Well, I get the first bit, but honestly, let's wait until Chinese Democracy comes out.
Assuming that's all you have to say... it's very wonderful that $5 can get you a set of horse armor. You can ride around with your horse, and I'll just keep buying games with fan-mods. Something comes out for 360 and the PC, and there's micro-upgrades for both? Well, I think I'll choose the platform with a history of free fan-hacks. Oh my gosh, hacking, illegal!!1! what would ayn rand think??? Well, whatever keeps us nearly broke college students from rioting in the streets, or demonstrating like our French cousins, I say.
Once I get a newbie to accept that it is a skill and it is his responsibility to learn it
You sound like the teacher who would waste weeks with bullshit "THIS IS WHY YOU LEARN!!! LEARN FASTER!!! LEARN BETTER!!! YOU!! DON'T BE SUCH A FOOL!!! JENKINS, YOU'RE PATHETIC!! EVERYBODY LAUGH AT JENKINS!!" garbage, then schedule remedial "skill building" exercises ("everybody plz copy ten quotes into your workbooks that emphasize the meaning of learning"), then wonder why people cut his class all the time - then spend ten minutes at the beginning of each class with threats about what happens to people who cut class. As someone who spent high school analyzing differing teaching styles and methodologies, including those used in Special Ed., yours ranks near the bottom - right down there with Clueless Newbie Hippie "Let's Make Dioramas to Learn History" instructors.
Or, to put it bluntly - you know the Pink Floyd song, "Another Brick in the Wall, pt. 2"? Yeah...
-- "IF YOU DON'T ET'YER MEAT, YOU CAN'T HAVE ANY PUDDIN'! HOW CAN YOU HAVE ANY PUDDIN' IF Y' DON'T ET'YER MEAT!?!?"
...because, see, I own a console called the "Playstation 2", and I believe this announcement pretty much seals that the PS2 will be supported for about as long as the PSX was after the PS2, and then some. I'll be seeing new games come out for my system long after Bush leaves the White House!
Anyway. My deeper, thoughtful reaction?
First, the controller.
From what I've seen:
The Wii controller is trying to do this fancy-pants "swing it like a sword - it IS a sword" stuff that is Very Great for fanboys but will probably never pan out in actuality ("oh crap, I moved my controller diagonally left-down instead of straight-down, now I am rolling straight off a cliff instead of ducking")
The PS3 controller is a last minute design, "oh this'll be so kewliez" sorta thing. Only thing is, if it's motion tracking AND Rumble, then that's about the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. And if it's not Rumble, congratulations, Sony, you took your one best feature from the PS2/Xbox/GC days and threw it off a cliff. HOWEVER - I think this controller will work a lot better for stuff like racing games (some people already tilt the controllers for an extra sharp turn - now it'll be like the SNES, where analog (/the crosspad) will turn you the "maximum", and tilting (/the L/R triggers) will push you past the limit.
Beyond racing games there aren't any situations where this controller is leaping out and attacking me with Perfection, but the truth is that it's a lot more subtle than the Wii, and so probably will result in a more diverse set of games, a few dozen of which will use the tilt to great effect. The tilt is "there if you need it", the Wii-stick is "all you can expect the gamer to have" - barring some sort of original-DualShock controller redesign.
Price, sucks.
Getting everything you need with the console, nice idea
I wouldn't be too surprised if the controller went through another final revision, possibly doing away with the tilt sensing altogether. Or maybe not.
It makes me sad thinking back ten+ years ago... "299." this isn't. Oh, Sony, how the mighty have fallen : (
It could really, really use a quality pack-in. Or two. Is Sony taking a loss on these? Are the internals solid 24k gold and diamond? If they're making a profit, they should srsly throw in a pack-in game that everyone's going to want anyway. It's the least they could do.
This trend of micro-purchasing sucks balls, and all other things equal, the console I'd buy and get all fan-boyish over will be the one with the least amount of this horse-armor^H^H^H^H^Hshit.
In the end, personally, the Wii isn't getting my money no matter how cheap it is. $300 for dogshit is still paying money for dogshit. It's like buying a Peter Frampton CD for $30 because the only other CDs in the store are Linkin Park for $40 ($50 with liner notes) and Boyz II Men for $60 ($70 with bonus tracks). The XBox 360 needs a price drop and a library of offbeat "killer aps" (just to give an idea of what I consider a "killer ap", three "killer aps" for the PS2 were MetropoliaMania!, Katamari Damarcy, and Bombastic - I'm a fan of the sub-$30 game that is fun and long-lasting, fuck that Splinter Cell MGS Gran Turismo bullshit). And the PS3... two great pack-in games, one or two price drops and maybe a free hooker with every game (just to take my mind off of the days of "$299"), choose two, then I'll bite.
So, wait, does this moean we're getting a motion sensing control with Rumble capabilities?
That would be the funniest, saddest, laugh-till-you-cry-and-then-realize-you're-crying- and-oh-god-the-laugh-is-so-painful move ever. It'd be the 5200 controller of the 21st century!
they are now bringing a real product to market that is designed to compete with the PC industry (including the Microsoft juggernaut) head to head
How is a computer that runs 75% as fast at 200% the cost "competing" in any way?
Big businesses don't like being dependent on one other company for their software + hardware + upkeep. Small businesses got burned back in the late 80s with proprietary computing and would be loath to go back. The Government doesn't want a computer made by potheads. The hippies don't want a computer designed and marketed by fascists. About half of the art crowd doesn't want a product from a company that has a long track record of fucking over the customers without a care (remember the iPod batteries?). The web server crowd is happy with Linux, and IBM compatible boxes are cheaper to run it on.
Middle America and the "GIT 'R DONE" crowd don't want it, it doesn't look manly the way a computer should. Most college kids can't afford one. Try telling Mom that all of a sudden most of the applications she comes across won't be able to run (or try telling her she needs to reboot into the other OS to run them). The high schoolers want the computer that has a track record of running all of the current hot games. The tweens just want to run Neopets and MySpace. And Dad just want whatever's cheap and will run with whatever he needs for the office.
So what Apple's left with is about half the arty crowd, the new-agers, the really spoiled tweens, the college kids who can't budget their money, and that floaty group that gets suckered for whatever advertising campaign or phony, self-conscious "word of mouth" hits them at the right time. The last two groups will probably move back to the PC once they fall on financial hard times or get burned (literally, in the case of the Macbook Pro), respectively. So that means Apple will have a group of self-conscious "independants" and a bunch of people who spend most of their disposable income on crystals and silver-sprays to "rejuvinate". Oh, and a portion of the N*Sync crowd. Sounds like a real winning long-term gameplan.
All in all, while the P.T. Barnum Theorum(TM) will keep Apple afloat for quite some time to come, I truly don't see them conquering the M$ empire (or even making more than a modest dent) unless they open up their hardware or port their OS to PC - neither of which seem very likely in the near - short term.
Yep, this is an anti-Apple post, and like most, there's a certain amount of scornful disdain and ridicule directed towards people who fall for Apple. I'd say it's pretty inevitable, and even possibly warranted. So feel free to mod me -1 Troll, Flamebait, or even Off-Topic. Go ahead - let your inner emotions talk! Rebirth yourself! Become ONE with your inner child! And while you're throwing money at stupid new-age shit, I think Apple released a new product with round corners and a lowercase "i". You KNOW you want it! (also: CRAPPLE!!! LOL):-D
Boy, you haven't read any Apple threads lately, have you?
Oh look, a thing that plays MP3s! Totally Something Great from Geniuses diamond rio huh whats that oh well anyway gotta load iTunes, back in ten minutes*!
If you give the player rockets, then a simple way to encourage them to use them properly is to ensure that they don't have enough to waste taking out scenery.
Or you can go the Crusader: No Remorse route. A rocket will take out any door that isn't made of Sci Fi Future Alloys (from the Future). A significant portion of keycard-doors are regular old doors. Should you choose to blast them, however, alarms are going to go apeshit, and you may not find an off-switch for quite some time.
The game worked well. It truly was "isometric action from a different perspective". Now tell me why 3D game designers can't possibly bear to part with their pacifiers and security blankets - er, I mean, their keycard hunts and mazes?
(sidenote: the one LOL moment I had during Serious Sam came when he said "sure beats finding keycards" upon blowing up a cavewall with a suspiciously-keycard-like-in-execution detonater. The irony, plus the 4th wall crashing down combined for an uproarious giggle)
I consider a game that I still play a decade after its release to be more deserving of Game of the Year than one I haven't played for more than five years.
Agreed. It'd be one thing if it had been years since the reviews. But all of this happened within the span of about a year or so, probably less. And to declare one game a better game Of All Time - then give the other, longer-lived game Game of the Year - reeks of bullshit to me.
Duke3D was, IMO, killed by the delay of the 1.5 update. In 1.4, there were limits as to what you could do with the GAME.CON file. I suspect (though have absolutely no evidence to support this theory) that the 1.5 patch (which removed these limitations) was delayed so it could ship with the Plutonium Pak. In the end, by the time that piece of shit had shipped and modders were free to truly explore the depths of the BUILD engine, QuakeC had already started to take off, and had all the momentum. Not to mention that, as a budding modder myself, I was put off by the prospect of having to pay an additional $19.99 for some levels I'd never appreciate and a patch which, in my eyes, fixed the game.
At that point I'd wonder why they'd give you such a weapon if you can't use it for most of the game unless you're using an infinite ammo cheat.
And I'd have to wonder why they waste man-hours making a giant pillar encased in colored reflective flames (that shine and also explode) if you'll never be able to see it unless you're either using a SPISPOPD cheat or spend hours learning to groupthink and collect the key cards.
Allowing the player to remove certain obstacles (in this case walls) necessitates new obstacles the player cannot remove easily in order to prevent the player from blowing a straight line from start to finish. Currently they're using walls and the like to stop you from going somewhere, if you could blow up the wall then they'd have to think of something else, probably a huge sea of fire or something.
And yet again, allow me to restate my central point: the genres aren't stale. The minds behind them are. Rather than brute-forcing everything into compliance, how about something creative? Like along the lines of:
* If I choose to blast a straight line from start to finish -
* And if I do not get caught in the falling debris-
* Then this will no doubt trigger an minor institution-wide event-
* And therefore I might find a platoon of soldiers swamping the start-point of the next level-
* Which, having already made the decision that a "fun experience" for me is the Rambo Tank of Doom approach, will probably be a fun challenge when I whip out my chaingun and mow down as many as I can while frantically fleeing for some cover of some sort.
This can be as simple as I made it, or made even more complex / interesting by incorporating RPG (Role Playing, not Rocket Propelled) elements. Fuck that System Shock stuff - that's for toddlers. How about a system where each gun weighs X units. Where the more units I have for carrying capacity, the less able I am to sneak about (given that a 300 pound muscleman can't prance about like a sleek Ninja of the Night). Where a rocket launcher, a pistol, and a chaingun would pretty much max me out - but you could have your pistol, your dual-pistol, your glock pistol, your AWP, your throwing knives, and your ballerina tutu or whatever helps you prance from choke point to choke point.:-D
As for the telephone pole of doom, well, the Gizmondo CEO found out the hard way that telephone poles are indeed instant doom.
Hahaha... +1, Funny. This is why I love discussing videogames, because I find that I go from neck-and-neck "yo mama so fat" low blows (see the last line of my above paragraph) to fucking laughing out loud.
Anyway. Point well taken.
At some point the FIFA games allowed unnecessary brutality, it was removed for later games. Probably because people were abusing it.
Or possibly because FIFA wanted to make a family-friendly image, similar to the NHL's misguided efforts in the mid-90s. Solution, of course, being - who needs licenses? I remember the days of the NES, where Bases Loaded was king and champion, Baseball Simulator 1.000 was the fun alternative, Baseball Stars was the Otaku-favorite, and the MLBPA licensed RBI baseball was usually "top of the second tier" at best. And the only (that springs to mind) baseball game licensed by the MLB? Everybody agreed that it blew goats (MLB, by LJN, possibly the worst baseball game of all time - even Jeff Rovin hated it. It's so bad I can't even find a Google result for it that isn't COMPARE PRICES BUY SELL TRADE. Some things are truly best forgotten, it seems).
I fault game companies not willing to take risks, burnt out programmers unwilling to fight for what they know is right, and stockholders who are paranoid about profits. In that order.
Let's see. I press the "A" button. Megaman launches upward, hits a peak, falls downward. In some cases (Super Mario Brothers), I press the "A" button, Mario jumps, and he appears to "float" in the air - ie, when I move left or right, in the air, he moves slower than the equivelant ground-based movement. Not so much in Megaman, but I digress.
Maybe it's not calculating momentum on the fly using real-time Einsteinian rendering, but I, the player of the game, could care less. "Simple gravity simulations", for me, make the difference between a game I could be playing right now instead of even bothering to get into this ridiculous argument (Megaman III) and one so bad that... jesus, it's bad (Captain Comic).
It's physics to me.
But go ahead, code some "impressive" "real-time physics"-utilizing game where every time I jump, a small army of Emotion Gnomes dives into my PS2's CPU and calculates just where on the parabola I shall lose 0.0003% momentum and whether swinging my sword will affect my doppler-wind-resistance enough to cause me to miss that platform I was so eagerly expecting to reach. And while you're scratching your head and wondering why all the game reviewers called that game a sloppy nightmare, I'll be playing a Capcom game.:-D
Dirt mounds (well, I think it was piles of sandbags) however, had incredible stopping power and survived impressive explosions
Apples and oranges. To put it another way, a litre of water (a mound of dirt) is incredibly subject to the forces of nature and man. It's not going to hurt much if I clock someone upside the head with it. That same litre of water, encased in a plastic bottle (a sandbag) takes on added elements that enhance its durability, and make for a sound thrashing.
In the case of sandbags - and I Am Not a Physics Major - I believe the compacting and confinement of the dirt would enhance its durability (dirtability? ouch ouch i'm sorry i'm sorry). We oftentimes see sandbags used to prevent floods or protect auto racers from tight turns, but an equivalent amount of dirt wouldn't do as much to help or buffer.
Explosives are used to knock through SOLID ROCK. I am relatively confident in stating that an RPG hitting the top of a reasonably narrow foothill will turn said foothill into something more resembling Mt. St. Helens, post-eruption. Ie, jaggy and carved out.
The inability to blow up scenery has more to do with level design than anything else. It's damn hard to keep things interesting if you allow the player to just blow up anything in their way.
It's a challenge - but you know, it's a videogame, not a sight-seeing tour. Maybe some people like getting a guided tour of a museum, but there are those of us who like charting our own paths, and have only ourselves to blame if it's not Mathematically Interesting.
Your sports game scenario won't work well either. You put your backup player in the game and have him violently take out the other team's staring QB. The other team is screwed for the season, but you're simply out your worst player. It's something that's cool once but takes away from the game past that.
I disagree. Heck, a simple AI strategy would be to increase Rivalry factor +1 - okay, once was an accident, but when that third-string LB committed four unnecessary roughness fouls en route to Peyton Manning's career ending elbow-tear, then you'll have an entire team fired up and aiming for the weak spots. Refs could throw flags, kick players out, maybe a bench clearing brawl, and the post-game "newspaper" would mention a real battle on the ballfield. Too much and "you" (the GM/coach/whatever) could get fired.
Honestly, give us the option. If Sammy Straightline wants to remove the temptation to "game the system", then let him turn "Constraint" ("Pro"/"Sim"/whatever) mode "on". If Nasty Nugneant wants to see what kind of realistic gridion chaos he can wreck, let him play his mode. This "leading the player by the nose" is symptomatic of an industry that is concerned only with the mythical mass appeal, and tunnel vision has never made a game fun.
For your car crash scenario, that could be done now. You'd just have to sacrifice graphical detail in other areas to do it. Based on what sells, people would rather have better looking scenery or more detailed cars than more detailed damage.
I call bull. What sells is what's advertised and what's hyped in everyone's favorite monthly magazine, Game___. What Game___ hypes is what it "thinks" people are interested in. Really, to determine what sells, you'd need two games, identical save for one having purdyful trees, the other having yummylicious car damage - oh, and a control game that is the same engine but features neither of these improvements - and then see what a majority of subjects indicated a preference for.
Your comment on computer teams switching cities and changing logos probably won't ever happen. I doubt the licenses with the sports league would allow that.
No. The option already exists in Madden (as of 2005) - however, in the two campaigns I've played, my team's been the only one to move to Mexico City (/Portland / random Canadian cities). It was around in the _____ Mogul series as well, and once again, computer teams just chose not to move on their own - even though I could go in and change all the names to "(TeamName) SUCKS NUTS", should I so decide to. I can't remember if the ____ Moguls were MLB / NFL licensed or just MLBPA / NFLPA, though.
For your platformer comments, branching level paths have been done plenty of times. Super Mario World 15 years ago was a rather prominent one. About a third of the levels had multiple exits, which opened up different branches on the world map. They also had a level broken into 4 parts. Each part had about 3 possiblies. Which one you were given depended on what you did in the previous one. It was a nice change, but would've gotten annoying fast if they did it often.
Yeeeeesssss.........no. Sorta. Kinda. Agree to disagree? Plead the 5th? Motion to adjourn?
SMW had branching EXITS. I was still confined to moving right (usually) until the world ended. Sometimes if I went down, or up, I would find a second exit. What I'm talking about... for starters, picture DOOM's E1M1. Say there was the e
The whole 'passion' bullshit is trying to put the work as an art.
Wow. Strangely, I find myself agreeing 100% with this.
Example: Daikatana? Battlecruiser 3000 A.D.? Games built from the "heart" of "passion".
Katamari Damarcy? The general impression I get is "uh, yeah, I guess we had fun? Maybe at some point? We weren't tortured, really. And yeah, the game's kinda cool, isn't it? Anyway, work work work".
DOOM? I get that "yeah, we were friends and had fun together - but that thing wasn't passion. That thing was BITCH. INCARNATE..
Half Life? Grand Theft Auto? Soul Calibur? Planning, calculation, execution. Granted, I doubt anyone on the inside hated the game itself - but I'm almost positive there were a significant portion of people who hated the bitch that The Game had become.
It's not "beautiful" (classically speaking), it's not pretty, but it's not a fucking flower. It's code. It's life. If life were meant to be a perfect little picture of beauty and metaphor, the Earth would still be flat. And frankly, I think I like really well executed code a little more than a really well executed flower.
Just for the record, I like (and am strongly in favor of) hand-held guns that cause these reactions in videogames.
That said, I believe this was debunked on Mythbusters (though I may be wrong). Put simply, due to Newton's 3rd law (or 2nd, or 1st, or 4th - I Am Not A Physicist), a gun with this power would blow the person who fires it backwards in much the same manner. Sorta like hitting an imp in the face with a rocket at point-blank range in DOOM - the invisible hand of "okay, you two, back off, simmer down, enough", if you will.:-D
Because acting weird in public is a crime punishable by secret prisons, 72 hour observations, and in general a whole bunch of idiots who lost the ability to feel taking things far, far too seriously.
So, some counter-questions, in a manner that you'll relate to:
Instead of arguing, why don't you... read a book?
Instead of insulting people who care about things, why don't you... clean your room?
Instead of replying to this post, why don't you... eat your veggies?
Instead of sharing your views with people, why don't you... brush your teeth?
Instead of realizing that your fucking non-sequiter of an argument is -1 Flamebait, why don't you... say your prayers?
The people these ratings laws are designed for are fucking stupid. Look around you. Your 13 year old friends probably played Mortal Kombat, right? DOOM, tons of fighting games, some R rated movies... and how many of them are killers?
I played DOOM when I was, let's see... 12. Has it messed me up for life? Other than that I'm up at 2 in the morning posting about it to Slashdot, no, I can't say that it has.
So. These people don't know themselves. They don't know their kids. They don't trust humanity. They are, in the words of Frank Zappa, Big Stupid.
And the problem with bending over for Big Stupid is that Big Stupid is never happy. Their distrust of humanity runs infinitely deep, and they will always ask for something more. Something bigger. Something should be done - to help the CHILDREN!!. Every Big Stupid retard overflows with smug self-satisfaction - it's the QED of retard debate.
And anyway, the ESRB was created in panic and fear during the MK days - much like, oh, the PATRIOT Act. And laws and institutions that are created in a panicked, stupid uproar, as far as I can figure, are always destined to fail. The ESRB, the PATRIOT Act, the Hays Office (created during the wake of the Fatty Arbuckle sex scandal, basically sanitized all movies from the mid 1930s up until the 60s), Prohibition, contraception legislation - all created from fear. Fear of angry parents (who would hurt the videogame industry... how? Oh, by denying a few sales... sort of... uh... like what they're doing now?). Fear of TERRORISTS. Fear of looking scandalous. Fear of being scandalous. Fear of the Lord God in Heaven.
Since we can say "stop making laws that are merely reactions to fear" until we're blue in the face and nothing will change, how about something like... oh, how about attack these constructions (the ESRB, RIAA, what have you) not because they're stupid (because stupid is very, very hard to objectively ram home), but because they're un-American, un-Christian (hello, tolerance?), un-profitable, un-necessary, and finally, a hazard to our continued survival.
Violence on a computer screen harms no child.
So why regulate it? Fact is that the parents who are truly upset about this are already the type who keep Little Johnny free from TV, Nintendo, flouride, evolution, and sugary cereals, and are perfectly used to micro-managing. Then you have a large army of "WELL, THIS IS THE RIGHT PRINCIPLE!!" morons who are equally harmful to society - it sounds good to them, it sounds like something nice, something that should be done!:) This group, in the end, is pretty much blind and unaware of what their kid does, and the most recent generation still hasn't realized that little Albert the Straight-A Accountant (pride and joy of the family) spent his high school years playing Giant Buckets of Blood and Guns, in between watching Attack of the Boob Creatures IV. And finally, there's the majority of educated America, who doesn't give a shit if Ralphie buys Duke Nukem Touches the Boob IV, because in between bouts of this, the kid's nutured and fearless mind seeks out Dickens and Proust.
The ESRB is set up to protect the first group, with the nod and Positive Thoughts of the second group. And it's a fucking retarded disaster.
(Devil's Advocate: The suggestable, likely superstitious child that would be harmed from violence on a computer screen (harmed = affected beyond tears and the urge to look away) is a walking schizophrenic time-bomb anyway, and there comes a point where you learn that, sadly, nothing can be done to help - lest we all live in fear and subject every instance of our existance to the kid who can send us all to the cornfield.)
Anyway. I just needed to get that off my chest, I like the words I used, and so-- (one minute later) --and good lord I'm so glad I use Firefox - somehow I navigated away from this rant (possibly a bug? It happens in IE t
Slashdot Mirror
I've put some of the words above in all caps. You should pay special attention to those, because you have obviously missed the point.
...no, still don't get it. Oh, wait, I know--
GIVE... NEW... FULL, REGULAR... OPTION... ADDITIONAL.
G...N...F...R... O... A...
Well, I get the first bit, but honestly, let's wait until Chinese Democracy comes out.
Assuming that's all you have to say... it's very wonderful that $5 can get you a set of horse armor. You can ride around with your horse, and I'll just keep buying games with fan-mods. Something comes out for 360 and the PC, and there's micro-upgrades for both? Well, I think I'll choose the platform with a history of free fan-hacks. Oh my gosh, hacking, illegal!!1! what would ayn rand think??? Well, whatever keeps us nearly broke college students from rioting in the streets, or demonstrating like our French cousins, I say.
We'll see how the marketplace goes. =)
You are totally offtopic.
Totally PONIES!?!?!? OMG, totally no WAY!!!!!
Oh, like sorry (for SURE!) - totally forgot to finish reading that totally bodacious sentence of yours there!! I'm like, sototally sorry and stuff!
Once I get a newbie to accept that it is a skill and it is his responsibility to learn it
You sound like the teacher who would waste weeks with bullshit "THIS IS WHY YOU LEARN!!! LEARN FASTER!!! LEARN BETTER!!! YOU!! DON'T BE SUCH A FOOL!!! JENKINS, YOU'RE PATHETIC!! EVERYBODY LAUGH AT JENKINS!!" garbage, then schedule remedial "skill building" exercises ("everybody plz copy ten quotes into your workbooks that emphasize the meaning of learning"), then wonder why people cut his class all the time - then spend ten minutes at the beginning of each class with threats about what happens to people who cut class. As someone who spent high school analyzing differing teaching styles and methodologies, including those used in Special Ed., yours ranks near the bottom - right down there with Clueless Newbie Hippie "Let's Make Dioramas to Learn History" instructors.
Or, to put it bluntly - you know the Pink Floyd song, "Another Brick in the Wall, pt. 2"? Yeah...
--
"IF YOU DON'T ET'YER MEAT, YOU CAN'T HAVE ANY PUDDIN'! HOW CAN YOU HAVE ANY PUDDIN' IF Y' DON'T ET'YER MEAT!?!?"
A Pinky and the Brain joke? On Slashdot? WTF?
...because, see, I own a console called the "Playstation 2", and I believe this announcement pretty much seals that the PS2 will be supported for about as long as the PSX was after the PS2, and then some. I'll be seeing new games come out for my system long after Bush leaves the White House!
Anyway. My deeper, thoughtful reaction?
First, the controller.
From what I've seen:
The Wii controller is trying to do this fancy-pants "swing it like a sword - it IS a sword" stuff that is Very Great for fanboys but will probably never pan out in actuality ("oh crap, I moved my controller diagonally left-down instead of straight-down, now I am rolling straight off a cliff instead of ducking")
The PS3 controller is a last minute design, "oh this'll be so kewliez" sorta thing. Only thing is, if it's motion tracking AND Rumble, then that's about the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. And if it's not Rumble, congratulations, Sony, you took your one best feature from the PS2/Xbox/GC days and threw it off a cliff. HOWEVER - I think this controller will work a lot better for stuff like racing games (some people already tilt the controllers for an extra sharp turn - now it'll be like the SNES, where analog (/the crosspad) will turn you the "maximum", and tilting (/the L/R triggers) will push you past the limit.
Beyond racing games there aren't any situations where this controller is leaping out and attacking me with Perfection, but the truth is that it's a lot more subtle than the Wii, and so probably will result in a more diverse set of games, a few dozen of which will use the tilt to great effect. The tilt is "there if you need it", the Wii-stick is "all you can expect the gamer to have" - barring some sort of original-DualShock controller redesign.
Price, sucks.
Getting everything you need with the console, nice idea
I wouldn't be too surprised if the controller went through another final revision, possibly doing away with the tilt sensing altogether. Or maybe not.
It makes me sad thinking back ten+ years ago... "299." this isn't. Oh, Sony, how the mighty have fallen : (
It could really, really use a quality pack-in. Or two. Is Sony taking a loss on these? Are the internals solid 24k gold and diamond? If they're making a profit, they should srsly throw in a pack-in game that everyone's going to want anyway. It's the least they could do.
This trend of micro-purchasing sucks balls, and all other things equal, the console I'd buy and get all fan-boyish over will be the one with the least amount of this horse-armor^H^H^H^H^Hshit.
In the end, personally, the Wii isn't getting my money no matter how cheap it is. $300 for dogshit is still paying money for dogshit. It's like buying a Peter Frampton CD for $30 because the only other CDs in the store are Linkin Park for $40 ($50 with liner notes) and Boyz II Men for $60 ($70 with bonus tracks). The XBox 360 needs a price drop and a library of offbeat "killer aps" (just to give an idea of what I consider a "killer ap", three "killer aps" for the PS2 were MetropoliaMania!, Katamari Damarcy, and Bombastic - I'm a fan of the sub-$30 game that is fun and long-lasting, fuck that Splinter Cell MGS Gran Turismo bullshit). And the PS3... two great pack-in games, one or two price drops and maybe a free hooker with every game (just to take my mind off of the days of "$299"), choose two, then I'll bite.
So, wait, does this moean we're getting a motion sensing control with Rumble capabilities?
- and-oh-god-the-laugh-is-so-painful move ever. It'd be the 5200 controller of the 21st century!
That would be the funniest, saddest, laugh-till-you-cry-and-then-realize-you're-crying
they are now bringing a real product to market that is designed to compete with the PC industry (including the Microsoft juggernaut) head to head
:-D
How is a computer that runs 75% as fast at 200% the cost "competing" in any way?
Big businesses don't like being dependent on one other company for their software + hardware + upkeep. Small businesses got burned back in the late 80s with proprietary computing and would be loath to go back. The Government doesn't want a computer made by potheads. The hippies don't want a computer designed and marketed by fascists. About half of the art crowd doesn't want a product from a company that has a long track record of fucking over the customers without a care (remember the iPod batteries?). The web server crowd is happy with Linux, and IBM compatible boxes are cheaper to run it on. Middle America and the "GIT 'R DONE" crowd don't want it, it doesn't look manly the way a computer should. Most college kids can't afford one. Try telling Mom that all of a sudden most of the applications she comes across won't be able to run (or try telling her she needs to reboot into the other OS to run them). The high schoolers want the computer that has a track record of running all of the current hot games. The tweens just want to run Neopets and MySpace. And Dad just want whatever's cheap and will run with whatever he needs for the office.
So what Apple's left with is about half the arty crowd, the new-agers, the really spoiled tweens, the college kids who can't budget their money, and that floaty group that gets suckered for whatever advertising campaign or phony, self-conscious "word of mouth" hits them at the right time. The last two groups will probably move back to the PC once they fall on financial hard times or get burned (literally, in the case of the Macbook Pro), respectively. So that means Apple will have a group of self-conscious "independants" and a bunch of people who spend most of their disposable income on crystals and silver-sprays to "rejuvinate". Oh, and a portion of the N*Sync crowd. Sounds like a real winning long-term gameplan.
All in all, while the P.T. Barnum Theorum(TM) will keep Apple afloat for quite some time to come, I truly don't see them conquering the M$ empire (or even making more than a modest dent) unless they open up their hardware or port their OS to PC - neither of which seem very likely in the near - short term.
Yep, this is an anti-Apple post, and like most, there's a certain amount of scornful disdain and ridicule directed towards people who fall for Apple. I'd say it's pretty inevitable, and even possibly warranted. So feel free to mod me -1 Troll, Flamebait, or even Off-Topic. Go ahead - let your inner emotions talk! Rebirth yourself! Become ONE with your inner child! And while you're throwing money at stupid new-age shit, I think Apple released a new product with round corners and a lowercase "i". You KNOW you want it! (also: CRAPPLE!!! LOL)
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My MOMMY thinks I'm +1 Insightful!
It has been stagnant and slowly declining for the last six years.
Anomalities aside, the same could be said for tech in general.
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My MOMMY thinks I'm +1 Insightful!
would have sold more had there been no delivery problems.
Yeah, gotta hand it to Sony - that PS2 launch was fucking flawless.
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+1, Sarcastic, if you please.
Boy, you haven't read any Apple threads lately, have you?
Oh look, a thing that plays MP3s! Totally Something Great from Geniuses diamond rio huh whats that oh well anyway gotta load iTunes, back in ten minutes*!
* exaggeration
No, in fact, they're the ones most troubled by it.
Russia alone pretty much sums the problem up.
Dvorak of course is the same guy that screamed that the system idle process was eating all of his CPU time{{cite}}
:-P )
(or, for those of you who don't speak Wiki - can someone please find a link for this? That'd be some DAMN good Sunday-evening reading
Don't kid yourself about 'target audience'.
I was speaking in terms of taste, not in terms of demographics.
If you give the player rockets, then a simple way to encourage them to use them properly is to ensure that they don't have enough to waste taking out scenery.
Or you can go the Crusader: No Remorse route. A rocket will take out any door that isn't made of Sci Fi Future Alloys (from the Future). A significant portion of keycard-doors are regular old doors. Should you choose to blast them, however, alarms are going to go apeshit, and you may not find an off-switch for quite some time.
The game worked well. It truly was "isometric action from a different perspective". Now tell me why 3D game designers can't possibly bear to part with their pacifiers and security blankets - er, I mean, their keycard hunts and mazes?
(sidenote: the one LOL moment I had during Serious Sam came when he said "sure beats finding keycards" upon blowing up a cavewall with a suspiciously-keycard-like-in-execution detonater. The irony, plus the 4th wall crashing down combined for an uproarious giggle)
I consider a game that I still play a decade after its release to be more deserving of Game of the Year than one I haven't played for more than five years.
Agreed. It'd be one thing if it had been years since the reviews. But all of this happened within the span of about a year or so, probably less. And to declare one game a better game Of All Time - then give the other, longer-lived game Game of the Year - reeks of bullshit to me.
Duke3D was, IMO, killed by the delay of the 1.5 update. In 1.4, there were limits as to what you could do with the GAME.CON file. I suspect (though have absolutely no evidence to support this theory) that the 1.5 patch (which removed these limitations) was delayed so it could ship with the Plutonium Pak. In the end, by the time that piece of shit had shipped and modders were free to truly explore the depths of the BUILD engine, QuakeC had already started to take off, and had all the momentum. Not to mention that, as a budding modder myself, I was put off by the prospect of having to pay an additional $19.99 for some levels I'd never appreciate and a patch which, in my eyes, fixed the game.
Moral of the story: Don't be sleazy.
At that point I'd wonder why they'd give you such a weapon if you can't use it for most of the game unless you're using an infinite ammo cheat.
And I'd have to wonder why they waste man-hours making a giant pillar encased in colored reflective flames (that shine and also explode) if you'll never be able to see it unless you're either using a SPISPOPD cheat or spend hours learning to groupthink and collect the key cards.
Allowing the player to remove certain obstacles (in this case walls) necessitates new obstacles the player cannot remove easily in order to prevent the player from blowing a straight line from start to finish. Currently they're using walls and the like to stop you from going somewhere, if you could blow up the wall then they'd have to think of something else, probably a huge sea of fire or something.
:-D
And yet again, allow me to restate my central point: the genres aren't stale. The minds behind them are. Rather than brute-forcing everything into compliance, how about something creative? Like along the lines of:
* If I choose to blast a straight line from start to finish -
* And if I do not get caught in the falling debris-
* Then this will no doubt trigger an minor institution-wide event-
* And therefore I might find a platoon of soldiers swamping the start-point of the next level-
* Which, having already made the decision that a "fun experience" for me is the Rambo Tank of Doom approach, will probably be a fun challenge when I whip out my chaingun and mow down as many as I can while frantically fleeing for some cover of some sort.
This can be as simple as I made it, or made even more complex / interesting by incorporating RPG (Role Playing, not Rocket Propelled) elements. Fuck that System Shock stuff - that's for toddlers. How about a system where each gun weighs X units. Where the more units I have for carrying capacity, the less able I am to sneak about (given that a 300 pound muscleman can't prance about like a sleek Ninja of the Night). Where a rocket launcher, a pistol, and a chaingun would pretty much max me out - but you could have your pistol, your dual-pistol, your glock pistol, your AWP, your throwing knives, and your ballerina tutu or whatever helps you prance from choke point to choke point.
As for the telephone pole of doom, well, the Gizmondo CEO found out the hard way that telephone poles are indeed instant doom.
Hahaha... +1, Funny. This is why I love discussing videogames, because I find that I go from neck-and-neck "yo mama so fat" low blows (see the last line of my above paragraph) to fucking laughing out loud.
Anyway. Point well taken.
At some point the FIFA games allowed unnecessary brutality, it was removed for later games. Probably because people were abusing it.
Or possibly because FIFA wanted to make a family-friendly image, similar to the NHL's misguided efforts in the mid-90s. Solution, of course, being - who needs licenses? I remember the days of the NES, where Bases Loaded was king and champion, Baseball Simulator 1.000 was the fun alternative, Baseball Stars was the Otaku-favorite, and the MLBPA licensed RBI baseball was usually "top of the second tier" at best. And the only (that springs to mind) baseball game licensed by the MLB? Everybody agreed that it blew goats (MLB, by LJN, possibly the worst baseball game of all time - even Jeff Rovin hated it. It's so bad I can't even find a Google result for it that isn't COMPARE PRICES BUY SELL TRADE. Some things are truly best forgotten, it seems).
I fault game companies not willing to take risks, burnt out programmers unwilling to fight for what they know is right, and stockholders who are paranoid about profits. In that order.
"Hopefully, it will refresh eventually."
== "Hopefully, I'll get fired from this job soon"?
Let's see. I press the "A" button. Megaman launches upward, hits a peak, falls downward. In some cases (Super Mario Brothers), I press the "A" button, Mario jumps, and he appears to "float" in the air - ie, when I move left or right, in the air, he moves slower than the equivelant ground-based movement. Not so much in Megaman, but I digress.
:-D
Maybe it's not calculating momentum on the fly using real-time Einsteinian rendering, but I, the player of the game, could care less. "Simple gravity simulations", for me, make the difference between a game I could be playing right now instead of even bothering to get into this ridiculous argument (Megaman III) and one so bad that... jesus, it's bad (Captain Comic).
It's physics to me.
But go ahead, code some "impressive" "real-time physics"-utilizing game where every time I jump, a small army of Emotion Gnomes dives into my PS2's CPU and calculates just where on the parabola I shall lose 0.0003% momentum and whether swinging my sword will affect my doppler-wind-resistance enough to cause me to miss that platform I was so eagerly expecting to reach. And while you're scratching your head and wondering why all the game reviewers called that game a sloppy nightmare, I'll be playing a Capcom game.
Dirt mounds (well, I think it was piles of sandbags) however, had incredible stopping power and survived impressive explosions
Apples and oranges. To put it another way, a litre of water (a mound of dirt) is incredibly subject to the forces of nature and man. It's not going to hurt much if I clock someone upside the head with it. That same litre of water, encased in a plastic bottle (a sandbag) takes on added elements that enhance its durability, and make for a sound thrashing.
In the case of sandbags - and I Am Not a Physics Major - I believe the compacting and confinement of the dirt would enhance its durability (dirtability? ouch ouch i'm sorry i'm sorry). We oftentimes see sandbags used to prevent floods or protect auto racers from tight turns, but an equivalent amount of dirt wouldn't do as much to help or buffer.
Explosives are used to knock through SOLID ROCK. I am relatively confident in stating that an RPG hitting the top of a reasonably narrow foothill will turn said foothill into something more resembling Mt. St. Helens, post-eruption. Ie, jaggy and carved out.
The inability to blow up scenery has more to do with level design than anything else. It's damn hard to keep things interesting if you allow the player to just blow up anything in their way.
....no. Sorta. Kinda. Agree to disagree? Plead the 5th? Motion to adjourn?
It's a challenge - but you know, it's a videogame, not a sight-seeing tour. Maybe some people like getting a guided tour of a museum, but there are those of us who like charting our own paths, and have only ourselves to blame if it's not Mathematically Interesting.
Your sports game scenario won't work well either. You put your backup player in the game and have him violently take out the other team's staring QB. The other team is screwed for the season, but you're simply out your worst player. It's something that's cool once but takes away from the game past that.
I disagree. Heck, a simple AI strategy would be to increase Rivalry factor +1 - okay, once was an accident, but when that third-string LB committed four unnecessary roughness fouls en route to Peyton Manning's career ending elbow-tear, then you'll have an entire team fired up and aiming for the weak spots. Refs could throw flags, kick players out, maybe a bench clearing brawl, and the post-game "newspaper" would mention a real battle on the ballfield. Too much and "you" (the GM/coach/whatever) could get fired.
Honestly, give us the option. If Sammy Straightline wants to remove the temptation to "game the system", then let him turn "Constraint" ("Pro"/"Sim"/whatever) mode "on". If Nasty Nugneant wants to see what kind of realistic gridion chaos he can wreck, let him play his mode. This "leading the player by the nose" is symptomatic of an industry that is concerned only with the mythical mass appeal, and tunnel vision has never made a game fun.
For your car crash scenario, that could be done now. You'd just have to sacrifice graphical detail in other areas to do it. Based on what sells, people would rather have better looking scenery or more detailed cars than more detailed damage.
I call bull. What sells is what's advertised and what's hyped in everyone's favorite monthly magazine, Game___. What Game___ hypes is what it "thinks" people are interested in. Really, to determine what sells, you'd need two games, identical save for one having purdyful trees, the other having yummylicious car damage - oh, and a control game that is the same engine but features neither of these improvements - and then see what a majority of subjects indicated a preference for.
Your comment on computer teams switching cities and changing logos probably won't ever happen. I doubt the licenses with the sports league would allow that.
No. The option already exists in Madden (as of 2005) - however, in the two campaigns I've played, my team's been the only one to move to Mexico City (/Portland / random Canadian cities). It was around in the _____ Mogul series as well, and once again, computer teams just chose not to move on their own - even though I could go in and change all the names to "(TeamName) SUCKS NUTS", should I so decide to. I can't remember if the ____ Moguls were MLB / NFL licensed or just MLBPA / NFLPA, though.
For your platformer comments, branching level paths have been done plenty of times. Super Mario World 15 years ago was a rather prominent one. About a third of the levels had multiple exits, which opened up different branches on the world map. They also had a level broken into 4 parts. Each part had about 3 possiblies. Which one you were given depended on what you did in the previous one. It was a nice change, but would've gotten annoying fast if they did it often.
Yeeeeesssss.....
SMW had branching EXITS. I was still confined to moving right (usually) until the world ended. Sometimes if I went down, or up, I would find a second exit. What I'm talking about... for starters, picture DOOM's E1M1. Say there was the e
The whole 'passion' bullshit is trying to put the work as an art.
Wow. Strangely, I find myself agreeing 100% with this.
Example: Daikatana? Battlecruiser 3000 A.D.? Games built from the "heart" of "passion".
Katamari Damarcy? The general impression I get is "uh, yeah, I guess we had fun? Maybe at some point? We weren't tortured, really. And yeah, the game's kinda cool, isn't it? Anyway, work work work".
DOOM? I get that "yeah, we were friends and had fun together - but that thing wasn't passion. That thing was BITCH. INCARNATE..
Half Life? Grand Theft Auto? Soul Calibur? Planning, calculation, execution. Granted, I doubt anyone on the inside hated the game itself - but I'm almost positive there were a significant portion of people who hated the bitch that The Game had become.
It's not "beautiful" (classically speaking), it's not pretty, but it's not a fucking flower. It's code. It's life. If life were meant to be a perfect little picture of beauty and metaphor, the Earth would still be flat. And frankly, I think I like really well executed code a little more than a really well executed flower.
Just for the record, I like (and am strongly in favor of) hand-held guns that cause these reactions in videogames.
:-D
That said, I believe this was debunked on Mythbusters (though I may be wrong). Put simply, due to Newton's 3rd law (or 2nd, or 1st, or 4th - I Am Not A Physicist), a gun with this power would blow the person who fires it backwards in much the same manner. Sorta like hitting an imp in the face with a rocket at point-blank range in DOOM - the invisible hand of "okay, you two, back off, simmer down, enough", if you will.
Because acting weird in public is a crime punishable by secret prisons, 72 hour observations, and in general a whole bunch of idiots who lost the ability to feel taking things far, far too seriously.
So, some counter-questions, in a manner that you'll relate to:
Instead of arguing, why don't you... read a book?
Instead of insulting people who care about things, why don't you... clean your room?
Instead of replying to this post, why don't you... eat your veggies?
Instead of sharing your views with people, why don't you... brush your teeth?
Instead of realizing that your fucking non-sequiter of an argument is -1 Flamebait, why don't you... say your prayers?
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My MOMMY thinks I'm +1 Insightful
...but look.
:) This group, in the end, is pretty much blind and unaware of what their kid does, and the most recent generation still hasn't realized that little Albert the Straight-A Accountant (pride and joy of the family) spent his high school years playing Giant Buckets of Blood and Guns, in between watching Attack of the Boob Creatures IV. And finally, there's the majority of educated America, who doesn't give a shit if Ralphie buys Duke Nukem Touches the Boob IV, because in between bouts of this, the kid's nutured and fearless mind seeks out Dickens and Proust.
The people these ratings laws are designed for are fucking stupid. Look around you. Your 13 year old friends probably played Mortal Kombat, right? DOOM, tons of fighting games, some R rated movies... and how many of them are killers?
I played DOOM when I was, let's see... 12. Has it messed me up for life? Other than that I'm up at 2 in the morning posting about it to Slashdot, no, I can't say that it has.
So. These people don't know themselves. They don't know their kids. They don't trust humanity. They are, in the words of Frank Zappa, Big Stupid.
And the problem with bending over for Big Stupid is that Big Stupid is never happy. Their distrust of humanity runs infinitely deep, and they will always ask for something more. Something bigger. Something should be done - to help the CHILDREN!!. Every Big Stupid retard overflows with smug self-satisfaction - it's the QED of retard debate.
And anyway, the ESRB was created in panic and fear during the MK days - much like, oh, the PATRIOT Act. And laws and institutions that are created in a panicked, stupid uproar, as far as I can figure, are always destined to fail. The ESRB, the PATRIOT Act, the Hays Office (created during the wake of the Fatty Arbuckle sex scandal, basically sanitized all movies from the mid 1930s up until the 60s), Prohibition, contraception legislation - all created from fear. Fear of angry parents (who would hurt the videogame industry... how? Oh, by denying a few sales... sort of... uh... like what they're doing now?). Fear of TERRORISTS. Fear of looking scandalous. Fear of being scandalous. Fear of the Lord God in Heaven.
Since we can say "stop making laws that are merely reactions to fear" until we're blue in the face and nothing will change, how about something like... oh, how about attack these constructions (the ESRB, RIAA, what have you) not because they're stupid (because stupid is very, very hard to objectively ram home), but because they're un-American, un-Christian (hello, tolerance?), un-profitable, un-necessary, and finally, a hazard to our continued survival.
Violence on a computer screen harms no child.
So why regulate it? Fact is that the parents who are truly upset about this are already the type who keep Little Johnny free from TV, Nintendo, flouride, evolution, and sugary cereals, and are perfectly used to micro-managing. Then you have a large army of "WELL, THIS IS THE RIGHT PRINCIPLE!!" morons who are equally harmful to society - it sounds good to them, it sounds like something nice, something that should be done!
The ESRB is set up to protect the first group, with the nod and Positive Thoughts of the second group. And it's a fucking retarded disaster.
(Devil's Advocate: The suggestable, likely superstitious child that would be harmed from violence on a computer screen (harmed = affected beyond tears and the urge to look away) is a walking schizophrenic time-bomb anyway, and there comes a point where you learn that, sadly, nothing can be done to help - lest we all live in fear and subject every instance of our existance to the kid who can send us all to the cornfield.)
Anyway. I just needed to get that off my chest, I like the words I used, and so-- (one minute later) --and good lord I'm so glad I use Firefox - somehow I navigated away from this rant (possibly a bug? It happens in IE t