Look, I love many modern games. In fact, I love more modern games than I do classics. But Final Fantasy X?
Ignoring the luscious graphics, the brilliant musical score, the huge lifespan, the charming mini-games and secrets, and story that for once isn't a simple afterthought - it's too 'cinematic'. Not enough speed, not enough skill, not enough hammering at the 'fire' button and dodging swathes of bullets.
No. Ignoring the luscious graphics, brilliant musical score, ``huge lifespan,'' ``charming'' mini games and secrets, and story, there is nothing there at all. It's 10 hour movie broken up by what most of the world calls ``work'' -- endless, mind-numbing repetition of random battles for purpose of leveling up, so you can be tough enough to beat the next boss and acquire the next plot token.
And while the graphics and musical score are undeniably gorgeous, but Square's skill at making a compelling story pales compared to even the average hollywood summer blockbuster. But hey, if you have to work to watch it, that must mean it's good, right?
It goes a bit beyond using a naughty word. This game's title is some of the most inspired wordplay I've seen in a long while. The alternate meaning of "Ghoulies" isn't just a simple substitution, it completely changes the grammatical form of the sentence!
If it's emulated instead of hardware, then perhaps it could also emulate more than one GBA at once, connected by emulated link cables. If so, I would switch over from the official device in an instant.
Often, in an adventure game, the first part of a puzzle is realizing that there is a puzzle. Colors can be hidden in scenery in a much less contrived way than, e.g., geometric shapes, and I can't even think of a way to warn color-blind players about such a puzzle without spoiling it for everyone else.
Maybe the solution is to avoid relying on color altogether, but that would be a shame. Some of the more satisfying puzzles I've met have been color-based.
It may be true now that people don't play games now to appreciate them as works of art, but I hope that's not the way it will always be. And experts are going to point the way. I think insertcredit.com is a step in the right direction.
(Aside: Anyone who thinks a game can't (or shouldn't) be art needs to take a look at Ico.)
I never understood the appeal of Donkey Kong Country's graphics. You say they were godlike, and a lot of people seem to share that opinion, not least the 1994-era press.
DKC's graphics were 3D, drawn by a computer, whereas the graphics of most other platformers were drawn by people. In my opinion, art created by people has always looked superior to art created by a machine. 2D just looks better than 3D, plain and simple. What 3D rendering buys you is not graphical quality, but immersion. A sense of "thereness." It's a strong appeal.
However, Donkey Kong Country wasn't true 3D. It was pseudo 3D, 3D models rendered as 2D sprites. So it lacked the immersion that true 3D gives, and it also lacked the artistic quality that hand-drawn sprites give. It was the worst of both worlds.
So why does everyone like the look of it so much, then? I honestly believe that it's because in 1994, people were addicted to 3D. It was the exciting new thing. DKC provided all the secondary characteristics of 3D without having to provide the primary ones, and people ate it up. That's my hypothesis, anyways.
Oh, and a nitpick: the characters in SMB2 had enormous variation in their abilities:)
It's arguably true that Final Fantasy 7 did exactly that. Noone will argue that the PSX brought video gaming into the mainstream, and FF7 brought an enormous number of people to the PSX.
Whether or not FF7 a good game is another story entirely.
I agree that Tycho is being an idiot here, but because he's arguing that FF7 was influential and therefore must be excellent -- but I can think of many awful games that were widely influential.
A lot of people seem to be under the impression that everyone's opinion is just as valid as anyone elses. This is patently false. Some people are smart, some people are dumb. Some people are well versed in a subject, some people are dilettantes.
When determining the quality of any work of art, the opinion of an expert is worth more than the opinions of a million Joe Sixpacks.
Of course, when determining the amount of money a work makse, this all goes out the window and Joe Sixpack is all that matters. (And I probably shouldn't have to say this, but when you're determining whether or not you like a game or not, your opinion is all that matters.)
What you describe would be reasonable (though I would argue that it loses too much data to really be useful). But that's not how the Torino scale works. As for how it does work, I couldn't tell you... I was unable to discern the pattern of how the two values (no more math terms for me) were combined.
By "misunderstanding," I meant the misunderstanding that arose from my not making it clear that I was using the colloquial definition of "orthogonal" rather than the mathematical one.
The Torino scale is trying to represent two completely orthogonal scalars (chance of collision and consequences of collision) with a single scalar. It's going to end up misrepresenting something.
This is interesting information, but how old is it? If it's a recent trend, it's possible that cause and effect have been reversed (that is, it's possible that people spend more on Thursday because they see more ads Thursday morning).
It's also possible that an advertiser jumped on a statistical anomaly, and feedback caused it to grow from there.
For what it's worth, I never learned to type properly until I learned Dvorak. When I decided to learn Dvorak, I had to relearn so much of typing anyways, might as well learn the proper style while I'm at it. Dvorak lends itself to touch typing much better than Qwerty does, anyways -- maybe half of the letters you type will be in the home row.
To this end, I didn't relabel the keys themselves, I just taped a keyboard diagram below my monitor. I never look at the keyboard now, I just rely on the bumps on F and J.
This sort of perspective is annoying to me. It's especially annoying to me when the writer says that games used to be fun, but now they're just hours of drudgework between cinematic cut scenes. You just know that this guy's only recent gaming experience has been on the X-Box.
I may be biased here, but as I see it, the really fun games are still coming from the same guy they have been for the last 20 years: Shigeru Miyamoto.
If you want fun games, games that aren't trying to be movies, pick up a Gamecube. Grab copies of Mario Sunshine, Wind Waker, and Metroid Prime. Then you have the right to complain to me that are trying to be beautiful and dramatic instead of fun.
Nokia seems to have learned the wrong lessons from Microsoft's X-Box marketing strategy. They need to remember that the "insult your apparent target demographic" gimmick only works if you're using it as part of a billion dollar campaign to convince regular people that it's socially acceptable to buy your product.
I'm getting totally random results from all over the world.
I'm guessing this is because the IP address is being determined on the client. Since I'm behind a firewall, that makes my IP 192.168.*, and everyone else on the list behind a firewall is going to have a similar IP.
Slashdot Mirror
Ignoring the luscious graphics, the brilliant musical score, the huge lifespan, the charming mini-games and secrets, and story that for once isn't a simple afterthought - it's too 'cinematic'. Not enough speed, not enough skill, not enough hammering at the 'fire' button and dodging swathes of bullets.
No. Ignoring the luscious graphics, brilliant musical score, ``huge lifespan,'' ``charming'' mini games and secrets, and story, there is nothing there at all. It's 10 hour movie broken up by what most of the world calls ``work'' -- endless, mind-numbing repetition of random battles for purpose of leveling up, so you can be tough enough to beat the next boss and acquire the next plot token.
And while the graphics and musical score are undeniably gorgeous, but Square's skill at making a compelling story pales compared to even the average hollywood summer blockbuster. But hey, if you have to work to watch it, that must mean it's good, right?
It goes a bit beyond using a naughty word. This game's title is some of the most inspired wordplay I've seen in a long while. The alternate meaning of "Ghoulies" isn't just a simple substitution, it completely changes the grammatical form of the sentence!
If it's emulated instead of hardware, then perhaps it could also emulate more than one GBA at once, connected by emulated link cables. If so, I would switch over from the official device in an instant.
Maybe the solution is to avoid relying on color altogether, but that would be a shame. Some of the more satisfying puzzles I've met have been color-based.
(Aside: Anyone who thinks a game can't (or shouldn't) be art needs to take a look at Ico.)
In either case, though, my point still stands.
DKC's graphics were 3D, drawn by a computer, whereas the graphics of most other platformers were drawn by people. In my opinion, art created by people has always looked superior to art created by a machine. 2D just looks better than 3D, plain and simple. What 3D rendering buys you is not graphical quality, but immersion. A sense of "thereness." It's a strong appeal.
However, Donkey Kong Country wasn't true 3D. It was pseudo 3D, 3D models rendered as 2D sprites. So it lacked the immersion that true 3D gives, and it also lacked the artistic quality that hand-drawn sprites give. It was the worst of both worlds.
So why does everyone like the look of it so much, then? I honestly believe that it's because in 1994, people were addicted to 3D. It was the exciting new thing. DKC provided all the secondary characteristics of 3D without having to provide the primary ones, and people ate it up. That's my hypothesis, anyways.
Oh, and a nitpick: the characters in SMB2 had enormous variation in their abilities :)
Whether or not FF7 a good game is another story entirely.
I agree that Tycho is being an idiot here, but because he's arguing that FF7 was influential and therefore must be excellent -- but I can think of many awful games that were widely influential.
A lot of people seem to be under the impression that everyone's opinion is just as valid as anyone elses. This is patently false. Some people are smart, some people are dumb. Some people are well versed in a subject, some people are dilettantes.
When determining the quality of any work of art, the opinion of an expert is worth more than the opinions of a million Joe Sixpacks.
Of course, when determining the amount of money a work makse, this all goes out the window and Joe Sixpack is all that matters. (And I probably shouldn't have to say this, but when you're determining whether or not you like a game or not, your opinion is all that matters.)
What you describe would be reasonable (though I would argue that it loses too much data to really be useful). But that's not how the Torino scale works. As for how it does work, I couldn't tell you... I was unable to discern the pattern of how the two values (no more math terms for me) were combined.
Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Sorry for the misunderstanding.
The Torino scale is trying to represent two completely orthogonal scalars (chance of collision and consequences of collision) with a single scalar. It's going to end up misrepresenting something.
It's also possible that an advertiser jumped on a statistical anomaly, and feedback caused it to grow from there.
To this end, I didn't relabel the keys themselves, I just taped a keyboard diagram below my monitor. I never look at the keyboard now, I just rely on the bumps on F and J.
I may be biased here, but as I see it, the really fun games are still coming from the same guy they have been for the last 20 years: Shigeru Miyamoto.
If you want fun games, games that aren't trying to be movies, pick up a Gamecube. Grab copies of Mario Sunshine, Wind Waker, and Metroid Prime. Then you have the right to complain to me that are trying to be beautiful and dramatic instead of fun.
These have the advantage that you don't need to buy new hardware to try them out.
Nokia seems to have learned the wrong lessons from Microsoft's X-Box marketing strategy. They need to remember that the "insult your apparent target demographic" gimmick only works if you're using it as part of a billion dollar campaign to convince regular people that it's socially acceptable to buy your product.
I'm getting totally random results from all over the world. I'm guessing this is because the IP address is being determined on the client. Since I'm behind a firewall, that makes my IP 192.168.*, and everyone else on the list behind a firewall is going to have a similar IP.