubt that you spend absolutely no time entertaining yourself. Or, at the very least, I don't see how your time spent in this forum tackles any significant world problem or takes responsibility for absolutely anything of worth.
Whatever, if you're having fun, you're having fun... but it doesn't take long until you start to realize that using a computer for video games is little more than wanking. And, everyone knows that the energy you use for that is usually better spent elsewhere...;)
Just get over it, is my advice. You don't have to be a gamer to enjoy life. You can enjoy life without getting involved in any 'virtual realities', and if you're feeling that, then go with it... your life will get better as a result of not playing video games as a habit...
The thing is, your little rant doesn't just apply to video games. It applies to ALL passive entertainment, i.e. anything that doesn't produce something. So, do you also abstain from television, music, movies, sports, board games, and idle chit-chat? Because if you don't, you're just wanking with your other hand. You're still just wasting your time, not doing anything productive. At least from your stand-point.
No, seriously. Do they have articles that aren't divided up into lists? Seven Deadly Sins Of The N-Gage, Ten Portables That Aren't The Game Boy, 50 Games That We're Really Sorry We Gave Huge-Ass Review Scores To... Do their advertisers force them to do this or something?
This is a phase that everyone goes through. Either because of something in your life (often something subtle) or just a batch of mediocre games that temporarily sour your opinion of the entire medium, you stop playing games for awhile. I did the same thing when I was around 17. I stopped playing games for about a year or two straight and missed out on most of the interesting games that were released for the original PlayStation. But it wasn't a part of "growing up", "putting away childish things", or some other moronic platitude that non-gamers would give you. It's just a temporary change in the way you choose to entertain yourself.
This is something that we all do on a regular basis, but we don't really notice it until it strikes a medium that we actually care about. Personally, there was a time when I watched at least a couple of movies on DVD every week, burning through them at about the same rate as most regulars buyers/renters do. But now I haven't watched a movie on DVD in a good three months or so, but I haven't even noticed it. Why? Because I don't visit six or seven movie sites a day, but I do visit Insert Credit, GameSpot, Video Fenky, GAF, The Magic Box, Penny Arcade, and Slashdot Games just about every day. If you're actually posting on this site, then I'm guessing that you have a pretty similar set of sites that you visit.
I'm guessing that you'll pick up something really good in about a year or two and then you'll be addicted again just like the rest of us. But then again, if you really are of the mentality that "games are kids stuff", then maybe you'll deprive yourself of them forever. I really don't see how Metal Gear Solid or Knights of the Old Republic are any more childish than any of the TV shows or movies that I watch, but that's just me. Maybe that's why I really don't see myself abstaining from video games as I grow up any more than I see myself suddenly abstaining from television, movies, or music.
Gaming gloves are actually a very old idea. Back in the NES/SNES days, several third party accessory manufacturers sold thick fingerless gloves with some kind of material on the palms to improve your grip. I think it was originally supposed to save you some hand pain while using controllers designs that had sharp edges, such as the original NES controller, but they continued through into the 16-bit era as a tool for reducing hand sweat.
They seemed to die out around the PlayStation's debut, though, and for a reason that still mystifies me: For some reason, my hands never sweat while using the Dual Shock controller. In fact, I can't remember any of my friends having to stop and wipe their hands off on their pants during a gaming session since that time.
Oh yeah buy someone somthing that will show my compassion....try volunteering some time, don't get me wrong in-lieu of doing nothing, tossing some cash at the problem is better, but that doesn't show compassion, just guilt...
Where will you be spending your Thanksgiving day ?
Charities all across the country and the world need both your time AND your money. They need volunteers, but they also need funding for the supplies that the volunteers will be working with, regardless of whether it's food, medicine, or just entertainment for hospitalized children. Without money, the time spent by volunteers is pointless, so if that's all you can give, then there's nothing wrong with that.
I'm surprised that so few people mentioned the two main reasons why random battles really suck:
1) They're boring and easy. Classic Final Fantasy-style gameplay offers you nothing but using the same attacks over and over to defeat enemies that can be easily slaughted by nothing more than the Attack/Fight option. Because they have no depth or challenge, they're just a momentary distraction from the boss fights that you're looking forward to. Contrast this with Final Fantasy Tactics. Hardly anyone complains about the random battles in that game, even though you can rack up quite a few of them on your first playthrough to get past Dorter Trade City, Queklain, or Velius. This is because they actually offer some depth. Different terrain, different heights, different groupings and pairings of soldiers (most of which are very different from one another, because they share the same enormous Job System that you do) and monsters. There's enough depth there to make you think about skipping the random battle, but then think, "Holy shit, Ninja Army!" or "I wonder what Phantom Time Mages do..." If the combat in traditional console RPGs like Final Fantasy or Suikoden games had this kind of depth, no one would want to skip the random battles.
2) The other, minor problem: Time delay. Each random battle has a startup animation, a victory animation, an experience screen, and then another animation to transition you back to the world. Combine this with the fact that there are usually ten to twenty random battles (at least?) per dungeon and that's a lot of delay. If the monsters just jumped out and then the game switched to battle mode right there in real time, no one would mind. When most players play RPGs, you'll hear a whole lot more groaning and bitching from them during the long startup and ending animations than during the random battle itself.
I guess the real problem is that random battles don't HAVE to suck, especially because of the added muscle that the PS2, GameCube, and Xbox have to handle magic and summoning animations alongside the normal game world instead of in the plain box that your characters fight in in Final Fantasy VII or other PS1 RPGs... but for some reason, they still do.
From your description the game your wife was playing sounds a lot like "Breath of Fire" for the SNES. It was developed by Squaresoft, and I believe Capcom published it.
Or Megaman Battle Network. Or Final Fantasy VIII. Or several other RPGs. Kinda hard to tell with so little information.
I can't say that I am familiar with many titles from Japan that are not written for the US market. Is this common or am I unique?
As someone who has never heard of Final Fantasy, Tekken, Soul Calibur, or the names "Sega" or "Nintendo"... yes, you're unique. Not just among gamers, but among Americans, Europeans, Asians, and possibly even your entire species.
It already has failed with little or no info told about it. Looks like another game boy clone with little to no games. But did you know you can
mp3 player surf the net and its a phone
Now that sound a tad better when you see the $300 price tag for what looks to be nothing but another GB. They should put out some better commercial fast if they want to sell them.
People pay $300 for a reg phone that can do most of that but without the cool color games.
Everyone already knows about all of this and it's certainly been pointed out in Nokia's larger print ads. The problem is that thanks to every video game magazine, TV show, web board, and chat room in North America, most gamers also know about all of its crippling problems. Taking the battery out just to swap games is annoying, the vertical screen ruins Sonic N and Pandemonium because sidescrollers don't work well on vertical screens, the small screen ruins Tomb Raider because you can't see very much around you (such as the secret passageways or exits that are hidden somewhere in the room), the screen's colors ruin Puyo Pop because you can't really differentiate between colors like light blue and light purple, "Sidetalkin'" looks stupid and is very uncomfortable, the buttons are poorly made and laid out, and those design flaws still cost $100 more than the GBA and much more than the average cellphone if you buy the N-Gage from EB or GameStop, because most people buy their phones with a fat discount provided by their cellphone service.
In short, the problem with the N-Gage is that most gamers comparison shop when they're buying a game system, especially a very expensive niche system like this one, and the N-Gage just doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Almost every gaming magazine and review site will tell you to buy something -- ANYTHING -- else.
On the unfortunate side, on the PS2 Sega is apparently mimicking EA's policy of not allowing online play of older games once new versions come out. I suspect that Sega figures they can't compete yearly with EA if they don't follow the same upgrade/online policy. AFAIK, Xbox Live policy prevents companies from doing this to customers (one of the big sticking points with getting EA on board with XBL).
Considering that Sega has been on the rocks financially since a year or so before the Dreamcast ceased production, isn't it likely that Sega is just moving the older servers over to the new games because they can't afford to maintain a larger and larger number of servers every year? They can't risk running out of servers (or coming anywhere near that) because it would immediately crush their franchises, so if they wanted to have full support for older versions of all of their software, then they would have to add more and more servers every year as a precaution, which would directly cut into their already lackluster profits. Sega has tried to be really nice about this and kept the Dreamcast SegaNet servers up for long after both the system and its games were no longer being produced, so I don't think you can really lump them in with EA, who is turning a profit and has some of the largest resources in the gaming industry outside of Microsoft or Sony, but is still screwing you over.
Ever since I caught the dreaded (-1 Flamebait) mod I have been trying to be more openminded, but I am having trouble with this statement... Microsoft: "Dudes, how about you release GTA3 on the X-Box with FULL MULTIPLAYER SUPPORT!" Rockstar: "Cool, Bill G-man. We got some wicked ideas for the interface, we are going to do it all with 3D vegetables and #$$%^ that rotate and spin and rap like Jay Z. And to logon to the internet and #%%$, the players don't press any buttons, but they have to stand on the controller and %$#@ man!" Microsoft: "Um, no. You guys need to use the standard interface." Rockstar: "THEN $$%$%#@# that MAN! We are gonna take our #$%%# to Sony!" (Rockstar takes GTA3 to Sony, and due to feelings of rejection doesn't even bring up the mulitplater component of GTA3) Bring on the -5 mods...
This sarcastic analogy would make sense if it weren't for the fact that it's already happened. EA told Microsoft that they wanted to make their own system for Xbox online games and not join up with Xbox Live. When Microsoft told EA that they wouldn't allow any online games on the Xbox that didn't use Live, EA just stripped the online capability out of all of their Xbox titles, including the multiplatform ones, and now all of the comparisons of EA's multiplatform games read, "Reasons to buy the Xbox version: Better graphics, better sound; Reasons to buy the PS2 version: Online play".
Who wants to bet he wouldn't have said "ergo" if it wasn't for the whole Architect conversation in Maxtrix: Reloaded?:-)
This is obviously correct, because as we all know, professional writers learn most of their vocabulary from movies. Their writing skills and their profession are a complete coincidence, just like strong people doing construction work or people that know what the word "antibiotic" means having the legal license to prescribe them.
Slashdot Mirror
Symphony of the Night and Aria of Sorrow (the best Metroid-style CVs) wouldn't make the list however, not because they aren't great but because Metroid's already there, having pioneered their innovation years ahead of time.
Castlevania introduced on-the-fly variable difficulty (RPG-style levelling system) and moderately independent computer-controlled allies (familiars), as well as demonstrating how a wide range of playstyles, including dozens of very different weapons, fighting game-style magic attacks, and even multiple different character transformations could work well together. It not only introduced a lot of new things to the 2D sidescroller, but is arguably still ahead of its time, because even the new Castlevania GBA games haven't demonstrated the same depth and wide range of play styles that Symphony of the Night did.
Not only should SotN have been in that list, but it should've been displayed very prominently. The creators of modern 2D sidescrollers still haven't learned many of the lessons that it had to offer, nor have they created anything that's half as ambitious.
No one found the entry "Thunderbolt (Colonel)" interesting? Colonel Roy Campbell, much like Revolver Ocelot, would've been a young man in the 1960s, and he probably would've been a military man since the age of 18. And it's not unlikely that someone overseeing a highly secret military group (Foxhound) would've been a former member, probably with his own codename...
Then again, Campbell never seemed to regard Revolver Ocelot with any suspicion while Ocelot was a legitimate member of Foxhound, so there would be kind of a continuity gap there.
La Pucelle isn't a sequel to Disgaea, it was created and released before Disgaea in Japan and they're unconnected (though Pucelle is supposed to make a cameo in Disgaea, I haven't seen her).
In the last few chapters of Disgaea, options will open up in the Dark Congress that allow you to enter a series of hidden worlds. The really, really high level ones that I can't even get to yet contain some La Pucelle characters. You have to have an obscenely high level though, so in order to get them, I'd go straight to GameFAQs as soon as you beat the story portion of the game.
"Windwaker to be cel-shaded," we whined. "I'd rather the original Zelda any day, but they won't sell it to me!"
Now Nintendo is offering its old games in a variety of formats. What happens? More whining. First, we whine that it's only releasing them in Japan. "Bring them stateside!"
Now they bring it stateside. "They aren't selling it cheap enough," we whine. "They should be bundling more together," we whine. And worst of all, "they already gave this to us free!"
Please do not make the mistake of thinking that all English-speaking gamers are some sort of multi-headed squealing beast that changes its mind every few minutes. Many people asked for these rereleases and now many people are complaining about the price, but they aren't necessarily the same people. The community of English-speaking gamers is one of millions, not a handful, and even just Slashdot Games probably has hundreds or more.
not to troll, but this seems a little fishy. not the fact that they are being released, but the quote from kaplin. she is always well spoken, and that quote is out of character. plus the box art is off. take a good look at that dk box. since when is luigi taking on dk?
I believe that Perrin Kaplin was simply making a joke, using lame '80s slang to kick off their new retro release. This either soared far over the head of the IGN writer or they simply forgot to point out the joke.
Surelly you could still access the data and copy it onto another Hard disk, burn it to CD or copy it to a USB pen by running Knoppix.
The "first few sectors --- making the machine unbootable" part appears to be an error. According to most of the virus reports, it actually detects a random physical disk and writes 64k of data to a random location every time it finishes sending a set of 20,000 packets. Eventually, its random target ends up being the boot sector, but by that time the machine is fubar anyway.
I haven't seen the videos yet, but the way you describe it doesn't seem that inventive. In Ultima Online, when you die, you become a ghost and have to wonder around and look for a healer to bring you back to life. Once brought back to life, you can go back to your corpse and grab your stuff, assuming someone else hasn't looted it.
According to the design plan for WoW's final death system, dying will resurrect you as a ghost in a complete "ghost world", which will look slightly different from the normal world and be populated by not only your fellow ghost players, but also ghost NPCs, some of which can send you on ghost quests. In other words, they're trying to make it interesting enough that you not only won't mind dying, but you'll be interested in dying in new and different places, and will often be convinced to stay there and hang out for awhile if you don't have anything better to do. Also, if I remember correctly, they're also thinking about giving some classes the ability to see ghosts while using certain spells, which would let them interact with both worlds simultaneously.
Blizzard seems to be planning on having a few of these "alternate worlds" (so to speak) by making separate areas that certain players can only visit under certain circumstances. In addition to the ghost world and the basic separation between Horde and Alliance cities, the underwater areas are another semi-restricted area. The Undead are the only ones that can hang out underwater unassisted, which means that there will be plenty of them under there, but Warlocks (the wizards of evil and death and such) of all races will be able to cast a spell that lets them and their friends travel underwater.
So yeah, the ghost thing is an old idea, but in typical Blizzard fashion, they've polished it into something much more complex and useful.
Well, you sum up one of the problems with MMORPGs - when everyone is a hero, no one is a hero.
This is absolutely not true. There is no logical reason, besides laziness, for why MMORPG characters take thousands of hours and dozens of levels to be anything like what Cloud or Squall are in the first few minutes of a console RPG. Console RPGs start you off with a reasonably powerful, flexible character and let you eventually become a God of War. MMORPGs start you off with the sort of character that a Peon from Warcraft could beat the crap out of in two seconds and then let you, over the course of many months, develop a reasonably powerful, flexible character... i.e., Cloud and Squall at Level 1.
This is why I actually have some hope for World of Warcraft. The previews and now the beta writeups have given me a lot of hope for the game, because they show that you can actually start with a character who is reasonably powerful and flexible. One writer on Warbucket.com explained how, over the course of just five hours, he attained a character with a decent ranged attack spell, a must-have defensive spell, a DOT (Damage Over Time) spell, and a cool little minion who is perpetually on fire. All that, and now he's only a few hours away from having another pet, which is a hulking mass of shadows that can fight for him and act as a meat shield. He's not a god, but he has a lot more flexibility than the Star Wars Galaxies players, who had to wait many months just to get a lightsaber and some basic force powers. This is the way that it SHOULD be, with the developers taking the time to design and balance a happy medium between a world of worthless, bored peons and a world of immortal super-gods.
It's the same with most games. People keep saying "This game sucks worse than anything else I have ever played! I should know, I play it 24/7!". One can only speculate as to why people keep playing games they allegedly hate so much...
The same reason people complain about tons of other things that they still use every day: They're problems, but not deal breakers. For instance, DirecTV does a lot of things that annoy me. They force well over one hundred pay-per-view advertisement channels onto my service, they send me "mail" that causes the green mail light to light up, but the mail is never anything more than pay-per-view advertisements, and they leave channels that are inaccessible in my channel list just so I'll see their little advertisement that tells me that I could have the channel if I paid more. All of it is very annoying and I've definitely griped about it a couple of times. But am I going back to cable? Hell no. It's still WAY better than cable, and even though those little problems are annoying, the rest of the service is still excellent.
That's probably the same way it works with Star Wars Galaxies. Most of the people that complain about the way Jedis are implemented are probably still enjoying the other fighting classes a whole lot. That enjoyment is enough to keep them playing, even though they wish the game were a little more polished.
Will there ever be a speed run record for people who play through getting the bare minimum items? At least in the Metroid games, you don't need to get all the items especially considering with 100% you'd end up with over 100 missles and 1000 energy..
Just as a quick side note, the new Metroid game, Metroid: Zero Mission for the GBA, has special endings for players that beat the game with 15% or less on Normal or Hard mode. So at the very least, the games' developers are taking notice of the players that try those runs.
What do you think of hardware manufacturers locking in games to certain platforms, whether a territorial decision or a universal one?
In the case of territorial decisions, I think that all it does is convince the average person to ask their friend (or friend of a friend, or friend of a friend of a friend, etc.), "So, that whole pirating games thing... how do I do that?"
These game companies bitch endlessly to lawmakers and the press in multiple nations that mod chips, piracy, and imported games are ruining their industry, but then they go and make decisions that give more of their customers a reason to stab to them in the back just to get the products they want. Sony Europe may make a quick buck on these deals, but when Microsoft's European branch secures a similar deal, more people will be convinced to mod chip their PS2s, and then Sony Europe's money will start flowing to Sony America or Sony Japan. And then they'll whine more about mod chips, but this time it won't just be the fault of Sony as a whole for setting up a business model that is hurt by imports. It will be Sony Europe's fault, specifically, for ruining their own market.
The PC game industry already has a problem with piracy that is, in large part, their own damn fault. Their copy protection mechanisms have ruined their games on certain systems and they've annoyed the Hell out of all of their customers by making them jump through hoops just to enjoy their games. So more average, normally law-abiding PC gamers go out and get cracks for their own games, which puts more bandwidth in the game crack torrents and more copies of the cracks in people's P2P folders, which makes it much easier for the people that are just flat-out pirating the game. Now Sony Europe has figured out a way to give that same "I'm getting screwed, so I can do what I want now" justification to console gamers. And they will pay for it.
The more hoops European gamers have to jump through to play their favorite games, the fewer hoops they'll have to jump through to pirate them. It's the simple supply and demand principle of game piracy.
I really wish that one of these days, a reporter from a mainstream news outlet would actually do their own reporting on the topic of game ratings instead of deferring to some parental group that tries its best to distort the facts. If an unbiased observer took a serious look at the ESRB ratings, they would realize that the inaccuracy goes both ways.
The ratings aren't just applied loosely, which infers that certain game publishers might be getting favors from the ESRB or that the ESRB just has a vested interest in stamping an "M" on fewer games every year. The ratings are just applied inaccurately all across the board. This article mentions all of the cases where the ratings were applied too loosely, but what about where they're applied too harshly? Ico, for instance, is rated Teen. Anyone that has actually played the game knows that that's like stamping a PG-13 on The Lion King or The Never-Ending Story. It's ludicrous, but it's done because the ESRB only looks at selected scenes from the games that they rate, and someone in this case looked at the ONE moment where there is any blood or violence in the game and said, "Oh, no, this isn't for kids." And the same applies to Maximo. Maximo is also rated Teen, but the entire game is cartoonish. It's probably less violent than the Spider-Man cartoons from the '90s and it's certainly no darker than Count Duckula.
A lot of stuff falls through the cracks at the ESRB, but it's not just in favor of the game companies. The inaccuracy goes both ways.
There *ARE* significant world problems around today which don't get solved because of passive, spectator, 'entertainment-centric' societies which refuse to take responsibility for such things ...
Its something the Romans taught us. Or, some of us. Kind of.
What the Romans, at their lowest points, have to teach us is that not all time should be spent on entertaining one's self. This should not be confused, however, with the idea that zero time should be spent on entertainment. Human beings need at least SOME time for entertainment or they become burned-out husks that cannot do half the work of a healthy individual. And if all entertainment is, as we both agree, wanking, then I don't see the point in saying that one wanking technique is better or worse than another.
And I seriously doubt that you spend absolutely no time entertaining yourself. Or, at the very least, I don't see how your time spent in this forum tackles any significant world problem or takes responsibility for absolutely anything of worth.
Whatever, if you're having fun, you're having fun... but it doesn't take long until you start to realize that using a computer for video games is little more than wanking. And, everyone knows that the energy you use for that is usually better spent elsewhere ... ;)
... your life will get better as a result of not playing video games as a habit ...
Just get over it, is my advice. You don't have to be a gamer to enjoy life. You can enjoy life without getting involved in any 'virtual realities', and if you're feeling that, then go with it
The thing is, your little rant doesn't just apply to video games. It applies to ALL passive entertainment, i.e. anything that doesn't produce something. So, do you also abstain from television, music, movies, sports, board games, and idle chit-chat? Because if you don't, you're just wanking with your other hand. You're still just wasting your time, not doing anything productive. At least from your stand-point.
No, seriously. Do they have articles that aren't divided up into lists? Seven Deadly Sins Of The N-Gage, Ten Portables That Aren't The Game Boy, 50 Games That We're Really Sorry We Gave Huge-Ass Review Scores To... Do their advertisers force them to do this or something?
This is a phase that everyone goes through. Either because of something in your life (often something subtle) or just a batch of mediocre games that temporarily sour your opinion of the entire medium, you stop playing games for awhile. I did the same thing when I was around 17. I stopped playing games for about a year or two straight and missed out on most of the interesting games that were released for the original PlayStation. But it wasn't a part of "growing up", "putting away childish things", or some other moronic platitude that non-gamers would give you. It's just a temporary change in the way you choose to entertain yourself.
This is something that we all do on a regular basis, but we don't really notice it until it strikes a medium that we actually care about. Personally, there was a time when I watched at least a couple of movies on DVD every week, burning through them at about the same rate as most regulars buyers/renters do. But now I haven't watched a movie on DVD in a good three months or so, but I haven't even noticed it. Why? Because I don't visit six or seven movie sites a day, but I do visit Insert Credit, GameSpot, Video Fenky, GAF, The Magic Box, Penny Arcade, and Slashdot Games just about every day. If you're actually posting on this site, then I'm guessing that you have a pretty similar set of sites that you visit.
I'm guessing that you'll pick up something really good in about a year or two and then you'll be addicted again just like the rest of us. But then again, if you really are of the mentality that "games are kids stuff", then maybe you'll deprive yourself of them forever. I really don't see how Metal Gear Solid or Knights of the Old Republic are any more childish than any of the TV shows or movies that I watch, but that's just me. Maybe that's why I really don't see myself abstaining from video games as I grow up any more than I see myself suddenly abstaining from television, movies, or music.
Gaming gloves are actually a very old idea. Back in the NES/SNES days, several third party accessory manufacturers sold thick fingerless gloves with some kind of material on the palms to improve your grip. I think it was originally supposed to save you some hand pain while using controllers designs that had sharp edges, such as the original NES controller, but they continued through into the 16-bit era as a tool for reducing hand sweat.
They seemed to die out around the PlayStation's debut, though, and for a reason that still mystifies me: For some reason, my hands never sweat while using the Dual Shock controller. In fact, I can't remember any of my friends having to stop and wipe their hands off on their pants during a gaming session since that time.
Oh yeah buy someone somthing that will show my compassion....try volunteering some time, don't get me wrong in-lieu of doing nothing, tossing some cash at the problem is better, but that doesn't show compassion, just guilt...
Where will you be spending your Thanksgiving day ?
Charities all across the country and the world need both your time AND your money. They need volunteers, but they also need funding for the supplies that the volunteers will be working with, regardless of whether it's food, medicine, or just entertainment for hospitalized children. Without money, the time spent by volunteers is pointless, so if that's all you can give, then there's nothing wrong with that.
I'm surprised that so few people mentioned the two main reasons why random battles really suck:
1) They're boring and easy. Classic Final Fantasy-style gameplay offers you nothing but using the same attacks over and over to defeat enemies that can be easily slaughted by nothing more than the Attack/Fight option. Because they have no depth or challenge, they're just a momentary distraction from the boss fights that you're looking forward to. Contrast this with Final Fantasy Tactics. Hardly anyone complains about the random battles in that game, even though you can rack up quite a few of them on your first playthrough to get past Dorter Trade City, Queklain, or Velius. This is because they actually offer some depth. Different terrain, different heights, different groupings and pairings of soldiers (most of which are very different from one another, because they share the same enormous Job System that you do) and monsters. There's enough depth there to make you think about skipping the random battle, but then think, "Holy shit, Ninja Army!" or "I wonder what Phantom Time Mages do..." If the combat in traditional console RPGs like Final Fantasy or Suikoden games had this kind of depth, no one would want to skip the random battles.
2) The other, minor problem: Time delay. Each random battle has a startup animation, a victory animation, an experience screen, and then another animation to transition you back to the world. Combine this with the fact that there are usually ten to twenty random battles (at least?) per dungeon and that's a lot of delay. If the monsters just jumped out and then the game switched to battle mode right there in real time, no one would mind. When most players play RPGs, you'll hear a whole lot more groaning and bitching from them during the long startup and ending animations than during the random battle itself.
I guess the real problem is that random battles don't HAVE to suck, especially because of the added muscle that the PS2, GameCube, and Xbox have to handle magic and summoning animations alongside the normal game world instead of in the plain box that your characters fight in in Final Fantasy VII or other PS1 RPGs... but for some reason, they still do.
From your description the game your wife was playing sounds a lot like "Breath of Fire" for the SNES. It was developed by Squaresoft, and I believe Capcom published it.
Or Megaman Battle Network. Or Final Fantasy VIII. Or several other RPGs. Kinda hard to tell with so little information.
I can't say that I am familiar with many titles from Japan that are not written for the US market. Is this common or am I unique?
As someone who has never heard of Final Fantasy, Tekken, Soul Calibur, or the names "Sega" or "Nintendo"... yes, you're unique. Not just among gamers, but among Americans, Europeans, Asians, and possibly even your entire species.
N-Gage fails from lack of hype.
It already has failed with little or no info told about it. Looks like another game boy clone with little to no games. But did you know you can
mp3 player
surf the net
and its a phone
Now that sound a tad better when you see the $300 price tag for what looks to be nothing but another GB. They should put out some better commercial fast if they want to sell them.
People pay $300 for a reg phone that can do most of that but without the cool color games.
Everyone already knows about all of this and it's certainly been pointed out in Nokia's larger print ads. The problem is that thanks to every video game magazine, TV show, web board, and chat room in North America, most gamers also know about all of its crippling problems. Taking the battery out just to swap games is annoying, the vertical screen ruins Sonic N and Pandemonium because sidescrollers don't work well on vertical screens, the small screen ruins Tomb Raider because you can't see very much around you (such as the secret passageways or exits that are hidden somewhere in the room), the screen's colors ruin Puyo Pop because you can't really differentiate between colors like light blue and light purple, "Sidetalkin'" looks stupid and is very uncomfortable, the buttons are poorly made and laid out, and those design flaws still cost $100 more than the GBA and much more than the average cellphone if you buy the N-Gage from EB or GameStop, because most people buy their phones with a fat discount provided by their cellphone service.
In short, the problem with the N-Gage is that most gamers comparison shop when they're buying a game system, especially a very expensive niche system like this one, and the N-Gage just doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Almost every gaming magazine and review site will tell you to buy something -- ANYTHING -- else.
On the unfortunate side, on the PS2 Sega is apparently mimicking EA's policy of not allowing online play of older games once new versions come out. I suspect that Sega figures they can't compete yearly with EA if they don't follow the same upgrade/online policy. AFAIK, Xbox Live policy prevents companies from doing this to customers (one of the big sticking points with getting EA on board with XBL).
Considering that Sega has been on the rocks financially since a year or so before the Dreamcast ceased production, isn't it likely that Sega is just moving the older servers over to the new games because they can't afford to maintain a larger and larger number of servers every year? They can't risk running out of servers (or coming anywhere near that) because it would immediately crush their franchises, so if they wanted to have full support for older versions of all of their software, then they would have to add more and more servers every year as a precaution, which would directly cut into their already lackluster profits. Sega has tried to be really nice about this and kept the Dreamcast SegaNet servers up for long after both the system and its games were no longer being produced, so I don't think you can really lump them in with EA, who is turning a profit and has some of the largest resources in the gaming industry outside of Microsoft or Sony, but is still screwing you over.
Ever since I caught the dreaded (-1 Flamebait) mod I have been trying to be more openminded, but I am having trouble with this statement... Microsoft: "Dudes, how about you release GTA3 on the X-Box with FULL MULTIPLAYER SUPPORT!" Rockstar: "Cool, Bill G-man. We got some wicked ideas for the interface, we are going to do it all with 3D vegetables and #$$%^ that rotate and spin and rap like Jay Z. And to logon to the internet and #%%$, the players don't press any buttons, but they have to stand on the controller and %$#@ man!" Microsoft: "Um, no. You guys need to use the standard interface." Rockstar: "THEN $$%$%#@# that MAN! We are gonna take our #$%%# to Sony!" (Rockstar takes GTA3 to Sony, and due to feelings of rejection doesn't even bring up the mulitplater component of GTA3) Bring on the -5 mods...
This sarcastic analogy would make sense if it weren't for the fact that it's already happened. EA told Microsoft that they wanted to make their own system for Xbox online games and not join up with Xbox Live. When Microsoft told EA that they wouldn't allow any online games on the Xbox that didn't use Live, EA just stripped the online capability out of all of their Xbox titles, including the multiplatform ones, and now all of the comparisons of EA's multiplatform games read, "Reasons to buy the Xbox version: Better graphics, better sound; Reasons to buy the PS2 version: Online play".
"... ergo there are more online games."
:-)
Who wants to bet he wouldn't have said "ergo" if it wasn't for the whole Architect conversation in Maxtrix: Reloaded?
This is obviously correct, because as we all know, professional writers learn most of their vocabulary from movies. Their writing skills and their profession are a complete coincidence, just like strong people doing construction work or people that know what the word "antibiotic" means having the legal license to prescribe them.