I wont buy ANYTHING with the Ubisoft label on it... not after the Pools of Radiance 2 debacle...
what a wonderful game... ruined... completely...
oh well, they were the number 1 game for a week, if you dont like it, write your own! (if you didnt check the forums you wouldnt understand, but that was their response!)
Note, this game was so horrible, they had to patch it before it could be uninstalled off of some users machines...
I tried (for the 3rd and final time) last weekend to play AO, as one of my friends wanted to try the 7 day demo...
so I downloaded it (again), and proceeded to sign on.
I was a Soldier, and I (think I did anyway) assigned my skill points so that I could use the super cannon of a rifle I was given (it actually just LOOKED impressive), yet I still couldnt kill anything. I couldnt kill Leets (rat like things), I couldnt kill Eleets (they looked the same, maybe stronger?), rotting corpses (nope, they kicked my ass too), and there was another thing, looked like a pissed off gopher, it kept hostiling me.
All in all, it was complete anarchy. And it was online... I guess it lived up to its name.
I give it a 2/5, the character creation was better than it was the last time I tried it, obviously they are trying to make it better... but in the end, it was a waste of three hours of my life...
Seriously though... I can name quite a few fords, but Prefect is not one I've ever heard of (admittedly, I've only been around since 1980, was it prior to that?):)
"its your hub/router (I maintain to this day that they dont know that its a hub or router, but think its a hub-router)... plug the cable modem right into the computer, count to ten, pray to Thor, go the macarena, and chant... if that doesnt work, we cant help you and will schedule a tech"
if I were an artist, I'd have to say that 1,000 CD sales and 0 downloads is worse than 50 CD sales and 1,000,000 downloads... at least if people are downloading and listening to the music, there is a percentage of them that may come and see you when you play live, and those people might buy your t-shirts, and posters, and assorted other crap they sell at live shows... if a relatively small people are buying your CD, and no one is downloading you because of either their hatred for the RIAA or because its "morally wrong" or because it is no longer possible to download, then who is going to see you play live?
Its a helluva lot easier to get a CD at target for 13 bucks as opposed to hunting on Kazaa for the entire thing in good quality that isnt the chorus repeated over and over and over...
but if even 1 penny of that purchase goes to fund a lawsuit, they fuck 'em. I'd rather infringe their copyright.
Oh, and if they dont want us listening to their music for free, then perhaps they shouldnt play it on the radio... I'd guess that over 95% of the stuff I download is the flavor of the week on the radio.
But then I realize that part of the 15 bucks I would have given to best buy or whatever is going to fund a lawsuit against the parents of some 13 year old girl who downloaded the latest n*stink song, listened to it twice, and forgot about it (nevermind the fact that the song COULD have been copied from the GOD DAMN RADIO)...
So I am left with hunting on KaZaA for a song that may or may not be the real (or whole) song, and might very well crap out halfway through the download...
RIAA, sod off... some of us want your music, and WOULD pay 13-15 bucks for a CD, but not if you're going to rape us...
and besides, you dont pay for books at the library.
the ? was "name another activity that costs 7 dollars for 5 hours of anjoyment (free activities excluded)".
You might as well say, "go jogging, go to the park, do the dishes, play with the dog"...
video games arent an "end all" activity (gasp, did I really say that??) but since this is the "games" section of slashdot, for this "argument" it is...
I'm really confused... when I go to {insert game store here} and buy a $50 game, and it sucks, and I am stuck with it, THEN I get pissed.
When I go to Blockbuster and pony up 5.99 and get a dud, I chalk it up as a "well, at least I didnt buy it"... and generally I dont rent stuff that I wouldnt have bought if there WAS no place to rent it.
Why get pissed because the rental stunk? thats GOOD, you just saved about 45 bucks from not BUYING the game.
Its just a silly waste of energy to get mad because a RENTAL blows.
If you spent 5 hours playing it, thats roughly 1.4 bucks an hour at 7 bucks, and since you beat it, you'll never have to play it again... please show me another activity (that costs money) where you can spend 7 bucks and get 5 hours of entertainment.
With all the 2-3 hour games out there, would YOU want to spend 50 bucks on them? Hell no. Couple that with the fact that everyone I know with at least 1 current gen console owns another (in other words, most of us own PS2s and either GC or Xbox, or all three) PLUS a PC (which we use mostly for gaming), and it equals lots of hardware, but no software.
Now, we HAVE to buy the PC games because they dont rent those, but for a weekend of fun, 5 bucks is hard to beat (and since you blockbuster and hollywood video give about 5 or so days for 5 bucks, its not THAT bad a deal).
Also, in the days of the NES, many of us got burned with games that were 50+ bucks (catridges were expensive!) that royally sucked (deadly towers anyone? Sqoon?), why the heck would we want to get burned again? IF its a good game, you go out and buy it after the rental... if it sucks, well, you've only lost 5 bucks.
I would have bought a GC first, however, it WAS the last resort, coming out AFTER the PS2 and DURING the Xbox Halo hype... the launch games for the GC stunk... Rogue Squadron was pathetic (the devs admitted this, and its why RS3 will feature the entire RS2 game WITH multiplayer support), luigi's mansion was "meh", and the other titles I cant even remember... IMHO, the system didnt get "good" until recently, where people can go to the store and see Mario Sunshine, Zelda, Metroid, and other solid games coming before X-mas, not 2 years from now...
"Shortly after posting this article, I realized something that had somehow gotten past me about the last update by SOE, just two days ago. SOE in their wisdom decided that they needed to slow down the respawn rate of some static spawns, because people were "camping" them. Camping is, apparently, a bad thing. (Does it matter that most players want lots of spawn points to camp? One must wonder...).
I went to one of the very few locations with some content today (the Tusken Fortress), and hunted for a while. The tuskens located there spawn much, much more slowly now. There is less to hunt, basically. It was frustrating.
That's right, folks. SOE took a game with little content and, by reducing the spawn rate of static spawns, actually reduced the amount of content, hunting, and other things to do.
Pure genius."
oh god... I was in Beta 3... (actually, I was BANNED from beta 3 near the end because I was a little miffed when medics got the shaft, and suggested that if marksmen had to go through the same crap to shoot as medics were forced to in order to heal, people would tell SoE to shove the game up their ass... or perhaps it was Holocrons (Raph Kosters) post about "how they had decided to drop vehicles at launch in order to focus on 'content'" and my subsequent posting of a WoW screenshot showing players on horses... who can say?)
Regardless, the games "content" has been 0 since the day I got the beta, and it seems like it hasnt gotten any better. Sad really, THIS is that SW MMORPG we get. There wont be another one 6 months from now (like, AC and EQ are both fantasy MMORPGs, so there IS "choice")...
When I go to the local EB, I look over the racks of all the systems... (I own a GC and a PS2, as well as a "gaming" PC... no Xbox just yet). What do I see? Under PS2... crap, crap, GTA (also on PC), crap, crap, port, port, port, GTA VC (also on PC), crap, crap... under Xbox, crap, crap, Halo (on PC soon), crap, crap, port, port, port, crap, KoTOR (on PC soon), and Live (not a game, but a selling point). On GC, however, its Mario, Link, Metroid, Mario Golf, Animal Crossing (was that the name of it?), in addition to the other crap and the ports. (I havent gone into games that are "coming soon" like the new StarFox and Fzero and Mario Kart and Mario Tennis...)
The GC doesnt have many games, but the PS2 has alot of games that arent good. The Xbox, I have played and enjoyed, and Live is very appealing, but the games just arent there... I'd rather play Halo on my PC with a mouse than with the joystick, and kotor will be better on the PC as well...
It has nothing to do with "progress"... if each 1 GB stick is 170, then you can get 8 sticks for 1500 bucks (almost 9, really) which is 2 times the storage, or in case you cant put 2 and 2 together, is 2 times the amount of pictures taken before clearing the photos from the card.
Its not like this is a hard drive where you are limited by case size or free IDE spots or whatever... you can carry as many of these as you care to, thus, 8 GB of space on 8 cards is better than 4 GB of space on one card.
unless you're rich or your company will front the bill, that is... in that case, hey, go for it...:P
a quick google search reveals that a 1 GB version is about 170... 170 * 4 = 680. At 1500 bucks, I think I'd rather just keep three other 1 gb sticks in my pocket/camera bag/whatever... granted, if you're a professional photgrapher you might think otherwise, but I recall something that we used a few years back that had to be changed every X number of pictures, what was it, oh yes... film.
I'd say it has to be easier to pop a flash card in and out of a digital camera as opposed to a roll of film... but thats just me.
Yes, mario golf is good... I am not sure if its better than the original (on the 64), because that was VERY good, and I even traded in FF8 for that (believe me, the guy at the EB was like "you're trading in FF8 for... MARIO GOLF?!" then again, FF8 was a steaming pile of dog shit which was good until I sucked mana, and realized that the game itself, sucked.)
I suppose the GC version will be more fun once I get used to the differences in the swings...
Of course girls play games. I always see female toons on EQ!
No, seriously... my girlfriend was addicted to Civ 3, now its NWN... we just got Mario Golf yesterday (god that game is FUN, and I HATE golf!!) and she was really into the N64 version so I expect lots of courses to be unlocked when I get home...
I tell you what, I've gotten 3 computers in 3 years, along with near constant upgrades on the basis of "but you'll get a better video card/more memory/whatever if I do" =)
Slashdot Mirror
Lets see... morning coffee... morning donut... morning SCO story...
the day can start now!
Now with the homeless being tracked, we cant shoot them for sport anymore!
Oh wait, you didnt *wink wink* hear that...
Gee, "no wonder he didnt only got"...
maybe I'm on a "magic tour" right now!!
Maybe if the Knight REALLY wanted to take a Magic Tour he'd consult a Wizard instead of a Computer...
No wonder he didnt only got a Semimagic tour, damn you Travelocity! Damn you to hell!
I wont buy ANYTHING with the Ubisoft label on it... not after the Pools of Radiance 2 debacle...
what a wonderful game... ruined... completely...
oh well, they were the number 1 game for a week, if you dont like it, write your own! (if you didnt check the forums you wouldnt understand, but that was their response!)
Note, this game was so horrible, they had to patch it before it could be uninstalled off of some users machines...
I tried (for the 3rd and final time) last weekend to play AO, as one of my friends wanted to try the 7 day demo...
so I downloaded it (again), and proceeded to sign on.
I was a Soldier, and I (think I did anyway) assigned my skill points so that I could use the super cannon of a rifle I was given (it actually just LOOKED impressive), yet I still couldnt kill anything. I couldnt kill Leets (rat like things), I couldnt kill Eleets (they looked the same, maybe stronger?), rotting corpses (nope, they kicked my ass too), and there was another thing, looked like a pissed off gopher, it kept hostiling me.
All in all, it was complete anarchy. And it was online... I guess it lived up to its name.
I give it a 2/5, the character creation was better than it was the last time I tried it, obviously they are trying to make it better... but in the end, it was a waste of three hours of my life...
No, actually, I had no idea!
:)
I'm an American you insensitive clod!
Seriously though... I can name quite a few fords, but Prefect is not one I've ever heard of (admittedly, I've only been around since 1980, was it prior to that?)
Is it faster than Chevy's Arthur Dent or Toyotas Zaphod Beeblebrox?
Oh well, I just hope it comes with a towel... and a pint of beer!!
Of the brainiac that "discovered" this?
Der... I could have told you that...
ever try calling at&t for a cable modem outage?
"its your hub/router (I maintain to this day that they dont know that its a hub or router, but think its a hub-router)... plug the cable modem right into the computer, count to ten, pray to Thor, go the macarena, and chant... if that doesnt work, we cant help you and will schedule a tech"
if I were an artist, I'd have to say that 1,000 CD sales and 0 downloads is worse than 50 CD sales and 1,000,000 downloads... at least if people are downloading and listening to the music, there is a percentage of them that may come and see you when you play live, and those people might buy your t-shirts, and posters, and assorted other crap they sell at live shows... if a relatively small people are buying your CD, and no one is downloading you because of either their hatred for the RIAA or because its "morally wrong" or because it is no longer possible to download, then who is going to see you play live?
No one, thats who.
Its a helluva lot easier to get a CD at target for 13 bucks as opposed to hunting on Kazaa for the entire thing in good quality that isnt the chorus repeated over and over and over...
but if even 1 penny of that purchase goes to fund a lawsuit, they fuck 'em. I'd rather infringe their copyright.
Oh, and if they dont want us listening to their music for free, then perhaps they shouldnt play it on the radio... I'd guess that over 95% of the stuff I download is the flavor of the week on the radio.
But then I realize that part of the 15 bucks I would have given to best buy or whatever is going to fund a lawsuit against the parents of some 13 year old girl who downloaded the latest n*stink song, listened to it twice, and forgot about it (nevermind the fact that the song COULD have been copied from the GOD DAMN RADIO)...
So I am left with hunting on KaZaA for a song that may or may not be the real (or whole) song, and might very well crap out halfway through the download...
RIAA, sod off... some of us want your music, and WOULD pay 13-15 bucks for a CD, but not if you're going to rape us...
book reading isnt a social activity.
and besides, you dont pay for books at the library.
the ? was "name another activity that costs 7 dollars for 5 hours of anjoyment (free activities excluded)".
You might as well say, "go jogging, go to the park, do the dishes, play with the dog"...
video games arent an "end all" activity (gasp, did I really say that??) but since this is the "games" section of slashdot, for this "argument" it is...
I'm really confused... when I go to {insert game store here} and buy a $50 game, and it sucks, and I am stuck with it, THEN I get pissed.
When I go to Blockbuster and pony up 5.99 and get a dud, I chalk it up as a "well, at least I didnt buy it"... and generally I dont rent stuff that I wouldnt have bought if there WAS no place to rent it.
Why get pissed because the rental stunk? thats GOOD, you just saved about 45 bucks from not BUYING the game.
Its just a silly waste of energy to get mad because a RENTAL blows.
If you spent 5 hours playing it, thats roughly 1.4 bucks an hour at 7 bucks, and since you beat it, you'll never have to play it again... please show me another activity (that costs money) where you can spend 7 bucks and get 5 hours of entertainment.
With all the 2-3 hour games out there, would YOU want to spend 50 bucks on them? Hell no. Couple that with the fact that everyone I know with at least 1 current gen console owns another (in other words, most of us own PS2s and either GC or Xbox, or all three) PLUS a PC (which we use mostly for gaming), and it equals lots of hardware, but no software.
Now, we HAVE to buy the PC games because they dont rent those, but for a weekend of fun, 5 bucks is hard to beat (and since you blockbuster and hollywood video give about 5 or so days for 5 bucks, its not THAT bad a deal).
Also, in the days of the NES, many of us got burned with games that were 50+ bucks (catridges were expensive!) that royally sucked (deadly towers anyone? Sqoon?), why the heck would we want to get burned again? IF its a good game, you go out and buy it after the rental... if it sucks, well, you've only lost 5 bucks.
thats not the point... the POINT is that they claim to have taken people OFF of "vehicle duty" and onto "content duty"...
There. Is. No. Content.
I would have bought a GC first, however, it WAS the last resort, coming out AFTER the PS2 and DURING the Xbox Halo hype... the launch games for the GC stunk... Rogue Squadron was pathetic (the devs admitted this, and its why RS3 will feature the entire RS2 game WITH multiplayer support), luigi's mansion was "meh", and the other titles I cant even remember... IMHO, the system didnt get "good" until recently, where people can go to the store and see Mario Sunshine, Zelda, Metroid, and other solid games coming before X-mas, not 2 years from now...
In a product designed to amuse me, I shouldnt have to go looking for fun.
"Shortly after posting this article, I realized something that had somehow gotten past me about the last update by SOE, just two days ago. SOE in their wisdom decided that they needed to slow down the respawn rate of some static spawns, because people were "camping" them. Camping is, apparently, a bad thing. (Does it matter that most players want lots of spawn points to camp? One must wonder...).
I went to one of the very few locations with some content today (the Tusken Fortress), and hunted for a while. The tuskens located there spawn much, much more slowly now. There is less to hunt, basically. It was frustrating.
That's right, folks. SOE took a game with little content and, by reducing the spawn rate of static spawns, actually reduced the amount of content, hunting, and other things to do.
Pure genius."
oh god... I was in Beta 3... (actually, I was BANNED from beta 3 near the end because I was a little miffed when medics got the shaft, and suggested that if marksmen had to go through the same crap to shoot as medics were forced to in order to heal, people would tell SoE to shove the game up their ass... or perhaps it was Holocrons (Raph Kosters) post about "how they had decided to drop vehicles at launch in order to focus on 'content'" and my subsequent posting of a WoW screenshot showing players on horses... who can say?)
Regardless, the games "content" has been 0 since the day I got the beta, and it seems like it hasnt gotten any better. Sad really, THIS is that SW MMORPG we get. There wont be another one 6 months from now (like, AC and EQ are both fantasy MMORPGs, so there IS "choice")...
oh well, WoW will be out in a year or so...
When I go to the local EB, I look over the racks of all the systems... (I own a GC and a PS2, as well as a "gaming" PC... no Xbox just yet). What do I see? Under PS2... crap, crap, GTA (also on PC), crap, crap, port, port, port, GTA VC (also on PC), crap, crap... under Xbox, crap, crap, Halo (on PC soon), crap, crap, port, port, port, crap, KoTOR (on PC soon), and Live (not a game, but a selling point). On GC, however, its Mario, Link, Metroid, Mario Golf, Animal Crossing (was that the name of it?), in addition to the other crap and the ports. (I havent gone into games that are "coming soon" like the new StarFox and Fzero and Mario Kart and Mario Tennis...)
The GC doesnt have many games, but the PS2 has alot of games that arent good. The Xbox, I have played and enjoyed, and Live is very appealing, but the games just arent there... I'd rather play Halo on my PC with a mouse than with the joystick, and kotor will be better on the PC as well...
It has nothing to do with "progress"... if each 1 GB stick is 170, then you can get 8 sticks for 1500 bucks (almost 9, really) which is 2 times the storage, or in case you cant put 2 and 2 together, is 2 times the amount of pictures taken before clearing the photos from the card.
:P
Its not like this is a hard drive where you are limited by case size or free IDE spots or whatever... you can carry as many of these as you care to, thus, 8 GB of space on 8 cards is better than 4 GB of space on one card.
unless you're rich or your company will front the bill, that is... in that case, hey, go for it...
a quick google search reveals that a 1 GB version is about 170... 170 * 4 = 680. At 1500 bucks, I think I'd rather just keep three other 1 gb sticks in my pocket/camera bag/whatever... granted, if you're a professional photgrapher you might think otherwise, but I recall something that we used a few years back that had to be changed every X number of pictures, what was it, oh yes... film.
I'd say it has to be easier to pop a flash card in and out of a digital camera as opposed to a roll of film... but thats just me.
Yes, mario golf is good... I am not sure if its better than the original (on the 64), because that was VERY good, and I even traded in FF8 for that (believe me, the guy at the EB was like "you're trading in FF8 for ... MARIO GOLF?!" then again, FF8 was a steaming pile of dog shit which was good until I sucked mana, and realized that the game itself, sucked.)
I suppose the GC version will be more fun once I get used to the differences in the swings...
Of course girls play games. I always see female toons on EQ!
No, seriously... my girlfriend was addicted to Civ 3, now its NWN... we just got Mario Golf yesterday (god that game is FUN, and I HATE golf!!) and she was really into the N64 version so I expect lots of courses to be unlocked when I get home...
I tell you what, I've gotten 3 computers in 3 years, along with near constant upgrades on the basis of "but you'll get a better video card/more memory/whatever if I do" =)