Jagged Alliance 2 is a iso-metric view tactical squad based strategy game with some RPG elements along the lines of X-Com UFO: Defense and Laser Squad but with an off-beat personality. It's got a vast array of weapons, some deep gameplay, great voice work and a wicked sense of humour.
The AI isn't great, but it's definitely worth a look especially if you enjoyed X-Com.
I was getting worried that Total Annihilation wouldn't make the list but there it is at the top of the heap.
I loved that game. The tweakability, AI, unit balance, use of terrain etc really were ahead of it's time. Just that fact that the air units were actually bound by the laws of flight rather than being ground units that floated was revolutionary
My favorite strategy was building a base and stocking it with an assload of Big Bertha cannons and missile defenses, setting both to automatically fire at anything that moved. I'd send scout planes (backed up by construction planes on repair duty) to roam the map. As the planes exposed enemy postions and units, the Big Bertha's would automatically target and pound them into oblivion.
Then I'd leave the computer on for a couple hours and come back to see a complete wasteland with nothing standing except for my base.
Obligatory Simpsons quote:
BOB: "Oh come, now. You wanted to be Krusty's sidekick since you were five! What about the buffoon lessons? The four years at clown college?"
CECIL: "I'll thank you not to refer to Princeton that way."
"Hero" moved me-- to tears. Funded by the Bejing government, it is a 2 1/2 hour long apology for totalitarianism. But what would you expect from a director who was once one of the bravest social critics in Chinese cinema, but has since sold out for a position in the Cultural Ministry. (Zhang Yimou)?
Donnie Yen, Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung are tragically wasted, while Jet Li captures all the emotion of a wooden dummy which comes as a surprise to no one.
The uninspired fight scenes are far too formalized and drag on interminably, with none of the visceral impact of "Fist of Legend", "Fong Sai Yuk" or even "Crouching Tiger".
Sure it looks pretty, but "Hero" doesn't have many brains and not a hint of soul.
Hong Kong kung fu films were once dominated with stories of rebels (Fong Sai Yuk, Wong Fei Hung) sticking up for the little guy against opressive governments, but the message in "Hero" is that as long as you've got the best intentions it's OK to crush dissent. What a shame.
***Disclaimer: I'm Taiwanese, but have lived in North America all my life. My parents are vehemently pro-Taiwanese independence and supporters of President Chen***
Both economically and militarily, there won't be mutual self-destruction between mainland China and Taiwan. Instead, there will be one huge mammoth of a country squashing a football-field-sized other country.
I agree that if China and Taiwan had a knock out drag out fight, Taiwan would be up shit creek. China has about 450 missiles currently aimed at Taiwan with 75 being added per year. But that's operating under the assumption that China would be willing to destroy Taiwan rather than invade or occupy which would be extremely costly. Remember Taiwan would be fighting a defensive war and what it lacks in numbers, Taiwan's military makes up in quality of equipment and support. Although Taiwanese navy wasn't sold the four Arleigh Burke destroyers (with Aegis missile systems) it was looking for, it did get 4 Kidd class guided missile destroyers in addition to it's current fleet of 21 Perry, Knox and LaFayette frigates and homegrown naval ships. Taiwan's airforce is made up of 150 F-16's and 60 Mirage 2000-5's. The vast numbers of PLA won't do any good unless they can make it across the Taiwan strait, which they'll have a hard time doing without overwhelming naval and air superiority (unless the PLA can march along the seabed like in Pirates of the Carribean)
And there won't be economic or military sanctions on China (the threat of which is what prevented it from harming Taiwan for so long) because now the US, the only country able to inflict any kind of sanctions on China, has vested interests in both countries.
You're ignoring the fact that Taiwan has extremely close trade ties with China, and is by some estimates its largest foreign investor. This is the main reason why China has been relatively restrained recently regarding Taiwan, it's a piggybank that's been driving much of its economic development.
The only thing China risks is reproachful looks at the UN for a while, then after everybody there is done looking really shocked, Taiwan will be history. Proof is, if the rest of the world had any kind of power against China's actions, Tibet would have been freed a long time ago.
The reason why Tibet was never "freed" is that there are no economic benefits an agrarian country where any natural resources would be prohibitively expensive to export.
MacArthur wanted to nuke China during the Korean war. India had border conflicts with China in 3 seperate instances dating back to the 1950's. It's not a question of China pushing and no-one pushing back, it just was in no one's interest to pick that fight.
In short: Taiwan's days are numbered.
I agree. Taiwan's days as a province of China in name, but as an independent nation in fact are numbered. The only thing that has kept Taiwan independent thus far is the fact that it would be prohibitively expenses economically and militarily for Tiawan to retake China by force. It's hard to see how this will remain the case indefinitely. The only questions remaining are how China and Taiwan will resolve their differences and whether the people of the United States would be willing to get into a protracted shooting war over Taiwan...
I live in the SF Bay Area and switched from Cingular to Verizon on Monday. After two years of wretched coverage, there was no force on earth that could have made me stay with Cingular.
I walked into the Verizon store, picked out a phone and a plan and within 2 hours was switched over. I didn't even have to bring in any documentation and I was surprised how painles entire processes was.
It was the best buying experience I've had in a long time. I'd rather not have to pay the $1.75 per month for a service that should be standard, but given the choice between the fee and freedom to switch numbers versus no fee but no choice, go ahead and bill me.
And yet with our "crumbling school system" we still lead the World with advances in all sorts of Sciences. World leaders come to our country for major medical procedures because they don't trust their own medical systems. Foreign students come to our universities in droves.
There is no doubt that the American higher education system is the envy of the world. However it would take a blind man to not see the failings of our elementary school system.
I tutor at a foster home in what would politely be called "low-income housing", poor, predominantly African American. 10, 11, 13 years old and they still struggle with long division and basic literacy. Contrast this with my wealthy cousins attending a $26K/year private school: 12, 13 years old and studying on precalculus and working on research projects. In 5 years when the kids I tutor and my cousins are thinking about their futures, who is going to better prepared for college and the opportunities it opens up?
What kind of school system do we have when the wealth of your parents plays such an important role in opening doors?
I'm with you though, I don't like pausing movies and playing musical chairs during them. It takes me out of the emotional experience and interrupts the flow of the film.
In Israel, Turkey and other countries in the Middle East movies are halted at seemingly arbitrary points for 5-10 minute intermissions/smoke breaks. It's pretty distracting when you're watching a quality film like "Rushmore" or "All About My Mother", but it was a great opportunity to get the the hell out of the theatre during "Armageddon".
The vast majority of comic books sold in America in the last 15 years reflect a pre-pubescent fascination with big breasts, big guns and geek empowerment fantasies. For every Pulitzer winning "Maus" there are 10 X-Men titles.
Same thing with games-- the female game character most recognizable to the public is Lara Croft, just as known as for the size of her breasts as for her skill with guns.
Sega showed us it takes more than originality in game design to survive in the console industry. It takes a viable platform and large installed user base. Sony just announced it's shipped over 60 million PS2. Nintendo announced that it sold 15 million GBA and hopes it'll sell 6 million GC by March 2004. Granted console sales alone are no gauge of the financial health of a game company, but while Sony touts its online strategy with EA Sports currently exclusive support, it's penetration of the Middle East/Europe market, all Nintendo can talk about is its GBA-GC link (whoop-de-doo, "wait, you're telling me that I can play a portable game system in MY OWN HOME? Wow. What's next? A park full of mobile homes that don't go anywhere?") and its next big console (which they should call the Osbourne-2).
Not helping is Nintendo's reputation for arrogant indifference towards the interests of 3rd party developers (the paternalistic "Seal of Quality" for the NES, keeping the cartidge system when 3rd parties were clamoring for a CD format, an extremely litigous culture) survives, despite Nintendo's attempts to rehabilitate its image among game developers.
At the last Game Developer's Conference, Sony had a HUGE booth and their head of developer relations ran his ass off meeting with developers. Nintendo (to quote gignews.com) "acted as if North American developers were about as relevant as airline customer service."
And what if players don't want to play Pikmin, Warioware or Metroid Prime? Is it their fault that
they want games they see on other consoles? If Mario, Zelda, F-Zero GX, Metroid, Resident Evil 0, Final Fantasy Chronicles and all the other GC exclusive titles haven't convinced a console buyer to to buy a GC, nothing will. With 80,000 (or 800,000 which still sucks) GC sales in the last quarter, you can basically assume that anyone who's would buy a GC for exclusive games has already bought one. Now they have to expand their appeal to everyone else.
Nintendo has to understand that gamers buy what they want to play, not what Nintendo thinks that they want to play. It's fine for Nintendo to make innovative, original games the "Nintendo way" but they can't continue to turn a blind eye to the success that 3rd party support has brought PS2 as a platform.
Soul Calibur 2 sold so many GC copies because there are no other fighting games for the GC worth buying (except may Super Smash Bros Melee). PS2 has Virtua Fighter, Xbox DOA. If a game has no competition on it's platform, of course it'll sell bucketloads. It's called a captive audience.
An even better example would be SEGA dropping GC versions of their high-quality sports games. Why? It's a small market with 800 lb gorilla dominating (EA). Plus the GC has no online strategy.
As a GC owner, I'm happy that we're not getting the crap, but we're also not getting the GTAs, the Virtua Fighters, the Winning Elevens.
The higher sales for Soul Calibur 2 for GC might be due to the fact that there are no other good fighting games for GC (except maybe Super Smash Brothers) while PS has Virtua Fighter 4, Xbox DOA3. If your title has no competition on your platform, selling alot of units is practically guaranteed.
It's being shared on Kazaa, it'll only take 20 mins to download... wait make that 40 min... 1 hr... 22hrs, wtf?
Sneaking suspicion that this is part of some heinious plot to slashdot kazaa. Stupid AOL/Time Warner.
2 years ago at the Game Developer's Conference, Will Wright (designer of the Sims) gave a presentation on game design. There was one section where he compared designing games to designing chairs (as a mental exercise, a chair can have an infinite number of permutations but its success can be determined by sitting in it). Will Wright asked the question, if such-and-such game designer designed a chair, what would it look and feel like?
Sid Meier had a big brown recliner; familiar, but once you sat in it you'd could sit forever. Peter Molyneaux had a psychiatrists couch since he'd probably tell you things about yourself you'd never knew. John Carmack had a really technical chair that no one would understand, but that was okay since he'd give always the source code away.
Shigeru Miyamoto had (in Will Wright's words): "The most perfect chair you could ever imagine".
Remember it's not the gamers who have proclaimed him the god of games, it's other game designers.
Some have painted him as the Spielberg of games but he's better described as the Hitchcock of games; his work is easily pigeon-holed by the undiscerning, but his influence on his peers is immeasurable.
Slashdot Mirror
Jagged Alliance 2 is a iso-metric view tactical squad based strategy game with some RPG elements along the lines of X-Com UFO: Defense and Laser Squad but with an off-beat personality. It's got a vast array of weapons, some deep gameplay, great voice work and a wicked sense of humour. The AI isn't great, but it's definitely worth a look especially if you enjoyed X-Com.
Coming soon: Sam & Max in the Land of the Lounge Lizards!
See furry animals going places Leisure Suit Larry never imagined!
Actually I think it would go more like this:
RWaaargh!
What did you just say?
Warrrgekkkh!
You're my what? Please god tell me I was bottle fed.
Bullshit. I'm a medical assistant and I use my digital watch to measure pulses and respiration all the time.
I was getting worried that Total Annihilation wouldn't make the list but there it is at the top of the heap.
I loved that game. The tweakability, AI, unit balance, use of terrain etc really were ahead of it's time. Just that fact that the air units were actually bound by the laws of flight rather than being ground units that floated was revolutionary
My favorite strategy was building a base and stocking it with an assload of Big Bertha cannons and missile defenses, setting both to automatically fire at anything that moved. I'd send scout planes (backed up by construction planes on repair duty) to roam the map. As the planes exposed enemy postions and units, the Big Bertha's would automatically target and pound them into oblivion.
Then I'd leave the computer on for a couple hours and come back to see a complete wasteland with nothing standing except for my base.
Obligatory Simpsons quote: BOB: "Oh come, now. You wanted to be Krusty's sidekick since you were five! What about the buffoon lessons? The four years at clown college?" CECIL: "I'll thank you not to refer to Princeton that way."
Money doesn't bring success, talent does.
Like any other industry money buys talent though.
There have been what? 4 or 5 sequels out this year? Where is the origionality at?
I liked "Fellowship of the Ring" and all but having 2 sequels was just bald attempt at starting a franchise. When will people learn?
"Hero" moved me-- to tears. Funded by the Bejing government, it is a 2 1/2 hour long apology for totalitarianism. But what would you expect from a director who was once one of the bravest social critics in Chinese cinema, but has since sold out for a position in the Cultural Ministry. (Zhang Yimou)?
Donnie Yen, Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung are tragically wasted, while Jet Li captures all the emotion of a wooden dummy which comes as a surprise to no one.
The uninspired fight scenes are far too formalized and drag on interminably, with none of the visceral impact of "Fist of Legend", "Fong Sai Yuk" or even "Crouching Tiger".
Sure it looks pretty, but "Hero" doesn't have many brains and not a hint of soul.
Hong Kong kung fu films were once dominated with stories of rebels (Fong Sai Yuk, Wong Fei Hung) sticking up for the little guy against opressive governments, but the message in "Hero" is that as long as you've got the best intentions it's OK to crush dissent. What a shame.
***Disclaimer: I'm Taiwanese, but have lived in North America all my life. My parents are vehemently pro-Taiwanese independence and supporters of President Chen***
Both economically and militarily, there won't be mutual self-destruction between mainland China and Taiwan. Instead, there will be one huge mammoth of a country squashing a football-field-sized other country.
I agree that if China and Taiwan had a knock out drag out fight, Taiwan would be up shit creek. China has about 450 missiles currently aimed at Taiwan with 75 being added per year. But that's operating under the assumption that China would be willing to destroy Taiwan rather than invade or occupy which would be extremely costly. Remember Taiwan would be fighting a defensive war and what it lacks in numbers, Taiwan's military makes up in quality of equipment and support. Although Taiwanese navy wasn't sold the four Arleigh Burke destroyers (with Aegis missile systems) it was looking for, it did get 4 Kidd class guided missile destroyers in addition to it's current fleet of 21 Perry, Knox and LaFayette frigates and homegrown naval ships. Taiwan's airforce is made up of 150 F-16's and 60 Mirage 2000-5's. The vast numbers of PLA won't do any good unless they can make it across the Taiwan strait, which they'll have a hard time doing without overwhelming naval and air superiority (unless the PLA can march along the seabed like in Pirates of the Carribean)
And there won't be economic or military sanctions on China (the threat of which is what prevented it from harming Taiwan for so long) because now the US, the only country able to inflict any kind of sanctions on China, has vested interests in both countries.
You're ignoring the fact that Taiwan has extremely close trade ties with China, and is by some estimates its largest foreign investor. This is the main reason why China has been relatively restrained recently regarding Taiwan, it's a piggybank that's been driving much of its economic development.
The only thing China risks is reproachful looks at the UN for a while, then after everybody there is done looking really shocked, Taiwan will be history. Proof is, if the rest of the world had any kind of power against China's actions, Tibet would have been freed a long time ago.
The reason why Tibet was never "freed" is that there are no economic benefits an agrarian country where any natural resources would be prohibitively expensive to export.
MacArthur wanted to nuke China during the Korean war. India had border conflicts with China in 3 seperate instances dating back to the 1950's. It's not a question of China pushing and no-one pushing back, it just was in no one's interest to pick that fight.
In short: Taiwan's days are numbered.
I agree. Taiwan's days as a province of China in name, but as an independent nation in fact are numbered. The only thing that has kept Taiwan independent thus far is the fact that it would be prohibitively expenses economically and militarily for Tiawan to retake China by force. It's hard to see how this will remain the case indefinitely. The only questions remaining are how China and Taiwan will resolve their differences and whether the people of the United States would be willing to get into a protracted shooting war over Taiwan...
What if the gang had been named 'The Jews' or 'The Arabs'?
I live in the SF Bay Area and switched from Cingular to Verizon on Monday. After two years of wretched coverage, there was no force on earth that could have made me stay with Cingular.
I walked into the Verizon store, picked out a phone and a plan and within 2 hours was switched over. I didn't even have to bring in any documentation and I was surprised how painles entire processes was.
It was the best buying experience I've had in a long time. I'd rather not have to pay the $1.75 per month for a service that should be standard, but given the choice between the fee and freedom to switch numbers versus no fee but no choice, go ahead and bill me.
I tutor at a foster home in what would politely be called "low-income housing", poor, predominantly African American. 10, 11, 13 years old and they still struggle with long division and basic literacy. Contrast this with my wealthy cousins attending a $26K/year private school: 12, 13 years old and studying on precalculus and working on research projects. In 5 years when the kids I tutor and my cousins are thinking about their futures, who is going to better prepared for college and the opportunities it opens up? What kind of school system do we have when the wealth of your parents plays such an important role in opening doors?
The vast majority of comic books sold in America in the last 15 years reflect a pre-pubescent fascination with big breasts, big guns and geek empowerment fantasies. For every Pulitzer winning "Maus" there are 10 X-Men titles.
Same thing with games-- the female game character most recognizable to the public is Lara Croft, just as known as for the size of her breasts as for her skill with guns.
- I can't recall seeing any games, with the exception of arcade games, run on a vertically-aligned screen.
Tetris!!!! Nokia's going to corner the "falling puzzle bricks" market-- oh wait....
I'm guessing they get sent to the same prison?
Sega showed us it takes more than originality in game design to survive in the console industry. It takes a viable platform and large installed user base. Sony just announced it's shipped over 60 million PS2. Nintendo announced that it sold 15 million GBA and hopes it'll sell 6 million GC by March 2004. Granted console sales alone are no gauge of the financial health of a game company, but while Sony touts its online strategy with EA Sports currently exclusive support, it's penetration of the Middle East/Europe market, all Nintendo can talk about is its GBA-GC link (whoop-de-doo, "wait, you're telling me that I can play a portable game system in MY OWN HOME? Wow. What's next? A park full of mobile homes that don't go anywhere?") and its next big console (which they should call the Osbourne-2). Not helping is Nintendo's reputation for arrogant indifference towards the interests of 3rd party developers (the paternalistic "Seal of Quality" for the NES, keeping the cartidge system when 3rd parties were clamoring for a CD format, an extremely litigous culture) survives, despite Nintendo's attempts to rehabilitate its image among game developers. At the last Game Developer's Conference, Sony had a HUGE booth and their head of developer relations ran his ass off meeting with developers. Nintendo (to quote gignews.com) "acted as if North American developers were about as relevant as airline customer service." And what if players don't want to play Pikmin, Warioware or Metroid Prime? Is it their fault that they want games they see on other consoles? If Mario, Zelda, F-Zero GX, Metroid, Resident Evil 0, Final Fantasy Chronicles and all the other GC exclusive titles haven't convinced a console buyer to to buy a GC, nothing will. With 80,000 (or 800,000 which still sucks) GC sales in the last quarter, you can basically assume that anyone who's would buy a GC for exclusive games has already bought one. Now they have to expand their appeal to everyone else. Nintendo has to understand that gamers buy what they want to play, not what Nintendo thinks that they want to play. It's fine for Nintendo to make innovative, original games the "Nintendo way" but they can't continue to turn a blind eye to the success that 3rd party support has brought PS2 as a platform.
Soul Calibur 2 sold so many GC copies because there are no other fighting games for the GC worth buying (except may Super Smash Bros Melee). PS2 has Virtua Fighter, Xbox DOA. If a game has no competition on it's platform, of course it'll sell bucketloads. It's called a captive audience.
An even better example would be SEGA dropping GC versions of their high-quality sports games. Why? It's a small market with 800 lb gorilla dominating (EA). Plus the GC has no online strategy.
As a GC owner, I'm happy that we're not getting the crap, but we're also not getting the GTAs, the Virtua Fighters, the Winning Elevens.
The higher sales for Soul Calibur 2 for GC might be due to the fact that there are no other good fighting games for GC (except maybe Super Smash Brothers) while PS has Virtua Fighter 4, Xbox DOA3. If your title has no competition on your platform, selling alot of units is practically guaranteed.
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/china/doctrine/unres w1.htm
It's being shared on Kazaa, it'll only take 20 mins to download... wait make that 40 min... 1 hr... 22hrs, wtf? Sneaking suspicion that this is part of some heinious plot to slashdot kazaa. Stupid AOL/Time Warner.
2 years ago at the Game Developer's Conference, Will Wright (designer of the Sims) gave a presentation on game design. There was one section where he compared designing games to designing chairs (as a mental exercise, a chair can have an infinite number of permutations but its success can be determined by sitting in it). Will Wright asked the question, if such-and-such game designer designed a chair, what would it look and feel like? Sid Meier had a big brown recliner; familiar, but once you sat in it you'd could sit forever. Peter Molyneaux had a psychiatrists couch since he'd probably tell you things about yourself you'd never knew. John Carmack had a really technical chair that no one would understand, but that was okay since he'd give always the source code away. Shigeru Miyamoto had (in Will Wright's words): "The most perfect chair you could ever imagine". Remember it's not the gamers who have proclaimed him the god of games, it's other game designers. Some have painted him as the Spielberg of games but he's better described as the Hitchcock of games; his work is easily pigeon-holed by the undiscerning, but his influence on his peers is immeasurable.