I can definitely see the point where financial issues could force a choice. But it seems to me like the games are differentiating themselves pretty well in terms of story, engine, gameplay etc. so they are not really in direct competition (like, say, Q3 and UT).
Reminds me of my Freshman Seminar... "Religion, Sacrifice and Violence" with this psycho superliberal ex-hippy type proffessor woman. She always made us read stories bout ancient warriors consuming their foes or something. Made me wonder if eating Dragonball Z fruity snacks would make you become super-sayain. I'd settle for Marshall Faulk or whoever though.
There's one key thing to consider here people, when it comes to the doom vs half life BS I see every time Doom3 is mentioned anywhere:
IT'S NOT A FRICKING CONTEST.
Sure both of these engine are going to be licensed or whatever, but there is NO REASON why you can't just get and enjoy them both. I don't see either of these companies' fortunes depending on out-selling the other one's product. Both of these games look like they will be a spectacular diversion from the total dreck we have seen on PC for the past year or two. If it wasn't for these two games (and FFXI and LO:MAC) on the horizon, I would not have built a game-oriented computer, and just further built up my console collection. So I say wait and see, the better game will be judged by gaming history, and we will all be happy whether we play one or both of these excellent looking titles.
I agree with you on this one. While I used to work mostly from the desktop and quick launch bar in 98, once I went to XP I found that the main folders that I used were right at my fingertips, and the "recent programs" function is fairly intelligent, so if I start to play a game every other time it will rise to the top of the recent programs list before too long. Do you know how to customize the folders that apear to the right? (Docs, music, pictures, etc) I'd like to get rid of the pictures or whatever and go to my download folder.
I just hope it's easier to control yourself during the "Walk on a trail of blood that's floating in outer space" acid trip segment in this one. Or better yet, I hope there is no "Walk on a trail of blood that's floating in outer space" acid trip segment at all in #2. Because other than that, Max Payne was pretty cool, despite the bland levels at the begining. I think I might track down a PC copy so I can try the kung fu version.
As a huge Deep Space Nine nerd, I went out and bought the game Dominon Wars for like $50 right when it came out. I had already read some bad reviews of it, but I figured the coolness of the setting might make up for its shortcomings. Wrong. Terrible interface both in-game (nothing you would click seemed to affect the ships' movements) and out (seems to be impossible to save). Plus the game mechanics were out of whack, and the "all-new starfleet ships" were pretty lame, especially since there were plenty of choices they could have used instead. It's too bad really, because the game had a pretty good looking engine, and the epic Dominion War had a lot of potential as a game. Maybe some day we will be vidicated - I always thought a Dominion War expansion for Armada or Armada 2 would be good, but I doubt that is in the cards anymore with Activision's dumping of the trek license.
From what I've read the mouse/keyboard interface looks pretty svelte. Like a fully mousable version of Final Fantasy's traditional button-press-fest (based on an OK and CANCEL button, basically FORWARD and BACK), with Left Mouse as OK and Right Mouse as CANCEL. I'd like to see fully customized controls(and sounds like there is a good chance that we will get them), but I think I could live with the setup described in the IGN article.
I'm glad to see that an FF game is finally getting a good PC port after those wretched versions of 7 and 8. I wish to hell that I could have used my mouse or hotkeys with the Draw command in 8 instead of button-pressing through 4 different menus!
I tend to agree with you here. One of the main things that addicted me to the Final Fantasy games (and a lot of JRPGS) about a decade ago was how they were fantasies and had certain elements of Tolkienian lore, but each had distinctive worlds, races, monsters, etc. I don't wanna sound too biased or like i'm bashing western RPGs (which I am admittedly not as experienced with though I have played a few) but I definitely feel that it is important for fantasy game developers to put some care into making their worlds unique.
The Warcraft (1 and 3 especially) RTSs and Heretic/Hexen series are the best western fantasy games (albeit not RPGs) I can think of off the top of my head, borrowing from the D&D/Tolkien mindset but still showing quite a bit of imagination in the setting and characters.
I'm beginning to come to the point where I am interested in and can afford to dabble in MMORPGs, and within a year or two I might just subscribe to one. The market is obviously flooded and I only really want to get into one of them. I think I'm going to subscribe to Final Fantasy XI depending on the reviews, since it looks truely unique (tarutarus?) and seems to have a lot of the elements that have gelled nicely for about 15 years now in my experience. EQ looks fun and I don't mean to bash it or its members, but I am not quite as interested in that slightly cliched setting. The Warcraft MMORPG sounds slightly interesting, but personally I will always associate Warcraft with strategy gaming.
I think I bought that book too when I was 12 or so. But when I saw I needed to learn C programming and whatnot, I shit a brick and brought it back, and used the money to buy that Klick 'N Play game creation suite thing, it was pretty neat but extremely limited. You could make some neat 2D space shooters if you put the effort into it, but that was about all it was good for. Anyone else remember that?
Flash forward to 1997, I download the Doom source and pretty much teach myself C programming by looking at that, which came as a great help in my college freshman computer science classes.
As a current 20-year old, I've been thinking lately that if I was born about 10-15 years earlier and grew up with the fabled Apple IIe and so forth, I might have had a better chance of becoming some kind of code prodigy, as opposed to a college-trained Computer Scientist as I am now headed.
Have you considered a debit card? I've found that having a debit card SAVES me money (sorta). I say this because it keeps me from generating the approximatley 30 cents of change very time I make a small currency transaction for lunch, CD's, DVD's, and other purchases in the $5-20 range. That change just about always winds up down the seats in my car. When I lost my card for a while and had to go back to cash transactions, I took the spare change I eventually generated while waiting for my replacement card to a Coinstar (change sorter) machine and got back like $40 (AFTER a 9% fee). Your point is good though, I probably would not be as much of a spendaholic American pig-dog if it wasn't for my Plastic Pal who's Fun to Be With.
I have a nice 21" flatscreen toshiba that I just bought may 2002, it was really nice(especially good for playing Super Nintendo I think), but I dropped it moving it back to my dorm and it f'ed the colors up really badly and had splotches and stuff. After paying to have it repaired twice, there are no more blotches but the color seems a little too red, and the menu doesn't have options to adjust by color for some reason. I'm a little upset but it's tollerable for now. Shame too cuz it has component ins and everything that I was using for my XBox and PS2, and now it's not "perfect" anymore. I might try and take it to a specialist of some sort if I can find one. I'm glad you had good luck with your dropping experiences though.
I've been toying with the idea of building up a computer using a mix of modern and legacy parts to play old dos games on (mainly the non-3d wing commanders i think), so something like this would be pretty useful, especially if it will boot to (true) dos. As long as I can underclock my CPU to like 66mhz and get an old soundblaster working in there, i think this version would be good (especially if it's free, which I don't know since the site is down)
I get it. Next generation, good stuff. Did you ever notice that there are no computer programmers on star trek? Maybe when enterprise bombs they could make Star Trek: Office Space.
When I played through FF9 earlier this year, I went to gamefaqs constantly. Perhaps because of the lack of a good strategy guide, the gamefaqs for FF9 are remarkably deep and informative. They go into stats and theoretical formulas for some of the advanced moves, and have very detailed info on getting all the secret weapons and stuff that only obsessive-compulsives really need to find. When I began another game for FF7, I was surprised to find that the guides were relatively primative despite the fact that 7 is years older and much more popular than 9. In the end I dished out 10 or 15 dollars on the official print guide for 7, and I would say it's a pretty worthy investment since it includes maps (much more important in 7 which has some confusing layouts) and all but a few minor secrets. It'd be cool if they came out with a second edition with some of the info culled from gamefaqs, but since it seems to me like just about every game released during the later half of the 90's has gone out of print within the past few months that is never gonna happen.
Anyone remember StarTropics for NES with the water-disolving password thing in the box that you actually needed to beat the game? Everyone who rented it was SOL on that one.
Yeah, I played the demo, it was real cool. I think I used my mouse for that game before I started mousing in doom/quake. Fun stuff though, i kinda wish i had invested in the full version (although it probably wouldn't run properly on my XP computer now like every other interplay game ever released)
I always though H*R would make a good gaming license (either RPG or platform). I think they'd be doing themselves a favor to get a GBA game going with these crazy characters. Maybe Romero would do it? Either way, i like marshmallows.
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It's true sir, the Kilrathi have invisible fighters.
Actually, the voice pack acting in WC2 was pretty darn good in my opinon. Maybe the downsampling to 11k or whatever helped it out.
What about the most underrated american action cartoon of all time, ExoSquad? God I loved that show back in the day. (don't worry, i was in 8th grade)
I can definitely see the point where financial issues could force a choice. But it seems to me like the games are differentiating themselves pretty well in terms of story, engine, gameplay etc. so they are not really in direct competition (like, say, Q3 and UT).
Reminds me of my Freshman Seminar... "Religion, Sacrifice and Violence" with this psycho superliberal ex-hippy type proffessor woman. She always made us read stories bout ancient warriors consuming their foes or something. Made me wonder if eating Dragonball Z fruity snacks would make you become super-sayain. I'd settle for Marshall Faulk or whoever though.
There's one key thing to consider here people, when it comes to the doom vs half life BS I see every time Doom3 is mentioned anywhere:
IT'S NOT A FRICKING CONTEST.
Sure both of these engine are going to be licensed or whatever, but there is NO REASON why you can't just get and enjoy them both. I don't see either of these companies' fortunes depending on out-selling the other one's product. Both of these games look like they will be a spectacular diversion from the total dreck we have seen on PC for the past year or two. If it wasn't for these two games (and FFXI and LO:MAC) on the horizon, I would not have built a game-oriented computer, and just further built up my console collection. So I say wait and see, the better game will be judged by gaming history, and we will all be happy whether we play one or both of these excellent looking titles.
I agree with you on this one. While I used to work mostly from the desktop and quick launch bar in 98, once I went to XP I found that the main folders that I used were right at my fingertips, and the "recent programs" function is fairly intelligent, so if I start to play a game every other time it will rise to the top of the recent programs list before too long. Do you know how to customize the folders that apear to the right? (Docs, music, pictures, etc) I'd like to get rid of the pictures or whatever and go to my download folder.
In 10 years, the lightning/rain will be in the gonads!
I just hope it's easier to control yourself during the "Walk on a trail of blood that's floating in outer space" acid trip segment in this one. Or better yet, I hope there is no "Walk on a trail of blood that's floating in outer space" acid trip segment at all in #2. Because other than that, Max Payne was pretty cool, despite the bland levels at the begining. I think I might track down a PC copy so I can try the kung fu version.
As a huge Deep Space Nine nerd, I went out and bought the game Dominon Wars for like $50 right when it came out. I had already read some bad reviews of it, but I figured the coolness of the setting might make up for its shortcomings. Wrong. Terrible interface both in-game (nothing you would click seemed to affect the ships' movements) and out (seems to be impossible to save). Plus the game mechanics were out of whack, and the "all-new starfleet ships" were pretty lame, especially since there were plenty of choices they could have used instead. It's too bad really, because the game had a pretty good looking engine, and the epic Dominion War had a lot of potential as a game. Maybe some day we will be vidicated - I always thought a Dominion War expansion for Armada or Armada 2 would be good, but I doubt that is in the cards anymore with Activision's dumping of the trek license.
From what I've read the mouse/keyboard interface looks pretty svelte. Like a fully mousable version of Final Fantasy's traditional button-press-fest (based on an OK and CANCEL button, basically FORWARD and BACK), with Left Mouse as OK and Right Mouse as CANCEL. I'd like to see fully customized controls(and sounds like there is a good chance that we will get them), but I think I could live with the setup described in the IGN article.
I'm glad to see that an FF game is finally getting a good PC port after those wretched versions of 7 and 8. I wish to hell that I could have used my mouse or hotkeys with the Draw command in 8 instead of button-pressing through 4 different menus!
I tend to agree with you here. One of the main things that addicted me to the Final Fantasy games (and a lot of JRPGS) about a decade ago was how they were fantasies and had certain elements of Tolkienian lore, but each had distinctive worlds, races, monsters, etc. I don't wanna sound too biased or like i'm bashing western RPGs (which I am admittedly not as experienced with though I have played a few) but I definitely feel that it is important for fantasy game developers to put some care into making their worlds unique.
The Warcraft (1 and 3 especially) RTSs and Heretic/Hexen series are the best western fantasy games (albeit not RPGs) I can think of off the top of my head, borrowing from the D&D/Tolkien mindset but still showing quite a bit of imagination in the setting and characters.
I'm beginning to come to the point where I am interested in and can afford to dabble in MMORPGs, and within a year or two I might just subscribe to one. The market is obviously flooded and I only really want to get into one of them. I think I'm going to subscribe to Final Fantasy XI depending on the reviews, since it looks truely unique (tarutarus?) and seems to have a lot of the elements that have gelled nicely for about 15 years now in my experience. EQ looks fun and I don't mean to bash it or its members, but I am not quite as interested in that slightly cliched setting. The Warcraft MMORPG sounds slightly interesting, but personally I will always associate Warcraft with strategy gaming.
Towlie told me that this console will be no competition for the Okama Gamesphere 2000.
I think I bought that book too when I was 12 or so. But when I saw I needed to learn C programming and whatnot, I shit a brick and brought it back, and used the money to buy that Klick 'N Play game creation suite thing, it was pretty neat but extremely limited. You could make some neat 2D space shooters if you put the effort into it, but that was about all it was good for. Anyone else remember that?
Flash forward to 1997, I download the Doom source and pretty much teach myself C programming by looking at that, which came as a great help in my college freshman computer science classes.
As a current 20-year old, I've been thinking lately that if I was born about 10-15 years earlier and grew up with the fabled Apple IIe and so forth, I might have had a better chance of becoming some kind of code prodigy, as opposed to a college-trained Computer Scientist as I am now headed.
Have you considered a debit card? I've found that having a debit card SAVES me money (sorta). I say this because it keeps me from generating the approximatley 30 cents of change very time I make a small currency transaction for lunch, CD's, DVD's, and other purchases in the $5-20 range. That change just about always winds up down the seats in my car. When I lost my card for a while and had to go back to cash transactions, I took the spare change I eventually generated while waiting for my replacement card to a Coinstar (change sorter) machine and got back like $40 (AFTER a 9% fee). Your point is good though, I probably would not be as much of a spendaholic American pig-dog if it wasn't for my Plastic Pal who's Fun to Be With.
I have a nice 21" flatscreen toshiba that I just bought may 2002, it was really nice(especially good for playing Super Nintendo I think), but I dropped it moving it back to my dorm and it f'ed the colors up really badly and had splotches and stuff. After paying to have it repaired twice, there are no more blotches but the color seems a little too red, and the menu doesn't have options to adjust by color for some reason. I'm a little upset but it's tollerable for now. Shame too cuz it has component ins and everything that I was using for my XBox and PS2, and now it's not "perfect" anymore. I might try and take it to a specialist of some sort if I can find one. I'm glad you had good luck with your dropping experiences though.
I've been toying with the idea of building up a computer using a mix of modern and legacy parts to play old dos games on (mainly the non-3d wing commanders i think), so something like this would be pretty useful, especially if it will boot to (true) dos. As long as I can underclock my CPU to like 66mhz and get an old soundblaster working in there, i think this version would be good (especially if it's free, which I don't know since the site is down)
I get it. Next generation, good stuff. Did you ever notice that there are no computer programmers on star trek? Maybe when enterprise bombs they could make Star Trek: Office Space.
public Nomaaaahh () { if (yankeesfan) yousuck = TRUE; } that was some really bad Java (or "Javahr" in Boston).
I miss wing commander badly. I really wish the legal rights would open up for someone to do remakes of the pre-FMV ones. (source code etc). O well.
When I played through FF9 earlier this year, I went to gamefaqs constantly. Perhaps because of the lack of a good strategy guide, the gamefaqs for FF9 are remarkably deep and informative. They go into stats and theoretical formulas for some of the advanced moves, and have very detailed info on getting all the secret weapons and stuff that only obsessive-compulsives really need to find. When I began another game for FF7, I was surprised to find that the guides were relatively primative despite the fact that 7 is years older and much more popular than 9. In the end I dished out 10 or 15 dollars on the official print guide for 7, and I would say it's a pretty worthy investment since it includes maps (much more important in 7 which has some confusing layouts) and all but a few minor secrets. It'd be cool if they came out with a second edition with some of the info culled from gamefaqs, but since it seems to me like just about every game released during the later half of the 90's has gone out of print within the past few months that is never gonna happen.
Anyone remember StarTropics for NES with the water-disolving password thing in the box that you actually needed to beat the game? Everyone who rented it was SOL on that one.
I didn't know Eidos executives posted on slashdot!
Yeah, I played the demo, it was real cool. I think I used my mouse for that game before I started mousing in doom/quake. Fun stuff though, i kinda wish i had invested in the full version (although it probably wouldn't run properly on my XP computer now like every other interplay game ever released)
I always though H*R would make a good gaming license (either RPG or platform). I think they'd be doing themselves a favor to get a GBA game going with these crazy characters. Maybe Romero would do it? Either way, i like marshmallows.
I can't seem to find an "about"-type page on their main website. It'd be nice to be able to see the main features and so forth before downloading it.