Is zoning out of reality a normal side effect of playing MMORPGs or am I just weird? I seem to recall people referring to Everquest as "Evercrack" so I'm worried I may have stumbled down a slippery slope. Perhaps I should flee back to Desert Combat and FPS games before
I'm in exactly the same boat. I've easily resisted every MMORPG, and mocked those who fell victim to them. But... here comes City of Heroes, and everything changes.
Yes, I'm getting that zoning-out as well... I guess I can't say I wasn't warned:)
Did Interplay even publish Freespace and Freespace 2? I never played Freespace 2, but I was a Freespace fan and it was a good game too.
Man, I just replayed Freespace 2 recently. Great stuff. They even released the source.
I'd love to play a Freespace 3. Imagine the massively detailed capital ships you could do with modern video cards!
Grampa: What the hell is that? Frink: Why, it's a death ray my good man, behold.
(Frink fires death ray) Grampa: Hey, feels warm, kinda nice. Frink: Well it's just a prototype, with proper funding I'm
confident this little baby could destroy an area the
size of New York City. Grampa: But I want to help people, not kill 'em. Frink: Oh, well to be honest, the ray only has evil
applications. You know my wife will be happy,
she's hated this whole death ray thing from day
one.
Quite impressive although I am sure that DirectX is doing most of the work, all they've created is a texture generator (a good one, the textures are pretty good), a map generator (maps aren't that inspiring or involved at the moment, but there are nice touches) and then a few baddies and weapons and a way to walk around the map firing the weapons at the baddies (with nice graphical effects for some of the ammo).
Yeah, but the baddies were just procedurally generated with the DirectEnemies module, and the whole thing uses the built-in functionality of DirectAI.
I really wish the artistic community could invent a better name than post-modern for the current period.
I hear what you're saying, and you should understand that while the term postmodernism is now mainly used by the fine art community, it originated in the art/architecture criticism community. They came up with "Modernism", they came up with "Postmodernism", and it just stuck.
Just to flip it for a second, I've experienced similar frustration when using the words "object", "class", and "function" around programmers;)
Anyone remember the game Trespasser? Before it came out there were nothing but glowing reviews, talking about how the game was going to change the face of the industry, blah blah blah. When the game finally came out it didn't really play on any of the then current compute (unless you like slideshows) and it was buggy as hell.
Far be it from me to try to reduce anyone's cynicism with regard to the game press, but there's actually a reasonable explanation for this. Game previews are generally positive and non-judgemental, with good reason -- they're not looking at a final version. It would be wrong to taint readers' opinions on things that will eventually get fixed.
Reviews are what you want to read for an actual critical evaluation. Remember that when Trespasser shipped, the reviews were terrible.
There's also the fact that just because pirates allow publishers to charge $50 a game doesn't mean that the publishers have to
You know, this diverges from your main point, but I'd like to point out that games have a fundamental economic problem moving forward: The cost to make games is rising, but the price of games isn't.
Atari 2600 cartridges, the first mass-market home video games, cost about $30 each. Fast forward 25 years. Last week I bought "The Suffering" for the PS2 for $45.
Now, I don't have precise numbers for the cost of development of 2600 games, but I know most were created by a single person who did all the programming, art, music, etc. Compare that with development today, which involves massive teams with dedicated departments for engineering, design, art, animation, and music. However, because of market forces, developers/publishers can't charge more for games today. The effect is that only the big, big hits make their money back. There's massive risk involved in simply developing and publishing a video game.
Thus, you see publishers trying to reduce risk wherever possible, and what could be more risky than innovation? If you complain about clone after clone, look carefully at your own buying habits. (Obviously, I'm not talking to you, Pluvius -- I'm just speaking generally.)
I just can't seem to get into newer RPGs. I have NWN, I have KotOR.
You know, you should give NWN another chance. It's quite good. I actually played through 4 times, not in succession, but in time-staggered parallel. It was worth it to see how different the game was when played with different classes and character types.
While I think Spielberg has done some fine films, I also think he's done some utter rubbish.
I like Spielberg. In fact, I'm a fan. That said, he's had a problem lately -- he can't commit to an ending. A.I. and Minority Report both had this problem, and it's just painful. I actually had to walk out after A.I.'s third ending because they just kept getting worse and worse, and it hurt to see Spielberg make such a monumental mistake.
Okay, rant over. That said, I hope he's learned his lesson, and I'm looking forward to his take on War of the Worlds.
I remember reading about a MMORPG a while ago whose server was completely independent from the client, so the client game could be graphical, or text-based, or whatever. It *might* have been Wyvern, but I'm not certain.
Anyway, it's a really cool idea, if someone could do it right and have a client for every available platform while retaining whatever makes the game fun.
1.Half-Life 2.Deus Ex (I don't care what they say, I sure played it like a FPS) 3.Undying 4.SWAT 3 5.Requiem 6.Painkiller (I know, it's not out yet, but I can tell right now that it's going to be everything I wanted from Serious Sam but didn't get) 7.The Suffering (Playing right now in the PS2 in first-person mode)
Ooo! Also Simfarm. Great little game, completely nonviolent and stealth-educational. Semi-abandonware; if you can't find it for sale, you might still be able to find it online somewhere.
Tiny level size and long load times were the real killer for me with DX2. Drove me nuts every time I saw that confirmation dialog. (The original had fast load times, with no immersion-breaking dialogs.)
And the small level size was a direct result of the limitations imposed by the new/complex/expensive lighting model.
1.Contemporary; none of this retro-anything stuff, unless you go *way* back like Mafia did.
2.Bring back the original music!
3.More interiors. Many more.
To add to that, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't even be in Afganistan if Gore were president. Al Queda would still be operating under the protection of the Taliban. Airline security still would have changed, but nothing else would have.
Let's set the hyperbole aside for a minute. I'd be willing to bet that our response to 9/11 would have been identical if Gore'd been President.
There might still have been something *like* the PATRIOT act, although it would probably be less extreme.
The 9/11 Commission probably wouldn't have gotten much farther than it has under Bush -- all the same CYA interests would be involved.
We wouldn't be in Iraq, and as a result, we might actually have a stronger presence in Afghanistan at this stage.
Lacking the push to war in Iraq, we wouldn't have pissed the entire world off, and we'd likely be in a better position in the "War on Terror" because of this.
Republicans, Democrats, same f'in difference. A vote for either major party is a wasted vote, because you're voting to maintain the status quo.
I can't see how you can look at Bush and Gore and say there's no difference. For starters, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be in Iraq if Gore were President.
Nader's critique is, essentially, that there is a cancer on the body politic--and he's right about that. The problem in the year 2004 is that the body politic is also suffering from multiple wounds and blunt force trauma, we're in the emergency room and it's a damn mess and there's blood everywhere and the doctors are working furiously but it's anybody's guess how things are gonna turn out. We are in triage, and we have to deal with the immediate problems, or the long-term ones won't matter anyway.
It's premature. We're not even at X12 yet. Hell, we're not even at X11r7 yet!
: )
Re:What in the world is WRONG with you people?
on
Painkiller PC Demo Debuts
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Painkiller moves as slow as molasses and has, well, "painfully" repetitive play. The physics additions are little different from any other special effects gimmick - knocking down the balconies was sort of interesting, but the level provided little opportunity to really make use of it other than to take down the odd barrel or zombie. Indeed, the level was garbage. Now, I'll admit that I didn't go the whole way through it before I felt that I'd had enough, but it seemed pretty clear to me that the whole thing wasn't going to be much more than variations on "corridor, corridor, open area. Corridor, corridor, open area. Badger, badger, badger." There was some modest challenge in defeating the zombies and cloaked guys, but that could not possibly sustain the length of an entire game. The zombies in Quake 1 were truthfully much more interesting than these, seeing as they were a real hassle unless you had gibbing power handy.
Okay, so... I see what you're saying. And I agree with much of your assessment. Yet, get this:
I had an awful lot of fun playing it. As someone who designs games professionally, I always have to remember that in reflex-based games, game-play has to be engaging at a visceral level first, and then at an intellectual level.
There are lots of tiny decisions in there that made the game work viscerally:
*The slow speed of enemy projectiles, enabling you to dodge a single one easily. However, you get 4 enemies throwing stuff at the same time, *and* you're trying to aim while dodging, it becomes a significant skill-based challenge.
*The "crippled" zombies later on move slowly most of the time, but have a "hop attack" in which they move short distances very quickly.
*The stake gun was just a joy to use, and finally makes rag-doll physics satisfying.
So... I guess what I'm saying is that yes, the game is lacking a high-quality high-level design (like, say, Half-Life); however, they're doing an awful lot of things right on a low-level that help make the experience fun nevertheless. That's often harder to do right than the high level, and I think the Painkiller team deserves credit for it.
Fakezilla was a flop simply because it WASN'T Godzilla. They took TOO many liberties with their Godzilla design. I won't even get into how easy they made it to kill Godzilla or the whole breeding thing they came up with.
Of course Toho, the creator and only true maker of Godzilla films, has made some big mistakes as well(Godzilla 2000 for instance, one of if not the most boring of the Godzilla films)
I've always suspected it would've been recieved better if it'd been billed as the movie it was actually a remake of -- The Beast from 20000 Fathoms.
(Although it still wouldn't have lived up to their remake of War of the Worlds;)
Slashdot Mirror
Arcades died because of the home hardware/cost cycle caught up with the arcades.
But your hypothesis doesn't address why arcades and arcade games are still successful in Japan (which the parent post does address).
Is zoning out of reality a normal side effect of playing MMORPGs or am I just weird? I seem to recall people referring to Everquest as "Evercrack" so I'm worried I may have stumbled down a slippery slope. Perhaps I should flee back to Desert Combat and FPS games before
:)
I'm in exactly the same boat. I've easily resisted every MMORPG, and mocked those who fell victim to them. But... here comes City of Heroes, and everything changes.
Yes, I'm getting that zoning-out as well... I guess I can't say I wasn't warned
Did Interplay even publish Freespace and Freespace 2? I never played Freespace 2, but I was a Freespace fan and it was a good game too.
Man, I just replayed Freespace 2 recently. Great stuff. They even released the source.
I'd love to play a Freespace 3. Imagine the massively detailed capital ships you could do with modern video cards!
Grampa: What the hell is that?
Frink: Why, it's a death ray my good man, behold. (Frink fires death ray)
Grampa: Hey, feels warm, kinda nice.
Frink: Well it's just a prototype, with proper funding I'm confident this little baby could destroy an area the size of New York City.
Grampa: But I want to help people, not kill 'em.
Frink: Oh, well to be honest, the ray only has evil applications. You know my wife will be happy, she's hated this whole death ray thing from day one.
Quite impressive although I am sure that DirectX is doing most of the work, all they've created is a texture generator (a good one, the textures are pretty good), a map generator (maps aren't that inspiring or involved at the moment, but there are nice touches) and then a few baddies and weapons and a way to walk around the map firing the weapons at the baddies (with nice graphical effects for some of the ammo).
Yeah, but the baddies were just procedurally generated with the DirectEnemies module, and the whole thing uses the built-in functionality of DirectAI.
I really wish the artistic community could invent a better name than post-modern for the current period.
;)
I hear what you're saying, and you should understand that while the term postmodernism is now mainly used by the fine art community, it originated in the art/architecture criticism community. They came up with "Modernism", they came up with "Postmodernism", and it just stuck.
Just to flip it for a second, I've experienced similar frustration when using the words "object", "class", and "function" around programmers
Just because it didn't have cute characters? Bah!
Cybernator for the SNES, and its unofficial sequel Metal Warriors.
Anyone remember the game Trespasser? Before it came out there were nothing but glowing reviews, talking about how the game was going to change the face of the industry, blah blah blah. When the game finally came out it didn't really play on any of the then current compute (unless you like slideshows) and it was buggy as hell.
Far be it from me to try to reduce anyone's cynicism with regard to the game press, but there's actually a reasonable explanation for this. Game previews are generally positive and non-judgemental, with good reason -- they're not looking at a final version. It would be wrong to taint readers' opinions on things that will eventually get fixed.
Reviews are what you want to read for an actual critical evaluation. Remember that when Trespasser shipped, the reviews were terrible.
"I know those words, but that sign doesn't make sense."
-Lisa Simpson
There's also the fact that just because pirates allow publishers to charge $50 a game doesn't mean that the publishers have to
You know, this diverges from your main point, but I'd like to point out that games have a fundamental economic problem moving forward: The cost to make games is rising, but the price of games isn't.
Atari 2600 cartridges, the first mass-market home video games, cost about $30 each. Fast forward 25 years. Last week I bought "The Suffering" for the PS2 for $45.
Now, I don't have precise numbers for the cost of development of 2600 games, but I know most were created by a single person who did all the programming, art, music, etc. Compare that with development today, which involves massive teams with dedicated departments for engineering, design, art, animation, and music. However, because of market forces, developers/publishers can't charge more for games today. The effect is that only the big, big hits make their money back. There's massive risk involved in simply developing and publishing a video game.
Thus, you see publishers trying to reduce risk wherever possible, and what could be more risky than innovation? If you complain about clone after clone, look carefully at your own buying habits. (Obviously, I'm not talking to you, Pluvius -- I'm just speaking generally.)
I just can't seem to get into newer RPGs. I have NWN, I have KotOR.
You know, you should give NWN another chance. It's quite good. I actually played through 4 times, not in succession, but in time-staggered parallel. It was worth it to see how different the game was when played with different classes and character types.
Considering that the real ones are headed for extinction, at least we'll have some facsimile as a reminder.
(Not sure whether I should follow that with a winky-face or a sad-face.)
While I think Spielberg has done some fine films, I also think he's done some utter rubbish.
I like Spielberg. In fact, I'm a fan. That said, he's had a problem lately -- he can't commit to an ending. A.I. and Minority Report both had this problem, and it's just painful. I actually had to walk out after A.I.'s third ending because they just kept getting worse and worse, and it hurt to see Spielberg make such a monumental mistake.
Okay, rant over. That said, I hope he's learned his lesson, and I'm looking forward to his take on War of the Worlds.
I remember reading about a MMORPG a while ago whose server was completely independent from the client, so the client game could be graphical, or text-based, or whatever. It *might* have been Wyvern, but I'm not certain.
Anyway, it's a really cool idea, if someone could do it right and have a client for every available platform while retaining whatever makes the game fun.
1.Half-Life
2.Deus Ex (I don't care what they say, I sure played it like a FPS)
3.Undying
4.SWAT 3
5.Requiem
6.Painkiller (I know, it's not out yet, but I can tell right now that it's going to be everything I wanted from Serious Sam but didn't get)
7.The Suffering (Playing right now in the PS2 in first-person mode)
Sim Tower is kind of old but it's very good.
Ooo! Also Simfarm. Great little game, completely nonviolent and stealth-educational. Semi-abandonware; if you can't find it for sale, you might still be able to find it online somewhere.
Tiny level size and long load times were the real killer for me with DX2. Drove me nuts every time I saw that confirmation dialog. (The original had fast load times, with no immersion-breaking dialogs.)
And the small level size was a direct result of the limitations imposed by the new/complex/expensive lighting model.
I only have three major wishes:
1.Contemporary; none of this retro-anything stuff, unless you go *way* back like Mafia did.
2.Bring back the original music!
3.More interiors. Many more.
When you come up with the perfect voting system, please let us all know. We'd love to apply it to things like American Politics.
Well, I've got a better one for you, at least: Condorcet's Method.
To add to that, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't even be in Afganistan if Gore were president. Al Queda would still be operating under the protection of the Taliban. Airline security still would have changed, but nothing else would have.
Let's set the hyperbole aside for a minute. I'd be willing to bet that our response to 9/11 would have been identical if Gore'd been President.
There might still have been something *like* the PATRIOT act, although it would probably be less extreme.
The 9/11 Commission probably wouldn't have gotten much farther than it has under Bush -- all the same CYA interests would be involved.
We wouldn't be in Iraq, and as a result, we might actually have a stronger presence in Afghanistan at this stage.
Lacking the push to war in Iraq, we wouldn't have pissed the entire world off, and we'd likely be in a better position in the "War on Terror" because of this.
But in 9/11 what-if terms, it's not even a very interesting question. The really interesting question is this -- what if John McCain had won the Republican nomination and the national election?
I can't see how you can look at Bush and Gore and say there's no difference. For starters, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be in Iraq if Gore were President.
I like the how Tom Tomorrow put it:
It's premature. We're not even at X12 yet. Hell, we're not even at X11r7 yet!
: )
I had an awful lot of fun playing it. As someone who designs games professionally, I always have to remember that in reflex-based games, game-play has to be engaging at a visceral level first, and then at an intellectual level.
There are lots of tiny decisions in there that made the game work viscerally:
*The slow speed of enemy projectiles, enabling you to dodge a single one easily. However, you get 4 enemies throwing stuff at the same time, *and* you're trying to aim while dodging, it becomes a significant skill-based challenge.
*The "crippled" zombies later on move slowly most of the time, but have a "hop attack" in which they move short distances very quickly.
*The stake gun was just a joy to use, and finally makes rag-doll physics satisfying.
So... I guess what I'm saying is that yes, the game is lacking a high-quality high-level design (like, say, Half-Life); however, they're doing an awful lot of things right on a low-level that help make the experience fun nevertheless. That's often harder to do right than the high level, and I think the Painkiller team deserves credit for it.
Fakezilla was a flop simply because it WASN'T Godzilla. They took TOO many liberties with their Godzilla design. I won't even get into how easy they made it to kill Godzilla or the whole breeding thing they came up with.
;)
Of course Toho, the creator and only true maker of Godzilla films, has made some big mistakes as well(Godzilla 2000 for instance, one of if not the most boring of the Godzilla films)
I've always suspected it would've been recieved better if it'd been billed as the movie it was actually a remake of -- The Beast from 20000 Fathoms.
(Although it still wouldn't have lived up to their remake of War of the Worlds