The fact that they're not included makes the article meaningless.
...to a PC only gamer. In defense of Next-Gen they did say they'd do more lists, one just for PCs and one for handhelds. The PC and handheld markets are vastly different sizes than the console market, it'd be misleading to directly compare unit sales of such different markets.
And does it really make sense to offer a Top 100 of ANYTHING where we're only five years into the 21st centry?
Absolutely. PS2, GC and Xbox were all released in or after the year 2000. So, this list is effectively telling you what the best selling console games were of the PS2-GC-XBOX era.
Personally, I was surprised by a couple of the list's findings. One was how few XBox games were on there and the other was the complete dominance of the PS2.
It's exactly the other way around. CGI looks too good.
By "good" I meant realistic or believable, not "good" as in perfectly proportioned and defect free.
Actually, Jar Jar is quite convincing, simply because it's not human and doesn't try to be.
Just because something is alien, it doesn't get a free pass. I still think he looked like a cartoon. I had no problem with the aliens who were made of real-life costumes. I think a big part of the CG "cartoon" look, is a problem with light. The space vehicles are too reflective, as is Jar Jar's skin. Models and costumes obviously reflect light exactly as they should.
Gollum is an example of some forward progress. Like you said, probably because they did such a good job making his skin and hair more "flawed" than most other CG characters. Gollum still falls short, as there were some moments where I was reminded he was CG (the scene where he's playing in the water before being captured by Faramir). So, I'm not convinced making Gollum a CG character was the right move.
I don't think reliance on SFX instead of plot/characters is anything new. Before CG, they just used lots of fireballs and before that it was lots of guns firing blanks.
The problem is that CG still (typically) doesn't look as good as using scale models, puppets and costumes. The ships in the original trilogy look realistic. The new movie's ships look like cartoons; effectively, that's what they are. Another example, loook at the difference between Chewbacca in the original and JarJar in the new movies. Again, one looks real, the other looks like a cartoon. (Or compare the original Jabba with the CG Jabba). Or...
It's not that CG is better than the old ways of doing things, it's just more cost effective to use CG instead of scale models and puppets. To me though, most CG looks like ass, and I think SFX have taken quite a few steps back with their over reliance on CG.
E3 can fill both roles. Since I live near Detroit, I'm more familiar with how the North American International Auto Show is run. They have about a week where the show is only open to the suits and/or the press. This allows all the big deals to happen and allows the press to get their stories/pictures without any problem.
Then, the show opens up to the public for a couple weeks (who are also charged admission). This is when the show gets crowded to E3 proportions. Some press stick around to get "the public's" impression of new cars, but for the most part, any serious business is already done by the time the public comes. This way, the crowds don't interfere with the suits and the press, but the public is still allowed to go check out new cars and concepts. As a result, none of the problems of E3 seem to affect the auto show.
They must be talking about building a robot according to the plans they provide. Seeing how those plans will act as a tutorial for most people, a decrease from 2 hours to 30 minutes would be welcome.
One of my favorite LEGO books as a kid was one that had page after page of different elaborate scenes but the instructions only showed you how to make a few (typically minor) items in each scene. If you wanted to replicate some of the more cool stuff in a scene, you were pretty much on your own as how to build it.
The one thing that bothers me the most is that people downplay how having a beefier system is changing the way games are played.
I agree with this, but your examples don't really support your point. You say Hitman was more fun on the 360 but you don't really give a reason why. As for load times, I can't remember any on 1st party Nintendo titles. About the only time I've seen load screens on the GC, are on multi-platform titles (especially from Ubisoft).
Examples of where a more powerful system really makes a difference in gameplay are the upcoming Dead Rising or Assassin's Creed. A GC-PS2-XBox probably wouldn't be able to pull off the hundreds of characters that can be in one spot in those games, which means a port to the older systems would result in a far different experience, as the crowds in those games are half their point.
If GC didn't appeal to gamers because they saw it as too kiddy, then Nintendo's problem was a marketing one. There were enough non-kiddy quality titles for me on GC. List of GC I own; out of date as I've bought a couple more.
It'd be nice if the "editor" doing the backslash included some noteworthy comments but for whatever reason (too deep, or was added too late) didn't recieve many (or any) mod points.
this is all within the rights of the police? After all, you're in a public place, right?
AFAIK, in the US the police can monitor you today from your house's front door to the grocery store without a warrant if they wanted to. I don't think there is a reasonable expectation to privacy on public roads. If you have a problem with this, you have a problem with current law.
That said, I agree with the ACLU rep in the article that said "We need to establish basic ground rules for how these new capabilities are constrained." I do think the location and time of any scans on my license plate shouldn't be recorded, or if they are, the record can only be kept for a short period (say a week). Although, I see no reason why scanning my plate and looking it up in a database shouldn't be allowed.
I guess we should just say please and thank you instead to get the info we need?
I guess if we torture someone (maybe to death) who actually doesn't have any info we need and/or isn't actually an enemy we just say "oops"?
Re:High Fructose Corn Syrup, demon of the far left
on
Growing Insulin
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· Score: 1
Table sugar is sucrose and glucose bonded together (the body easily breaks them into seperate sucrose and glucose molecules). HFCS is free sucrose and glucose.
Nitpick, table sugar is 100% sucrose, whose make-up is fructose and glucose bonded. Now, that bond takes energy to break and I'd guess that's the key difference. Everything else being equal sucrose requires a small amount of energy expended to "unlock" its energy while HFCS requires no energy output.
I imagine the hostitlity to HFCS is actually due to overconsumption of sweetened foods. Someone must've pointed out that if you're eating a pound of HFCS a week, you'd be better off eating a pound of table sugar instead, ignoring the fact that you shouldn't be eating a pound of either each week. So, in other words, these are the same people that ignore the fact that people consume too many calories and expend too few calories, and instead focus on where they're getting their calories from.
Anyway, I didn't know HFCS was demonized by the far left. The only complaint I've heard about it are pro-globalization who complain HFCS wouldn't exist without US farm subsidies. And people like me who think HFCS tastes like ass compared to table sugar.
Being next to Nazi Germany is bad, true. Being between Nazi Germany and Stanlist Russia is worse. I don't think any nation could've survived a simultaneous attack by Russia and Germany. Poland was defeated in one week less than France was. And France didn't have the USSR to deal with.
Why do the 'clueless' managers make so much money, when I'm obviously so much smarter?
Maybe some look at it that way. The way I look at it is "Why do the managers make so much money, when their work isn't any more (or less) difficult than my own?" If the head of the company I work at is the guy who started it by sinking himself into debt, then I can understand why he's getting paid so much more than me. The risk is/was all his, so it's up to him to divy up any spoils how he sees fit. That's fair. What isn't fair is paying someone more solely because they're better at managing people than they are at other forms of mental work. My manager(s) share no more risk than I do. If one of us does a bad job, all we'll lose is our job.
Now, I won't argue that my understanding of business is more than rudimentary. So, when I see that in 2005, CEOs made 262 times what the average worker made I can't help but to feel puzzled. I'd really like to know from someone with a firm understanding in business what the average CEO does that earns them 262 times what the average worker bee does. What are CEOs doing now that is more than 20 times better than they were in 1965 when they were only earning 24 times what the average worker does? As far as I can tell, all they're doing better is taking other people's money.
Like it or not, there is such a thing as skill in business -- and oftentimes, it's rarer and less replaceable than technical skill.
I don't believe that business skills are any more rare than any random technical skill set, and I believe either can be learned by a smart enough person.
As far as Jobs and Wozniak are concerned, all I can see is that neither had much high profile success outside of Apple. The exceptions being Jobs' success with Pixar and Wozniak's success at Atari.
The average non shut-in American will probably never encounter a poor starving person either. Before the internet, most Americans were probably already finding out about poor starving people via mainstream media. An internet shut-in might have an extra layer of insulation against the poor starving masses, but most Amercians insulation was already complete.
I'll counter that it's far easier to find out about and read about poor starving people than it was before the internet. It's also easier to research and donate to various charities. All the ones I know about and donate to readily accept credit card payments over the internet.
I've mentioned before how I would do a FPS controls on Wii. First of all, I wouldn't require you to actually point at the screen, any movement of the controller could work exactly like any movement in a mouse. Vertical axis aiming could be defined by moving the controller forward and backwards (just like a mouse) or by tilting the front of the controller up and down.
Secondly, I'd implement a lock button on the controller which would be equivalent to picking up your mouse (it wouldn't interpret any controller movement until you release the lock button).
To turn 180 on PC: Flick mouse right, pick up mouse, reposition mouse to where it was. To turn 180 on Wii: Flick controller right, push and hold lock button, reposition controller to where it was, release lock button.
I'd lump those parents in with the ones I said "don't care more than the 4 times a year they see a report card". A sufficiently involved parent would've known there was a problem and worked on correcting it before the grade came in.
The main reason that home schooled kids do so well on tests, in college, and later is life, is because their parents are highly involved.
This is key. I don't think the method of schooling is as nearly as important as family involvement (and investment) in the child's education (and well being). For obvious reasons, home schooled kids will always have the most parental involvement. Most teachers I know would absolutely love, not hate, if the parents got more involved in their children's education. When they call the parents because their kid was being disruptive or is doing poorly, most of the time the parent doesn't care or they'll turn around and blame the teacher for not doing their job well enough.
If I had to point to one problem with public schools, it's a problem with the public part. Most kids don't care, and most parents don't care more than the 4 times a year they see a report card. Really great teachers can sometimes overcome the apathy, but it takes a tremendous amount of effort and energy.
The Gary Shandling Show video game starring Gary Shandling?
Hmm, I'd be more interested in The Larry Sanders Show: The Video Game Starring Gary Shandling. Especially if there's a button where I can make Jeffrey Tambor say "Hey now!" every time I press it.
Sure, part of the appeal of GTA is being an urban sociopath. The real draw of the GTA series though is its open world. GTA 3 was one of the most open 3D games that had come out in a while. You can get fares in a taxi-cab, drive sick people to the hospital in an ambulance, or totally ignore the missions and just cause mayhem.
Instead of publishers trying to copy GTA by focusing on its gameplay, they instead focused on the hip hop vibe. What they don't seem to realize is that GTA was popular despite its urban flavor, not becaues of it. GTA is more similar to Oblivion than it is to Def Jam: Fight for NY. You want to have a GTA or Oblivion style hit? Create an unquie world and make it open and give the player a lot of different stuff to do. It's a little puzzling that the open world genre is really lacking in quantity right now despite the huge success of the few games that have done it right.
Remember all the side scrollers that came out after Super Mario Bros? What if instead of side scrollers, publishers figured Mario was popular because it featured a fat plumber and all games of the NES era all featured plumbers or fat blue collar workers, but totally ignored the side-scrolling action that made Mario fun. That's exactly what's happening with the companies that tried to ape GTA by putting focusing on MTV style hip hop rather than on open gameplay.
Besides what innovative gameplay are you experiencing?
The other poster mentioned Trauma Center and Kirby. But that's not all! The game where you're a lawyer and can literally yell objection. Yoshi Touch and Go which requires heavy use of the stylus. Meteos which would be a different game without a touch screen (the ability to "launch" blocks with the stylus is half the game). The Pac Man game where the action is totally controlled by drawing. Lost Magic the first RPG with immersive spell casting. Trace Memory makes use of nearly every DS bit of functionality. The Princess Peach game which has levels and a mini-game that require blowing into the mic. Sexual innuendo, a lot of DS games seem to require blowing. The Bomberman game where, in multiplayer, you can set bombs or blow them up by yelling nonsense. Of course Warioware which has tons of way to play with the stylus.
Slashdot Mirror
Well done. You get a golf clap from me.
Absolutely. PS2, GC and Xbox were all released in or after the year 2000. So, this list is effectively telling you what the best selling console games were of the PS2-GC-XBOX era.
Personally, I was surprised by a couple of the list's findings. One was how few XBox games were on there and the other was the complete dominance of the PS2.
Just because something is alien, it doesn't get a free pass. I still think he looked like a cartoon. I had no problem with the aliens who were made of real-life costumes. I think a big part of the CG "cartoon" look, is a problem with light. The space vehicles are too reflective, as is Jar Jar's skin. Models and costumes obviously reflect light exactly as they should.
Gollum is an example of some forward progress. Like you said, probably because they did such a good job making his skin and hair more "flawed" than most other CG characters. Gollum still falls short, as there were some moments where I was reminded he was CG (the scene where he's playing in the water before being captured by Faramir). So, I'm not convinced making Gollum a CG character was the right move.
I don't think reliance on SFX instead of plot/characters is anything new. Before CG, they just used lots of fireballs and before that it was lots of guns firing blanks.
The problem is that CG still (typically) doesn't look as good as using scale models, puppets and costumes. The ships in the original trilogy look realistic. The new movie's ships look like cartoons; effectively, that's what they are. Another example, loook at the difference between Chewbacca in the original and JarJar in the new movies. Again, one looks real, the other looks like a cartoon. (Or compare the original Jabba with the CG Jabba). Or...
It's not that CG is better than the old ways of doing things, it's just more cost effective to use CG instead of scale models and puppets. To me though, most CG looks like ass, and I think SFX have taken quite a few steps back with their over reliance on CG.
E3 can fill both roles. Since I live near Detroit, I'm more familiar with how the North American International Auto Show is run. They have about a week where the show is only open to the suits and/or the press. This allows all the big deals to happen and allows the press to get their stories/pictures without any problem.
Then, the show opens up to the public for a couple weeks (who are also charged admission). This is when the show gets crowded to E3 proportions. Some press stick around to get "the public's" impression of new cars, but for the most part, any serious business is already done by the time the public comes. This way, the crowds don't interfere with the suits and the press, but the public is still allowed to go check out new cars and concepts. As a result, none of the problems of E3 seem to affect the auto show.
They must be talking about building a robot according to the plans they provide. Seeing how those plans will act as a tutorial for most people, a decrease from 2 hours to 30 minutes would be welcome.
One of my favorite LEGO books as a kid was one that had page after page of different elaborate scenes but the instructions only showed you how to make a few (typically minor) items in each scene. If you wanted to replicate some of the more cool stuff in a scene, you were pretty much on your own as how to build it.
Examples of where a more powerful system really makes a difference in gameplay are the upcoming Dead Rising or Assassin's Creed. A GC-PS2-XBox probably wouldn't be able to pull off the hundreds of characters that can be in one spot in those games, which means a port to the older systems would result in a far different experience, as the crowds in those games are half their point.
If GC didn't appeal to gamers because they saw it as too kiddy, then Nintendo's problem was a marketing one. There were enough non-kiddy quality titles for me on GC. List of GC I own; out of date as I've bought a couple more.
Don't tell David Cross that.
It'd be nice if the "editor" doing the backslash included some noteworthy comments but for whatever reason (too deep, or was added too late) didn't recieve many (or any) mod points.
That said, I agree with the ACLU rep in the article that said "We need to establish basic ground rules for how these new capabilities are constrained." I do think the location and time of any scans on my license plate shouldn't be recorded, or if they are, the record can only be kept for a short period (say a week). Although, I see no reason why scanning my plate and looking it up in a database shouldn't be allowed.
3D Realms (think Duke Nukem Forever) was behind its development for most of that 9 years. It's amazing to me that Prey was ever released.
Our upper limit on torture is burning someone alive? That's where we're going to draw the line now?
Holy shit.
I imagine the hostitlity to HFCS is actually due to overconsumption of sweetened foods. Someone must've pointed out that if you're eating a pound of HFCS a week, you'd be better off eating a pound of table sugar instead, ignoring the fact that you shouldn't be eating a pound of either each week. So, in other words, these are the same people that ignore the fact that people consume too many calories and expend too few calories, and instead focus on where they're getting their calories from.
Anyway, I didn't know HFCS was demonized by the far left. The only complaint I've heard about it are pro-globalization who complain HFCS wouldn't exist without US farm subsidies. And people like me who think HFCS tastes like ass compared to table sugar.
Educate yourself:
Invasion of Poland
Polish Resistence
Warsaw Uprising
Polish Fighter Squadron
Polish contributions to WW2
Man-made gems can be more ethical as well since they don't finance activities which further human suffering. See also conflict diamonds.
Now, I won't argue that my understanding of business is more than rudimentary. So, when I see that in 2005, CEOs made 262 times what the average worker made I can't help but to feel puzzled. I'd really like to know from someone with a firm understanding in business what the average CEO does that earns them 262 times what the average worker bee does. What are CEOs doing now that is more than 20 times better than they were in 1965 when they were only earning 24 times what the average worker does? As far as I can tell, all they're doing better is taking other people's money.
I don't believe that business skills are any more rare than any random technical skill set, and I believe either can be learned by a smart enough person.
As far as Jobs and Wozniak are concerned, all I can see is that neither had much high profile success outside of Apple. The exceptions being Jobs' success with Pixar and Wozniak's success at Atari.
The average non shut-in American will probably never encounter a poor starving person either. Before the internet, most Americans were probably already finding out about poor starving people via mainstream media. An internet shut-in might have an extra layer of insulation against the poor starving masses, but most Amercians insulation was already complete.
I'll counter that it's far easier to find out about and read about poor starving people than it was before the internet. It's also easier to research and donate to various charities. All the ones I know about and donate to readily accept credit card payments over the internet.
I've mentioned before how I would do a FPS controls on Wii. First of all, I wouldn't require you to actually point at the screen, any movement of the controller could work exactly like any movement in a mouse. Vertical axis aiming could be defined by moving the controller forward and backwards (just like a mouse) or by tilting the front of the controller up and down.
Secondly, I'd implement a lock button on the controller which would be equivalent to picking up your mouse (it wouldn't interpret any controller movement until you release the lock button).
To turn 180 on PC: Flick mouse right, pick up mouse, reposition mouse to where it was.
To turn 180 on Wii: Flick controller right, push and hold lock button, reposition controller to where it was, release lock button.
I'd lump those parents in with the ones I said "don't care more than the 4 times a year they see a report card". A sufficiently involved parent would've known there was a problem and worked on correcting it before the grade came in.
If I had to point to one problem with public schools, it's a problem with the public part. Most kids don't care, and most parents don't care more than the 4 times a year they see a report card. Really great teachers can sometimes overcome the apathy, but it takes a tremendous amount of effort and energy.
Sure, part of the appeal of GTA is being an urban sociopath. The real draw of the GTA series though is its open world. GTA 3 was one of the most open 3D games that had come out in a while. You can get fares in a taxi-cab, drive sick people to the hospital in an ambulance, or totally ignore the missions and just cause mayhem.
Instead of publishers trying to copy GTA by focusing on its gameplay, they instead focused on the hip hop vibe. What they don't seem to realize is that GTA was popular despite its urban flavor, not becaues of it. GTA is more similar to Oblivion than it is to Def Jam: Fight for NY. You want to have a GTA or Oblivion style hit? Create an unquie world and make it open and give the player a lot of different stuff to do. It's a little puzzling that the open world genre is really lacking in quantity right now despite the huge success of the few games that have done it right.
Remember all the side scrollers that came out after Super Mario Bros? What if instead of side scrollers, publishers figured Mario was popular because it featured a fat plumber and all games of the NES era all featured plumbers or fat blue collar workers, but totally ignored the side-scrolling action that made Mario fun. That's exactly what's happening with the companies that tried to ape GTA by putting focusing on MTV style hip hop rather than on open gameplay.
The game where you're a lawyer and can literally yell objection.
Yoshi Touch and Go which requires heavy use of the stylus.
Meteos which would be a different game without a touch screen (the ability to "launch" blocks with the stylus is half the game).
The Pac Man game where the action is totally controlled by drawing.
Lost Magic the first RPG with immersive spell casting.
Trace Memory makes use of nearly every DS bit of functionality.
The Princess Peach game which has levels and a mini-game that require blowing into the mic. Sexual innuendo, a lot of DS games seem to require blowing.
The Bomberman game where, in multiplayer, you can set bombs or blow them up by yelling nonsense.
Of course Warioware which has tons of way to play with the stylus.