I'd take a wartime culture over an ignorant culture anyday. If we're gonna get killed or go around killing people, we might as well know why rather than sit around on our asses wondering why some guy in a hole has been hating us for the past few:
years (see : Somalia/Cuba/Central America/Africa) decades (see : Russia/China/Korea/Vietnam/Middle East) centuries (see : France/Germany/England/Europe) millennium(s) (see : Crusades/Promised Land/Muslims/Hebrews/Christians) unknown amounts of time (see : Native Americans/North America/South America).
Considering the U.S.'s past you'd think we would be a wee bit vigilant considering how many heads we've kicked since the 18th century. Yeah, I'd say we were pretty ignorant up until 9/11.
The old NES version required you to sit, read and TAKE NOTES on some of the radio sequences in the game. The gameplay was revolutionary but didn't win any awards with the masses. There was no help to call, killing any hostages accidentally or purposely would make it impossible to beat the game and if you missed a hint or radio number, tough. You can't call them back. If anything Metal Gear started the crossing of gameplay into interactive theater.
I agree with you on the PSP having equal or better graphics but so far there hasn't been much to impress me in the game division. Demos just don't cut it for me and so far that seems to be the best they have to show.
If 'one more update' is going to fix HL2 on Linux, then it'd have to be a pretty big update. Just from the review:
Brand new video drivers have to be downloaded. There are loading issues. The graphics are not loaded correctly. Gameplay and frame rate drop for an unknown reason. Turning down the graphics settings do little to fix the frame rate. Attempts to modify the video settings results in HL2 locking up. Different drivers do not work. Textures and lightmaps do not always work. Sound does not work properly. Loading screens are very long despite high system specs.
I don't know about you, but it sounds like there are some serious problems with the Linux version.
Too much money, too little time? To me it seems more like the people who make their fortunes are generally too busy/too occupied/love their jobs too much to get into this sort of stuff. If nothing else, I'm pretty sure millionaries don't spend their free time sitting in front of a computer monitor. They go outside and get natural sunlight, exercise and fresh air. All the things we don't.
The $20 price tag worked, the ESPN line was able to outdo EA's line... at first. The problem is EA fought back the way it always did, by throwing money at the problem. Once all sports games hit $20, Sega's advantage was lost and any future attempts to do so again would just be responded by EA by the lowering of prices again. It was a one-shot trick which gambled on EA not being willing to lower the price so quickly.
Really now? I didn't see crowds of people standing outside my local EBGames for the Half-Life 2 launch. Instead of hearing Half-Life 2 breaking sales records, I hear complaints about Steam, loading issues and copy protection preventing people from playing the game. Take your pick : you can have the larger userbase but a system that blows, or a smaller userbase but is refined and polished so Joe Average can use it. Either way Halo 2 outdoes Half-Life 2 in the media.
Second. Load times, shmock times, minimal load times did no favours for the n64 against the psx (and the PSX launching titles load times were terrible)
Yeah, no load times for the N64 didn't win the war, but after the Sega CD, the Sega Saturn, the PS1, the Dreamcast, the PS2, the Gamecube, the Xbox and the PC; we're STILL bitching about load times which accompany the use of CDs/DVDs. If theres a system that can avoid load times, hell yeah I'm gonna support that as long as I can especially if I'm not gonna spend those load times on my couch.
The battery is a problem YES but so it was anti aliasing for the ps2 and it still beat every other console it was against
You're comparing battery life with graphics. What next? Number of buttons a controller has versus the processing power?
Ive read you can make the battery last up to 4 times by simply lowering your brightness and using an extra light source
In other words : Play at home where you can adjust the surroundings. I did the same with the original GBA (not SP) and I bitched about that too.
are you aware the PSP runs on rechargeable batteries and AC ? all you need to do is to hook it to the car lighter, problem solved.
Usually when I'm in the car, I'm driving. When I'm in the car with other people, I'm usually the driving anyway. And I'm not gonna sit in my car just to play a handheld.
You're comparing apples with orange trees. A handheld is a totally different battlefield compared to consoles. Its like comparing consoles with PCs, say what you want but any casual gamer can tell you they're just different.
Or just read a fan fiction based on the game? There was NO storyline (other than a few paragraphs of background information) and the graphics caused the game to crawl to a halt on anything that was high-end when it was first launched, with Halo and Doom 3 being the only games to claim that. I remember reading how C&C:Generals was SUPPOSED to have a huge complex story that eventually got cut out.
Supposedly the storyline involved China becoming a military power after the fall of the Soviet Union complete with nukes but after the first mission in the Chinese campaign in the game (the GLA nuke Beijing) they get involved (not suprising at all). The U.S.A. went isolationist again after Afghanistan but was attacked by the GLA with a giant ballistic chemical missle which they shot down using the Particle Beam (which is their superweapon in the game, think the Star Wars program). And the GLA is just a name for any major terrorist group in the world but their biggest claim is hitting Japan, Russia and Europe with giant biologically loaded ballistic missles. Sound cool? Too bad you don't see this in the game.
The only problem with comparison Doom 3 with Event Horizon (the book or the movie, your choice) is that if there was a game based off Event Horizon, it would've been an adventure/puzzle game. While Doom 3's story was about the horror/action, Event Horizon was about the confusion/mystery.
Horror and action at the same time? Hard to feel afraid when the main character is armed with a SHOTGUN (and a machine gun, rocket launcher, BFG, etc etc). Event Horizon's dark underwater facility and alien artifact? Pretty scary considering you can't even see outside the window due to the water depth and the fact that their stranded underwater with an alien device.
It took so long for the game to sell 5 million units it sucked too. Remember all the "buzz" about the PS1 launch and the new Final Fantasy game? The most shining characteristic was that every other game was pathetic and would never see the light of day again except as a coaster. The key phrase in FF7 was jaggy polygons. You saw the same graphical problems over and over again. You realized that all the tactics revolved around the old fire>ice>lighting>fire system. The levels were hardly creative with most of them revolving around a simple 'end of the world' theme.
FF7 was redeemed by its storying telling. It also had exceptional FMVs for the time. But FF7 took a long time to move millions of units because there were so many flaws. It only did as well as it did at first because there were no other real options. Later on the 'first time playing an RPG' feeling became popular.
MOST countries in Europe consider the unauthorized distribution of music, video and software to be illegal. The only reason you don't hear about it is because the RIAA, the MPAA and major PC video game developers/producers in the U.S. are on the forefront of this argument. No one wants to hear about how the Swedish version of the RIAA suddenly started illegal sharers because thats OLD NEWS compared to the U.S.'s RIAA whos been suing people for over a year now. If a European country was to suddenly announce 'Illegal sharing of movies of the internet is now a 6 month minimum jail sentence per song' Slashdot would be all over that.
just stick to creating an original tactical espionage action story.
Uh, doesn't the MGS series span 3 (with a 4th coming) games over a period of nearly 40 years with a cast of over 3 different 'main' characters? (Naked Snake/Big Boss, Solid Snake, Raiden and maybe Ocelot depending on what happens in the 4th game.) The only reason the MGS series has an 'original' story is because it spans over such a long period of time. Compared to the James Bond movies, which take place in a span of a few weeks, Hideo Kojima is gonna have to throw out and completely redesign his storytelling skills.
I personally can't wait to flip someone's minitank with my little Somali street trash barrier. But hey, keep griping, you'll shut up soon enough when you throw someone through a building in a superhero mod.
Except for the fact that you're violating your own physics. If you can build a road block why the hell can't I destroy it with a minitank?! Great physics there, I'm sure you've taken into account the huge hardware stress a player's GUI will experience when hes picked up by another player and then flung using the game's physics engine too.
Valve created a digital sandbox with excellent physics but worthless balance. The gravity gun basicly nullified every other gun in these two maps. Machine gun? Too weak and inaccurate. Rocket launcher? Miss once and you're owned. Grenades? Too long of a fuse and you can't 'cook' them. But the gravity gun can pick up a DUMPSTER and use it as a SHIELD and as a ONE HIT KILL WEAPON. Way to balance Valve.
I love that I can buy a game without going to a store.
See : Amazon.com. I've been buying games online for years, where have you been?
I love that I can download the game to as many computers as I want (at work, at home) and play it anywhere with my personal license (username and passowrd.)
Sorry but not everyone lives/works at a place with broadband or better internet connection.
I love that I can run a linux-based game server myself, modify the rules on it myself with perl scripts, and not pay extra money for that right.
Games that let you run Linux servers, modify the rules (we've all seen the no-grav, insta-gib, melee-weapon only servers) and all for free have been around for a long time. (Quake series, Half-Life 1, Counter-Strike...)
I love that STEAM creates an authentication mechanism so I can uniquely identify 1337 h4x0r 12-year-old idiots and ban them for life when they cause trouble on my server.
'Uniquely' ID people? You're linking people with Steam accounts. Big deal. Valve doesn't exactly ask for your credit card when signing up.
I love that a small software company can break the large game publishers channel control and sell direct.
And I love how Valve managed to screw over everyone who bought the game outside of their Steam service. Thats gonna be great publicity to encourage new people to buy direct from them./sarcasm
Yeah map-making is a great way to break into the industry, but you also have to keep in mind the side-effects. $5000 is pocket change to corporations like this. If Valve made just 1 million dollars this year, $5000 is just.5% of their yearly income. Big whoop for map makers. The problem that would occur is other companies mimicing this.
"Well Valve did this contest so if you want to keep your job you have to take a huge pay cut or we'll fire you and just do a similar contest for a fraction of what we're paying you."
Collaboration with an evil is as good as being evil.
The Americans and British collaborated with Stalin and Russia during World War II, but I don't see people saying 'FDR and Churchill sent those poor defending German soldiers to die in the gulags! They're as evil as Stalin!'
Sometimes you just gotta take one of two evils. Either work with Communist Stalin or risk letting Hitler take all of Europe. Or in this case, work with Communist China or risk a civil war erupting in a country with NUCLEAR WEAPONS.
So what do you suggest the government/corporations/people do about this? Before you give any suggestions, note the following:
1. Any decision must take longer than 6 months to reach. With few exceptions (Patriot Act, declarations of war, etc etc.) any piece of law in the government (at least the U.S. government) takes months to pass through the Senate and signed into law by the President. Therefore you CANNOT arrest someone, hold them until a bill passes and THEN jail them since everyone else under him would've scatter. Essentually making you look like a fool to people like the/. crowd. Governments (unless acting together) at out.
2. It cannot be done through EULAs since EULAs do not extend internationally. A simple proxy setup somewhere in Russia, India or China is enough to bypass that instantly. Corporations at out, due to legal reasons.
3. It MUST invade people's privacy. This is the INTERNET. This isn't CSI where you have fancy fingerprints that you can match up with the FBI's database. Theres no trail of breadcrumbs you can follow back you the spammers computer since it'll often lead internationally or through a zombified computer. Theres no motives here other than money, no doubt cover with its own miles and miles of internet BS covering its ass. You have millions of suspects, many of which are assisting in the crime without knowing it. Any law enforcement agency smaller than every intellience branch in the world combined cannot handle this task, the U.N. and watch-dog groups are out due to sheer amount of research that would be necessary.
What do you do? As for your analogy with spam and cocaine, ever hear of vigilantes? Course not, cause most of them act ILLEGALLY. A few 'accidents' to the local drug dealer does wonders to drug abuse in the area, instead of having to pay an extra hundred dollars in taxes to keep the same drug dealer in an overpopulated jail.
Blogs, being unaccountable and sometimes anonymous, make the reader think.
Do they really? Books are supposed to make readers think, yet we have people claiming Uncle Tom's Cabin is racist for its racial slurs despite the time period it was written in and the fact that a black (ex-)slave at the end of the book becomes the 'hero.'
Fahrenheit 9/11 was supposed to make people think, but instead you ended up with millions of people parading what was claimed in the movie to be a truth against the Bush administration covered up by mainstream media. End result? Mass hysteria against the Bush administration, the sweeping belief that Bush was going to lose the election by a landslide and months of sniping between republicans and democrats on a level previously unseen in the media.
Blogs don't make people think. They give people a first-person perspective on things; good, bad or indifferent. The decision whether or not to think about the information is up to individual readers who, so far, have decided NOT to do so.
No offense, but I think you need to go back and replay them. The old magic system in FFI was HORRIBLE since you never wanted to use your higher level magic except in emergencies, unless you were going outside of town purposely to get experience points, or against a boss (or Warmech).
The stats system in FFII was hardcore to extreme measures. To raise stats in an area, you had to get affected in a way that directly affected that stat. Want STR? Gotta attack with melee weapons. Want VIT? Gotta get hit physically. Magic defense? Get hit magically. Etc etc. It wasn't consistent either since there were usually additional requirements, like you had to get hit while having low HP to raise your max HP. In the end of the game you COULD have characters with maxed out stats... but then you'd have to spend more time fighting than in a MMORPG.
Oh and if you didn't work with other stats at the same time, the stats in other areas would actually go down. So that uber-physically defensive tank might go down in one hit from a magical attack. Sound like fun?
If the software is indeed totally unusable or any kind of serious hindrance, then it won't last.
Gamespy Arcade is considered to be largely unusable and a hindrance yet its still around and some game require users to use it to play online. So whats your point?
Advertisement? Rent for the building? Other salaries beyond the programmers and GMs? Expenses like electricity? Shipping and handling? Promotional items? Manufacturing? Publisher fees? Alpha/Beta in house testing?
What I suggested was merely an overhead view of what they'll have to pay. If you want to sound fancy with tax write offs, crediting, fixed costs, and revenue in the long term rather than short term, you still don't pull an income for at least a year. Blizzard probably OWES an easy 5 million just for past expenses in making the game, so if they make an initial million in sales, thats gone instantly.
Slashdot Mirror
years (see : Somalia/Cuba/Central America/Africa)
decades (see : Russia/China/Korea/Vietnam/Middle East)
centuries (see : France/Germany/England/Europe)
millennium(s) (see : Crusades/Promised Land/Muslims/Hebrews/Christians)
unknown amounts of time (see : Native Americans/North America/South America).
Considering the U.S.'s past you'd think we would be a wee bit vigilant considering how many heads we've kicked since the 18th century. Yeah, I'd say we were pretty ignorant up until 9/11.
The old NES version required you to sit, read and TAKE NOTES on some of the radio sequences in the game. The gameplay was revolutionary but didn't win any awards with the masses. There was no help to call, killing any hostages accidentally or purposely would make it impossible to beat the game and if you missed a hint or radio number, tough. You can't call them back. If anything Metal Gear started the crossing of gameplay into interactive theater.
I agree with you on the PSP having equal or better graphics but so far there hasn't been much to impress me in the game division. Demos just don't cut it for me and so far that seems to be the best they have to show.
Brand new video drivers have to be downloaded.
There are loading issues.
The graphics are not loaded correctly.
Gameplay and frame rate drop for an unknown reason.
Turning down the graphics settings do little to fix the frame rate.
Attempts to modify the video settings results in HL2 locking up.
Different drivers do not work.
Textures and lightmaps do not always work.
Sound does not work properly.
Loading screens are very long despite high system specs.
I don't know about you, but it sounds like there are some serious problems with the Linux version.
Too much money, too little time? To me it seems more like the people who make their fortunes are generally too busy/too occupied/love their jobs too much to get into this sort of stuff. If nothing else, I'm pretty sure millionaries don't spend their free time sitting in front of a computer monitor. They go outside and get natural sunlight, exercise and fresh air. All the things we don't.
The $20 price tag worked, the ESPN line was able to outdo EA's line... at first. The problem is EA fought back the way it always did, by throwing money at the problem. Once all sports games hit $20, Sega's advantage was lost and any future attempts to do so again would just be responded by EA by the lowering of prices again. It was a one-shot trick which gambled on EA not being willing to lower the price so quickly.
Really now? I didn't see crowds of people standing outside my local EBGames for the Half-Life 2 launch. Instead of hearing Half-Life 2 breaking sales records, I hear complaints about Steam, loading issues and copy protection preventing people from playing the game. Take your pick : you can have the larger userbase but a system that blows, or a smaller userbase but is refined and polished so Joe Average can use it. Either way Halo 2 outdoes Half-Life 2 in the media.
Yeah, no load times for the N64 didn't win the war, but after the Sega CD, the Sega Saturn, the PS1, the Dreamcast, the PS2, the Gamecube, the Xbox and the PC; we're STILL bitching about load times which accompany the use of CDs/DVDs. If theres a system that can avoid load times, hell yeah I'm gonna support that as long as I can especially if I'm not gonna spend those load times on my couch.
The battery is a problem YES but so it was anti aliasing for the ps2 and it still beat every other console it was against
You're comparing battery life with graphics. What next? Number of buttons a controller has versus the processing power?
Ive read you can make the battery last up to 4 times by simply lowering your brightness and using an extra light source
In other words : Play at home where you can adjust the surroundings. I did the same with the original GBA (not SP) and I bitched about that too.
are you aware the PSP runs on rechargeable batteries and AC ? all you need to do is to hook it to the car lighter, problem solved.
Usually when I'm in the car, I'm driving. When I'm in the car with other people, I'm usually the driving anyway. And I'm not gonna sit in my car just to play a handheld.
You're comparing apples with orange trees. A handheld is a totally different battlefield compared to consoles. Its like comparing consoles with PCs, say what you want but any casual gamer can tell you they're just different.
Supposedly the storyline involved China becoming a military power after the fall of the Soviet Union complete with nukes but after the first mission in the Chinese campaign in the game (the GLA nuke Beijing) they get involved (not suprising at all). The U.S.A. went isolationist again after Afghanistan but was attacked by the GLA with a giant ballistic chemical missle which they shot down using the Particle Beam (which is their superweapon in the game, think the Star Wars program). And the GLA is just a name for any major terrorist group in the world but their biggest claim is hitting Japan, Russia and Europe with giant biologically loaded ballistic missles. Sound cool? Too bad you don't see this in the game.
Horror and action at the same time? Hard to feel afraid when the main character is armed with a SHOTGUN (and a machine gun, rocket launcher, BFG, etc etc). Event Horizon's dark underwater facility and alien artifact? Pretty scary considering you can't even see outside the window due to the water depth and the fact that their stranded underwater with an alien device.
Speed hackers could be master ambushers. Rush in quickly, have all the ambushers attack one guy, run out, repeat. They'd be untouchable in PvP.
FF7 was redeemed by its storying telling. It also had exceptional FMVs for the time. But FF7 took a long time to move millions of units because there were so many flaws. It only did as well as it did at first because there were no other real options. Later on the 'first time playing an RPG' feeling became popular.
The best kept secrets are the ones who know nothing about.
MOST countries in Europe consider the unauthorized distribution of music, video and software to be illegal. The only reason you don't hear about it is because the RIAA, the MPAA and major PC video game developers/producers in the U.S. are on the forefront of this argument. No one wants to hear about how the Swedish version of the RIAA suddenly started illegal sharers because thats OLD NEWS compared to the U.S.'s RIAA whos been suing people for over a year now. If a European country was to suddenly announce 'Illegal sharing of movies of the internet is now a 6 month minimum jail sentence per song' Slashdot would be all over that.
Uh, doesn't the MGS series span 3 (with a 4th coming) games over a period of nearly 40 years with a cast of over 3 different 'main' characters? (Naked Snake/Big Boss, Solid Snake, Raiden and maybe Ocelot depending on what happens in the 4th game.) The only reason the MGS series has an 'original' story is because it spans over such a long period of time. Compared to the James Bond movies, which take place in a span of a few weeks, Hideo Kojima is gonna have to throw out and completely redesign his storytelling skills.
Except for the fact that you're violating your own physics. If you can build a road block why the hell can't I destroy it with a minitank?! Great physics there, I'm sure you've taken into account the huge hardware stress a player's GUI will experience when hes picked up by another player and then flung using the game's physics engine too.
Valve created a digital sandbox with excellent physics but worthless balance. The gravity gun basicly nullified every other gun in these two maps. Machine gun? Too weak and inaccurate. Rocket launcher? Miss once and you're owned. Grenades? Too long of a fuse and you can't 'cook' them. But the gravity gun can pick up a DUMPSTER and use it as a SHIELD and as a ONE HIT KILL WEAPON. Way to balance Valve.
See : Amazon.com. I've been buying games online for years, where have you been?
I love that I can download the game to as many computers as I want (at work, at home) and play it anywhere with my personal license (username and passowrd.)
Sorry but not everyone lives/works at a place with broadband or better internet connection.
I love that I can run a linux-based game server myself, modify the rules on it myself with perl scripts, and not pay extra money for that right.
Games that let you run Linux servers, modify the rules (we've all seen the no-grav, insta-gib, melee-weapon only servers) and all for free have been around for a long time. (Quake series, Half-Life 1, Counter-Strike...)
I love that STEAM creates an authentication mechanism so I can uniquely identify 1337 h4x0r 12-year-old idiots and ban them for life when they cause trouble on my server.
'Uniquely' ID people? You're linking people with Steam accounts. Big deal. Valve doesn't exactly ask for your credit card when signing up.
I love that a small software company can break the large game publishers channel control and sell direct.
And I love how Valve managed to screw over everyone who bought the game outside of their Steam service. Thats gonna be great publicity to encourage new people to buy direct from them. /sarcasm
"Well Valve did this contest so if you want to keep your job you have to take a huge pay cut or we'll fire you and just do a similar contest for a fraction of what we're paying you."
Who said I'm an American?
The Americans and British collaborated with Stalin and Russia during World War II, but I don't see people saying 'FDR and Churchill sent those poor defending German soldiers to die in the gulags! They're as evil as Stalin!'
Sometimes you just gotta take one of two evils. Either work with Communist Stalin or risk letting Hitler take all of Europe. Or in this case, work with Communist China or risk a civil war erupting in a country with NUCLEAR WEAPONS.
1. Any decision must take longer than 6 months to reach. With few exceptions (Patriot Act, declarations of war, etc etc.) any piece of law in the government (at least the U.S. government) takes months to pass through the Senate and signed into law by the President. Therefore you CANNOT arrest someone, hold them until a bill passes and THEN jail them since everyone else under him would've scatter. Essentually making you look like a fool to people like the /. crowd. Governments (unless acting together) at out.
2. It cannot be done through EULAs since EULAs do not extend internationally. A simple proxy setup somewhere in Russia, India or China is enough to bypass that instantly. Corporations at out, due to legal reasons.
3. It MUST invade people's privacy. This is the INTERNET. This isn't CSI where you have fancy fingerprints that you can match up with the FBI's database. Theres no trail of breadcrumbs you can follow back you the spammers computer since it'll often lead internationally or through a zombified computer. Theres no motives here other than money, no doubt cover with its own miles and miles of internet BS covering its ass. You have millions of suspects, many of which are assisting in the crime without knowing it. Any law enforcement agency smaller than every intellience branch in the world combined cannot handle this task, the U.N. and watch-dog groups are out due to sheer amount of research that would be necessary.
What do you do? As for your analogy with spam and cocaine, ever hear of vigilantes? Course not, cause most of them act ILLEGALLY. A few 'accidents' to the local drug dealer does wonders to drug abuse in the area, instead of having to pay an extra hundred dollars in taxes to keep the same drug dealer in an overpopulated jail.
Do they really? Books are supposed to make readers think, yet we have people claiming Uncle Tom's Cabin is racist for its racial slurs despite the time period it was written in and the fact that a black (ex-)slave at the end of the book becomes the 'hero.'
Fahrenheit 9/11 was supposed to make people think, but instead you ended up with millions of people parading what was claimed in the movie to be a truth against the Bush administration covered up by mainstream media. End result? Mass hysteria against the Bush administration, the sweeping belief that Bush was going to lose the election by a landslide and months of sniping between republicans and democrats on a level previously unseen in the media.
Blogs don't make people think. They give people a first-person perspective on things; good, bad or indifferent. The decision whether or not to think about the information is up to individual readers who, so far, have decided NOT to do so.
The stats system in FFII was hardcore to extreme measures. To raise stats in an area, you had to get affected in a way that directly affected that stat. Want STR? Gotta attack with melee weapons. Want VIT? Gotta get hit physically. Magic defense? Get hit magically. Etc etc. It wasn't consistent either since there were usually additional requirements, like you had to get hit while having low HP to raise your max HP. In the end of the game you COULD have characters with maxed out stats... but then you'd have to spend more time fighting than in a MMORPG.
Oh and if you didn't work with other stats at the same time, the stats in other areas would actually go down. So that uber-physically defensive tank might go down in one hit from a magical attack. Sound like fun?
Gamespy Arcade is considered to be largely unusable and a hindrance yet its still around and some game require users to use it to play online. So whats your point?
What I suggested was merely an overhead view of what they'll have to pay. If you want to sound fancy with tax write offs, crediting, fixed costs, and revenue in the long term rather than short term, you still don't pull an income for at least a year. Blizzard probably OWES an easy 5 million just for past expenses in making the game, so if they make an initial million in sales, thats gone instantly.