" Am I the only person that thinks "music" and "dancing" games are just not entertaining? "
Probably not.
"On top of that, you don't make any real music or do any real dancing."
Unfortunately, that's the result of making the games much harder. I used to play Beat Mania when it first appeared in the arcades in Japan. The difficulty level was really low, which meant that you could hit notes during the intervals between notes without a score penalty. Most of my gaming ended out being "make a new interesting song by adding lots of embellishments to the core song". Damn fun, and I noticed each person embellished differently so each player made slightly different music. With the newer Bemani's, though, they gave a score penalty to any note struck besides the ones on screen, meaning each player played the exact same song.
There are music games that are entertaining, and that allow for personal expression as opposed to pure Simon Says, but they are getting fewer and farther between.
I'm an American living in Japan, and I can't even imagine what part of this is considered odd. Is it because it's drums? Because it's Donkey Kong? Because it's portable?
I know a lot of airline pilots who say the job is nothing more than a glorified taxi driver, but it pays the bills, so they keep doing it. I think your logical gap is assuming that people quit when they hate it. An ammended version of your comment:
Yeah, 'cause look at all those programmers who get a job doing it, then hate programming. That happens a lot.
Well, look at the kids who love to play football, then wind up in the NFL, and hate football. Ok, admittedly, this doesn't happen much,
Well, look at all the guys who love to fly, then get jobs as commercial pilots, so they hate flying...That happens a hell of a lot.
Wait, I know; what about that guy who started a little geek news web site, then get hired by big software companies to run it and realized shutting it down would be breach of contract and also destroy his source of income, so he decided to keep doing it even though his heart was no longer in it: Look around. You can't take 5 steps in the internet without tripping over a site like this.
" I blame consoles but I blame them for anything....I noticed something. Almost always switching the music off will improve not only speed but stability as well."
Since you're a PC gamer, you may not know, but this problem doesn't appear on consoles. Games don't slow down with music on, and music doesn't crash them. It's pretty much a PC phenomenon.
"Instead, it feels more like I'm playing a virtual Miami Vice."
While I have no problem with your opinion on the subject, I just wanted to point out that the "virtual Miami Vice" was a big part of the thematic approach to the game, from the opening credits and music to the clothing and even the sidekick.
DoomIII is working on it. Somehow, though, I just can't shake the feeling that DoomIII is trying to fill DNF's shoes. It's like a kid who wants to be like his big brother. But one day, one day...BOOM!! Puberty hits, and DoomIII is the new king of vaporware!
Or not. I couldn't really venture to guess. I'd put good money on DNF never coming out, though.
Sorry, I don't really know how to interpret your question, so I'll answer it straightforwardly: If they can find a guy in a hole covered by a rock, they can easily find massive stashes of WMD.
Like I said, I don't know exactly what you meant with your question, so I don't know if I'm agreeing or disagreeing.
Hmm...Dunno where you got that logic. Check out this X-Box, this PS2, and this PS1, each selling for $6 US or less. Why you would assume that they're priced the M-Gage at a high price "to fool people" is beyond me.
The easier it is to copy something, the more likely it is to be shared. For most people the amount of time and effort involved in burning 1 CD is way less than the amount of time and effort involved into writing a program to 10 separate floppy disks. In fact, you'd have to have an amazingly old CD burner to find writing and swapping out 10 floppies to be faster and easier than writing a single CD. So, yes, people still call it shareware, and with good reason: they share it.
Well, as a Tokyo resident, I can confirm that there are very few LAN gaming places. In fact, I only know off-hand of one (though I suspect that there are a few near Akihabara). The one I'm thinking of is nice, very well appointed, in a part of town known for its youth, with gigantic, obvious signage, and yet it's pretty much always empty. It's a shame.
I haven't played either game, but keep in mind that, unlike Gamespy, IGN, Gamespot, and the rest, this site uses "5" for average. Any score above 5 is better than average. You may just be swayed by the current score inflation where 9 is good, 7 is average, and 5 is terrible.
I swear, the way things are going, in 2013 a "9.0" will be bottom of the barrel and no-one will consider even renting a game unless it's at least a "9.6".
Ok, they didn't lie, but they did massively represent (in implying that they were the first to offer email via cell phone).
NTT DoCoMo was the first to have internet, true (ref CHTML comment). However, J-Phone had email before that (no need for HTML). I had a Digital TuKa (a company that no longer exists composed of Digital Phone (also known as J-Phone) and TuKa) Denso DN-174 in late 1997 (it came out in November, I think I got mine in December) which I used to send email to my parents, before iMode came out in Feb 1999.
JPhone didn't come out with a color phone until much later, December of 1999...which I bought too (I've gone through a lot of cell phones...I think I'm on number 7 now, but I may have missed one)
People don't hate J-Phone (as far as I know) (oh, and it got bought out by Vodafone last year. The name change became official October 1st of this year), but TuKa is slipping and slipping fast. Each maker has/had a strong point (J-Phone had color first, then made cameras on all phones standard first; DoCoMo had first 3G, plus a huge user base and name recognition; KDDI/AU/EzWeb had cool design, external flashes, and now ChakuUta (song sample ring tones, as opposed to synthesized tones). TuKa's only strong point was price, and now that they're all pretty cheap, it's going by the wayside. They have tried a new advertising approach, "simple is beautiful", or, as their recent spokesman, Matsumoto Hitoshi says, "It's a phone. You only need it for talking", and they foreswore digital cameras, mp3 playing, Java apps (I think) and everything besides the standard "Talk/Mail/Email" bundle. From what I gather, it's been disastrously unsuccessful. I can say for certain that I don't know a single person with a TuKa. For a while, they were doing OK because they had Hamasaki Ayumi as spokesperson, but now she's gone and they're screwed.
As for raves, I'm using the Japanese definition (bad habit) meaning outdoor techno concerts (usually goa). Indoor stuff doesn't get called raves here. Odd linguistic quirk.
If you can read Japanese, here's a slighly amusing page I found while looking up all my facts on Google (wouldn't want to get caught with my pants down in Slashdot!): http://www.yukawanet.com/sunday/tuka.html
I'm not sure how KDDI works their mail system, but J/Voda-fone automatically transmit the first 128 characters for free. If you get longer mail, and want to read the rest, you can choose to download the rest for a cost. This means that spam, while a pain in the butt, is free for the user (yes, yes, I know, indirect costs associated with increasing bandwidth and equipment to handle spam loads, but you know what I mean). DoCoMo used to charge for EVERY mail, whether you want it or not. A big scandal came out in the press (you may remember it), where they determined that a huge percentage of DoCoMo's income came from charging users for the spam they received (sorry, can't find links now). It was after that came to light that they started putting countermeasures into effect and offering "first X number of mail free!". It's a good thing, don't get me wrong, but they have gotten lots of bad karma from me from the old days, when the phones cost 4 times more for the same specs, the mail cost twice as much, receiving cost mail, and their features were no better than anyone elses.
That tirade being said, I use Vodafone myself, so I don't know the spam situation for KDDI.
And as for coverage: amen. DoCoMo is still the head of the pack when it comes to the countryside. In any city, the three big companies are all equal, but when I go to a rave, only the DoCoMo phones still get a signal. DoCoMo does have its good points, and countryside coverage is definitely one of them.
"Just so I understand you, you're saying that you bought the game, played one level as an FPS, decided it wasn't for you and went super stealth for the rest of the game. This apparently invalidates my claim that the game does not work as an FPS."
Er, sorry, slight misunderstanding here. I agree with your assertion that it doesn't work as an FPS. I perhaps misunderstood you as saying "they changed it from a stealth game into a sub-par FPS, such that it was no longer a stealth game". The way I see it, it is still a good stealth game, but it has as a bad but totally ignorable addition a FPS mode.
"By listening to the "fans", who never seemed to understand the point of the game, they turned one of the most innovative games of recent times into a sub-par FPS."
Only if you're a supremely sub-par player, I'd guess. I did one level guns-a-blazin, decided it wasn't for me, and went for super stealth the rest of the game. It was awesome. I haven't played the first, but I can tell you that the sequel involved tons of "getting into position for 15 minutes for the perfect snipe" followed by getting caught by guards and starting over. The "snipe the general accompanied by the U.N. team" mission took for fucking ever.
Wha? I used the hell out of that piano wire! I haven't played the first game, so I suspect that maybe you just have to use a different approach in using it?
Heck, to go out on a limb I'd say that perhaps using the piano wire in the sequel may have been more suspenseful and difficult than in the first.
Think of it less as "Insightful", and more as "a succinct, right on the money answer to a stupid question". He should be modded up just for pointing out the incredibly obvious point that the article poster didn't get. He was just lucky enough to answer it first.
Maybe true in the U.S., but not Japan. People turn off the ringers on trains, busses, etc. No more beep beep boops, and games on phones are a kick ass way to avoid being bored to death during commuting. Sure, so are books, but on a fully packed train, with one hand on the support strap, trying to flip pages on a book is a pain in the ass. Much easier to play a game, and much less intrusive to the people pushed up against you.
"The first imode phone came out in February 1999...I wanted a phone I could send email from because I didn't have a PC. That phone was nice and was way ahead of it's time (even in Japan)"
FUCK J-Phone and its horrible horrible public relations. J-Phone (and Digital TuKa) had email on phones way before iMode came out, but they didn't advertise or hype it at all, and only techies knew about it (it wasn't hidden, by any means. Clearly explained in the manuals, obvious on menus, etc., but they didn't advertise it). Then iMode came out and basically lied about being the first (I think they said something along the lines "iMode is the first phone that allows you to send e-mail, check your bank account, and make ticket reservations!", which is true: it was the first that allowed you to do all three, but not the first to allow you to do any of them). They charged 2 to 3 times the cost of their competitors, but people bought iModes out of ignorance.
Recently, thankfully, their prices have become sane, but they really don't deserve to be the top carrier in Japan. Currently EzWeb (KDDI) is probably the best, followed by Vodafone (J-Phone), and then DoCoMo...And then TuKa and its glorious bid to avoid going out of business.
"But does the O/S really matter if all the phones support Java now anyway?"
Bingo. Since all Japanases phone manufacturers allow only Java for external apps, users have no access to the OS anyway. It's completely transparent. Linux may help the manufacturers, but the customer can't interact with the OS in any way, so it's a non-topic here (in Japan). Don't know about the U.S.
"how cool wouldn't it be to run sshd on your phone"
I have no idea how cool it would be, but since Japanese manufacturers don't allow user access to the OS, you couldn't run it anyway. The only external applications that can run on Japanese cell phones are Java applications. The manufacturers use the OS to run phone functions (user interface, dialing, phonebook, digital camera, internet, and video), and that's all the customer can see.
Slashdot Mirror
" Am I the only person that thinks "music" and "dancing" games are just not entertaining? "
Probably not.
"On top of that, you don't make any real music or do any real dancing."
Unfortunately, that's the result of making the games much harder. I used to play Beat Mania when it first appeared in the arcades in Japan. The difficulty level was really low, which meant that you could hit notes during the intervals between notes without a score penalty. Most of my gaming ended out being "make a new interesting song by adding lots of embellishments to the core song". Damn fun, and I noticed each person embellished differently so each player made slightly different music. With the newer Bemani's, though, they gave a score penalty to any note struck besides the ones on screen, meaning each player played the exact same song.
There are music games that are entertaining, and that allow for personal expression as opposed to pure Simon Says, but they are getting fewer and farther between.
I'm an American living in Japan, and I can't even imagine what part of this is considered odd. Is it because it's drums? Because it's Donkey Kong? Because it's portable?
I know a lot of airline pilots who say the job is nothing more than a glorified taxi driver, but it pays the bills, so they keep doing it. I think your logical gap is assuming that people quit when they hate it. An ammended version of your comment:
Yeah, 'cause look at all those programmers who get a job doing it, then hate programming. That happens a lot.
Well, look at the kids who love to play football, then wind up in the NFL, and hate football. Ok, admittedly, this doesn't happen much,
Well, look at all the guys who love to fly, then get jobs as commercial pilots, so they hate flying...That happens a hell of a lot.
Wait, I know; what about that guy who started a little geek news web site, then get hired by big software companies to run it and realized shutting it down would be breach of contract and also destroy his source of income, so he decided to keep doing it even though his heart was no longer in it: Look around. You can't take 5 steps in the internet without tripping over a site like this.
" I think Blizzard do know the meaning of alpha, and are using that time to get rid of many bugs. "
The original comment was a joke. Laugh.
" I blame consoles but I blame them for anything....I noticed something. Almost always switching the music off will improve not only speed but stability as well."
Since you're a PC gamer, you may not know, but this problem doesn't appear on consoles. Games don't slow down with music on, and music doesn't crash them. It's pretty much a PC phenomenon.
"Instead, it feels more like I'm playing a virtual Miami Vice." While I have no problem with your opinion on the subject, I just wanted to point out that the "virtual Miami Vice" was a big part of the thematic approach to the game, from the opening credits and music to the clothing and even the sidekick.
"So tell us all, Mr. Wizard, why have WMD's if you're not going to use them?"
Two words: Amateur Hobbyist.
DoomIII is working on it. Somehow, though, I just can't shake the feeling that DoomIII is trying to fill DNF's shoes. It's like a kid who wants to be like his big brother. But one day, one day...BOOM!! Puberty hits, and DoomIII is the new king of vaporware!
Or not. I couldn't really venture to guess. I'd put good money on DNF never coming out, though.
It may be cliche, it may be unfunny, but goddamn it's accurate! I'm hardpressed to think of a better vaporware winner than DNF.
Sorry, I don't really know how to interpret your question, so I'll answer it straightforwardly: If they can find a guy in a hole covered by a rock, they can easily find massive stashes of WMD.
Like I said, I don't know exactly what you meant with your question, so I don't know if I'm agreeing or disagreeing.
Hmm...Dunno where you got that logic. Check out this X-Box, this PS2, and this PS1, each selling for $6 US or less. Why you would assume that they're priced the M-Gage at a high price "to fool people" is beyond me.
The easier it is to copy something, the more likely it is to be shared. For most people the amount of time and effort involved in burning 1 CD is way less than the amount of time and effort involved into writing a program to 10 separate floppy disks. In fact, you'd have to have an amazingly old CD burner to find writing and swapping out 10 floppies to be faster and easier than writing a single CD. So, yes, people still call it shareware, and with good reason: they share it.
The more I think about it, the more it seems that you've gotten the optimist and pessimist sides confused.
Well, as a Tokyo resident, I can confirm that there are very few LAN gaming places. In fact, I only know off-hand of one (though I suspect that there are a few near Akihabara). The one I'm thinking of is nice, very well appointed, in a part of town known for its youth, with gigantic, obvious signage, and yet it's pretty much always empty. It's a shame.
I haven't played either game, but keep in mind that, unlike Gamespy, IGN, Gamespot, and the rest, this site uses "5" for average. Any score above 5 is better than average. You may just be swayed by the current score inflation where 9 is good, 7 is average, and 5 is terrible.
I swear, the way things are going, in 2013 a "9.0" will be bottom of the barrel and no-one will consider even renting a game unless it's at least a "9.6".
A few points
Ok, they didn't lie, but they did massively represent (in implying that they were the first to offer email via cell phone).
NTT DoCoMo was the first to have internet, true (ref CHTML comment). However, J-Phone had email before that (no need for HTML). I had a Digital TuKa (a company that no longer exists composed of Digital Phone (also known as J-Phone) and TuKa) Denso DN-174 in late 1997 (it came out in November, I think I got mine in December) which I used to send email to my parents, before iMode came out in Feb 1999.
JPhone didn't come out with a color phone until much later, December of 1999...which I bought too (I've gone through a lot of cell phones...I think I'm on number 7 now, but I may have missed one)
People don't hate J-Phone (as far as I know) (oh, and it got bought out by Vodafone last year. The name change became official October 1st of this year), but TuKa is slipping and slipping fast. Each maker has/had a strong point (J-Phone had color first, then made cameras on all phones standard first; DoCoMo had first 3G, plus a huge user base and name recognition; KDDI/AU/EzWeb had cool design, external flashes, and now ChakuUta (song sample ring tones, as opposed to synthesized tones). TuKa's only strong point was price, and now that they're all pretty cheap, it's going by the wayside. They have tried a new advertising approach, "simple is beautiful", or, as their recent spokesman, Matsumoto Hitoshi says, "It's a phone. You only need it for talking", and they foreswore digital cameras, mp3 playing, Java apps (I think) and everything besides the standard "Talk/Mail/Email" bundle. From what I gather, it's been disastrously unsuccessful. I can say for certain that I don't know a single person with a TuKa. For a while, they were doing OK because they had Hamasaki Ayumi as spokesperson, but now she's gone and they're screwed.
As for raves, I'm using the Japanese definition (bad habit) meaning outdoor techno concerts (usually goa). Indoor stuff doesn't get called raves here. Odd linguistic quirk.
If you can read Japanese, here's a slighly amusing page I found while looking up all my facts on Google (wouldn't want to get caught with my pants down in Slashdot!): http://www.yukawanet.com/sunday/tuka.html
I'm not sure how KDDI works their mail system, but J/Voda-fone automatically transmit the first 128 characters for free. If you get longer mail, and want to read the rest, you can choose to download the rest for a cost. This means that spam, while a pain in the butt, is free for the user (yes, yes, I know, indirect costs associated with increasing bandwidth and equipment to handle spam loads, but you know what I mean). DoCoMo used to charge for EVERY mail, whether you want it or not. A big scandal came out in the press (you may remember it), where they determined that a huge percentage of DoCoMo's income came from charging users for the spam they received (sorry, can't find links now). It was after that came to light that they started putting countermeasures into effect and offering "first X number of mail free!". It's a good thing, don't get me wrong, but they have gotten lots of bad karma from me from the old days, when the phones cost 4 times more for the same specs, the mail cost twice as much, receiving cost mail, and their features were no better than anyone elses.
That tirade being said, I use Vodafone myself, so I don't know the spam situation for KDDI.
And as for coverage: amen. DoCoMo is still the head of the pack when it comes to the countryside. In any city, the three big companies are all equal, but when I go to a rave, only the DoCoMo phones still get a signal. DoCoMo does have its good points, and countryside coverage is definitely one of them.
"Just so I understand you, you're saying that you bought the game, played one level as an FPS, decided it wasn't for you and went super stealth for the rest of the game. This apparently invalidates my claim that the game does not work as an FPS."
Er, sorry, slight misunderstanding here. I agree with your assertion that it doesn't work as an FPS. I perhaps misunderstood you as saying "they changed it from a stealth game into a sub-par FPS, such that it was no longer a stealth game". The way I see it, it is still a good stealth game, but it has as a bad but totally ignorable addition a FPS mode.
"By listening to the "fans", who never seemed to understand the point of the game, they turned one of the most innovative games of recent times into a sub-par FPS."
Only if you're a supremely sub-par player, I'd guess. I did one level guns-a-blazin, decided it wasn't for me, and went for super stealth the rest of the game. It was awesome. I haven't played the first, but I can tell you that the sequel involved tons of "getting into position for 15 minutes for the perfect snipe" followed by getting caught by guards and starting over. The "snipe the general accompanied by the U.N. team" mission took for fucking ever.
Wha? I used the hell out of that piano wire! I haven't played the first game, so I suspect that maybe you just have to use a different approach in using it?
Heck, to go out on a limb I'd say that perhaps using the piano wire in the sequel may have been more suspenseful and difficult than in the first.
Think of it less as "Insightful", and more as "a succinct, right on the money answer to a stupid question". He should be modded up just for pointing out the incredibly obvious point that the article poster didn't get. He was just lucky enough to answer it first.
Maybe true in the U.S., but not Japan. People turn off the ringers on trains, busses, etc. No more beep beep boops, and games on phones are a kick ass way to avoid being bored to death during commuting. Sure, so are books, but on a fully packed train, with one hand on the support strap, trying to flip pages on a book is a pain in the ass. Much easier to play a game, and much less intrusive to the people pushed up against you.
"The first imode phone came out in February 1999...I wanted a phone I could send email from because I didn't have a PC. That phone was nice and was way ahead of it's time (even in Japan)"
FUCK J-Phone and its horrible horrible public relations. J-Phone (and Digital TuKa) had email on phones way before iMode came out, but they didn't advertise or hype it at all, and only techies knew about it (it wasn't hidden, by any means. Clearly explained in the manuals, obvious on menus, etc., but they didn't advertise it). Then iMode came out and basically lied about being the first (I think they said something along the lines "iMode is the first phone that allows you to send e-mail, check your bank account, and make ticket reservations!", which is true: it was the first that allowed you to do all three, but not the first to allow you to do any of them). They charged 2 to 3 times the cost of their competitors, but people bought iModes out of ignorance.
Recently, thankfully, their prices have become sane, but they really don't deserve to be the top carrier in Japan. Currently EzWeb (KDDI) is probably the best, followed by Vodafone (J-Phone), and then DoCoMo...And then TuKa and its glorious bid to avoid going out of business.
"But does the O/S really matter if all the phones support Java now anyway?"
Bingo. Since all Japanases phone manufacturers allow only Java for external apps, users have no access to the OS anyway. It's completely transparent. Linux may help the manufacturers, but the customer can't interact with the OS in any way, so it's a non-topic here (in Japan). Don't know about the U.S.
"how cool wouldn't it be to run sshd on your phone"
I have no idea how cool it would be, but since Japanese manufacturers don't allow user access to the OS, you couldn't run it anyway. The only external applications that can run on Japanese cell phones are Java applications. The manufacturers use the OS to run phone functions (user interface, dialing, phonebook, digital camera, internet, and video), and that's all the customer can see.