I'm with you. I've had an assfull of WWII games. It's been done to death. If you add up the gameplay time of all the WWII games that have been released it's probably longer than the war itself. I'm sick of hitting the beach at Normandy, I'm sick of paratrooping into France, I'm sick of the same damn guns I've used in 4 other games and I'm sick sick SICK of killing nazis. How about an original frickin idea for once?
That's just one of the conventions that are indemic to JRPGs that I think should go away.
- Random monster encounters. Seriously, I've thrown away games I just bought because I couldn't move my character more than 10 feet at a time without being forced into combat with a Massive Golem of Ass-Raping.
- Plot??! I forget what game it was, but at the end it turned out I was only a dream of a dream of my dead dad...who was also a demon, or some crap. It's either way too convoluted and existential or the usual "there is a great evil threatening to destroy the world/galaxy/universe and only one fated person can stop it, but only if he has a +8 sword."
- Really really REALLY long dungeon encounters with no way to save your progress.
when a store manager feels compelled to write what is essentially an instruction manual for shopping at his store. What the hell happened to customer service?
3 lives, no continues. So many quarters thrown at that damn machine. If I got enough of the power ups I found I could survive for a bit but I still never got past the second level.
I'd like to see this as well. Unfortunately, the video game industry seems to think more "mature" content means more tits and buckets of gore. I'd like to see more developed characters and plotlines that deal with more adult themes. To use a horror/spooky movie analogy, I'd like to play the video game equivalent of The Sixth Sense where there's tension, eerieness, a few BOO! moments and actual character development. What the publishers deliver, however is more like what Eli Roth has regurgitated on the moviegoing public.
I found it odd that Minda was the only one they added an actual voice to. It wasn't a horrible thing, it was just kind of jarring, after hours of having character dialogue represented by a series of synth guitar plucks, to all of a sudden hear a character talking like they were in The Sims.
Plus, thereafter you're treated to this every time you hit up on the D pad:
I'm starting to realize this going back and playing some of my old favorites from the arcades; Ghosts and Goblins, Joust, Gradius, Beer Tapper, Tempest, Lifeforce, etc. Most of the old arcade games were pretty damn hard*. Lifeforce especially, 1 credit, 3 lives, no continues. It was a good 2 or 3 hour shooter too, and it didn't pull any punches. I never got past level 2. That still didn't stop me from pumping quarters into the thing. It provided enough fun for the casual gamer to goof off for 10 minutes while providing a challenge for the hardcore gamer. I find that lacking in a lot of today's games, where the only barrier to victory is time. Just keep at it and eventually you will beat it, if you die, it's okay, there's savepoints every five feet.
Thinking back to the arcade hayday, I remember a few instances where a crowd would form around a cabinet when someone was doing exceptionally well or getting close to beating the game. Kinda like that scene in The Last Starfighter. I can't picture that happening anymore, mostly because arcades are almost non-existant but also because it's just not an acomplishment anymore.
*The absolute worst was Ghouls n' Ghosts. Not only was it rediculously difficult, but you'd fight to the end and kill Loki only to find out that you need a special weapon that's hidden somewhere in the levels you just trudged through. Then, IT SENDS YOU BACK TO THE FUCKING BEGINNING OF THE GAME TO START OVER!!! AAAARRRGH!! *rips out hair*
Yes, all in the past. Except for, you know, that whole kid fucking thing. But as recent news has shown, protestants don't seem to be very good at keeping their dongs away from the sunday school either.
Duck Hunt would be pretty cool. When I first got the system and took a look at the remote I started thinking about the possibility of someone making a gun casing for it. Maybe have a little lever action dealie that would hit the B button when you pull the trigger on the grip. I don't know why, but I would find it hard to aim without a pointer if I wasn't holding it like a pistol.
PSH! Thrashing is sooooooo 1980s. Nowadays we just steal the identities of the people we hate and sell them on the internets. You get the satisfaction of knowing that your tormentor's life is a living hell and they have no idea why!
That's right Robbie Selter! I'm the reason even payday loan places think you're too high risk to lend to! WAS THAT SWIRLIE WORTH IT? HUH?!?
It also wouldn't be worth it, there are a whole lot of blind quilters since it is a visual medium. There's nothing stopping a blind person from doing it, of course, but it's hard to appreciate your work if you can't see it.
Only about 6% of people that can be classified as blind are totally blind.
Whether she found it or bought it, she had to have known that the phone didn't belong to her. The fact that she refuses to return it with the knowledge that it isn't hers makes it posession of stolen property, which is a felony. You don't have to actively run up to someone and grab something from them in order for it to be considered stolen.
When you reached the "end" in COH you can make another character (there are two unlockable classes available to those with level 50 heroes), participate in raids, help out your supergroup by either grouping with them or helping with base construction, work on getting badges and accolades or PVP. Personally I went with making new characters, the variety available has been enough to keep me from getting bored with it.
Cryptic has gone the route of trying to make more interesting and engaging content rather than introducing more repetitive timesinks like 40 person, 6 hour raids that give one trinket to the lucky few that have that much time, or introducing a super rare item that only drops for the player that kills one monster that spawns once a month. The content releases are infrequent but for the most part they've been full of things to keep players occupied. Sure, there are spots that feel "grindy", every MMO has those to an extent but I found COH to be less grindy in 2 years of playing than WoW felt during just my trial month. Your mileage may vary but I've made my choice.
This is exactly why I play COH/COV instead of WoW. Doing well is not based on who can buy the most l337 gear, there are no super rare drops and there's no real player economy to speak of. How your character performs depends on which powers you pick up, not how long you camped a spawn or killed the same blue drake over and over and over. A level 30 player who can only get on for 4-6 hours/week is at no more of a disadvantage as far as character performance as someone who can spend 4-6 hours/day.
The only exception to this is the Hamidon enhancements but those aren't terribly difficult to come by on most servers.
I have to say, after having played one, I like my MMOs with no real economy. It keeps the players more or less equal which helps the devs out. They no longer have to make content geared toward keeping the super tight tweaked out uber builds happy which is usually too tough for the average player.
I looked at the current library for the PSP as well as the games coming down the pike for it and about the only original title was Lumines. The rest were either ports or knockoffs. I compared that to the possibilities of the GP2X, emulators, homebrew and indie titles, and I made my choice. I'm not saying past eras are exempt from the plague of unoriginality, there is a dearth of cheap knockoffs and absolute garbage out there available on every system. My point was that now more than ever the pencil pushers have taken over the development process and sucked all the soul out of it. They don't seem to be concerned with putting out a great product anymore, just a passable product that will sell. They stick with what they consider safe and skip anything that doesn't fit the mold. Therefore the next truly original game probably won't come from one of the big development houses, it'll come from either homebrew/indie developers or one of the smaller maverick developers. Just my opinion though, maybe EA will get lucky and pull The Next Big Thing out of its ass...I'm not holding my breath.
If they'd stop pushing out buggy crap before it's finished just to meet a deadline maybe more of us would buy more games. As it is now I don't have a whole lot of time to play anymore and I need to be extra choosy about what I spend my money on. I'd rather not spend what I thought would be my first play session with a game just patching the damn thing.
Originality seems to be lacking too, developers (I'm looking at you EA) seem to want to stick to what they're sure will work. So we end up with GenericFPS2005 or GenericWWIIShooter or another iteration of [insert professional sports league] 200x. There really is a difference between older games and those that have been developed recently, it seems like the developers genuinely cared about their product back then instead of just meeting a deadline.
There's a reason I've ordered a GP2X (SHIP ALREADY DAMN YOU!) over a PSP.
I agree with them to a point. MMO economies often mimic Wall Street. The big difference being: If I fail to save Princess Pretty-Pants from the evil Rat Wizard it doesn't have the potential to send a multinational corporation with thousands of employees into a tailspin from which it will never escape, effectively ruining the lives of many, many people. Considering its effect on the economy and the well-being of normal people, thinking of the stock market as a game is a dangerous thing.
Upgrading is easier since you don't have to wait for the manufacturer to fix any problems with the firmware.
I just hope it's easier than upgrading Linux on a PC. How does one compile binaries, write shell scripts and check version dependencies on a device sans keyboard?
There was a spot in the King's Row map, a sewer access door set at a 45 degree angle, right near the tram station, where the pedestrians would get stuck in an endless run/jump loop. They would basically run full speed up the door and when they reached the top they'd do a 180 and jump. When they hit the ground they would do another 180 and run at the door again, repeating ad infinitum. When the developers finally fixed the bug they put a plaque on the door that said something to the effect of "Unbeknownst to Paragon City's top mages, a powerful sorceror attempted to control the minds of the entire city. The effects of this mind control were at their strongest at this point, resulting in the citizens acting most peculiar."
Another thing you used to be able to do was get a crowd to follow you as you fly. It only worked if you could hover/fly out of their reach. You had to look for people being mugged or otherwise endangered and take out their assailants, repeat without touching the ground. The code wouldn't let them leave without thanking you, but they couldn't reach you if you were too high up so they would follow you for as long as you stayed up there. They eventually fixed this bug as people were using it to be a nuisance and cause lag in heavily popllated areas.
That's a very good point, you're right. In my mind, the evidence justifies the "born" route, in your mind, the evidence is a result of the "choice" route. Honestly, I have no idea who's right. Until somebody finds a "gay gene" I don't think anybody will have it right.
I just have a hard time imagining anybody would choose a life of ridicule and violence. I can't imagine waking up one day and thinking "You know, my life is entirely too absent of verbal ridicule and ass-beatings at the hands of ignorant rednecks. Hey I know, I'll be gay!"
This is just hearsay so take it as such.
My uncle works in a brain spectrometry lab at UCSD. In one of the experiments (or whatever) they did, there was a noticeable physical difference when comparring the brain structure of homosexuals to heterosexuals.
This lead me to believe that it's not a choice for most. I've tried to explain this to christians I know but I get the same "fingers in the ears" response they all give when something calls one of their beliefs into question.
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I'm with you. I've had an assfull of WWII games. It's been done to death. If you add up the gameplay time of all the WWII games that have been released it's probably longer than the war itself. I'm sick of hitting the beach at Normandy, I'm sick of paratrooping into France, I'm sick of the same damn guns I've used in 4 other games and I'm sick sick SICK of killing nazis. How about an original frickin idea for once?
That's just one of the conventions that are indemic to JRPGs that I think should go away.
- Random monster encounters. Seriously, I've thrown away games I just bought because I couldn't move my character more than 10 feet at a time without being forced into combat with a Massive Golem of Ass-Raping.
- Plot??! I forget what game it was, but at the end it turned out I was only a dream of a dream of my dead dad...who was also a demon, or some crap. It's either way too convoluted and existential or the usual "there is a great evil threatening to destroy the world/galaxy/universe and only one fated person can stop it, but only if he has a +8 sword."
- Really really REALLY long dungeon encounters with no way to save your progress.
Anyone remember Hell March from C&C: Red Alert? One of the best tracks of any C&C game.
when a store manager feels compelled to write what is essentially an instruction manual for shopping at his store. What the hell happened to customer service?
3 lives, no continues. So many quarters thrown at that damn machine. If I got enough of the power ups I found I could survive for a bit but I still never got past the second level.
I'd like to see this as well. Unfortunately, the video game industry seems to think more "mature" content means more tits and buckets of gore. I'd like to see more developed characters and plotlines that deal with more adult themes. To use a horror/spooky movie analogy, I'd like to play the video game equivalent of The Sixth Sense where there's tension, eerieness, a few BOO! moments and actual character development. What the publishers deliver, however is more like what Eli Roth has regurgitated on the moviegoing public.
I found it odd that Minda was the only one they added an actual voice to. It wasn't a horrible thing, it was just kind of jarring, after hours of having character dialogue represented by a series of synth guitar plucks, to all of a sudden hear a character talking like they were in The Sims.
Plus, thereafter you're treated to this every time you hit up on the D pad:
"Trat mems an hem. Pur trum smid es es ben."
Gets kind of annoying after a while.
I'm starting to realize this going back and playing some of my old favorites from the arcades; Ghosts and Goblins, Joust, Gradius, Beer Tapper, Tempest, Lifeforce, etc. Most of the old arcade games were pretty damn hard*. Lifeforce especially, 1 credit, 3 lives, no continues. It was a good 2 or 3 hour shooter too, and it didn't pull any punches. I never got past level 2. That still didn't stop me from pumping quarters into the thing. It provided enough fun for the casual gamer to goof off for 10 minutes while providing a challenge for the hardcore gamer. I find that lacking in a lot of today's games, where the only barrier to victory is time. Just keep at it and eventually you will beat it, if you die, it's okay, there's savepoints every five feet.
Thinking back to the arcade hayday, I remember a few instances where a crowd would form around a cabinet when someone was doing exceptionally well or getting close to beating the game. Kinda like that scene in The Last Starfighter. I can't picture that happening anymore, mostly because arcades are almost non-existant but also because it's just not an acomplishment anymore.
*The absolute worst was Ghouls n' Ghosts. Not only was it rediculously difficult, but you'd fight to the end and kill Loki only to find out that you need a special weapon that's hidden somewhere in the levels you just trudged through. Then, IT SENDS YOU BACK TO THE FUCKING BEGINNING OF THE GAME TO START OVER!!! AAAARRRGH!! *rips out hair*
Wow. Who's your Congressman, and how many millions did you donate to his campaign to get him to give a flying fuck about what happens to a commoner?
Yes, all in the past. Except for, you know, that whole kid fucking thing. But as recent news has shown, protestants don't seem to be very good at keeping their dongs away from the sunday school either.
Duck Hunt would be pretty cool. When I first got the system and took a look at the remote I started thinking about the possibility of someone making a gun casing for it. Maybe have a little lever action dealie that would hit the B button when you pull the trigger on the grip. I don't know why, but I would find it hard to aim without a pointer if I wasn't holding it like a pistol.
PSH! Thrashing is sooooooo 1980s. Nowadays we just steal the identities of the people we hate and sell them on the internets. You get the satisfaction of knowing that your tormentor's life is a living hell and they have no idea why!
That's right Robbie Selter! I'm the reason even payday loan places think you're too high risk to lend to! WAS THAT SWIRLIE WORTH IT? HUH?!?
Only about 6% of people that can be classified as blind are totally blind.
Whether she found it or bought it, she had to have known that the phone didn't belong to her. The fact that she refuses to return it with the knowledge that it isn't hers makes it posession of stolen property, which is a felony. You don't have to actively run up to someone and grab something from them in order for it to be considered stolen.
When you reached the "end" in COH you can make another character (there are two unlockable classes available to those with level 50 heroes), participate in raids, help out your supergroup by either grouping with them or helping with base construction, work on getting badges and accolades or PVP. Personally I went with making new characters, the variety available has been enough to keep me from getting bored with it.
Cryptic has gone the route of trying to make more interesting and engaging content rather than introducing more repetitive timesinks like 40 person, 6 hour raids that give one trinket to the lucky few that have that much time, or introducing a super rare item that only drops for the player that kills one monster that spawns once a month. The content releases are infrequent but for the most part they've been full of things to keep players occupied. Sure, there are spots that feel "grindy", every MMO has those to an extent but I found COH to be less grindy in 2 years of playing than WoW felt during just my trial month. Your mileage may vary but I've made my choice.
This is exactly why I play COH/COV instead of WoW. Doing well is not based on who can buy the most l337 gear, there are no super rare drops and there's no real player economy to speak of. How your character performs depends on which powers you pick up, not how long you camped a spawn or killed the same blue drake over and over and over. A level 30 player who can only get on for 4-6 hours/week is at no more of a disadvantage as far as character performance as someone who can spend 4-6 hours/day.
The only exception to this is the Hamidon enhancements but those aren't terribly difficult to come by on most servers.
I have to say, after having played one, I like my MMOs with no real economy. It keeps the players more or less equal which helps the devs out. They no longer have to make content geared toward keeping the super tight tweaked out uber builds happy which is usually too tough for the average player.
uhh
I looked at the current library for the PSP as well as the games coming down the pike for it and about the only original title was Lumines. The rest were either ports or knockoffs. I compared that to the possibilities of the GP2X, emulators, homebrew and indie titles, and I made my choice. I'm not saying past eras are exempt from the plague of unoriginality, there is a dearth of cheap knockoffs and absolute garbage out there available on every system. My point was that now more than ever the pencil pushers have taken over the development process and sucked all the soul out of it. They don't seem to be concerned with putting out a great product anymore, just a passable product that will sell. They stick with what they consider safe and skip anything that doesn't fit the mold. Therefore the next truly original game probably won't come from one of the big development houses, it'll come from either homebrew/indie developers or one of the smaller maverick developers. Just my opinion though, maybe EA will get lucky and pull The Next Big Thing out of its ass...I'm not holding my breath.
If they'd stop pushing out buggy crap before it's finished just to meet a deadline maybe more of us would buy more games. As it is now I don't have a whole lot of time to play anymore and I need to be extra choosy about what I spend my money on. I'd rather not spend what I thought would be my first play session with a game just patching the damn thing.
Originality seems to be lacking too, developers (I'm looking at you EA) seem to want to stick to what they're sure will work. So we end up with GenericFPS2005 or GenericWWIIShooter or another iteration of [insert professional sports league] 200x. There really is a difference between older games and those that have been developed recently, it seems like the developers genuinely cared about their product back then instead of just meeting a deadline.
There's a reason I've ordered a GP2X (SHIP ALREADY DAMN YOU!) over a PSP.
I agree with them to a point. MMO economies often mimic Wall Street. The big difference being: If I fail to save Princess Pretty-Pants from the evil Rat Wizard it doesn't have the potential to send a multinational corporation with thousands of employees into a tailspin from which it will never escape, effectively ruining the lives of many, many people. Considering its effect on the economy and the well-being of normal people, thinking of the stock market as a game is a dangerous thing.
25,601% is the current zoom in limit.
Upgrading is easier since you don't have to wait for the manufacturer to fix any problems with the firmware. I just hope it's easier than upgrading Linux on a PC. How does one compile binaries, write shell scripts and check version dependencies on a device sans keyboard?
City of Heroes had some fun glitches.
There was a spot in the King's Row map, a sewer access door set at a 45 degree angle, right near the tram station, where the pedestrians would get stuck in an endless run/jump loop. They would basically run full speed up the door and when they reached the top they'd do a 180 and jump. When they hit the ground they would do another 180 and run at the door again, repeating ad infinitum. When the developers finally fixed the bug they put a plaque on the door that said something to the effect of "Unbeknownst to Paragon City's top mages, a powerful sorceror attempted to control the minds of the entire city. The effects of this mind control were at their strongest at this point, resulting in the citizens acting most peculiar."
Another thing you used to be able to do was get a crowd to follow you as you fly. It only worked if you could hover/fly out of their reach. You had to look for people being mugged or otherwise endangered and take out their assailants, repeat without touching the ground. The code wouldn't let them leave without thanking you, but they couldn't reach you if you were too high up so they would follow you for as long as you stayed up there. They eventually fixed this bug as people were using it to be a nuisance and cause lag in heavily popllated areas.
That's a very good point, you're right. In my mind, the evidence justifies the "born" route, in your mind, the evidence is a result of the "choice" route. Honestly, I have no idea who's right. Until somebody finds a "gay gene" I don't think anybody will have it right.
I just have a hard time imagining anybody would choose a life of ridicule and violence. I can't imagine waking up one day and thinking "You know, my life is entirely too absent of verbal ridicule and ass-beatings at the hands of ignorant rednecks. Hey I know, I'll be gay!"
This is just hearsay so take it as such. My uncle works in a brain spectrometry lab at UCSD. In one of the experiments (or whatever) they did, there was a noticeable physical difference when comparring the brain structure of homosexuals to heterosexuals.
This lead me to believe that it's not a choice for most. I've tried to explain this to christians I know but I get the same "fingers in the ears" response they all give when something calls one of their beliefs into question.