"unless you're a two year old and like to see people get hit in the face with a giant mutant fly swatter"
Hate to admit to it in the face of your belittlement of it, but I loved that part. I didn't exactly catch on to why it was hitting them, until Zaphod spoke about having an idea, then I laughed. Loved it's inpromptu return as well.
"Well it was my idea in the..." *BAM!*
outside of the guide bits that they made politically correct.
Quite honestly, if they had kept the guide bits like they were, there would have been more trouble. If it came down to a choice between Disney keeping foaming at the mouth fundies at bay and keeping foaming at the mouth fanboys at bay, they quite obviously chose fundies, and quite honestly in the age we live in today, I don't blame them, as much as it saddens me to say it.
This is really odd. I've never seen such divided opinions on a movie before. I absolutely adored the movie, and there seems to be a whole second crowd who thinks it's a travisty.
Oh hush. I'm an avid fan of Douglas' work, and even though they removed some of his dialog, the stuff they replaced it with was suitably funny, and there was enough stuff changed and added that I was laughing throughout much of the movie, instead of mildly chuckling as each of Douglas jokes in the book is repeated verbatim.
Christ, even Douglas himself said that there was no such thing as the official Hitchhiker story. This movie is just another take on the whole Hitchiker idea.
It wasn't perfect. But it was a hell of a lot better than I expected it to be. And defeniatly a lot better than that godawful BBC miniseries.
Microsoft's monopoly? Absolutely. I don't want to put money into a company that has a monopoly over anything, and I really don't want to give them an edge in the console market -- if anyone has a monopoly on that, we'll all be subscribing to play single-player games at MMORPG-like prices.
This is one of two things I have issue with. You can't really concern yourself with stuff like that. Do you really know who you are supporting when you are doing any given thing? There are so many people who are involved with the creation of any product that I guarentee you somwhere along the line someone was related to something that did something you didn't like. I've learned to just buy on one factor, if the product itself is worth my money, not if whatever corperation is caught up in scandal. If what they are doing is wrong, karma will come back and bite them in the ass.
I'm curious. If Bungie had gone along without Microsoft, would Halo have gone anywhere? Probably not, but the most addicting thing about Halo was the level design and gameplay, which is something that doesn't cost as much money as pretty graphics. And Halo is successful enough right now that Bungie could easily stand alone as a separate company.
So let's see here. Microsoft has single handedly raised Bungie from some obscure company that made some awesome games but didn't get any attention to one of the leading names in the gaming industry. And then you're saying that Bungie should basically turn around and say "fuck you" to the people who gave them their big break, just so they can start making games for the PC? Bungie probably would have gone under had it not been for Microsoft's intervention, and I'd much rather see Bungie stick around. We have too many game development houses dying or being assimilated already.
No, but it did make it a lot more accessable. The Tribes series had all of these items, but Halo did all of these items well and able to be used by Joe Average.
Don't get me wrong, I loved Tribes, and I loved Tribes 2 even more, but don't kid yourself in thinking that either of those games were anywhere near accessable to the average gamer. And really, Tribes and Halo are two entierly different kinds of games, mainly becauose of their scales (Tribes was huge, Halo is more confined)
Sure, Halo might be watered down in some places compared to Tribes, but in the end, Halo was revolutionary beacuse it did a lot of things, and did a lot of things really well (aside from copy and paste architecture), and reguardless of if you personally thought it was good, it really catered to a lot of people, frat guys and FPS lovers alike. (Especially me, and when I was an anti-xbox fanboy around the time of it's release, it didn't have a harder sell than me)
And for the inevitable "Oh, it was marketed like a mothercucker, that's why it did so well" crowd, take a look at Doom 3. It was marketed massively for PC and now Xbox, and didn't do nearly as well. And actaully was, unlike Halo CE/2, a terrible game.
Unless you were wondering about why there's no PS2 version, in which case I'd just say Microsoft said "here's a wad of thousand dollar bills as big as your head to develop only for the XBox".
Yeah, Microsoft sure is pioneering with the whole "console exclusive" idea. Never seen that before. Ever.
They somehow got Half Life running on a Dreamcast. I don't think HL2 on a Xbox will be totally out of the question. They did have to cut corners with Doom 3, but considering how much mroe scalable Source seems to be, I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up decent.
Though I am worried about any extras. Half Life for PS2 only had single player, a short co-op campaign (Decay) and two player split screen deathmatch. I really hope they at least include Half Life 2 DM over Live.
There are no standards on the PC, either. I mean, standards are nice, but xbox live has problems, at least in Halo2. Takes something like two minutes for it to find and join a game, and standby glitches still work. The lack of custom servers means you are depending on Bungee to eliminate cheaters.
Two minutes to join a game is a small price to pay to ensure that the entire community doesn't go the way of Halo PC (BLOOD GULCH CTF 24/7) or Unreal Tournament (Instagib CTF on Facing Worlds 24/7) And while standby glitches still work, they're nowhere near as useful, especially on team games. And there are still custom servers, that's why parties and friends lists were invented.
There are no set standards on the PC. Of course not. You usually don't pay to play games over the PC either. The closest we've got it Steam, and while I love Steam, it has some serious problems with things like Friends Lists and VAC.
I'd rather not support Microsoft's monopoly on the games which are "only on xbox". I guarentee that not a one of those developers made the choice for any reason other than money from Microsoft.
This is ridiculous. Aside from your laughable use of "Monopoly" (Microsoft has a monopoly on some things, sure, but on Exclsuvie games? Are you kidding me?) You have no way to back this up, and besides, all four major game playing systems have their own exclusives. You're acting like Microsoft is holding a big green bag of cash on a stick out in front of their exclusive developers. The burden of proof is on you to prove that they're only in this for the money.
There are plenty of games -- good games, unique games -- which are only on PS2, or only on PC, or only on Gamecube. I don't see a Final Fantasy or a Zelda or a MMORPG for the xbox.
Considering Xbox has only has one generation to build up mascot games like Zelda or Final Fantasy, I don't think you're making a very fair comparison. I guess Halo could be an exception to this, but then again, that's a huge anomoly. Somehow, even being the new kid on the block doesn't prevent the Xbox from getting great games like Jade Empire and Ninja Gaiden.
MMORPG's on a console? What are the alternatives? Everquest: Online Adventures (AHAHAHAHAHAHAH) and Final Fantasy XI (which is not my cup of tea, though I do understand it has a huge playerbase). And I'm not just an anti-MMORPG nut either, I throughly enjoyed World of Warcraft and EVE Online, as well as the MMORPG-like persistant servers of Neverwinter Nights.
Lack of quirky games? Chalk that up to lack of japanese developers. Games like Katamari Damancy are quicky as all get out, so the japanese developers will naturally develop said quirky game for the platform that will give it it's biggest audience, so it will have a greater chance of not tanking. Things are getting better though, I can't wait to pick up Super Monkey Ball Deluxe for the XBox, and to get all the SEGA/Smilebit classics that got put out on Xbox (If you want quirky, you can't get more quirky than those). And it seems like more and more japanese companies are jumping on the XBox bandwagon, which only means good news for the Xbox 2.
Don't speak to me of half-assed ports. Doom 3 on xbox? 'Nuff said.
Doom 3 was terrible for other reasons. And I would love for you to try playing Doom 3 on a middle of the road machine from 2001. (And no, the guy who ran Doom 3 on his 2x Voodoo2 doesn't count)
Also, Deus Ex on PS2. Now THAT was a joke. It was actually a great game on PC too...
And, the "only on xbox" does help put games on PC anyway, because if you use that logo, you're not legally allowed to port it to any other consoles, so it can ONLY have an xbox and a PC port.
I agree with you on this, but why is the legal terminology relivent? It's not like these developers really really strive to get their games on all three systems, but are smacked down by the almighty Microsft's legal team.
It is. Contrary to Slashdot popular beleif, it IS possible to get a great product by paying for it.
Opera is one of them. Sure it seems 'bloated' at first, but most of it is because of lots of little toolbars that you can turn off and never see again within 4 seconds. And even with all this "bloat", it seems to be a lot snappier than Mozilla Firefox. And there are lot of little gemstones around the program that you keep discovering the more you use it. Some of these gem's you'll love and start using on a regular basis (one example of mine was the "drag over a non hypertext URL and right click it and choose "Go to URL"), and others that annoy you (The totally unnecissary chat client) you can turn off and never have to bother with again.
And if the thought of banner ad's for the unpaid version feaks you out, you can even switch the ads to a Google AdWrods bar that's a lot thinner than the standard banner ad....and I know I sure as hell don't mind AdWords, even on webpages.
Give it a try. I've been using the free version since 6.xx, and every time I've tried any other web browser, I've always wound up coming back.
I'll pay the extra money for a much higher overall quality of connection, an integrated friends list in every single game, and voice chat in every single game.
The PS2's online play is a joke. There are no standards, so it's up to the company making the game to put in online play to it's own satisfaction, and a good percentage of the time it's not so hot.
And "Most games are on PC anyway" Have you taken a look at the XBox's library.....at all? Sure, a few of them get PC ports, but a quite sizable majority of the games avalable for Xbox are avalable only Xbox, or are avalable in inferior form on Gamecube and PS2. Or, is a PC port, which is nothing new to consoles (See the origional Deus Ex for PS2 or Unreal Tournament, which came out for both PS2 and Dreamcast)
Off the top of my head, I can only think of five games that started out on the Xbox and later got ported to PC and are worth buying on PC. KotoR I and II (easy ports since it essentially used a modified NWN engine), Riddick and arguably Thief III (for bugfixes and new maps) and Halo (most half-assed PC port ever, but Internet Play and custom maps might keep you interested) Might sound like a lot, but think about the hunderds of games in the Xbox's library, and it's really nothing special.
We Xbox owners are tired of the cheap shots by your crowd at our system. We know it's fucking huge, we know the launch was terrible with bad Xbox's and the terrible controler, we're sick of the "Xbox is only popular because of Halo and Halo sux lol", we're just plain sick of it too.
And how about people not measure their e-penis about what kinds of games they play. I play everything from Halo 2 and Grand Theft Auto to Wind Waker and Katamari Damancy, and I'm sick of people on one side of the spectrum taking pot shots at the other. Seriously, shut the hell up, we don't care that the Gamecube is kiddy or the Xbox is for MATURE GAMERS LOL or that the PS2 is THE GAING PLATFORM OF CHOICE or that PC's are for SOPHISTICATED gamers, just shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!!!!
Bad example. I use my Xbox as a DVD player, and several of my friends's use their PS2 as their primary DVD player.
And honestly, I don't care. As long as they release a $300 machine that plays games well, I could care less if there is some $400 variant with WebTV. Besides, I bet there will be ways to hook up external hard drives to your Xbox within a week of it being released.
Me? I am perfectly happy with my Xbox, and since it's going to continue to be supported into 2007, I'll just stick with it until then. By then, hopefully the 360 will be $199 and the library of games will be good enough for me to grab one myself.
What's that? I've run 64 player quake servers on dedicated pentium-II class machines with 0 problems before, and there are processors and memory systems now that are orders of magnitude faster which should be able to handle a slower-paced game even better?
You can't be serious.
A server farm handling 64 players on a server (usually running all across the country spread out across hundreds of different servers) at a time has vastly different demands than a server farm of 84 (at last I heard) servers handling over 600,000 players total....meaning on average over 7,000 players per server. Give Blizzard ANY netcode that can handle 7,000 players per server (And because of the distribution of players to the high population servers, the actual numbers playing on the servers that have problems are much much higher) as gracefully as a Quake II server running 64 players, and they'll offer you a head programmer position in a heartbeat.
Don't they mean Neverwinter Nights 2?P?
In any case, I really hope that Obsilidian has a small both showcasing it, I still play the first one to this day, and while it wasn't perfect, it's probably the best D&D game avalable for any system to day. Or if not the best, the one that still has the most players still playing....or roleplaying, rather.
I've decided to pick apart your knocks against the Xbox controller. Not because I don't like you, but it's interesting for me to see how something bad for one person can be good for another
I grant that it's fairly comfortably shaped, but it is, without doubt, by far the heaviest standard console gamepad ever made besides the original Xbox controller. They are both unacceptably heavy for long periods of use.
I don't get the 'extended use' thing at all. I hated the fatbody, and I don't have particularly large hands, but the Xbox Controller S is perfectly heavy for me. The PS2's controller is a little too flimsy for me, and the Gamecube's 'conforms' too much to my hand, I don't feel like I have any leeway with it.
The buttons are also too resistant and not springy enough - they just don't have the right feel. And though MS could have easily gone to a more standard six-button layout with the S (something a lot of people were hoping for), they stubbornly stuck with those recessed black and white buttons, just put in a different place. At the same time, they put the start/back buttons in the exact spot where my thumb seems to want to go by mistake about fifty times per play session.
The springy buttons seem to respond just fine to me, and actually feel a lot better for games that use analog buttons than the PS2's equivilent. (I feel like I have to mash on the buttons to get them to go down fully. The black and white buttons, yeah, they do suck and I wish they had gone with a 6 button layout, but it's not terrible. However, I will never ever understand people's complaints about the start and back buttons. They are in an absolutely fantastic spot, recessed enough to prevent accidental pressage, but whenever I need to pause (or check my score in Halo 2) it's incredably convenient and just a short thumb motion away. It's a design feature I wish more compedators would copy.
It's also the worst of the current three first-party controllers. The dual shock, while probably overrated, is at least shaped in such a way that your hands aren't really forced or even guided into any sort of position - you can hold it any way you want to. The buttons are okay, though not great, and they're laid out logically, if not traditionally.
I have three major complaints with the PS2's controller. First of all, if you thought the Xbox's D-Pad was terrible, the PS2's d-pad MURDERS my thumb after long Virtua Fighter sessions. Whoever put that seporation in the middle needs to be flogged, seriously. Secondly, the left analog stick is a pain in the ass for me to use, and not in a comfortable position in relation to the rest of the controller at all. Third, and this didn't occor to me until playing with an Xbox controller, is that for racing games and FPS's, triggers are infinately superior to buttons. One of the things I like about the upcoming Xbox 360's controller design is that it's essentially doing both, putting buttons above the triggers, so you can have triggers for racing and FPS's and shoulder buttons for things like fighting games.
The Gamecube controller's only big failing is that it's just too specialized for its own good - the feel of it I think is amazing, but the button layout just doesn't work for a lot of games. And the d-pad is too small. Despite the bad layout, though, I think the springiness of the buttons is just perfect. Other than the d-pad, the Gamecube controller is probably the most comfortable gamepad I've ever used.
Oh my my.....where to begin. The Nintendo 64 controller, aside from it's blister inducing and prone to breaking thumbsticks was fantastic, what happened? First of all, the D-pad is attrocious. Simply attrocious. Never should have made it on there. Secondly, the C-stick feels way too flimsy, and while it might work for camera control, in the day and age of FPS's, it's a terrible choice. Third, the Z button is placed in a way too akward to reach place. This wouldn't be so bad if the triggers of the cont
..would do well to check out EVE Online. There's a 14 day free trial at mmorpg.com if you're interested enough. In any case, the market in EVE is absolutely insane. Instead of the really good weapons being Bind on Equip and not being able to make them yourself, you can make anything that you can possibly equip, from Miner II turrents to Kestrel ships. Much of the focus in EVE is on joining a corperation (either player owned or NPC corp), and filling out a role in it.
You could be
* Mining (similar to gathering raw materials in WoW such as gathering herbs
* Reprocessing (an extra step in EVE, think of it as turning the herbs into raw materials, the more skilled you are at it, the less you lose in the reprocessing process)
* Using a plan to create itms (like turning herbs into a potion)
* Researching plans (think of it as allowing you to make more potions with the same number of herbs)
* Hauling and selling (Since your goods are actually worth something, and since the market for each solar system is different, you have someone find the best price for your goods and then haul it there and place a sell order).
* Scouting (Someone has to find good stuff for you to mine, and in a pinch be able to run between different markets)
* Defending (Yes, there is full PvP in this game, so it is wise to protect your assests as they are transported from one place to another)
* Pirating (Someone has to be the bad guy, right? Rival corperation moving in your market? Attack them back! Or if you don't have the resources, place bounties on their heads or pay a mercenary corperation to harass them.)
And EVE has kill and courier missions from NPC's, just like every other MMORPG. But if you're looking for a fully realized market based MMORPG, this is defeniatly the one to try out. I coudln't imagine going back to trying to play WoW's market after this.
I'd like a cut of your jib. The price is what killed it for me, plus all the propritary formats and the fact that I have no idea where any Wi-fi hotspots are around my hometown.
Lumines did sorely tempt me, though. I'm a sucker for puzzle games.
This server downtime and lag, combined with the fact that it just got boring after Level 30, is why I ended up quitting WoW.
However, I find that because of WoW, I am now able to wrap my head around other MMORPGS's a lot easier. Before WoW, I thought the idea of playing an MMORPG was ridiculous. Now, I"ve gotten a taste and moved on to EVE and couldn't be happier. I guess I have Blizzard to thank for it.
I only half agree with you on that. Everyone hated the library, but Two Betrayals and The Maw, while being similar to Assault on the Control Room and Pillar of Automn respectively, had totally different tactical situations introduced by the flood. Plus you got to go lots of places where you didn't get to go before.
Keyes, however, didn't feature as much new content as the two I mentioned above, plus I hated the level the first time around anyway, so that plus the Library kinda ruined the first Halo. Plus, the fact that some of my friends insisted that the multiplayer of Halo 1 was superior to the multiplayer of Halo 2 completely baffled me.
Slashdot Mirror
"unless you're a two year old and like to see people get hit in the face with a giant mutant fly swatter"
Hate to admit to it in the face of your belittlement of it, but I loved that part. I didn't exactly catch on to why it was hitting them, until Zaphod spoke about having an idea, then I laughed. Loved it's inpromptu return as well.
"Well it was my idea in the..." *BAM!*
outside of the guide bits that they made politically correct.
Quite honestly, if they had kept the guide bits like they were, there would have been more trouble. If it came down to a choice between Disney keeping foaming at the mouth fundies at bay and keeping foaming at the mouth fanboys at bay, they quite obviously chose fundies, and quite honestly in the age we live in today, I don't blame them, as much as it saddens me to say it.
I keep hearing this in defense of the film's unfunniness.
Except we're not defending it for being unfunny. We actually think it's funny.
I don't see your point. That's not Something Awful.
Our theatre clapped. Yeah...
Stop embarassing the rest of us.
This is really odd. I've never seen such divided opinions on a movie before. I absolutely adored the movie, and there seems to be a whole second crowd who thinks it's a travisty.
Oh hush. I'm an avid fan of Douglas' work, and even though they removed some of his dialog, the stuff they replaced it with was suitably funny, and there was enough stuff changed and added that I was laughing throughout much of the movie, instead of mildly chuckling as each of Douglas jokes in the book is repeated verbatim.
Christ, even Douglas himself said that there was no such thing as the official Hitchhiker story. This movie is just another take on the whole Hitchiker idea.
It wasn't perfect. But it was a hell of a lot better than I expected it to be. And defeniatly a lot better than that godawful BBC miniseries.
Microsoft's monopoly? Absolutely. I don't want to put money into a company that has a monopoly over anything, and I really don't want to give them an edge in the console market -- if anyone has a monopoly on that, we'll all be subscribing to play single-player games at MMORPG-like prices. This is one of two things I have issue with. You can't really concern yourself with stuff like that. Do you really know who you are supporting when you are doing any given thing? There are so many people who are involved with the creation of any product that I guarentee you somwhere along the line someone was related to something that did something you didn't like. I've learned to just buy on one factor, if the product itself is worth my money, not if whatever corperation is caught up in scandal. If what they are doing is wrong, karma will come back and bite them in the ass. I'm curious. If Bungie had gone along without Microsoft, would Halo have gone anywhere? Probably not, but the most addicting thing about Halo was the level design and gameplay, which is something that doesn't cost as much money as pretty graphics. And Halo is successful enough right now that Bungie could easily stand alone as a separate company. So let's see here. Microsoft has single handedly raised Bungie from some obscure company that made some awesome games but didn't get any attention to one of the leading names in the gaming industry. And then you're saying that Bungie should basically turn around and say "fuck you" to the people who gave them their big break, just so they can start making games for the PC? Bungie probably would have gone under had it not been for Microsoft's intervention, and I'd much rather see Bungie stick around. We have too many game development houses dying or being assimilated already.
No, but it did make it a lot more accessable. The Tribes series had all of these items, but Halo did all of these items well and able to be used by Joe Average.
Don't get me wrong, I loved Tribes, and I loved Tribes 2 even more, but don't kid yourself in thinking that either of those games were anywhere near accessable to the average gamer. And really, Tribes and Halo are two entierly different kinds of games, mainly becauose of their scales (Tribes was huge, Halo is more confined)
Sure, Halo might be watered down in some places compared to Tribes, but in the end, Halo was revolutionary beacuse it did a lot of things, and did a lot of things really well (aside from copy and paste architecture), and reguardless of if you personally thought it was good, it really catered to a lot of people, frat guys and FPS lovers alike. (Especially me, and when I was an anti-xbox fanboy around the time of it's release, it didn't have a harder sell than me)
And for the inevitable "Oh, it was marketed like a mothercucker, that's why it did so well" crowd, take a look at Doom 3. It was marketed massively for PC and now Xbox, and didn't do nearly as well. And actaully was, unlike Halo CE/2, a terrible game.
Unless you were wondering about why there's no PS2 version, in which case I'd just say Microsoft said "here's a wad of thousand dollar bills as big as your head to develop only for the XBox".
Yeah, Microsoft sure is pioneering with the whole "console exclusive" idea. Never seen that before. Ever.
They somehow got Half Life running on a Dreamcast. I don't think HL2 on a Xbox will be totally out of the question. They did have to cut corners with Doom 3, but considering how much mroe scalable Source seems to be, I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up decent.
Though I am worried about any extras. Half Life for PS2 only had single player, a short co-op campaign (Decay) and two player split screen deathmatch. I really hope they at least include Half Life 2 DM over Live.
There are no standards on the PC, either. I mean, standards are nice, but xbox live has problems, at least in Halo2. Takes something like two minutes for it to find and join a game, and standby glitches still work. The lack of custom servers means you are depending on Bungee to eliminate cheaters.
Two minutes to join a game is a small price to pay to ensure that the entire community doesn't go the way of Halo PC (BLOOD GULCH CTF 24/7) or Unreal Tournament (Instagib CTF on Facing Worlds 24/7) And while standby glitches still work, they're nowhere near as useful, especially on team games. And there are still custom servers, that's why parties and friends lists were invented.
There are no set standards on the PC. Of course not. You usually don't pay to play games over the PC either. The closest we've got it Steam, and while I love Steam, it has some serious problems with things like Friends Lists and VAC.
I'd rather not support Microsoft's monopoly on the games which are "only on xbox". I guarentee that not a one of those developers made the choice for any reason other than money from Microsoft.
This is ridiculous. Aside from your laughable use of "Monopoly" (Microsoft has a monopoly on some things, sure, but on Exclsuvie games? Are you kidding me?) You have no way to back this up, and besides, all four major game playing systems have their own exclusives. You're acting like Microsoft is holding a big green bag of cash on a stick out in front of their exclusive developers. The burden of proof is on you to prove that they're only in this for the money.
There are plenty of games -- good games, unique games -- which are only on PS2, or only on PC, or only on Gamecube. I don't see a Final Fantasy or a Zelda or a MMORPG for the xbox.
Considering Xbox has only has one generation to build up mascot games like Zelda or Final Fantasy, I don't think you're making a very fair comparison. I guess Halo could be an exception to this, but then again, that's a huge anomoly. Somehow, even being the new kid on the block doesn't prevent the Xbox from getting great games like Jade Empire and Ninja Gaiden.
MMORPG's on a console? What are the alternatives? Everquest: Online Adventures (AHAHAHAHAHAHAH) and Final Fantasy XI (which is not my cup of tea, though I do understand it has a huge playerbase). And I'm not just an anti-MMORPG nut either, I throughly enjoyed World of Warcraft and EVE Online, as well as the MMORPG-like persistant servers of Neverwinter Nights.
Lack of quirky games? Chalk that up to lack of japanese developers. Games like Katamari Damancy are quicky as all get out, so the japanese developers will naturally develop said quirky game for the platform that will give it it's biggest audience, so it will have a greater chance of not tanking. Things are getting better though, I can't wait to pick up Super Monkey Ball Deluxe for the XBox, and to get all the SEGA/Smilebit classics that got put out on Xbox (If you want quirky, you can't get more quirky than those). And it seems like more and more japanese companies are jumping on the XBox bandwagon, which only means good news for the Xbox 2.
Don't speak to me of half-assed ports. Doom 3 on xbox? 'Nuff said.
Doom 3 was terrible for other reasons. And I would love for you to try playing Doom 3 on a middle of the road machine from 2001. (And no, the guy who ran Doom 3 on his 2x Voodoo2 doesn't count)
Also, Deus Ex on PS2. Now THAT was a joke. It was actually a great game on PC too...
And, the "only on xbox" does help put games on PC anyway, because if you use that logo, you're not legally allowed to port it to any other consoles, so it can ONLY have an xbox and a PC port.
I agree with you on this, but why is the legal terminology relivent? It's not like these developers really really strive to get their games on all three systems, but are smacked down by the almighty Microsft's legal team.
It is. Contrary to Slashdot popular beleif, it IS possible to get a great product by paying for it.
Opera is one of them. Sure it seems 'bloated' at first, but most of it is because of lots of little toolbars that you can turn off and never see again within 4 seconds. And even with all this "bloat", it seems to be a lot snappier than Mozilla Firefox. And there are lot of little gemstones around the program that you keep discovering the more you use it. Some of these gem's you'll love and start using on a regular basis (one example of mine was the "drag over a non hypertext URL and right click it and choose "Go to URL"), and others that annoy you (The totally unnecissary chat client) you can turn off and never have to bother with again.
And if the thought of banner ad's for the unpaid version feaks you out, you can even switch the ads to a Google AdWrods bar that's a lot thinner than the standard banner ad....and I know I sure as hell don't mind AdWords, even on webpages.
Give it a try. I've been using the free version since 6.xx, and every time I've tried any other web browser, I've always wound up coming back.
Off the top of my head, I can only think of five games that started out on the Xbox and later got ported to PC and are worth buying on PC. KotoR I and II (easy ports since it essentially used a modified NWN engine), Riddick and arguably Thief III (for bugfixes and new maps) and Halo (most half-assed PC port ever, but Internet Play and custom maps might keep you interested) Might sound like a lot, but think about the hunderds of games in the Xbox's library, and it's really nothing special.
And how about people not measure their e-penis about what kinds of games they play. I play everything from Halo 2 and Grand Theft Auto to Wind Waker and Katamari Damancy, and I'm sick of people on one side of the spectrum taking pot shots at the other. Seriously, shut the hell up, we don't care that the Gamecube is kiddy or the Xbox is for MATURE GAMERS LOL or that the PS2 is THE GAING PLATFORM OF CHOICE or that PC's are for SOPHISTICATED gamers, just shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!!!!
Bad example. I use my Xbox as a DVD player, and several of my friends's use their PS2 as their primary DVD player.
And honestly, I don't care. As long as they release a $300 machine that plays games well, I could care less if there is some $400 variant with WebTV. Besides, I bet there will be ways to hook up external hard drives to your Xbox within a week of it being released.
Me? I am perfectly happy with my Xbox, and since it's going to continue to be supported into 2007, I'll just stick with it until then. By then, hopefully the 360 will be $199 and the library of games will be good enough for me to grab one myself.
You can't be serious.
A server farm handling 64 players on a server (usually running all across the country spread out across hundreds of different servers) at a time has vastly different demands than a server farm of 84 (at last I heard) servers handling over 600,000 players total....meaning on average over 7,000 players per server. Give Blizzard ANY netcode that can handle 7,000 players per server (And because of the distribution of players to the high population servers, the actual numbers playing on the servers that have problems are much much higher) as gracefully as a Quake II server running 64 players, and they'll offer you a head programmer position in a heartbeat.
Nice try, though.
Don't they mean Neverwinter Nights 2?P? In any case, I really hope that Obsilidian has a small both showcasing it, I still play the first one to this day, and while it wasn't perfect, it's probably the best D&D game avalable for any system to day. Or if not the best, the one that still has the most players still playing....or roleplaying, rather.
I grant that it's fairly comfortably shaped, but it is, without doubt, by far the heaviest standard console gamepad ever made besides the original Xbox controller. They are both unacceptably heavy for long periods of use.
I don't get the 'extended use' thing at all. I hated the fatbody, and I don't have particularly large hands, but the Xbox Controller S is perfectly heavy for me. The PS2's controller is a little too flimsy for me, and the Gamecube's 'conforms' too much to my hand, I don't feel like I have any leeway with it.
The buttons are also too resistant and not springy enough - they just don't have the right feel. And though MS could have easily gone to a more standard six-button layout with the S (something a lot of people were hoping for), they stubbornly stuck with those recessed black and white buttons, just put in a different place. At the same time, they put the start/back buttons in the exact spot where my thumb seems to want to go by mistake about fifty times per play session.
The springy buttons seem to respond just fine to me, and actually feel a lot better for games that use analog buttons than the PS2's equivilent. (I feel like I have to mash on the buttons to get them to go down fully. The black and white buttons, yeah, they do suck and I wish they had gone with a 6 button layout, but it's not terrible. However, I will never ever understand people's complaints about the start and back buttons. They are in an absolutely fantastic spot, recessed enough to prevent accidental pressage, but whenever I need to pause (or check my score in Halo 2) it's incredably convenient and just a short thumb motion away. It's a design feature I wish more compedators would copy.
It's also the worst of the current three first-party controllers. The dual shock, while probably overrated, is at least shaped in such a way that your hands aren't really forced or even guided into any sort of position - you can hold it any way you want to. The buttons are okay, though not great, and they're laid out logically, if not traditionally.
I have three major complaints with the PS2's controller. First of all, if you thought the Xbox's D-Pad was terrible, the PS2's d-pad MURDERS my thumb after long Virtua Fighter sessions. Whoever put that seporation in the middle needs to be flogged, seriously. Secondly, the left analog stick is a pain in the ass for me to use, and not in a comfortable position in relation to the rest of the controller at all. Third, and this didn't occor to me until playing with an Xbox controller, is that for racing games and FPS's, triggers are infinately superior to buttons. One of the things I like about the upcoming Xbox 360's controller design is that it's essentially doing both, putting buttons above the triggers, so you can have triggers for racing and FPS's and shoulder buttons for things like fighting games.
The Gamecube controller's only big failing is that it's just too specialized for its own good - the feel of it I think is amazing, but the button layout just doesn't work for a lot of games. And the d-pad is too small. Despite the bad layout, though, I think the springiness of the buttons is just perfect. Other than the d-pad, the Gamecube controller is probably the most comfortable gamepad I've ever used.
Oh my my.....where to begin. The Nintendo 64 controller, aside from it's blister inducing and prone to breaking thumbsticks was fantastic, what happened? First of all, the D-pad is attrocious. Simply attrocious. Never should have made it on there. Secondly, the C-stick feels way too flimsy, and while it might work for camera control, in the day and age of FPS's, it's a terrible choice. Third, the Z button is placed in a way too akward to reach place. This wouldn't be so bad if the triggers of the cont
The white and black buttons are now relocated to above the triggers.
You could be
And EVE has kill and courier missions from NPC's, just like every other MMORPG. But if you're looking for a fully realized market based MMORPG, this is defeniatly the one to try out. I coudln't imagine going back to trying to play WoW's market after this.
I'd like a cut of your jib. The price is what killed it for me, plus all the propritary formats and the fact that I have no idea where any Wi-fi hotspots are around my hometown. Lumines did sorely tempt me, though. I'm a sucker for puzzle games.
Made me more receptive to them in general. Showed me that there ARE MMORPGS's out there that you don't have to poopsock in to have fun.
This server downtime and lag, combined with the fact that it just got boring after Level 30, is why I ended up quitting WoW.
However, I find that because of WoW, I am now able to wrap my head around other MMORPGS's a lot easier. Before WoW, I thought the idea of playing an MMORPG was ridiculous. Now, I"ve gotten a taste and moved on to EVE and couldn't be happier. I guess I have Blizzard to thank for it.
Keyes, however, didn't feature as much new content as the two I mentioned above, plus I hated the level the first time around anyway, so that plus the Library kinda ruined the first Halo. Plus, the fact that some of my friends insisted that the multiplayer of Halo 1 was superior to the multiplayer of Halo 2 completely baffled me.