It's silly, I couldn't believe they had the balls to charge me for a product that wasn't stable at all. I spent more time looking at my character screen than the game itself because the server kept bombing out on everyone. I honestly have no idea why they were charging people, if there is ever a class action lawsuit to regain money for stuff like they i'd gladly join it. I'm pretty pissed that I spent $70 on the collectors edition and then they charged me 6 months of play right around Christmas while the servers were totally overloaded, crashing, and unplayable.
Now that Morgan has gotten more comfortable doing the show, she seems like a good match for Mr. Whacky-Awesome Guy Adam Sessler. They give some really great unbiased reviews, can poke fun of themselves and the other gimmicks the rest of the industry picks up on. Unlike Judgement Day, they dont mind reading text in games, and are always willing to compare modern day games with old school games from way back when. They are very detailed with everything they say and rate, and it just works.
Watching Judgement Day is like watching the 2 Stooges screaming at each other. "HAY THIS RPG HAS TOO MUCH TEXT I HATE TEXT!! LOL NINTENDO IS FOR KIDDIES BUY XBOX LOL OLLOLOL" or "THIS GAEM HAS LOTS OF BREASTS AND I LIEK IT A LOT!! 8.7 OUT OF 10!!!! BUY IT!!"
I mean, c'mon.. Get those bozos off the air already.
Nothing even comes close yet. Yeah, you can make your own homebrew DVR box for free and everything, but it's not about cost, it's about features and functionality - Something no one has even came near yet. Their guide listings are the best and most accurate out of any competitor, carry more info, and are quickly corrected when a lineup change happens. You dont see this anywhere else with such a high accuracy rate. You get what you pay for rings true here more than anywhere else.
As for the cable boxes that are starting to include it, they're even worse than you could ever imagine. UI nightmares ahoy, terrible listings, horrible season pass implementations, and overall just too restrictive.
The only downside I can give Tivo is their Cablecard HD capable model wont be out until 2006, which is too long. It should have been released by summer 2004.
It's another DVR to toss on the stack on unusable. I suspect you haven't lived with a Tivo yet and somehow are basing your opinion that what you have is comparable. It isn't. Not in the slightest. Don't even get me started on the Moxi that Charter is using, that's even worse.
And I do tons of 3D modelling, graphics, DVD authoring, and lots of games. What do people do with all this space? I mean really, do people not uninstall old games they've won? Do they keep all their MP3s on their drive instead of dumping them onto DVDRs? I mean really.. I just dont understand it.
No offense, but even 3-3.5 hours is still really weak for a portable system. The Gamegear actually lasts longer regardless. You could get 4 hours out of that sucker.
And yes, I was aware you can get longer life by screwing around with settings. But why should we have to? We shouldn't.
Who wants a portable system that only lasts an hour and a half with a game that actually uses the processor for 3d? I can see the Japanese being suckered into it, but not the USA. They didn't have any idea how awful the system life was on these things when they came out.
Now that we all realise it's just another Gamegear in another case. I'll pass.
The multiple tuners in the box absolutely destroyed the non-digital channels. It was like watching snow, and this is a common complaint across the board for this unit. The actual response from the company was "That wont change in the future.". If non-digital channels are unwatchable, is it really worth it? Is it worth giving up excellent guide data just to play some games or look at the weather? You mention you dont have to slap a big chunk of money down, last I checked a Tivo was $99 with the same price per month service. The only thing the Moxi had going for it was that it could record HDTV shows, but at what cost? Tivo will have to come out with a component input version of their recorder sooner or later and then it wont even matter.
If it's as bad as the Moxi, Tivo has no worries...
on
SBC Builds A TiVo Rival
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Seriously.. After using a Moxi for a week after all the hype, it came nowhere near what a Tivo can do. I've seen and used so many Tivo clones now it isn't funny. Not a single one comes close to the features. And it's not just features, it's also program guide data; everyone else has simple one or two sentence descriptions, where Tivo has an entire paragraph, adult rating symbols ( NC/V/N/AC/AL/etc ), director, actor, how many stars it got, what type of show it is (horror/anime/scifi/etc), if the show is a repeat or a first run.. And on top of that, the guide data is CURRENT AND CORRECT. I don't know how many times I saw how horribly incorrect other peoples guide data is.. Sometimes shows change timeslots because of a football game or something, Tivo updates the data a day later, their competition doesnt!
It's a big hangup for people coming from Windows, they need some sort of Office compatability to convince them to come over. Sure, Office is available for $400, but it's quite pricey. If new people considering Macs find out a similar suite comes with the system for free, that can handle most Office docs, this might just be the sugar coating they need. It's a good move, but I wouldn't expect them to actually go head to head with Office, just something to give people a "leg up" with.
It is basically a visual Battle.Net where people can walk around and talk and create groups with each other. However, at the core of the game, it is still groups of 5-6 players doing missions, not much different than multi-player Diablo, Neverwinter Night, etc.. It is very slick, and Diablo fans will simply love it. It is the next step for multiplayer games (A visual gameworld to walk around talk/create groups in)..
But it is an entirely different beast than a full-on MMORPG like WoW, which are geared to having groups of 40 players fight dragons and such at the same time. Or huge PVP battles with hundreds of people in the same location just battling it out. You simply cannot compare Guild Wars to games like WoW, EQ 1/2, etc.. Totally different games entirely.
Why is this? I watched maybe 3-4 different shows with him winning, and for a lot of the answers he gave the correct term, but mispronounced it entirely. Often they had to rely on the judges to accept the answer even though he mis-spoke it.
It doesn't seem like he actually *knew* the answers, or what they were talking about, but rather had some photographic image of the answer pop in his head that he didn't even comprehend.
It was truely strange to watch someone answer these questions in a second flat, mispronounce the answer, and then go on and do the same thing for the rest of the show.
The enemy and team-mate AI was terrible, and the physics were completely annoying and gimmicky. You got stuck way too much, or were upside down in your vehicals. The graphics were also pretty sub-par compared to games like Doom3 and Far Cry. And the ending was the worst i'd ever experienced in any FPS to date. The level design was pretty lazily done as well.. Ravenholm? I mean, c'mon, it didn't even fit the theme of the game, it's like they went on some dumb horror tangent because they got bored with the Sci-Fi thing. It had its moments, but overall it was way more disppointing than any game out this year, Doom3 included.
WoW on the otherhand. Great humor, great graphics, more quests than both Everquests combined, and a lot of innovative additions to the MMORPG genre. There is nothing stagnant about it. Perhaps you should try playing it.
I looked at his past articles and they're all fluff. He goes on how stuff like the Moxi is going to kill Tivo and such.
Well, the Moxi has been out for a while, and anyone who has used both already knows the Moxi is a pile of junk. It's quality of recording on analogue channels is awful compared to Tivos. It doesn't know what "first runs" means - It thinks any episode you haven't seen is a "first run". This is a problem for any show that is in syndication. It doesn't let you record by date and time recurring; you HAVE to use a pass or select the show by hand to record it. And to top it all off, the GUI is abysmal. It shows you a preview of the next THREE shows on each channel, instead of 12 like Tivos. The show DESCRIPTIONS are vague and dont list if it contains AL, V, N, AC, SC, etc...
There was a reason it was called that! But to be serious, these "BASIC" languages are VERY specialized to the point of coding in them pumped out really great performance with very little work. It probably wont be the next language to create Duke Nukem Forever (Well, maybe it will!!), but for one man teams/hobbiests who want to make simple games, shareware or otherwise, they would be very happy with these types of compilers.
"HL2's AI is an improvement over that of HL1"?!!?!
on
Review: Half-Life 2
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· Score: 1, Interesting
Are you kidding? Half the time your own team blocked you into every corner in the building! The enemies blew themselves up constantly! half the time you could snipe at enemies from a mile away and they wouldn't react to being shot! The pathing they used was laughable and often go stuck. What game were you playing that the AI is "right where it should be"?
And the graphics weren't much better than HL1. Sure, they had higher textures, but the model detailing, especially on the zombies and other creatures were so low count that it felt like I was back playing Quake 1 again.
I can't honestly read what you wrote and comprehend WHY you wrote it unless you were blinded by the hype. Half Life 2 was an OKAY game, but nothing more. Don't even get me started on the frustrating "physics". It was NOT fun getting my air boat stuck on every little rock or stick.
Game is too buggy to be 9/10. More around 6/10.
on
Review: Half-Life 2
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· Score: 1
I've finished the game, and I have to say, despite the game having one of the worst endings ever; the AI really killed the game for me. Your own squad members constantly blocked you into rooms, hallways, stairwells and everywhere else. I can't count how many times i've seen a grenade thrown at me, only to try and back up and dodge and be blocked by 4 squad members who are just standing there. Moments later i've been blown to bits. Not only that, but they constantly run right into the aim of fire of snipers and everything else that can blow them up. The enemy AI is just as terrible. Half the time you can see them around corners and just shoot their arms and they fall over dead not bothering to engage you.
The sound stuttering bug is really horrible as well. Valve has acknowldged this issue and are working on a fix, but it should have been found to begin with judging from how wide spread it is.
The physics are also pretty awful as well. I think I spent most of my time in my balloon buggy bouncing around like I was on the moon. It just wasn't done right.
It was okay, but nothing great. And certainly not one of the best games released.
The terrible AI of both the enemy and your own squad is just inexcusable. I have never played a game where ive wanted to kill my own people so badly. The entire game so far has been tedious to say the least.. I wonder if people even played this game to make sure it was fun at all. The physics engine is also completely horrid. I've never gotten stuck in a game world more than this game, and watching boxes flip over and over when you casually bump them is just goofy.
I'm not sure where the hype came for this game, but this is definitely one of the worst FPS games i've played in a LONG time. Coupled with the stuttering bug I have no idea why i'm even playing still..I'm near the end, but unless this game has some REALLY amazing ending, I dont think my opinion will change about this game at all.
Because 1080i is basically THE HD mode that 90% of the sets out there offer. Most simply do not support 720P and never will. I have to be honest, though, when i'm watching a 1080i broadcast, it still looks better than ESPNs 720P broadcasts despite what that article says.
After reading that, I want to say he is having panic attacks. Probably from too much stress. The yellow modules are from his tonsils, and it normal for the majority of people to have. A lot of people simply dont see them the first half of their lives and when they do they tend to think they've caught some disease because of the smell they make.
Panic attacks and stress will and can cause all the other symptoms he described. I know. I had all of them. I had many doctors look me over as well. I had the "popping" feeling inside my chest and went to the ER room many times only to find out it was nothing. I've had my head feel like it was "popping" or I was having an annurism only to find out it was nothing. I've gone into cold shocks of shivering while sweating non-stop. I've been barely able to breathe and felt like I was about to die. In the end, I was prescribed Xanax and was told to take half a tab whenever any of these symtoms appeared. What it did was chill me out, because when your mind it racing, it makes you feel things that you wont normally feel, and then it only feeds into itself the more you think about it... Xanax basically makes you stoned and mellows you out.. It basically opened up my eyes that everything I was feeling was in my head. A few months later I stopped taking the Xanax and whenever I felt like my chest was "popping" or if my limbs went numbs, I'd just tell myself it wasn't real and it went away.
Unfortnately, people who have panic attacks can't often be cured this easily. Many of them REFUSE to believe it is just in their head because those feelings are just SO REAL.
He has probably been told this same thing many times but refuses to believe it. The tone on some of his doctors sounded less than respectful. I am going to guess this was why.
When you aquire level 70 in EQ, thats not the end. There are areas that just open up to you. A lot of the areas require a LOT of highly equiped players to work together to unlock and open up more areas. Unlike in CoH - You get there and there is nothing.. Nothing to unlock, no carrot to keep you going. EQ *always* has something to do when you reach the "end game" - be it defeating GODS, getting more equipment (there is NEVER an end to this), or raising hundreds of alternate advancement abilities (These give you extra skills - And you can work on some of them until you are level 60/65/70.. To get them, it might take WEEKS to aquire each skill.. ).. There is ALWAYS something in EQ at the end.
I would go so far as to say that Everquest BEGINS when you hit level 70, not end. Unlike CoH.
The cost of upkeep of the service. Like your cable bill, connecting to their servers, using their bandwidth, and getting their content costs a lot of money. Also the online support people need to be paid to help stuck people, etc.. You can't expect someone to sell a million copies and expect that revune to last 5 years later paying all these salaries that NEED to be around to maintain the hardware, helpdesk, and bandwidth.. It just isn't possible.
Guild Wars will try a unique model where there wont have a monthly fee, but they'll have lots of expansions to keep people paying money in. Either way, you gotta front the cash with these types of games.
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It's silly, I couldn't believe they had the balls to charge me for a product that wasn't stable at all. I spent more time looking at my character screen than the game itself because the server kept bombing out on everyone. I honestly have no idea why they were charging people, if there is ever a class action lawsuit to regain money for stuff like they i'd gladly join it. I'm pretty pissed that I spent $70 on the collectors edition and then they charged me 6 months of play right around Christmas while the servers were totally overloaded, crashing, and unplayable.
Watching Judgement Day is like watching the 2 Stooges screaming at each other. "HAY THIS RPG HAS TOO MUCH TEXT I HATE TEXT!! LOL NINTENDO IS FOR KIDDIES BUY XBOX LOL OLLOLOL" or "THIS GAEM HAS LOTS OF BREASTS AND I LIEK IT A LOT!! 8.7 OUT OF 10!!!! BUY IT!!"
I mean, c'mon .. Get those bozos off the air already.
As for the cable boxes that are starting to include it, they're even worse than you could ever imagine. UI nightmares ahoy, terrible listings, horrible season pass implementations, and overall just too restrictive.
The only downside I can give Tivo is their Cablecard HD capable model wont be out until 2006, which is too long. It should have been released by summer 2004.
It's another DVR to toss on the stack on unusable. I suspect you haven't lived with a Tivo yet and somehow are basing your opinion that what you have is comparable. It isn't. Not in the slightest. Don't even get me started on the Moxi that Charter is using, that's even worse.
And I do tons of 3D modelling, graphics, DVD authoring, and lots of games. What do people do with all this space? I mean really, do people not uninstall old games they've won? Do they keep all their MP3s on their drive instead of dumping them onto DVDRs? I mean really .. I just dont understand it.
And yes, I was aware you can get longer life by screwing around with settings. But why should we have to? We shouldn't.
Now that we all realise it's just another Gamegear in another case. I'll pass.
The multiple tuners in the box absolutely destroyed the non-digital channels. It was like watching snow, and this is a common complaint across the board for this unit. The actual response from the company was "That wont change in the future.". If non-digital channels are unwatchable, is it really worth it? Is it worth giving up excellent guide data just to play some games or look at the weather? You mention you dont have to slap a big chunk of money down, last I checked a Tivo was $99 with the same price per month service. The only thing the Moxi had going for it was that it could record HDTV shows, but at what cost? Tivo will have to come out with a component input version of their recorder sooner or later and then it wont even matter.
Seriously.. After using a Moxi for a week after all the hype, it came nowhere near what a Tivo can do. I've seen and used so many Tivo clones now it isn't funny. Not a single one comes close to the features. And it's not just features, it's also program guide data; everyone else has simple one or two sentence descriptions, where Tivo has an entire paragraph, adult rating symbols ( NC/V/N/AC/AL/etc ), director, actor, how many stars it got, what type of show it is (horror/anime/scifi/etc), if the show is a repeat or a first run .. And on top of that, the guide data is CURRENT AND CORRECT. I don't know how many times I saw how horribly incorrect other peoples guide data is.. Sometimes shows change timeslots because of a football game or something, Tivo updates the data a day later, their competition doesnt!
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It's a big hangup for people coming from Windows, they need some sort of Office compatability to convince them to come over. Sure, Office is available for $400, but it's quite pricey. If new people considering Macs find out a similar suite comes with the system for free, that can handle most Office docs, this might just be the sugar coating they need. It's a good move, but I wouldn't expect them to actually go head to head with Office, just something to give people a "leg up" with.
But it is an entirely different beast than a full-on MMORPG like WoW, which are geared to having groups of 40 players fight dragons and such at the same time. Or huge PVP battles with hundreds of people in the same location just battling it out. You simply cannot compare Guild Wars to games like WoW, EQ 1/2, etc .. Totally different games entirely.
It doesn't seem like he actually *knew* the answers, or what they were talking about, but rather had some photographic image of the answer pop in his head that he didn't even comprehend.
It was truely strange to watch someone answer these questions in a second flat, mispronounce the answer, and then go on and do the same thing for the rest of the show.
Doesn't make much sense to me.
WoW on the otherhand. Great humor, great graphics, more quests than both Everquests combined, and a lot of innovative additions to the MMORPG genre. There is nothing stagnant about it. Perhaps you should try playing it.
Well, the Moxi has been out for a while, and anyone who has used both already knows the Moxi is a pile of junk. It's quality of recording on analogue channels is awful compared to Tivos. It doesn't know what "first runs" means - It thinks any episode you haven't seen is a "first run". This is a problem for any show that is in syndication. It doesn't let you record by date and time recurring; you HAVE to use a pass or select the show by hand to record it. And to top it all off, the GUI is abysmal. It shows you a preview of the next THREE shows on each channel, instead of 12 like Tivos. The show DESCRIPTIONS are vague and dont list if it contains AL, V, N, AC, SC, etc ...
In summary, he likes jumping the gun.
As per the specs .. Proprietary Nintendo Wireless and 802.11b are both available.
There was a reason it was called that! But to be serious, these "BASIC" languages are VERY specialized to the point of coding in them pumped out really great performance with very little work. It probably wont be the next language to create Duke Nukem Forever (Well, maybe it will!!), but for one man teams/hobbiests who want to make simple games, shareware or otherwise, they would be very happy with these types of compilers.
And the graphics weren't much better than HL1. Sure, they had higher textures, but the model detailing, especially on the zombies and other creatures were so low count that it felt like I was back playing Quake 1 again.
I can't honestly read what you wrote and comprehend WHY you wrote it unless you were blinded by the hype. Half Life 2 was an OKAY game, but nothing more. Don't even get me started on the frustrating "physics". It was NOT fun getting my air boat stuck on every little rock or stick.
The sound stuttering bug is really horrible as well. Valve has acknowldged this issue and are working on a fix, but it should have been found to begin with judging from how wide spread it is.
The physics are also pretty awful as well. I think I spent most of my time in my balloon buggy bouncing around like I was on the moon. It just wasn't done right.
It was okay, but nothing great. And certainly not one of the best games released.
I'm not sure where the hype came for this game, but this is definitely one of the worst FPS games i've played in a LONG time. Coupled with the stuttering bug I have no idea why i'm even playing still..I'm near the end, but unless this game has some REALLY amazing ending, I dont think my opinion will change about this game at all.
Because 1080i is basically THE HD mode that 90% of the sets out there offer. Most simply do not support 720P and never will. I have to be honest, though, when i'm watching a 1080i broadcast, it still looks better than ESPNs 720P broadcasts despite what that article says.
Panic attacks and stress will and can cause all the other symptoms he described. I know. I had all of them. I had many doctors look me over as well. I had the "popping" feeling inside my chest and went to the ER room many times only to find out it was nothing. I've had my head feel like it was "popping" or I was having an annurism only to find out it was nothing. I've gone into cold shocks of shivering while sweating non-stop. I've been barely able to breathe and felt like I was about to die. In the end, I was prescribed Xanax and was told to take half a tab whenever any of these symtoms appeared. What it did was chill me out, because when your mind it racing, it makes you feel things that you wont normally feel, and then it only feeds into itself the more you think about it... Xanax basically makes you stoned and mellows you out .. It basically opened up my eyes that everything I was feeling was in my head. A few months later I stopped taking the Xanax and whenever I felt like my chest was "popping" or if my limbs went numbs, I'd just tell myself it wasn't real and it went away.
Unfortnately, people who have panic attacks can't often be cured this easily. Many of them REFUSE to believe it is just in their head because those feelings are just SO REAL.
He has probably been told this same thing many times but refuses to believe it. The tone on some of his doctors sounded less than respectful. I am going to guess this was why.
I would go so far as to say that Everquest BEGINS when you hit level 70, not end. Unlike CoH.
Guild Wars will try a unique model where there wont have a monthly fee, but they'll have lots of expansions to keep people paying money in. Either way, you gotta front the cash with these types of games.