Yeah, I worded that a bit harshly. They do update some things. But look at what I wrote: no creative additions to gameplay. That's the thing; they most certainly add to the sound, the ambience and the atmosphere and the presentation, everything looks cooler and more realistic with every new version. Drafting, trading players, etc. But you never get more than subtle tweaks to the gameplay itself, and the gameplay in a sports game is more important than anything else... it IS the game. It's hard to explain just how amazed I was after playing WE6 for an hour or so, but it was really a revelation - it just FEELS like you're down there playing football with those guys, even if they haven't motion-captured David Beckham's every finger movement or lovingly recreated the Camp Nou stadium in 30k polygons. That feeling was something EA had never given me, and probably never will. My point still stands; EA are content with polishing their games up every six months or so and marketing them aggressively - gameplay to the EA mooks is just another small-print bullet point in an overhead presentation on "quarterly revenues".
And since I'm drunk or high something, I wrote Sega when of course I meant Konami. Konami Tokyo are the people behind Winning Eleven/PES, not Sega. Sorry.
You're right, competition IS a good thing, and this move will make a bad situation even worse. EA already has a stranglehold on the sports market and we all know what EA Sports means: rubber-stamp sequels with updated graphics and rosters, licensed pop music, and no creative additions to gameplay since somewhere around 1999. I play mostly footie games, and having played FIFA since 94 or 95 somewhere (before they even went quasi-3d and had real rosters) I used to think that FIFA was as good as it got. That is, until I hit upon Sega's Winning Eleven series while looking for a decent footballer to import for my 'cube. I could understate things by saying that it was an eye-opener, but to be honest it made me realize that EA has been making gobs of money selling absolute shit for quite a while now. It certainly works if you haven't tried anything else, but I can't even play the FIFA series anymore - it's like trying to eat rocks for dinner after getting used to exquisite three-course meals.
Simply put, sports games can be vastly improved with some creativity and innovation, and EA is the one company you can trust to never ever EVER innovate. They've proved time and time again that the only thing they care about is the bottom line: they'll chew through developers and brands like snacks, release what should rightly be patches as add-ons, and sacrifice everything new and creative on the altar of "hey, it sold well enough last time" and glitzy graphics. It's painful to see. And even if this particular competitor made crap games too (haven't played any of their games, so I wouldn't know) it WAS competition. Maybe this makes sense for Sony, but every move that strengthens EA's sports dominance will shaft you - the consumer - in the end.
Yes, that guide to secure scripting was very useful - a "hello world" program. Whoopee. To be frank, that site looked... well, less than professional, and with a name like "uberhacker" I expected their tips to be a little more advanced than "look, you can change the values in a query string but don't tell anyone!!!!11"
That being said, I used to write a lot of PHP (I rarely do it anymore at work, but I still try to keep up with the language) and when I first started out I would have loved a comprehensive and easy-to-understand guide to common security holes. The world needs a simple "how to write security-conscious code" for beginners! The sooner you get to see stuff like SQL injection or XSS in action, the better.
Some choice quotes from the linked interview (thanks to babelfish):
You say that it evolves graphics and should have kept making function complicated "golden law of success" is the collapse red sandal wood. I think Iwata says that design is a natural evolution from graphics, and that the DS will be collapsible and come in a nice wood finish. Bold move, in this age of clean, plastic designs! I had assumed it would look more like the SP, but we all know that big N aren't satisfied with jumping on bandwagons. I agree with Iwata here, the design needs to convey a more adult sense of purpose, so it doesn't have to compete with the GBA.
The creator having suffered hardship 100 times, 100 times it can sell, instead of, in the circumstance that, even even maintenance of the status quo it is difficult, in the former route which wastes time and energy, as for future of the game as for without being it is clear. From this quote, I gather the DS will break easily. Iwata suggests that once you've bought a DS, you'll readily buy 100 more if they keep breaking (indicating that it will be a cheap unit, I suppose). I'm not so sure about this strategy, as Iwata says it will probably be a waste of time and energy to try and repair them yourself - but I'm still concerned about the cost. Time will have to tell on that one.
Very useful information! Hopefully slashdot can keep posting interviews like these. This really helped shed some light on Nintendo's strategy with the DS.
But I'm not going to declare it DOA just yet. Yeah, the N-Gage had so many design flaws and stupid decisions I can't even begin to count them (and I gotta wonder what those finnish engineers were smoking), but the idea is still sound. I played Pandemonium on one of these monsters a few days ago, and... it's not too shabby. The N-Gage sucks - I agree - but you have to keep in mind that phone companies roll out new models OFTEN. I think the people at Nokia have learned a few lessons and unless they get cold feet from this debacle and terminate the N-Gage, version 2.0 will probably be quite nice. As long as they stick to their standards (as in 100% backwards compatibility) and keep improving the model, it could really turn into something nice. Integrating phone/pda/handheld gaming isn't such a bad idea, really, but the devil is in the details and Nokia screwed up. If they can listen to consumer feedback and improve the phone, they might end up with a winner.
I remember seeing this in a Slashdot discussion just a couple of days ago - Burke's rant about SW:G. I don't remember if it was in the editorial itself or in the comments (and I can't really be arsed to search, perhaps someone could karma whore a little for me?). It was a point I found pretty lucid, however: movies will usually focus on a few exceptional characters, but... not everybody can play them. Of course everyone will want to be a Jedi, but having everyone run around with lightsabers won't work in a game. And everyone wants to be Legolas or Gimli, not $randomOrc[351].
It's very hard to convey a sense of being in the licensed universe, unless you get the hierarchy and the composition of trades and races right. For every Frodo you would need 50 resident farmers living in Bree to make it seem real, and NPC's will only get you so far. Until someone can think up a new way of doing MMOGs except the old fight-insects-for-a-couple-of-hours, these licenses will only be a gimmick to make the publisher take less risk and feel safer.
I knew this would happen. Valve have sort of a... history with this. Team Fortress 2, anyone? In this post-Daikatana world (sorry) perhaps they should have taken a hint and reined in their hype machine a bit. Goes for ANY game developer who isn't 100% sure they can deliver on time.
Oh well. Either way, I'm not holding my breath. Yeah, it could be an awesome game, but haven't we seen enough hyped games *cough*Black&White*cough* fail to deliver on their promises? I was going to wait for the reviews anyway.
Haha, the UN embezzled money and the European press was bought and paid for by Saddam? I can't believe your Fox News conspiracy theories got modded up!
The leftist slant of these "censored" stories was not hard to detect. Unlike yours, though, they were soundly based in REALITY. They were reported by press around the world but not widely picked up inside the US, because of media concentration, current pro-war sentiment, and government pressure. Really, it's not a pinko liberal conspiracy to take your SUV and your guns away. I, too, can clearly see that these stories had a political angle. That does not, however, make them any less real or any less disturbing. They're true, whether you like it or not, and trying to counter that with "well, we didn't kill MILLIONS of Iraqis, and look at Germany and France!" is not a good way of dealing with it.
Nah, the game doesn't become "pointless" with immediate respawns. The only FPS I play nowadays is The Specialists. When you die, you get a few seconds wait, you buy your weapons, then you go at it again. What you're trying to accomplish is either an unbroken kill streak (becoming THE SPECIALIST, and getting double frags for it) or just improving your kills/deaths ratio. No, you don't care *as much* about dying as you do in - for instance - Counter-strike, but you still want to keep your streak and you don't want to lose your powerups. This way, there's no waiting around for 2 mins with a spastic adolescent called "t3h fr4gm31573r" while someone is camping behind a crate.
That said, I really don't think FPS titles are where death matters most. At most, you get the aforementioned 2-minute wait (during which you can go drink a glass of water or something). Look at games like Pikmin, where losing your little troopers means going through the entire level... AGAIN. We're talking 15+ minutes of repetition in some games. I personally think save points strike the best balance, although the downside to them is that you can't leave the game when you feel like it. I also enjoy games like SoF or Resident Evil which allow you to save anytime you like, but limit the number of saves.
That pile-on thing was a load of crap, Fargo was the only one to get it right. They're sort of blasting the game - not because it's bad, they all said it was super - but because they expected it to "revolutionize the genre". Uh-huh.
I seem to recall an earlier Slashdot article (from yesterday?) discussing whether people want original games or not. Well, this is a prime example of a sequel that does absolutely everything right. It keeps the controls and the feeling that worked so beautifully in its predecessor, spices up the graphics, adds new characters and new playmodes and a ton of unlockable goodies (oodles of weapons, kata theater, concept art gallery, new costumes, etc etc). This is a must-have game, beyond excellent... and still it catches flak because "um, you know, it didn't radically change the way we view fighting games". Feh. I don't WANT Namco to change Soul Calibur. Yeah, I want them to sharpen it, refine it, make it better... but keep the meat, the stuff that makes it legendary. Which is exactly what they have done.
Anyway; I imported the Japanese SC2 for my cube several months ago, and I can only say buy this game now, whichever platform you're on. I fired up the old SC next to it, just to check the difference... and no matter what the cracksmokers at GameSpy have to say, it's a HUGE upgrade. It's the best fighter available, and I have a feeling it will stay that way until the next iteration (at which point the GameSpy editors will yammer about how SC3 STILL won't brew coffee for them).
Revenant! Couple years old, it was sort of a dungeon hack -- Diablo style -- and the voiceovers for the main character (Locke) were simply ATROCIOUS. The game itself was sort of decent, but I actually gave up in disgust after a while. It was impossible to take the plot line seriously! I'm sure those of you who played the game agree. Anyway, I did a quick google for reviews, guessing I wasn't alone in thinking this, and sure enough:
Understandably, Locke is angry and confused to suddenly find himself in a situation beyond his control, and he certainly shows it when he delivers his lines! I mentioned the character voices earlier, and, without wanting to over emphasise, I must mention that Locke does have a habit of bellowing his words to the point of agitation.
It was just too bad that many of the voice actors were so over-the-top in their line delivery with lines containing so much potential. Locke in particular had an annoying habit of screaming his lines, especially ones that did not need to be said with such intensity. I found this to be so distracting that I often avoided conversation with other characters and thus occasionally missed important pieces of information or quests.
Less impressive was the extensive recorded voice dialog for Locke and the many NPC's you can interact with. While some of the performances, especially the snake in the grass performance of the court Mage, are well done, they are sabotaged by the often unintentionally funny voice acting of the main character Locke. It's unfortunate that the character with the most dialog is the worst of the lot and it does detract from the game in a very real way.
Well, this is just the most recent installment in Nintendo's campaign to shaft us Euros! They've happily been doing it for 10+ years, so it shouldn't really come as a surprise to anyone. Why they do it, I'm not sure. It's probably just the good ol' German censorship laws, localization (and most of us could do without localization, thank you very much), stuff like that.
Knowing this, as soon as the cube was released in the US (more than half a year before it hit our shores, how's that for a warning sign?) I imported myself a JAP/US cube. Yeah, it's sort of a hassle having to import all my games, but there's a thrivingindustry that's realized you can make a buck off this region bullshit. So now I'm a proud owner of Soul Calibur 2, F-Zero GX, Winning Eleven 6 and Mario Golf, neither of which are even CLOSE to releasing in Europe yet. Hell, WE6 probably won't even go outside Japan, seeing as footie games aren't very big in the US. ...but anyway, my point was - Nintendo have always been doing this, they will continue to do it, and the best you can do is try to work around it. It sucks, really; they make the best consoles, the best games, but their business decisions sometimes seem to be made by monkeys.
It's not peculiar, really. It's just that the media are - for some reason - very anti-Nintendo. Sales wise, the GC has been neck-and-neck with the Xbox for quite a while.
Someone pointed this out in a very concise way a few days ago, so I won't try to parrot it here. But bottom line: everyone has been saying "TEH GAMECUBE R DOOMED 2 FAIL!!!!11" for so long people are starting to believe it, and so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Also, Nintendo slipped up BAD when it came to marketing their product. It's about image. Like a broken record, I constantly hear about how Nintendo makes kiddie games, how "it's not aimed at my demographic", ad nauseam. And this is SIMPLY NOT TRUE! Anyone who has actually given Metroid, Zelda, Monkey Ball, Pikmin et al a chance will tell you - these are awesome and innovative games. However, since Nintendo didn't expressly say "we are selling this to twentysomethings" and make cool commercials with skateboarders and jaggy letters, people assume they're for kids. The machine is small and has a handle, so I guess it's made for kids. And this image is a crying shame, because all those 18-30 year olds who think they're too cool for cel-shading are really missing out. Nintendo is truly the last innovative console company out there, and their games deserve a broader audience than they currently enjoy.
Since most people will buy the hype rather than see for themselves, Nintendo need to do something about their image. NOW. They do know how to do it, look at the SP for instance - that's more like what the Gamecube should look like in the eyes of the consumer. Sleek, sexy, efficient, and versatile. Because it really is an excellent system. I just wish people would see that.
Wow. It's a NY Times story, but someone finally figured out you can use the Google affiliate link to skip all the free reg hoo-haw. I think that's a first. Been waiting for that ever since the account generator stopped working. Please keep it up!
So-so implementation. There seems to be a very heavy slant towards the jRPG genre: Tidus, Magus, Squall, Kos-mos, Isaac... and that's just in the "north" division! Of course some of these spiky-haired heroes should be represented, but there are PLENTY of better characters that should have made it in there instead - I would personally have loved to see Antonio Malochio (Interstate '76) or Ivy (Soul Calibur) thrown in the mix. Both have oodles of style, flair, and personality.
That said, I'm going to do my best to send Captain Olimar to the top. Go Olimar!
I can deal with Max not looking like Sam Lake anymore. But THIS guy?? He looks like an insurance broker. Or maybe an accountant. In fact, for some reason he reminds me of Buddy Kane, the king of real estate. I'm severely disappointed! As Max himself would have said it:
The cheap cologne came off him in waves, rolling at you like the sea on a sun-baked beach in Mexico. Difference is, they don't give you a drink at a place like this. No little umbrellas. No life guard on duty. Just you, the accountant, and a sea of cologne.
Um, Virtua Tennis 2 has been out practically forever. It's a Sega production, IIRC, and an excellent game. I wasted many, many hours playing it on the Dreamcast. Actually, this stunt strikes me as rather odd, seeing as the only two platforms I've seen it on are Dreamcast and arcade.
Perhaps they're re-releasing it for the current generation of consoles? If they are, I'm going to buy it without so much as a second thought... hm, I guess their advertising paid off, eh?
I'd pay about 400SEK, since Sweden isn't a member of the EMU yet:) Anyway, I know all that. I'm well aware that running and maintaining persistent worlds and gaming servers can be damn expensive (in fact, I work for a small game developer and we have a little subscription gaming community of our own). I don't expect to be able to play such a game for free. But in the end, that's a moot point.
What it boils down to is that I don't want to pay for development, packaging and server service, I want to pay to play a game. If the price is too high, I'm not going to buy it, and that's the simple truth of it all. I can get just as much fun from BF1942 or IL-2, even if my pilot or soldier doesn't persist on the server. It's fun vs cost, and to me, MMORPGs and their ilk always seem to be on the wrong side of that balance. YMMV, of course.
Poppycock.
Here in Sweden, practically everyone has access to fast and cheap broadband. I'm not going to pull figures out of my ass (can't really be bothered to google for it either) but I can guarantee you that the market penetration of broadband is way higher here than in both the US and Japan. Everyone in my neighborhood can sign up for VDSL (uncapped, 26Mb/sec both upstream and downstream) for about [quick math] $45/month. Access is not the issue here.
I think it's mostly a question of neglect and/or culture. As a European, I'm used to not even being able to play MMORPGs because most companies have decided "well, europe's a crummy market, we don't need to put servers there, they can bloody well use the north american ones". There are of course exceptions (I'm a d2 addict, for instance) but I think everyone expects lag, incompatibilities, and general arrogance from these online services. But then again, that might just be me.
Also; Europeans are, for some reason, less inclined to pay for online content. First buying the game and then having to pay through the nose for the privilege of playing? Seems a bit excessive. It's worth noting that games where you can play-all-you-like after buying the game, like BF1942 and Counter-Strike, are huge here.
I'm sure there are overpaid analysts who can find other reasons, but this is what I see.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I worded that a bit harshly. They do update some things. But look at what I wrote: no creative additions to gameplay . That's the thing; they most certainly add to the sound, the ambience and the atmosphere and the presentation, everything looks cooler and more realistic with every new version. Drafting, trading players, etc. But you never get more than subtle tweaks to the gameplay itself, and the gameplay in a sports game is more important than anything else... it IS the game. It's hard to explain just how amazed I was after playing WE6 for an hour or so, but it was really a revelation - it just FEELS like you're down there playing football with those guys, even if they haven't motion-captured David Beckham's every finger movement or lovingly recreated the Camp Nou stadium in 30k polygons. That feeling was something EA had never given me, and probably never will. My point still stands; EA are content with polishing their games up every six months or so and marketing them aggressively - gameplay to the EA mooks is just another small-print bullet point in an overhead presentation on "quarterly revenues".
And since I'm drunk or high something, I wrote Sega when of course I meant Konami. Konami Tokyo are the people behind Winning Eleven/PES, not Sega. Sorry.
You're right, competition IS a good thing, and this move will make a bad situation even worse. EA already has a stranglehold on the sports market and we all know what EA Sports means: rubber-stamp sequels with updated graphics and rosters, licensed pop music, and no creative additions to gameplay since somewhere around 1999. I play mostly footie games, and having played FIFA since 94 or 95 somewhere (before they even went quasi-3d and had real rosters) I used to think that FIFA was as good as it got. That is, until I hit upon Sega's Winning Eleven series while looking for a decent footballer to import for my 'cube. I could understate things by saying that it was an eye-opener, but to be honest it made me realize that EA has been making gobs of money selling absolute shit for quite a while now. It certainly works if you haven't tried anything else, but I can't even play the FIFA series anymore - it's like trying to eat rocks for dinner after getting used to exquisite three-course meals.
Simply put, sports games can be vastly improved with some creativity and innovation, and EA is the one company you can trust to never ever EVER innovate. They've proved time and time again that the only thing they care about is the bottom line: they'll chew through developers and brands like snacks, release what should rightly be patches as add-ons, and sacrifice everything new and creative on the altar of "hey, it sold well enough last time" and glitzy graphics. It's painful to see. And even if this particular competitor made crap games too (haven't played any of their games, so I wouldn't know) it WAS competition. Maybe this makes sense for Sony, but every move that strengthens EA's sports dominance will shaft you - the consumer - in the end.
Yes, that guide to secure scripting was very useful - a "hello world" program. Whoopee. To be frank, that site looked... well, less than professional, and with a name like "uberhacker" I expected their tips to be a little more advanced than "look, you can change the values in a query string but don't tell anyone!!!!11"
That being said, I used to write a lot of PHP (I rarely do it anymore at work, but I still try to keep up with the language) and when I first started out I would have loved a comprehensive and easy-to-understand guide to common security holes. The world needs a simple "how to write security-conscious code" for beginners! The sooner you get to see stuff like SQL injection or XSS in action, the better.
Yeah, she could "audit" my "security" any day
is Nat's shoes - green suede Adidas Rekords. Seems mr Friedman has excellent taste in sneakers, a trait that's not too common in geeks.
Some choice quotes from the linked interview (thanks to babelfish):
You say that it evolves graphics and should have kept making function complicated "golden law of success" is the collapse red sandal wood.
I think Iwata says that design is a natural evolution from graphics, and that the DS will be collapsible and come in a nice wood finish. Bold move, in this age of clean, plastic designs! I had assumed it would look more like the SP, but we all know that big N aren't satisfied with jumping on bandwagons. I agree with Iwata here, the design needs to convey a more adult sense of purpose, so it doesn't have to compete with the GBA.
The creator having suffered hardship 100 times, 100 times it can sell, instead of, in the circumstance that, even even maintenance of the status quo it is difficult, in the former route which wastes time and energy, as for future of the game as for without being it is clear.
From this quote, I gather the DS will break easily. Iwata suggests that once you've bought a DS, you'll readily buy 100 more if they keep breaking (indicating that it will be a cheap unit, I suppose). I'm not so sure about this strategy, as Iwata says it will probably be a waste of time and energy to try and repair them yourself - but I'm still concerned about the cost. Time will have to tell on that one.
Very useful information! Hopefully slashdot can keep posting interviews like these. This really helped shed some light on Nintendo's strategy with the DS.
But I'm not going to declare it DOA just yet. Yeah, the N-Gage had so many design flaws and stupid decisions I can't even begin to count them (and I gotta wonder what those finnish engineers were smoking), but the idea is still sound. I played Pandemonium on one of these monsters a few days ago, and... it's not too shabby. The N-Gage sucks - I agree - but you have to keep in mind that phone companies roll out new models OFTEN. I think the people at Nokia have learned a few lessons and unless they get cold feet from this debacle and terminate the N-Gage, version 2.0 will probably be quite nice. As long as they stick to their standards (as in 100% backwards compatibility) and keep improving the model, it could really turn into something nice. Integrating phone/pda/handheld gaming isn't such a bad idea, really, but the devil is in the details and Nokia screwed up. If they can listen to consumer feedback and improve the phone, they might end up with a winner.
I remember seeing this in a Slashdot discussion just a couple of days ago - Burke's rant about SW:G. I don't remember if it was in the editorial itself or in the comments (and I can't really be arsed to search, perhaps someone could karma whore a little for me?). It was a point I found pretty lucid, however: movies will usually focus on a few exceptional characters, but... not everybody can play them. Of course everyone will want to be a Jedi, but having everyone run around with lightsabers won't work in a game. And everyone wants to be Legolas or Gimli, not $randomOrc[351].
It's very hard to convey a sense of being in the licensed universe, unless you get the hierarchy and the composition of trades and races right. For every Frodo you would need 50 resident farmers living in Bree to make it seem real, and NPC's will only get you so far. Until someone can think up a new way of doing MMOGs except the old fight-insects-for-a-couple-of-hours, these licenses will only be a gimmick to make the publisher take less risk and feel safer.
Just my 0.15 SEK.
Here's a mirror.
I knew this would happen. Valve have sort of a... history with this. Team Fortress 2, anyone? In this post-Daikatana world (sorry) perhaps they should have taken a hint and reined in their hype machine a bit. Goes for ANY game developer who isn't 100% sure they can deliver on time.
Oh well. Either way, I'm not holding my breath. Yeah, it could be an awesome game, but haven't we seen enough hyped games *cough*Black&White*cough* fail to deliver on their promises? I was going to wait for the reviews anyway.
Haha, the UN embezzled money and the European press was bought and paid for by Saddam? I can't believe your Fox News conspiracy theories got modded up!
The leftist slant of these "censored" stories was not hard to detect. Unlike yours, though, they were soundly based in REALITY. They were reported by press around the world but not widely picked up inside the US, because of media concentration, current pro-war sentiment, and government pressure. Really, it's not a pinko liberal conspiracy to take your SUV and your guns away. I, too, can clearly see that these stories had a political angle. That does not, however, make them any less real or any less disturbing. They're true, whether you like it or not, and trying to counter that with "well, we didn't kill MILLIONS of Iraqis, and look at Germany and France!" is not a good way of dealing with it.
Nah, the game doesn't become "pointless" with immediate respawns. The only FPS I play nowadays is The Specialists. When you die, you get a few seconds wait, you buy your weapons, then you go at it again. What you're trying to accomplish is either an unbroken kill streak (becoming THE SPECIALIST, and getting double frags for it) or just improving your kills/deaths ratio. No, you don't care *as much* about dying as you do in - for instance - Counter-strike, but you still want to keep your streak and you don't want to lose your powerups. This way, there's no waiting around for 2 mins with a spastic adolescent called "t3h fr4gm31573r" while someone is camping behind a crate.
That said, I really don't think FPS titles are where death matters most. At most, you get the aforementioned 2-minute wait (during which you can go drink a glass of water or something). Look at games like Pikmin, where losing your little troopers means going through the entire level... AGAIN. We're talking 15+ minutes of repetition in some games. I personally think save points strike the best balance, although the downside to them is that you can't leave the game when you feel like it. I also enjoy games like SoF or Resident Evil which allow you to save anytime you like, but limit the number of saves.
That pile-on thing was a load of crap, Fargo was the only one to get it right. They're sort of blasting the game - not because it's bad, they all said it was super - but because they expected it to "revolutionize the genre". Uh-huh.
I seem to recall an earlier Slashdot article (from yesterday?) discussing whether people want original games or not. Well, this is a prime example of a sequel that does absolutely everything right. It keeps the controls and the feeling that worked so beautifully in its predecessor, spices up the graphics, adds new characters and new playmodes and a ton of unlockable goodies (oodles of weapons, kata theater, concept art gallery, new costumes, etc etc). This is a must-have game, beyond excellent... and still it catches flak because "um, you know, it didn't radically change the way we view fighting games". Feh. I don't WANT Namco to change Soul Calibur. Yeah, I want them to sharpen it, refine it, make it better... but keep the meat, the stuff that makes it legendary. Which is exactly what they have done.
Anyway; I imported the Japanese SC2 for my cube several months ago, and I can only say buy this game now, whichever platform you're on. I fired up the old SC next to it, just to check the difference... and no matter what the cracksmokers at GameSpy have to say, it's a HUGE upgrade. It's the best fighter available, and I have a feeling it will stay that way until the next iteration (at which point the GameSpy editors will yammer about how SC3 STILL won't brew coffee for them).
Revenant!
Couple years old, it was sort of a dungeon hack -- Diablo style -- and the voiceovers for the main character (Locke) were simply ATROCIOUS. The game itself was sort of decent, but I actually gave up in disgust after a while. It was impossible to take the plot line seriously! I'm sure those of you who played the game agree. Anyway, I did a quick google for reviews, guessing I wasn't alone in thinking this, and sure enough:
Understandably , Locke is angry and confused to suddenly find himself in a situation beyond his control, and he certainly shows it when he delivers his lines! I mentioned the character voices earlier, and, without wanting to over emphasise, I must mention that Locke does have a habit of bellowing his words to the point of agitation.
It was just too bad that many of the voice actors were so over-the-top in their line delivery with lines containing so much potential. Locke in particular had an annoying habit of screaming his lines, especially ones that did not need to be said with such intensity. I found this to be so distracting that I often avoided conversation with other characters and thus occasionally missed important pieces of information or quests.
Less impressive was the extensive recorded voice dialog for Locke and the many NPC's you can interact with. While some of the performances, especially the snake in the grass performance of the court Mage, are well done, they are sabotaged by the often unintentionally funny voice acting of the main character Locke. It's unfortunate that the character with the most dialog is the worst of the lot and it does detract from the game in a very real way.
Well, this is just the most recent installment in Nintendo's campaign to shaft us Euros! They've happily been doing it for 10+ years, so it shouldn't really come as a surprise to anyone. Why they do it, I'm not sure. It's probably just the good ol' German censorship laws, localization (and most of us could do without localization, thank you very much), stuff like that.
...but anyway, my point was - Nintendo have always been doing this, they will continue to do it, and the best you can do is try to work around it. It sucks, really; they make the best consoles, the best games, but their business decisions sometimes seem to be made by monkeys.
Knowing this, as soon as the cube was released in the US (more than half a year before it hit our shores, how's that for a warning sign?) I imported myself a JAP/US cube. Yeah, it's sort of a hassle having to import all my games, but there's a thriving industry that's realized you can make a buck off this region bullshit. So now I'm a proud owner of Soul Calibur 2, F-Zero GX, Winning Eleven 6 and Mario Golf, neither of which are even CLOSE to releasing in Europe yet. Hell, WE6 probably won't even go outside Japan, seeing as footie games aren't very big in the US.
It's not peculiar, really. It's just that the media are - for some reason - very anti-Nintendo. Sales wise, the GC has been neck-and-neck with the Xbox for quite a while. Someone pointed this out in a very concise way a few days ago, so I won't try to parrot it here. But bottom line: everyone has been saying "TEH GAMECUBE R DOOMED 2 FAIL!!!!11" for so long people are starting to believe it, and so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Also, Nintendo slipped up BAD when it came to marketing their product. It's about image. Like a broken record, I constantly hear about how Nintendo makes kiddie games, how "it's not aimed at my demographic", ad nauseam. And this is SIMPLY NOT TRUE! Anyone who has actually given Metroid, Zelda, Monkey Ball, Pikmin et al a chance will tell you - these are awesome and innovative games. However, since Nintendo didn't expressly say "we are selling this to twentysomethings" and make cool commercials with skateboarders and jaggy letters, people assume they're for kids. The machine is small and has a handle, so I guess it's made for kids. And this image is a crying shame, because all those 18-30 year olds who think they're too cool for cel-shading are really missing out. Nintendo is truly the last innovative console company out there, and their games deserve a broader audience than they currently enjoy.
Since most people will buy the hype rather than see for themselves, Nintendo need to do something about their image. NOW. They do know how to do it, look at the SP for instance - that's more like what the Gamecube should look like in the eyes of the consumer. Sleek, sexy, efficient, and versatile. Because it really is an excellent system. I just wish people would see that.
...pushing things around. Couldn't he at least stick his out and lower his weapon...
Stick his WHAT out? O_o
Wow. It's a NY Times story, but someone finally figured out you can use the Google affiliate link to skip all the free reg hoo-haw. I think that's a first. Been waiting for that ever since the account generator stopped working.
Please keep it up!
So-so implementation. There seems to be a very heavy slant towards the jRPG genre: Tidus, Magus, Squall, Kos-mos, Isaac... and that's just in the "north" division! Of course some of these spiky-haired heroes should be represented, but there are PLENTY of better characters that should have made it in there instead - I would personally have loved to see Antonio Malochio (Interstate '76) or Ivy (Soul Calibur) thrown in the mix. Both have oodles of style, flair, and personality.
That said, I'm going to do my best to send Captain Olimar to the top. Go Olimar!
I'll probably be modded down for this, but... thanks! I didn't know.
I can deal with Max not looking like Sam Lake anymore. But THIS guy?? He looks like an insurance broker. Or maybe an accountant. In fact, for some reason he reminds me of Buddy Kane, the king of real estate. I'm severely disappointed!
As Max himself would have said it:
The cheap cologne came off him in waves, rolling at you like the sea on a sun-baked beach in Mexico. Difference is, they don't give you a drink at a place like this. No little umbrellas. No life guard on duty. Just you, the accountant, and a sea of cologne.
Um, Virtua Tennis 2 has been out practically forever. It's a Sega production, IIRC, and an excellent game. I wasted many, many hours playing it on the Dreamcast. Actually, this stunt strikes me as rather odd, seeing as the only two platforms I've seen it on are Dreamcast and arcade.
Perhaps they're re-releasing it for the current generation of consoles? If they are, I'm going to buy it without so much as a second thought... hm, I guess their advertising paid off, eh?
I'd pay about 400SEK, since Sweden isn't a member of the EMU yet :)
Anyway, I know all that. I'm well aware that running and maintaining persistent worlds and gaming servers can be damn expensive (in fact, I work for a small game developer and we have a little subscription gaming community of our own). I don't expect to be able to play such a game for free. But in the end, that's a moot point.
What it boils down to is that I don't want to pay for development, packaging and server service, I want to pay to play a game. If the price is too high, I'm not going to buy it, and that's the simple truth of it all. I can get just as much fun from BF1942 or IL-2, even if my pilot or soldier doesn't persist on the server. It's fun vs cost, and to me, MMORPGs and their ilk always seem to be on the wrong side of that balance. YMMV, of course.
Poppycock.
Here in Sweden, practically everyone has access to fast and cheap broadband. I'm not going to pull figures out of my ass (can't really be bothered to google for it either) but I can guarantee you that the market penetration of broadband is way higher here than in both the US and Japan. Everyone in my neighborhood can sign up for VDSL (uncapped, 26Mb/sec both upstream and downstream) for about [quick math] $45/month. Access is not the issue here.
I think it's mostly a question of neglect and/or culture. As a European, I'm used to not even being able to play MMORPGs because most companies have decided "well, europe's a crummy market, we don't need to put servers there, they can bloody well use the north american ones". There are of course exceptions (I'm a d2 addict, for instance) but I think everyone expects lag, incompatibilities, and general arrogance from these online services. But then again, that might just be me.
Also; Europeans are, for some reason, less inclined to pay for online content. First buying the game and then having to pay through the nose for the privilege of playing? Seems a bit excessive. It's worth noting that games where you can play-all-you-like after buying the game, like BF1942 and Counter-Strike, are huge here.
I'm sure there are overpaid analysts who can find other reasons, but this is what I see.