Ok, moron, since this is such a big deal to you, maybe it would help if you actually knew what happened?
At one point, while under oath, Clinton was asked, basically, "have you had sexual relations with Lewinsky?" To this he responded, "please define sexual relations?" The prosecution, already knowing FULL WELL about the BJ, specifically left oral sex off of the list when defining 'sexual relations.' Clinton took the bait and said, TRUTHFULLY, AS DEFINED BY THE PROSECUTION, "No, I did not have sexual relations with that woman."
Later on, it was proven that Clinton did, indeed receive a BJ from Lewinsky. BUT HE NEVER CLAIMED THAT HE DIDN'T, AS DEFINED BY THE PROSECUTION.
Fortunately, most morons don't look into the whole background of the case, and don't understand exactly how the whole thing happened. "omg he had sexxorz in teh oval office and he said he didnt!" So the prosecution got exactly what they wanted: it appeared that they had caught Clinton lying. After millions of dollars worth of investigation, being unable to turn up anything useful against him, ALL THEY COULD DO WAS TRICK HIM INTO APPEARING TO LIE UNDER OATH.
Here's the real story: Clinton DID NOT LIE. PERIOD. Starr just changed definitions around on him to make it appear that he did.
Your failure to understand this is very dangerous. No citizen should be so easily manipulated by lawyer-types into believing what the lawyer wants them to believe.
I apologize for the caps. I get sick of straightening people out on this -- not that most of them listen, because they prefer to believe that he lied anyway.
and there are way too many problems with it due to irreducible complexity
Ok. You don't believe that complex things can just 'create themselves.' Where did God come from? Who made god?
Consider yourself pwned until you can answer that question -- if you say that I can't consider that things arranged themselves over countless iterations through billions of years, then I say you can't consider that a god just magically appeared and then equally magically created everything else.
If we're going to rule out the possibility that complex things can create themselves, then that rules out god. Okay? And if you're going to allow that "well, god just is," then you have to also allow that "well, the universe just is." You can't have your cake and eat it too.
All ID theory does is deflect the whole purpose of the study of evolution. You know why evolution is bad, right? No evolution == no Adam & Eve == no original sin == why the fuck are we going to church every Sunday?
For instance, the Grand Turismo/Need for Speed/etc series have been as popular as they have because they're a HUGE demographic of realistic car fanatics out there.
Uhh... how about Need For Speed? It's available on the 'Cube you know.
As for opening up to the adult market, there are plenty of titles out there. The Resident Evil series and Eternal Darkness spring to mind right away, but there are also the Metroids and Splinter Cells and plenty of yet-another-cross-platform-FPSes out there.
No, you can't play Gran Turismo or Halo. Every system has its exclusives. For whatever reason, people forget that the Nintendo exclusives are consistently the best games released in a generation.
It generally is true of society in the US (though there are large exceptions).
Actually, most of the US population is mature and rational enough about sex to realize that the whole 'sex is evil' mantra is bullshit.
Using sex in advertising is certainly unscrupulous, but even I (with my vehement hatred of advertising in general) wouldn't go so far as to call it evil.
You choose to believe that sex is evil and miss out on the *entire point* of your existance. But when you get extremely frustrated with your life and can't stop your envy of those people around you who do enjoy sex, please remember that it's your choice.
This is OT anyway. Religious videogames have always been trash. They're within a half-step above or below movie tie-in games like Monsters Inc. There was a company called Wisdom Tree back in the 80s that made religious NES games that absolutely sucked.
Super Smash Brothers: Melee Both Metroid Prime titles Resident Evil series Eternal Darkness F-Zero GX Both Prince of Persia titles Pac Man Vs. (Best party game ever) Or are you going to argue that Pac Man is a kiddy game? Mortal Kombat series The Splinter Cell series Beyond Good and Evil Soul Calibur 2
I'd have to go dig around in my collection, but there are tons of things that should fit your definition.
However, what you probably mean by the "over 13 crowd" is "the 13-21 crowd that is too insecure to play fun, challenging games that may be viewed as kiddy games by their peers." In that case, you're pretty much screwed, since all of your mature friends are going to laugh at you for having a Gamecube in the first place, and the games won't even matter. Go play your XBox like a good media consumer.
An average Xbox game still looks and sounds better than a top-flight PS2 or GC game...
Umm, bullshit? You might be able to get away with that statement if you left the GC out, but I've not seen anything on the XBox that can compete with Resident Evil 4 graphically -- and that's only one example....and that's the important part.
Umm, wrong. I won't even bother explaining this one.
Here's the deal: Blizzard is a good company. Period. They treat their employees well. They produce high quailty titles. They allow their designers a lot of artistic freedom.
Vivendi Universal (You remember, the guys that actually sent the lawyers after BNetd?), is a steaming pile of shit. Blizzard has survived under the VU umbrella so long precisely because Blizzard is such a good company.
And, even if that weren't the case: I can think of several justifications for sending C&D letters to BNetd off the top of my head that are perfectly reasonable -- but the Slashdot hive drones like you see that someone is trying to take away their free cookie, and all reason is thrown out the window. So we get to hear the IP argument-equivalent of a 2 year old's temper tantrum.
which is more immersive than an[y?] console can ever be
My HDTV and $3000 surround setup say otherwise.
Just played Resident Evil 4 for the first time last night. The surround effects were absolutely incredible. I was able to pinpoint exactly where everything was in relation to me by sound alone.
My 19" professional series ViewSonic and high quality computer speakers just can't match that.
The difference here is that Bush/Gore 2000 weren't competing for the same votes as Bush/Kerry 2004 -- wheras Everquest 1 and 2 ARE in the same market as WoW. So WoW, a newcomer, is shattering records held by established brands in a crowded market.
In other words, WoW is expanding the market in a major way.
I own a gamecube and enjoy it, but fact is only about 5-10 quality games come out for it a year, of which only half will vaguely interest me and that I will finish way before another comes out to replace it and the gamecube just doesnt have many good games, Why can't "fanboys" just accept that?
Because it's simply not true.
I am a finicky gamer with 23 years experience. I own about 75 GCN games. About 5 of them are ones that I just bought because they were like 5 bucks (BMX XXX) and never really played. The other ~70 are all quality titles that I enjoyed. I've finished almost all of them, but haven't had time to get to a few (Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy is a good example).
There are at least a dozen more off the top of my head that I've meant to pick up but never gotten around to. I don't even have time to finish what I already have, so why overload even more?
Maybe your problem is that the only way you hear about GCN games is by watching commercials on TV. That's the best way I could explain your '5-10 quality games per year' comment. Nintendo doesn't really advertise on TV that much. More likely, however, is that your definition of 'quality' is highly subjective, and doesn't even include games that you've never played to make an informed judgement on.
I'll also offer you a challenge -- name > 10 quality XBox or PS2 titles from last year. Not ones that you heard were good, but ones you actually bought/rented and played.
My HT setup is probably at least as good as yours, and it doesn't bother me at all. Besides, if you don't like purple you can get black or platinum. Or does all of your stuff have a wood laminate finish?
What I find sad is that there are so many people out there that actually believe in these 'ivory tower liberals.'
What I find scary is that the United States, as a whole, is so rabidly anti-intellectual. Mention any remotely intellectual activity to an 'uneducated' person (bridge, LUGs, discussion groups), and they'll immediately assume you're a snob.
First: He didn't correct your grammar. How was the AC a grammar nazi?
Second: I found it convenient that Splinter Cell showed up on nearly all of their 'Favorite Game' lists. Apparently they all love their Sam Fisher!
I have a very accurate and sensitive bullshit meter. The stuff that these girls write doesn't come off as bullshit. However, I just can't believe that that many gamers who supposedly have a variety of tastes would list Splinter Cell as one of their all-time favorites. Splinter cell just *isn't* that good. It's like grabbing a group of 10 random people and having 8 of them say that Armageddon was their favorite movie.
Third: Your quoting style is entirely unnecessary. The parent/grandparent posts are back there for anyone who wants to read them. We don't need a play-by-play.
Obviously you're not the admin of an enterprise server room.
Pretty much any organization of a decent size is going to have a production environment, and a pre-production testing environment. Pretty much all of these organizations are going to have checklists to make ANY changes to the production environment -- one of which is usually an installation/test period in the pre-production environment.
Let's say there's a worm out there that can infect a system in the production environment. Let's say there's also a white worm out there that causes the production server to crash while protecting from this infection.
Now pretend you're a multi-million/billion dollar institution. Do you want your production, end-user facing servers to be crashed by a 'beneficial' white worm? And if your servers are crashed by this white worm, shouldn't the author be held accountable? Or are they protected because of their good intentions? What if they cost me tens of thousands of dollars in downtime? Is it better to be 0wned but still doing business, or crashed but protected? And who are you to judge?
If you can't understand this scenario because your only administrative experience is your family's Linux boxes, you aren't qualified to criticize people maintaining a real production environment. And a worm is *definitely* not qualified to force someone to patch.
I'd be pretty damned annoyed at not being able to play Burnout 3 on it. Of course, there's a bit of a vicious cycle here; 3rd party developers don't make games for the Cube because they don't sell, so people don't buy Cubes, so Cube games don't sell. It's going to take a lot of money to solve that.
Actually, this is a load of BS. Burnout 2 sold better on the Cube than it did on the Xbox. Explain to me why the sequel is available on the Xbox and not the Cube again?
Oh, that's right: It's because Microsoft has created an unprofitable, unmaintainable business strategy of buying/paying off developers to create games for its extremely expensive system. It's not healthy for the industry, and if they can't do a 180 turn on their losses in the next generation it's going to come around and bite EVERYONE, gamers and developers included, in the ass.
Your last paragraph is spot on. The m47ur3 gamer crowd likes to bash Nintendo's characters because they're insecure about playing as Mario, Yoshi, and Daisy. For some reason it's better and more 'adult' to be playing as 'generic pissed-off dude,' 'generic gangster dude,' or 'generic marine dude.'
Well, if they want a dynamic, original character, that certainly rules out Sam Fisher, who was neither dynamic nor original.
Of course, I think I'm about the only person in the world that thought the story to Spliter Cell was boring, incoherent nonsense, so maybe take my opinion with a bit of salt.
I don't remember anything really fun on gamecube aside from zelda.
Then you haven't looked. Case closed. Did you know that an improved version of Metal Gear: Solid was released exclusively for the Gamecube?
Also, Final Fantasy 6 is widely regarded as the best in the series, and it was on the SNES. Metal Gear started on the NES. Of course, many people think that video games started with the PlayStation, so I can't really fault you there.
I bought it. I (mostly) regret it. It's still got the game that I loved in SoT in it, but it's buried in a heap of garbage. Well, maybe not 'garbage', but it's certainly at least hidden under a pile of dirty laundry.
I like how the opening sequence had a solid 5-second full-screen ass shot. I wonder what focus group thought that'd be tasteful?
I mean, I can certainly *see* where the same talent that worked on SoT went. The art is very well done, the music is well done, the story is sorta well done, but it's all SO GODDAMN GENERIC that is's a huge turnoff.
I'm not one that usually cares that much about a game's story, so long as the game itself is fun, but SoT had an *excellent* story with a clever twist at the end. (One of the best endings I've ever seen, IMO) I actually cared about the characters right away, even though the prince was a reckless hothead -- the narration made you actually like the guy. Warrior Within, though? Story is crap. Writing is crap. Cliches abound -- "Your task is impossible! You cannot escape your fate!", "You bitch!", and that's just in the first 45 minutes or so that I've been able to stomach.
Swordplay? More like button mashing while you're mobbed by annoying enemies that are faster than you are. I really liked how in the first one, there were the drawn-out battles, followed by a large section of platform navigation/puzzle solving. In this one, you're reminded every 3 or 4 minutes that yes, there are in fact people who want to kill you (for whatever reason). The 'soul shattering' bosses that the back of the box mentions have so far been thoughtless "I'll hold block for 15 seconds until there's an opening, then try to get a few whacks in, then resume blocking." Nevermind that I'm barely into the game and I've already fought one boss twice.
Oh, and speaking of repetition -- what the hell were they thinking when they decided to make you keep revisiting areas? I mean, once you've figured out how to get from point A to point B in a room, doing it over and over again *really* isn't that much fun, it's just time consuming. The marketoids must have read some focus group that the game needs to have X hours of gameplay to be fun and sell well...
I bought it... I plan on finishing it, because despite all the crap, it's *still* got the core cameplay that I really liked in SoT. I like the new elements that they've added to the platforming portion of the game -- the tapestries, the new ropes, new types of switches and such. But why oh why did they have to screw it up so bad? It's like a Snickers bar that's coated in mud rather than chocolate -- the stuff inside is still good, but you have to *really* convince yourself that you want it.
In a nutshell: The PoP team did an outstanding job realizing the game that the marketing team said they should create. The marketing team did a really shitty job defining the game that PoP team made.
Slashdot Mirror
Lied in court while under oath
Ok, moron, since this is such a big deal to you, maybe it would help if you actually knew what happened?
At one point, while under oath, Clinton was asked, basically, "have you had sexual relations with Lewinsky?" To this he responded, "please define sexual relations?" The prosecution, already knowing FULL WELL about the BJ, specifically left oral sex off of the list when defining 'sexual relations.' Clinton took the bait and said, TRUTHFULLY, AS DEFINED BY THE PROSECUTION, "No, I did not have sexual relations with that woman."
Later on, it was proven that Clinton did, indeed receive a BJ from Lewinsky. BUT HE NEVER CLAIMED THAT HE DIDN'T, AS DEFINED BY THE PROSECUTION.
Fortunately, most morons don't look into the whole background of the case, and don't understand exactly how the whole thing happened. "omg he had sexxorz in teh oval office and he said he didnt!" So the prosecution got exactly what they wanted: it appeared that they had caught Clinton lying. After millions of dollars worth of investigation, being unable to turn up anything useful against him, ALL THEY COULD DO WAS TRICK HIM INTO APPEARING TO LIE UNDER OATH.
Here's the real story: Clinton DID NOT LIE. PERIOD. Starr just changed definitions around on him to make it appear that he did.
Your failure to understand this is very dangerous. No citizen should be so easily manipulated by lawyer-types into believing what the lawyer wants them to believe.
I apologize for the caps. I get sick of straightening people out on this -- not that most of them listen, because they prefer to believe that he lied anyway.
--Jeremy
and there are way too many problems with it due to irreducible complexity
Ok. You don't believe that complex things can just 'create themselves.' Where did God come from? Who made god?
Consider yourself pwned until you can answer that question -- if you say that I can't consider that things arranged themselves over countless iterations through billions of years, then I say you can't consider that a god just magically appeared and then equally magically created everything else.
If we're going to rule out the possibility that complex things can create themselves, then that rules out god. Okay? And if you're going to allow that "well, god just is," then you have to also allow that "well, the universe just is." You can't have your cake and eat it too.
All ID theory does is deflect the whole purpose of the study of evolution. You know why evolution is bad, right? No evolution == no Adam & Eve == no original sin == why the fuck are we going to church every Sunday?
--Jeremy
For instance, the Grand Turismo/Need for Speed/etc series have been as popular as they have because they're a HUGE demographic of realistic car fanatics out there.
Uhh... how about Need For Speed? It's available on the 'Cube you know.
As for opening up to the adult market, there are plenty of titles out there. The Resident Evil series and Eternal Darkness spring to mind right away, but there are also the Metroids and Splinter Cells and plenty of yet-another-cross-platform-FPSes out there.
No, you can't play Gran Turismo or Halo. Every system has its exclusives. For whatever reason, people forget that the Nintendo exclusives are consistently the best games released in a generation.
--Jeremy
It generally is true of society in the US (though there are large exceptions).
Actually, most of the US population is mature and rational enough about sex to realize that the whole 'sex is evil' mantra is bullshit.
Using sex in advertising is certainly unscrupulous, but even I (with my vehement hatred of advertising in general) wouldn't go so far as to call it evil.
You choose to believe that sex is evil and miss out on the *entire point* of your existance. But when you get extremely frustrated with your life and can't stop your envy of those people around you who do enjoy sex, please remember that it's your choice.
This is OT anyway. Religious videogames have always been trash. They're within a half-step above or below movie tie-in games like Monsters Inc. There was a company called Wisdom Tree back in the 80s that made religious NES games that absolutely sucked.
--Jeremy
Super Smash Brothers: Melee
Both Metroid Prime titles
Resident Evil series
Eternal Darkness
F-Zero GX
Both Prince of Persia titles
Pac Man Vs. (Best party game ever) Or are you going to argue that Pac Man is a kiddy game?
Mortal Kombat series
The Splinter Cell series
Beyond Good and Evil
Soul Calibur 2
I'd have to go dig around in my collection, but there are tons of things that should fit your definition.
However, what you probably mean by the "over 13 crowd" is "the 13-21 crowd that is too insecure to play fun, challenging games that may be viewed as kiddy games by their peers." In that case, you're pretty much screwed, since all of your mature friends are going to laugh at you for having a Gamecube in the first place, and the games won't even matter. Go play your XBox like a good media consumer.
--Jeremy
Ok, I understand your point. I don't think you completed it, though:
What designs do you believe that Nintendo isn't 'copying' that they should be? A hard drive? The EyeToy? What?
--Jeremy
An average Xbox game still looks and sounds better than a top-flight PS2 or GC game...
...and that's the important part.
Umm, bullshit? You might be able to get away with that statement if you left the GC out, but I've not seen anything on the XBox that can compete with Resident Evil 4 graphically -- and that's only one example.
Umm, wrong. I won't even bother explaining this one.
--Jeremy
Slashdot was supposed to be boycotting Blizzard
According to what crackpot?
Here's the deal: Blizzard is a good company. Period. They treat their employees well. They produce high quailty titles. They allow their designers a lot of artistic freedom.
Vivendi Universal (You remember, the guys that actually sent the lawyers after BNetd?), is a steaming pile of shit. Blizzard has survived under the VU umbrella so long precisely because Blizzard is such a good company.
And, even if that weren't the case: I can think of several justifications for sending C&D letters to BNetd off the top of my head that are perfectly reasonable -- but the Slashdot hive drones like you see that someone is trying to take away their free cookie, and all reason is thrown out the window. So we get to hear the IP argument-equivalent of a 2 year old's temper tantrum.
--Jeremy
which is more immersive than an[y?] console can ever be
My HDTV and $3000 surround setup say otherwise.
Just played Resident Evil 4 for the first time last night. The surround effects were absolutely incredible. I was able to pinpoint exactly where everything was in relation to me by sound alone.
My 19" professional series ViewSonic and high quality computer speakers just can't match that.
--Jeremy
The difference here is that Bush/Gore 2000 weren't competing for the same votes as Bush/Kerry 2004 -- wheras Everquest 1 and 2 ARE in the same market as WoW. So WoW, a newcomer, is shattering records held by established brands in a crowded market.
In other words, WoW is expanding the market in a major way.
--Jeremy
I own a gamecube and enjoy it, but fact is only about 5-10 quality games come out for it a year, of which only half will vaguely interest me and that I will finish way before another comes out to replace it and the gamecube just doesnt have many good games, Why can't "fanboys" just accept that?
Because it's simply not true.
I am a finicky gamer with 23 years experience. I own about 75 GCN games. About 5 of them are ones that I just bought because they were like 5 bucks (BMX XXX) and never really played. The other ~70 are all quality titles that I enjoyed. I've finished almost all of them, but haven't had time to get to a few (Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy is a good example).
There are at least a dozen more off the top of my head that I've meant to pick up but never gotten around to. I don't even have time to finish what I already have, so why overload even more?
Maybe your problem is that the only way you hear about GCN games is by watching commercials on TV. That's the best way I could explain your '5-10 quality games per year' comment. Nintendo doesn't really advertise on TV that much. More likely, however, is that your definition of 'quality' is highly subjective, and doesn't even include games that you've never played to make an informed judgement on.
I'll also offer you a challenge -- name > 10 quality XBox or PS2 titles from last year. Not ones that you heard were good, but ones you actually bought/rented and played.
--Jeremy
My HT setup is probably at least as good as yours, and it doesn't bother me at all. Besides, if you don't like purple you can get black or platinum. Or does all of your stuff have a wood laminate finish?
--Jeremy
What I find sad is that there are so many people out there that actually believe in these 'ivory tower liberals.'
What I find scary is that the United States, as a whole, is so rabidly anti-intellectual. Mention any remotely intellectual activity to an 'uneducated' person (bridge, LUGs, discussion groups), and they'll immediately assume you're a snob.
--Jeremy
One thing they fail to note, among all those glowing numbers and SpikeTV accolades:
Have they actually made any money yet? Or are they still bleeding money like they had been the previous 2 years?
--Jeremy
and the superior versions of all the Tom Clancy games
A superior turd is still a turd.
--Jeremy
First: He didn't correct your grammar. How was the AC a grammar nazi?
Second: I found it convenient that Splinter Cell showed up on nearly all of their 'Favorite Game' lists. Apparently they all love their Sam Fisher!
I have a very accurate and sensitive bullshit meter. The stuff that these girls write doesn't come off as bullshit. However, I just can't believe that that many gamers who supposedly have a variety of tastes would list Splinter Cell as one of their all-time favorites. Splinter cell just *isn't* that good. It's like grabbing a group of 10 random people and having 8 of them say that Armageddon was their favorite movie.
Third: Your quoting style is entirely unnecessary. The parent/grandparent posts are back there for anyone who wants to read them. We don't need a play-by-play.
--Jeremy
Ok, so the logo isn't as big as he said it is. Does that make it ok?
--Jeremy
Obviously you're not the admin of an enterprise server room.
Pretty much any organization of a decent size is going to have a production environment, and a pre-production testing environment. Pretty much all of these organizations are going to have checklists to make ANY changes to the production environment -- one of which is usually an installation/test period in the pre-production environment.
Let's say there's a worm out there that can infect a system in the production environment. Let's say there's also a white worm out there that causes the production server to crash while protecting from this infection.
Now pretend you're a multi-million/billion dollar institution. Do you want your production, end-user facing servers to be crashed by a 'beneficial' white worm? And if your servers are crashed by this white worm, shouldn't the author be held accountable? Or are they protected because of their good intentions? What if they cost me tens of thousands of dollars in downtime? Is it better to be 0wned but still doing business, or crashed but protected? And who are you to judge?
If you can't understand this scenario because your only administrative experience is your family's Linux boxes, you aren't qualified to criticize people maintaining a real production environment. And a worm is *definitely* not qualified to force someone to patch.
--Jeremy
I'd be pretty damned annoyed at not being able to play Burnout 3 on it. Of course, there's a bit of a vicious cycle here; 3rd party developers don't make games for the Cube because they don't sell, so people don't buy Cubes, so Cube games don't sell. It's going to take a lot of money to solve that.
Actually, this is a load of BS. Burnout 2 sold better on the Cube than it did on the Xbox. Explain to me why the sequel is available on the Xbox and not the Cube again?
Oh, that's right: It's because Microsoft has created an unprofitable, unmaintainable business strategy of buying/paying off developers to create games for its extremely expensive system. It's not healthy for the industry, and if they can't do a 180 turn on their losses in the next generation it's going to come around and bite EVERYONE, gamers and developers included, in the ass.
--Jeremy
Damn, wish my last mod point hadn't expired.
Your last paragraph is spot on. The m47ur3 gamer crowd likes to bash Nintendo's characters because they're insecure about playing as Mario, Yoshi, and Daisy. For some reason it's better and more 'adult' to be playing as 'generic pissed-off dude,' 'generic gangster dude,' or 'generic marine dude.'
--Jeremy
Well, if they want a dynamic, original character, that certainly rules out Sam Fisher, who was neither dynamic nor original.
Of course, I think I'm about the only person in the world that thought the story to Spliter Cell was boring, incoherent nonsense, so maybe take my opinion with a bit of salt.
--Jeremy
That's the job of our moral institutions (churches, etc.).
Who do you think is ultimately behind this type of legislation, anyway?
--Jeremy
I don't remember anything really fun on gamecube aside from zelda.
Then you haven't looked. Case closed. Did you know that an improved version of Metal Gear: Solid was released exclusively for the Gamecube?
Also, Final Fantasy 6 is widely regarded as the best in the series, and it was on the SNES. Metal Gear started on the NES. Of course, many people think that video games started with the PlayStation, so I can't really fault you there.
--Jeremy
Saying that "Nintendo is kiddie" means about as much as saying that "Pixar is kiddie."
If you have to explain this to someone, then, in general, they just DON'T get it, and it's probably not worth trying to convince them.
--Jeremy
I bought it. I (mostly) regret it. It's still got the game that I loved in SoT in it, but it's buried in a heap of garbage. Well, maybe not 'garbage', but it's certainly at least hidden under a pile of dirty laundry.
... I plan on finishing it, because despite all the crap, it's *still* got the core cameplay that I really liked in SoT. I like the new elements that they've added to the platforming portion of the game -- the tapestries, the new ropes, new types of switches and such. But why oh why did they have to screw it up so bad? It's like a Snickers bar that's coated in mud rather than chocolate -- the stuff inside is still good, but you have to *really* convince yourself that you want it.
I like how the opening sequence had a solid 5-second full-screen ass shot. I wonder what focus group thought that'd be tasteful?
I mean, I can certainly *see* where the same talent that worked on SoT went. The art is very well done, the music is well done, the story is sorta well done, but it's all SO GODDAMN GENERIC that is's a huge turnoff.
I'm not one that usually cares that much about a game's story, so long as the game itself is fun, but SoT had an *excellent* story with a clever twist at the end. (One of the best endings I've ever seen, IMO) I actually cared about the characters right away, even though the prince was a reckless hothead -- the narration made you actually like the guy. Warrior Within, though? Story is crap. Writing is crap. Cliches abound -- "Your task is impossible! You cannot escape your fate!", "You bitch!", and that's just in the first 45 minutes or so that I've been able to stomach.
Swordplay? More like button mashing while you're mobbed by annoying enemies that are faster than you are. I really liked how in the first one, there were the drawn-out battles, followed by a large section of platform navigation/puzzle solving. In this one, you're reminded every 3 or 4 minutes that yes, there are in fact people who want to kill you (for whatever reason). The 'soul shattering' bosses that the back of the box mentions have so far been thoughtless "I'll hold block for 15 seconds until there's an opening, then try to get a few whacks in, then resume blocking." Nevermind that I'm barely into the game and I've already fought one boss twice.
Oh, and speaking of repetition -- what the hell were they thinking when they decided to make you keep revisiting areas? I mean, once you've figured out how to get from point A to point B in a room, doing it over and over again *really* isn't that much fun, it's just time consuming. The marketoids must have read some focus group that the game needs to have X hours of gameplay to be fun and sell well...
I bought it
In a nutshell: The PoP team did an outstanding job realizing the game that the marketing team said they should create. The marketing team did a really shitty job defining the game that PoP team made.
--Jeremy