I agree with you on that one, While I loved Rogue Leader, I am just not all that interested in the new game because, well lets face it, I have personaly blown up the deathstar like 15 times now. Virtually every Starwars game that had any space combat at all has involved blowing up the deathstar, even the side scrolling Starwars games on the SNES saw us making the fabled trench run.
You would think that the imperials would just give up on that damn thing. I mean consider the amount of money and man power they have speant only to have some left wing liberal terrrorists show up and blow the thing to bits everyime they try to fire it up.
Sort of cute really, the first freedom force is a great game that didn't get the sales that the accolades should have predicted. i am glad that a sequel is in the works, good games deserve good sequels.
I can't help but think though, are they giving it the WW2 spin because they think it might be interesting, or is it because WW2 games are the "in" thing right now?
I am willing to bet, that the parents involved in this case are anything but uneducated, i am guessing that they are upper middle class college educated "afluent" people that are well respected by their communities. They likely own the largest SUVs, and I would bet that every memeber of the family has their own cell phones.
Well, judging by the way that the device is getting marketed, i would say that Nokia fully expects people to take it as a portable games console. Now it may very well have a butt-load of nice features like the aforementioned MP3 playability, phone service and so on, but thats not what you here about on the comercials and its certainly not what you see in the paper adverts either.
maybe they have created a nifty electronic device, but the public is never going to know that. All most of us see is a large company trying to look hip and nose into an already very well established market with a sub-par game system. Maybe they need to change the angle of their pitch if they want this thing not to take the nose dive its already in position for.
I have played this game, and it is as good as everyone is saying. If your fond of the side scrolling action games of old, then your going to love it. Hell, if you aren't a fan of the side scrolling action games of old you probably will still like this game.
I love how Capcom, king of remakes and sequels, somehow manages to throw a curve with something truely great and original from time to time.
Expose somebody to something for even 2 or 3 hours and they are going to absorb some of the information. Can you remember which brick in the first stage of Super Mario Brothers held the mushroom? If you grew up playing it probably. In fact, by your 2nd or 3rd game you knew where the powerups on the first stage were, its just simple memorization.
I would be more alarmed by people that played 30+ hours of Morrowind and didn't know some of the games culture and geography.
But.... With the possible exception of Resident Evil (I hated it but a lot of people thought it was at least watchable) there aren't really any good game to movie adaptations, i suppose that this has no less a chance than any other attempt that has been made thus far to be good.
Besides, when your watching a cheaply done movie, your not expecting perfect special effects or flawless cinematography. The bar is held a little bit lower, and so if the rest of the content is solid, it may actaully come off as pretty good. I mean why not? Could it suck worse than Super Mario Brothers or Mortal Kombat?
I was one of "those guys" that actually liked aspects of Conker for N64 (the multiplayer was great) Jet Force Gemini, while a seriously flawed game, is still one of my favorite N64 games. This rash of delays and push backs is nothing new though, Rare has been playing this song for nintendo for years and it is one of the reasons that the Big N cut them loose. They produced some of the most memorable games on the N64, and did some class A work on the SNES and NES back in the day. What has happened to this studio?
What Microsoft needs to do, is kick their asses a little. Pick one of their projects, (Perfect Dark is a strong candidate) put the others on hiatus, fire the management, and set an ultimatum. (similar to what nintendo did wit retro studios when Metroid Prime was in it's infancy) What good are all of these games going to do if they don't come out until 3 months before the x-box 2 releases?
Then again, maybe Rare just doesn't have it anymore, their E3 display was a joke, and now they are saying that their flagship title is years off yet? Maybe these guys should get jobs working on the Phantom over at infinum labs or whatever they call themselves, i bet they would fit right in.
well its all a medium of communication. Some time not too long agom the phone was considered a high tech and novel though less than required piece of technology.
People are people, and any medium in which they are capable of communicating with each other is going to bring out the best and worse in them. I know a guy that droped out of med School at the end of his forth year because EverQuest had become more important than finnishing an education that had taken him more than 8 years including undergrad. Some people have a sports team that they love. They watch every game, they shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars for tickets and travel expenses, they agonize with the teams losses and celebrate it's victories. Personally, I could never care so much about a sports team. I like Hockey, and while i love when my team does well, its not a "relationship" that i am willing to expend a lot of resources on. A fan of a team though could give and endless list of reasons as to why their obsession is justified. Maybe they watch the games with their famalies, maybe it maintains ties with friends, maybe its a great time out, whatever. The point is that we all have things that move us and inspire us to go to great lengths to partake in the activity.
I can't really understand the people that tie their whole lives in a game either. i love games, but i love the act of the game more than any individual game. The only thing that will piss me off into a frenzy are people cheating or not playing fair. I could care less who wins, I just want it to be a good game. This may seem beyond understanding for some people, just as their habits are beyond me. Whats the big deal if we are trying to play Neverwinter nights and someone brings a character twice the level of anybody else, why should I care? Was i right to boot his ass out? Maybe maybe not it all depends on perspective.
What about so-called "emergent gameplay" A topic a few days ago here on/. I am just not busy enough at work to post this comment, but not otiose enough to track it down for linking, sorry.
If it's done within confines of everything the game programming meant to allow - it is NOT a CRIME
I think a better way to put that, is anything that can be done in game without actually cheating by hacking or manipulating the game outside of the actual game engine (altering packets would for example be illegal even though it isn't actually hacking) Is fair game. I for one can't buy the idea that my Nose Goblin slaying sword in EverCrack has real value, so if i lose it due to a cheater I would hope that the admins of the game would be kind enough to make the situation right. If they don't I can quit and find a new game.
I just find it absurd that somebody should owe me money for my lost game items. "loss of enjoyment" is surely not a punishable crime, if it was I think we all need to mount a class-action lawsuit against the Film, television and music industries for wasting all of our times and killing all of our enjoyment of these things.
This idea of "Privileged information" on a console game, that is information unique to each player is probably one of the best potential uses of the GBA link on the cube. The Dreamcast tried to do this with the VMU's, but the idea was never really embraced and the tiny screens were limited. What Nintendo and Namco should have done, or still should do rather, is create a "Namco museum" type app with lots of old Namco games like Dig-Dug for example, and incorporate this kind of game play. I could see such a collection being a worthwhile addition to a library if you're going to be playing in group situations. Sort of puts a "Scotland Yard" type spin on some old classic games.
You can return any game, for any reason but if it isn't for the same game (i.e. its a case of "I don't like it") You can only swap for a different game once, after that, your second title like it or not is yours no exchanges except in cases of defective games and even then it can only be for the same product.
Its like this: Magic is such a convention in RPGs, it has become mundane even though if it were a real world phenomenon it wouldn't be. Do you get all excited when you find a sword? Of course not, theres millions of them, they are in just about every game, and they just aren't that special because of this. Magic is a tool, you know when you play a CRPG that magic is going to be for delivering pain on your foes, healing and curing, or buffing characters.
I think if you want to make magic interesting, you need to make the actual play mechanics of it more complex. For those of you that have played it, think of "Magic the gathering" regardless of your views on the game you have to admit that the way that players in that game cast spells to attack, defend, and counter their opponents spells creates something closer to the way that one might imagine a pair of real wizards may face off against each other. Now I'm not saying that the next Bioware offering should include a card game with the rest of the package, but what I am saying is that the way you make magic interesting is to give it a mechanic beyond "I cast, I burn a resource, and then the foozle takes 6-36 fire damage".
I am spouting so let me give some examples of what I mean: In the game "Chrono Cross" for the PSX, the battle area had a "field alignment". When spells of an elemental nature were cast, they would shift the field to their color, and subsequent spells of like alignment would become more powerful. Certain spells and abilities could only be used if the last 3 spells or effects cast were of a specific color, say for example you wanted to throw a firestorm spell, and it required the field to be in full red alignment, it would mean that your characters preceding the one casting the firestorm, would need to shift the alignment by using their own spells or abilities. Furthermore, on occasion you would face off against foes that had very dangerous abilities that they could use if the field alignment shifted all the way to one element, and so besides trying to hurt them, you would need to throw a spell or two here and there to prevent them from getting a favorable alignment. THis system made a number of the games battles a difficult and demanding encounter since your spell resources were limited. It was a lot more interesting than the usual MP based different colored damage model that is the standard convention.
I'm not sure I would call it the most overrated game ever, over dogged on game ever perhaps. I mean yeah it was a mess, and yeah it didn't even come close to what it was supposed to do as described by its creator, the missions were lame yada yada yada.
But despite all that, I did at least have fun with it. Teaching my giant cow to eat children and crap all over my worshipers homes was great fun. Rolling flaming boulders into my own villages entertained me for far longer than it should have I suppose.
Sony can get away with not having a strong first party line up (though in the last year they are starting to do really well in house with titles like Ratchet and Clank, Dark Cloud 2 and so on) Nintendo exists almost solely on its first party software already. MS has neither Sonys saturation, nor Nintendos quality in house staff so they need to do the logical thing: boost their internal design teams.
Most 3rd party titles end up on all 3 platforms, and this hurts nintendo and MS more than it does sony because it doesn't convince anyone to run out and buy an x-box or cube to gain access to them, and most people that own a cube or a x-box already have a PS2.
Nintendo has had the right idea in this sense, they don't buy up large companies like MS tried to do with capcom and sega a year or so back, they look for small companies that have potential, share resources with them, and build them up. Take Rare for example, yeah they split with nintendo but that company wouldn't even likely be around today if not for the time and money nintendo spent turning them into a first class game company. Now they stand on their own (even if their last couple titles were not their best)
Not all of nintedos proteges pan out, the game "tube slider" by NEC Interchannel was going to be an F-zero title. nintendo wasn't happy with what NEC had managed to put together, so they cut them loose and gave the project to one of Sega's teams.
This is probably old news, but the single level demo is out, and is looking very nice.
For those of you worried about the game being runined by 3d:
Environments are still fully destructable
Many of the weapons seem to be back
Controls are a little weird in the demo, but this may be something that gets tweaked before the final release
The game play is identical, except that now you have that pesky "Y" direction to worry about.
I grabbed the demo from Gamespot, but it seems to be about everywhere. Personally I am looking forward to this game even more now that i have had a chance to play with it a bit. It just gives me a great feeling when sequels are done right and this looks to be one of them.
I never said or implied anything like a boycott, I just stated my knowledge of the rare/ms relationship. Please save your insults for someone that deserves them.
Yes, MS owns Rare, Nintendo dumped them a year or so ago after Rare failed to generate any sort of significant revenue.
It is however unclear as to if Rare is going to be much use for MS though. In their last couple of years working with nintendo, Rare had gained a notorious rep for failing to get anything released even close to its deadline (perfect dark, starfox adventures and some others were all 2 years or more late) And their recent efforts while solid, have of late lacked the craftsmanship that their earlier work did. Some of this is because a good chunk of their staff left Rare to form the developer "Free Radical" some of the burnout may have just been related to not wanting to work with Nintendo anymore, who knows.
Epic wasn't much of a player on the console market in the first place, Sony might miss the Unreal ports but i don't think they did all that well anyway did they? I don't know, I mean Epic is a good name but I can think of other developers that would be better targets. Afterall, MS isn't trying to gain new games, they are trying to keep games away from the other consoles.
The "Bad stuff" is that you will be spending most of your time killing monsters for loot and xp. THere are some decent quests, but they will not fill more than a smidgen of your total playing time.
I think that the "system" of the game is good, but there was not enough to do for my tastes. If you like fighting and socializing though, you will be in heaven.
Quests? yes
Your character belongs to one of 3 kingdoms, and each kingdom has a chain of story quests that you can accomplish. They include cinematics, boss encounters, special items and so on. I beleive that there are about 8 or so in the story arc. There are also quests to unlock secret character classes (only 6 are selectable from start but there are another 6 that can be unlocked, more if they include the expansion with the US version) and a few other quests for items and the ability to dual-class. This is a fair number, but in comparison to the amount of time you will play the game, there are not that many. The story quests though are very cool.
Groups are from 2 to 6 characters, and then upto 3 groups can form a company, so in essence you can party up with upto 17 other people. xp sharing for groups is a bit.... how do I say it? Harsh. If your not fighting very strong enemies, the xp is bad. Loot sharing is good though, the party leader can either elect a quartermaster to hand out treasure to party members, or a lottery system can be used in which players that want a given item can cast lots for it, or skip it if they don't want it. You can certainly survive alone if you want to, but the game is a lot more fun in a group even if the level advancement rate is usally lower than you could acheive carefully soloing
The job system is very well done in my opinion. Your character can freely change jobs at his house, and each job is leveled up indivdualy. All stat bonuses are job dependent so Spending 10 levels as a fighter, will not mean that switching to a mage will give you a gimp mage. You can how ever only "equip" one class at a time. Once you reach 18th level it is possible to complete a quest, and thereafter you can equip 2 classes at once, effectively combining any two classes you have access to (though the secondary class can never count for more than half of the primary, so if you were a level 20 warrior, you could be a level 10 redmage at the same time). Characters also have craft, magic and weapon skills that are independent of their jobs, and can only rise through use. Casting "cure" enough times will allow your character to cast better versions of cure later. What you can equip as far as spells and gear are concerned is determined by your class and level. As your rank rises with a given weapon, you will learn special attacks akin to the limit breaks of the later FF games. These charge up as you hit and get hit by foes, and decline with the passage of time. When activated most of these attacks are wonderfully rendered, though their potency is significantly less than the single player FF equivalents.
I am/was in the PC beta (I quit playing it a few weeks ago so I am not sure if it is over or not)
To sum it up quickly:
The game is pretty easy to get into, most of the commands are on pull out menus, or can be actvated with simple ctrl-letter hot keys. The interface takes a bit of getting used to, but in all honesty the game playes pretty well and isn't going to pose a problem for anyone used to playing games.
The gameworld is huge, pretty, the music and effects are top-notch, and the game play itself is fast paced (short times to heal, travel distances not all that bad) but leveling is slow to say the least, they may correct this for the actual release but i doubt it.
Personally I liked PSO a lot more, but they are two completly different games so it isn't really a fair comparison anyway.
If you don't like multiplayer games and interacting with people, you are not going to like this game. If you have a specific question just ask, I or someone else will do our best to answer it.
Whoa buddy slow down, I just used them as an example. If there were an actual hard-line Liberal News station I would have just as happily used them as well. You do have to admit that FOX leans conservatively, and that in itself is not all that bad of a thing since there are some other viewpoints on other networks to counter-balance it. If they were the only news station though, this would not be a good thing, hell a single news source is a bad idea no matter what their leaning. The more variety you have the more individual opinions and prejudices are going to be diluted.
Too many people see things as black and white, if I disagree with a Liberal, I must be a fascist right-winger, and if I disagree with the Right, then I am a pinko-liberal self loather whatever. Wake up and smells the cat food, most people are moderates and we don't completely buy any viewpoint in its entirety. You don't have the slightest inkling of what my viewpoints are regarding any of the people you mention in your rant; so don't put words in my mouth.
Hypocrisy is the single most destructive force in human kinds history second only to fundamentalism
And how would your rant fall into this idea considering that you assume you know who I voted for last election?
Consolidated media is a step towards tyranny. Imagine the picture of the world you would have if FOX news owned every single other news network. How much could you trust the content of Slashdot if Microsoft owned it? The media is out to make money like everybody else, and when there are no longer enough of them to keep tabs on each other you are left with a single view point. If SONY music owns every radio station, what hope does an artist that isn't signed with Sony have?
Monopolies are not capitalistic; they are an unfortunate side effect of the times and letting the media fall into such a small number of hands is a terrible possibility.
Re:Riddle me this: Tihs is iprmoetnt? ipomtnet? ..
on
Can You Raed Tihs?
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· Score: 1
Not quite the same effect with the dropped vowels, (you said drop all cons, I am guessing you meant vowels) as i found the missing vowels a bit harder to read; readable, but just slower going.
Certainly context plays a big part, at least for those words that are less familiar, and of course some words may have the same first, last and interior letters in a different order. consider this:
thaw doulw nappeh fi uoy deverser eht tirsf dna tasl setterl? nac uoy ltils dear ti?
I find myself reading the words backwards myself, still trying to find what the first and last letters are.
And I would think that this whole process falls apart when trying to read large words:
hmoahepoty, or catunenakos, or even tolievesn.
I mean, sure you can kill every living thing in the world, and sure you can carry this level of anti-social behavior to the point of actually creating a condition in which you can no longer "solve" the game, but can you really arrive at another outcome? You either save the world, or you don't. There isn't an alternate scenario that you become the mad overlord supreame or anything (at least i never got that) Open ended should mean more than just "do the mapped out story line at your own pace rather than in order"
Not that Morrowind is bad, I loved the game, I just think that if we really want to talk about "open ended" games, there should be more than one solution to the game, if there is one at all.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you on that one, While I loved Rogue Leader, I am just not all that interested in the new game because, well lets face it, I have personaly blown up the deathstar like 15 times now. Virtually every Starwars game that had any space combat at all has involved blowing up the deathstar, even the side scrolling Starwars games on the SNES saw us making the fabled trench run.
You would think that the imperials would just give up on that damn thing. I mean consider the amount of money and man power they have speant only to have some left wing liberal terrrorists show up and blow the thing to bits everyime they try to fire it up.
Sort of cute really, the first freedom force is a great game that didn't get the sales that the accolades should have predicted. i am glad that a sequel is in the works, good games deserve good sequels.
I can't help but think though, are they giving it the WW2 spin because they think it might be interesting, or is it because WW2 games are the "in" thing right now?
Thats a rhetorical question by the way.
I am willing to bet, that the parents involved in this case are anything but uneducated, i am guessing that they are upper middle class college educated "afluent" people that are well respected by their communities. They likely own the largest SUVs, and I would bet that every memeber of the family has their own cell phones.
Otherwise I think your description is dead on.
Well, judging by the way that the device is getting marketed, i would say that Nokia fully expects people to take it as a portable games console. Now it may very well have a butt-load of nice features like the aforementioned MP3 playability, phone service and so on, but thats not what you here about on the comercials and its certainly not what you see in the paper adverts either.
maybe they have created a nifty electronic device, but the public is never going to know that. All most of us see is a large company trying to look hip and nose into an already very well established market with a sub-par game system. Maybe they need to change the angle of their pitch if they want this thing not to take the nose dive its already in position for.
I have played this game, and it is as good as everyone is saying. If your fond of the side scrolling action games of old, then your going to love it. Hell, if you aren't a fan of the side scrolling action games of old you probably will still like this game.
I love how Capcom, king of remakes and sequels, somehow manages to throw a curve with something truely great and original from time to time.
And the say games aren't art......
Expose somebody to something for even 2 or 3 hours and they are going to absorb some of the information. Can you remember which brick in the first stage of Super Mario Brothers held the mushroom? If you grew up playing it probably. In fact, by your 2nd or 3rd game you knew where the powerups on the first stage were, its just simple memorization.
I would be more alarmed by people that played 30+ hours of Morrowind and didn't know some of the games culture and geography.
B-Movie? yes very
But.... With the possible exception of Resident Evil (I hated it but a lot of people thought it was at least watchable) there aren't really any good game to movie adaptations, i suppose that this has no less a chance than any other attempt that has been made thus far to be good.
Besides, when your watching a cheaply done movie, your not expecting perfect special effects or flawless cinematography. The bar is held a little bit lower, and so if the rest of the content is solid, it may actaully come off as pretty good. I mean why not? Could it suck worse than Super Mario Brothers or Mortal Kombat?
And so Rare is right back up to their old tricks.
I was one of "those guys" that actually liked aspects of Conker for N64 (the multiplayer was great) Jet Force Gemini, while a seriously flawed game, is still one of my favorite N64 games. This rash of delays and push backs is nothing new though, Rare has been playing this song for nintendo for years and it is one of the reasons that the Big N cut them loose. They produced some of the most memorable games on the N64, and did some class A work on the SNES and NES back in the day. What has happened to this studio?
What Microsoft needs to do, is kick their asses a little. Pick one of their projects, (Perfect Dark is a strong candidate) put the others on hiatus, fire the management, and set an ultimatum. (similar to what nintendo did wit retro studios when Metroid Prime was in it's infancy) What good are all of these games going to do if they don't come out until 3 months before the x-box 2 releases?
Then again, maybe Rare just doesn't have it anymore, their E3 display was a joke, and now they are saying that their flagship title is years off yet? Maybe these guys should get jobs working on the Phantom over at infinum labs or whatever they call themselves, i bet they would fit right in.
well its all a medium of communication. Some time not too long agom the phone was considered a high tech and novel though less than required piece of technology.
People are people, and any medium in which they are capable of communicating with each other is going to bring out the best and worse in them. I know a guy that droped out of med School at the end of his forth year because EverQuest had become more important than finnishing an education that had taken him more than 8 years including undergrad. Some people have a sports team that they love. They watch every game, they shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars for tickets and travel expenses, they agonize with the teams losses and celebrate it's victories. Personally, I could never care so much about a sports team. I like Hockey, and while i love when my team does well, its not a "relationship" that i am willing to expend a lot of resources on. A fan of a team though could give and endless list of reasons as to why their obsession is justified. Maybe they watch the games with their famalies, maybe it maintains ties with friends, maybe its a great time out, whatever. The point is that we all have things that move us and inspire us to go to great lengths to partake in the activity.
I can't really understand the people that tie their whole lives in a game either. i love games, but i love the act of the game more than any individual game. The only thing that will piss me off into a frenzy are people cheating or not playing fair. I could care less who wins, I just want it to be a good game. This may seem beyond understanding for some people, just as their habits are beyond me. Whats the big deal if we are trying to play Neverwinter nights and someone brings a character twice the level of anybody else, why should I care? Was i right to boot his ass out? Maybe maybe not it all depends on perspective.
What about so-called "emergent gameplay" A topic a few days ago here on /. I am just not busy enough at work to post this comment, but not otiose enough to track it down for linking, sorry.
If it's done within confines of everything the game programming meant to allow - it is NOT a CRIME
I think a better way to put that, is anything that can be done in game without actually cheating by hacking or manipulating the game outside of the actual game engine (altering packets would for example be illegal even though it isn't actually hacking) Is fair game. I for one can't buy the idea that my Nose Goblin slaying sword in EverCrack has real value, so if i lose it due to a cheater I would hope that the admins of the game would be kind enough to make the situation right. If they don't I can quit and find a new game.
I just find it absurd that somebody should owe me money for my lost game items. "loss of enjoyment" is surely not a punishable crime, if it was I think we all need to mount a class-action lawsuit against the Film, television and music industries for wasting all of our times and killing all of our enjoyment of these things.
This idea of "Privileged information" on a console game, that is information unique to each player is probably one of the best potential uses of the GBA link on the cube. The Dreamcast tried to do this with the VMU's, but the idea was never really embraced and the tiny screens were limited. What Nintendo and Namco should have done, or still should do rather, is create a "Namco museum" type app with lots of old Namco games like Dig-Dug for example, and incorporate this kind of game play. I could see such a collection being a worthwhile addition to a library if you're going to be playing in group situations. Sort of puts a "Scotland Yard" type spin on some old classic games.
Simple solution
You can return any game, for any reason but if it isn't for the same game (i.e. its a case of "I don't like it") You can only swap for a different game once, after that, your second title like it or not is yours no exchanges except in cases of defective games and even then it can only be for the same product.
Its like this: Magic is such a convention in RPGs, it has become mundane even though if it were a real world phenomenon it wouldn't be. Do you get all excited when you find a sword? Of course not, theres millions of them, they are in just about every game, and they just aren't that special because of this. Magic is a tool, you know when you play a CRPG that magic is going to be for delivering pain on your foes, healing and curing, or buffing characters.
I think if you want to make magic interesting, you need to make the actual play mechanics of it more complex. For those of you that have played it, think of "Magic the gathering" regardless of your views on the game you have to admit that the way that players in that game cast spells to attack, defend, and counter their opponents spells creates something closer to the way that one might imagine a pair of real wizards may face off against each other. Now I'm not saying that the next Bioware offering should include a card game with the rest of the package, but what I am saying is that the way you make magic interesting is to give it a mechanic beyond "I cast, I burn a resource, and then the foozle takes 6-36 fire damage".
I am spouting so let me give some examples of what I mean: In the game "Chrono Cross" for the PSX, the battle area had a "field alignment". When spells of an elemental nature were cast, they would shift the field to their color, and subsequent spells of like alignment would become more powerful. Certain spells and abilities could only be used if the last 3 spells or effects cast were of a specific color, say for example you wanted to throw a firestorm spell, and it required the field to be in full red alignment, it would mean that your characters preceding the one casting the firestorm, would need to shift the alignment by using their own spells or abilities. Furthermore, on occasion you would face off against foes that had very dangerous abilities that they could use if the field alignment shifted all the way to one element, and so besides trying to hurt them, you would need to throw a spell or two here and there to prevent them from getting a favorable alignment. THis system made a number of the games battles a difficult and demanding encounter since your spell resources were limited. It was a lot more interesting than the usual MP based different colored damage model that is the standard convention.
I'm not sure I would call it the most overrated game ever, over dogged on game ever perhaps. I mean yeah it was a mess, and yeah it didn't even come close to what it was supposed to do as described by its creator, the missions were lame yada yada yada.
But despite all that, I did at least have fun with it. Teaching my giant cow to eat children and crap all over my worshipers homes was great fun. Rolling flaming boulders into my own villages entertained me for far longer than it should have I suppose.
Broken, definately, but at least it was fun.
Sony can get away with not having a strong first party line up (though in the last year they are starting to do really well in house with titles like Ratchet and Clank, Dark Cloud 2 and so on) Nintendo exists almost solely on its first party software already. MS has neither Sonys saturation, nor Nintendos quality in house staff so they need to do the logical thing: boost their internal design teams.
Most 3rd party titles end up on all 3 platforms, and this hurts nintendo and MS more than it does sony because it doesn't convince anyone to run out and buy an x-box or cube to gain access to them, and most people that own a cube or a x-box already have a PS2.
Nintendo has had the right idea in this sense, they don't buy up large companies like MS tried to do with capcom and sega a year or so back, they look for small companies that have potential, share resources with them, and build them up. Take Rare for example, yeah they split with nintendo but that company wouldn't even likely be around today if not for the time and money nintendo spent turning them into a first class game company. Now they stand on their own (even if their last couple titles were not their best)
Not all of nintedos proteges pan out, the game "tube slider" by NEC Interchannel was going to be an F-zero title. nintendo wasn't happy with what NEC had managed to put together, so they cut them loose and gave the project to one of Sega's teams.
This is probably old news, but the single level demo is out, and is looking very nice.
For those of you worried about the game being runined by 3d:
Environments are still fully destructable
Many of the weapons seem to be back
Controls are a little weird in the demo, but this may be something that gets tweaked before the final release
The game play is identical, except that now you have that pesky "Y" direction to worry about.
I grabbed the demo from Gamespot, but it seems to be about everywhere. Personally I am looking forward to this game even more now that i have had a chance to play with it a bit. It just gives me a great feeling when sequels are done right and this looks to be one of them.
boycott? what the hell are you talking about?
I never said or implied anything like a boycott, I just stated my knowledge of the rare/ms relationship. Please save your insults for someone that deserves them.
Yes, MS owns Rare, Nintendo dumped them a year or so ago after Rare failed to generate any sort of significant revenue.
It is however unclear as to if Rare is going to be much use for MS though. In their last couple of years working with nintendo, Rare had gained a notorious rep for failing to get anything released even close to its deadline (perfect dark, starfox adventures and some others were all 2 years or more late) And their recent efforts while solid, have of late lacked the craftsmanship that their earlier work did. Some of this is because a good chunk of their staff left Rare to form the developer "Free Radical" some of the burnout may have just been related to not wanting to work with Nintendo anymore, who knows.
Epic wasn't much of a player on the console market in the first place, Sony might miss the Unreal ports but i don't think they did all that well anyway did they? I don't know, I mean Epic is a good name but I can think of other developers that would be better targets. Afterall, MS isn't trying to gain new games, they are trying to keep games away from the other consoles.
The "Bad stuff" is that you will be spending most of your time killing monsters for loot and xp. THere are some decent quests, but they will not fill more than a smidgen of your total playing time.
I think that the "system" of the game is good, but there was not enough to do for my tastes. If you like fighting and socializing though, you will be in heaven.
Quests? yes
Your character belongs to one of 3 kingdoms, and each kingdom has a chain of story quests that you can accomplish. They include cinematics, boss encounters, special items and so on. I beleive that there are about 8 or so in the story arc. There are also quests to unlock secret character classes (only 6 are selectable from start but there are another 6 that can be unlocked, more if they include the expansion with the US version) and a few other quests for items and the ability to dual-class. This is a fair number, but in comparison to the amount of time you will play the game, there are not that many. The story quests though are very cool.
Groups are from 2 to 6 characters, and then upto 3 groups can form a company, so in essence you can party up with upto 17 other people. xp sharing for groups is a bit.... how do I say it? Harsh. If your not fighting very strong enemies, the xp is bad. Loot sharing is good though, the party leader can either elect a quartermaster to hand out treasure to party members, or a lottery system can be used in which players that want a given item can cast lots for it, or skip it if they don't want it. You can certainly survive alone if you want to, but the game is a lot more fun in a group even if the level advancement rate is usally lower than you could acheive carefully soloing
The job system is very well done in my opinion. Your character can freely change jobs at his house, and each job is leveled up indivdualy. All stat bonuses are job dependent so Spending 10 levels as a fighter, will not mean that switching to a mage will give you a gimp mage. You can how ever only "equip" one class at a time. Once you reach 18th level it is possible to complete a quest, and thereafter you can equip 2 classes at once, effectively combining any two classes you have access to (though the secondary class can never count for more than half of the primary, so if you were a level 20 warrior, you could be a level 10 redmage at the same time). Characters also have craft, magic and weapon skills that are independent of their jobs, and can only rise through use. Casting "cure" enough times will allow your character to cast better versions of cure later. What you can equip as far as spells and gear are concerned is determined by your class and level. As your rank rises with a given weapon, you will learn special attacks akin to the limit breaks of the later FF games. These charge up as you hit and get hit by foes, and decline with the passage of time. When activated most of these attacks are wonderfully rendered, though their potency is significantly less than the single player FF equivalents.
I am/was in the PC beta (I quit playing it a few weeks ago so I am not sure if it is over or not)
To sum it up quickly:
The game is pretty easy to get into, most of the commands are on pull out menus, or can be actvated with simple ctrl-letter hot keys. The interface takes a bit of getting used to, but in all honesty the game playes pretty well and isn't going to pose a problem for anyone used to playing games.
The gameworld is huge, pretty, the music and effects are top-notch, and the game play itself is fast paced (short times to heal, travel distances not all that bad) but leveling is slow to say the least, they may correct this for the actual release but i doubt it.
Personally I liked PSO a lot more, but they are two completly different games so it isn't really a fair comparison anyway.
If you don't like multiplayer games and interacting with people, you are not going to like this game. If you have a specific question just ask, I or someone else will do our best to answer it.
Whoa buddy slow down, I just used them as an example. If there were an actual hard-line Liberal News station I would have just as happily used them as well. You do have to admit that FOX leans conservatively, and that in itself is not all that bad of a thing since there are some other viewpoints on other networks to counter-balance it. If they were the only news station though, this would not be a good thing, hell a single news source is a bad idea no matter what their leaning. The more variety you have the more individual opinions and prejudices are going to be diluted.
Too many people see things as black and white, if I disagree with a Liberal, I must be a fascist right-winger, and if I disagree with the Right, then I am a pinko-liberal self loather whatever. Wake up and smells the cat food, most people are moderates and we don't completely buy any viewpoint in its entirety. You don't have the slightest inkling of what my viewpoints are regarding any of the people you mention in your rant; so don't put words in my mouth.
Hypocrisy is the single most destructive force in human kinds history second only to fundamentalism
And how would your rant fall into this idea considering that you assume you know who I voted for last election?
Your missing the entire point of this.
Consolidated media is a step towards tyranny. Imagine the picture of the world you would have if FOX news owned every single other news network. How much could you trust the content of Slashdot if Microsoft owned it? The media is out to make money like everybody else, and when there are no longer enough of them to keep tabs on each other you are left with a single view point. If SONY music owns every radio station, what hope does an artist that isn't signed with Sony have?
Monopolies are not capitalistic; they are an unfortunate side effect of the times and letting the media fall into such a small number of hands is a terrible possibility.
Not quite the same effect with the dropped vowels, (you said drop all cons, I am guessing you meant vowels) as i found the missing vowels a bit harder to read; readable, but just slower going.
Certainly context plays a big part, at least for those words that are less familiar, and of course some words may have the same first, last and interior letters in a different order. consider this:
thaw doulw nappeh fi uoy deverser eht tirsf dna tasl setterl? nac uoy ltils dear ti?
I find myself reading the words backwards myself, still trying to find what the first and last letters are.
And I would think that this whole process falls apart when trying to read large words:
hmoahepoty, or catunenakos, or even tolievesn.
Good stuff
eh, sort of.
I mean, sure you can kill every living thing in the world, and sure you can carry this level of anti-social behavior to the point of actually creating a condition in which you can no longer "solve" the game, but can you really arrive at another outcome? You either save the world, or you don't. There isn't an alternate scenario that you become the mad overlord supreame or anything (at least i never got that) Open ended should mean more than just "do the mapped out story line at your own pace rather than in order"
Not that Morrowind is bad, I loved the game, I just think that if we really want to talk about "open ended" games, there should be more than one solution to the game, if there is one at all.