The Governator: As the duly appointed representative to California I feel it is my duty to ban the sale of violent videogames to minors. Now if you will excuse me I'll be back. I have to go and make another movie where I kill lots of people and sexually harass the women on the set.
Someone with a brain: Isn't that being hypocritical Mr Schwarzenegger?
The Governator: Don't insult me, I have never even looked at another man.
Based on the specs you supposedly need to run Vista does the game performance tweaker just install Windows XP for you when you select the games profile? Or does it just open up a browser page for Xbox 360?
Seriously though, if the performance tweaker does provide tangible gaming performance improvements over XP I would very seriously consider the upgrade as games performance is something I consider vital to any OS I use. That said, OpenGL is supposedly just a wrapper to DirectX in Vista so I can't see myself wanting to take that performance killer on.
I think the PC channel on IGN is fairly balanced because they don't get the attention that the console channels do, especially the PS2 and Xbox channels where most of the blatant review fiddling goes on.
For example the rave reviews Halo 2, Knights of the Old Republic or San Andreas got. Halo 2 wasn't finished, neither was KOTOR2 and San Andreas had horrid slow down problems and terrible controls, yet they all got recommended as brilliant games without the flaws even being mentioned. Then there was their review of "Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness" that somehow managed to miss all or the bugs. And lets not get started on their MGS2 review except to say "Emperor's New Clothes".
IGN reviews should be taken with enough salt to cause arterial hardening.
Good point. I could remove the cover from the case and print a picture of tub girl on the back of it. We clearly must ban San Andreas now before children everywhere are exposed to this disgusting mod! Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children???
Yep, I'm sure the review for 24: The Game (stupid title) will be as impartial and fair handed as Fox News' coverage of George Bush's election campaign.
Still I'm sure this won't stop IGN pimping Jessica Chobot on every page as though a girl who plays games is some sort of pull for readers (maybe it is if you're 13 and "like teh playstashun and boobies". I bet the IGN editors were really impressed with her journalistic abilities and hiring her had nothing to do with her having breasts and them having no social skillz.
While I'm sure it won't happen because Squeenix are busy making Final Fantasy sequels, I'd love a new version of Actraiser. The touch screen would be excellent for the "sim" mode where you have to help the people build a town and survive, while normal controls could be used for the "action" parts.
The two screens could also be used to good effect by perhaps having the "action" and "sim" portions of the game occurring simultaneously (with the "action" on the top screen) forcing players to switch between looking after the people and fighting off monsters.
Ha, just what I was about to post. The PS1 made gaming cool, but it also started the trend of shallow franchises being endlessly rehashed into sequels.
As much as I enjoyed gaming on my old PS1, I don't know whether to look back on it fondly or as the catalyst of the mediocre and unoriginal franchises we get today...
Yeah me too, it was great catching up with Luigi each time to hear more about his adventure. Despite looking like a "kiddie" game Paper Mario was one of the best games I've played in ages.
I don't know why Nintendo doesn't do something like Super Smash Bros with Mario Kart and open it up to all their franchises. Something like "Nintendo Kart" with characters from all of their popular games could be the tweak needed to break the Mario Kart series out of its current lack of innovation.
What with the vast numbers of people without homes, food or water the ideal solution is clearly to make sure everyone has internet access ASAP so that they can check their email before starving to death or collapsing from dehydration.
Good point, given that it takes fairly exotic cooling to get 550Mhz+ speeds out of the 7800GTX it's likely the higher clock speed of the RSX means a different kind of chip. Probably it has fewer pipelines, so a 24 pipe 7800GTX at 450Mhz would likely be quicker than an RSX with 16 pipelines at 550Mhz.
Presumably Sony will play the yield game and go for something like a 20 pipeline part and disable the non-working pipes on each chip to maximise the number of working chips they can churn out. They're apparently doing that with the Cell chip too by disabling 1 of the 8 "cores".
"No, Halo 2 polarizes fans because of its multiplayer mode... and, more to the point, the problems therein"
No, the single player game wasn't finished and that's the problem with it. I've never played Halo 2's multiplayer as I don't want to pay for Live. The simple fact is the game was too short, towards the end it had too many "copied and pasted" sections of levels and it didn't have an ending.
Comparing Halo 2's "ending" to The Empire Stikes Back is misleading, TESB clearly had a conclusion to its story, Halo 2 just felt like it had a bug that skipped the last level of the game. The game wasn't finished, it was rushed out and it suffered for it. Halo 2 did have some very good, very fun levels early on, but pretty much once you left Earth the game became repetitive and lost the epic feel the Earth levels had.
I was beginning to think everyone had forgotten about Shenmue, Pro-G's prediction that it has a 60% chance of returning is encouraging too. I know there's Shenmue Online but that sounds like it's China only and it's not really a "proper" Shenmue game. I've stopped replaying Shenmue I + II as it's so sad to get to the end of II and know there's every chance I won't find out how the story ends...
I'd also add that NiGHTS is begging for a sequel too, personally I think a DS version could work really well using a tilt sensor cart like the one Nintendo used with Wario Ware Twisted.
It's a somewhat depressing sign how many great Sega titles are in that list. Sega haven't been releasing the same quantity of excellent games like that since the Dreamcast.:(
Exactly, I expect I'm going to have to make the choice between playing GTA:LCS or Mario, Zelda, Street Fighter 2, Chrono Trigger etc. It's going to be a tough one to decide...
Any idea if they improved on that with Doom 2 for the GBA? I know they gave it to a different development team and I thought Doom 2 looked more high-res (maybe higher res textures?) but it seemed to have a lower frame rate than the first GBA one.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed. Admittedly the SNES needed a SuperFX chip to do it, but it did do it (and it was considered by many to be a better port than the 32X and Jaguar conversions too).
Also the article says the 16-bit consoles ran at 7Mhz the SNES actually only ran at 3.58Mhz! It was the MD that ran at 7Mhz. That said the GBA has a 16.7Mhz CPU and it could do Doom too...
Yeah they've made some hints about that, but they were pretty enigmatic about it so I'm not sure if it means they've just added some filtering to remove jagged edges and removed sprite flickering like some emulators do or if they plan on actually re-writing the games with new graphics.
I think Nintendo's time would be better spent making new games rather than polishing up old ones, but we'll have to wait and see I suppose.
I'd be willing to bet given the massive success Nintendo has had with their re-release of old NES games for the GBA and the NES-coloured GBAs, Nintendo will be watching this very closely to see if they can stop it.
With one of Revolution's biggest known features being backwards compatibility right back to the NES I'm sure Nintendo won't want a competing product out there that might cost them a Revolution sale.
Slashdot Mirror
Surely Mario is Missing and Zelda: Wand of Gamelon are ideal ports to the CD-I^H^H^H^H Revolution?
Gates: Well, we don't know everything they are up to, but we do know they aren't using Windows and we disagree with that.
"If you just want to sit around and rub your dog's tummy all day, that's cool."
What if I want to be like Eric Cartman and play red rocket with the pup? Can I do that?
The Governator: As the duly appointed representative to California I feel it is my duty to ban the sale of violent videogames to minors. Now if you will excuse me I'll be back. I have to go and make another movie where I kill lots of people and sexually harass the women on the set.
Someone with a brain: Isn't that being hypocritical Mr Schwarzenegger?
The Governator: Don't insult me, I have never even looked at another man.
Based on the specs you supposedly need to run Vista does the game performance tweaker just install Windows XP for you when you select the games profile? Or does it just open up a browser page for Xbox 360?
Seriously though, if the performance tweaker does provide tangible gaming performance improvements over XP I would very seriously consider the upgrade as games performance is something I consider vital to any OS I use. That said, OpenGL is supposedly just a wrapper to DirectX in Vista so I can't see myself wanting to take that performance killer on.
I think the PC channel on IGN is fairly balanced because they don't get the attention that the console channels do, especially the PS2 and Xbox channels where most of the blatant review fiddling goes on.
For example the rave reviews Halo 2, Knights of the Old Republic or San Andreas got. Halo 2 wasn't finished, neither was KOTOR2 and San Andreas had horrid slow down problems and terrible controls, yet they all got recommended as brilliant games without the flaws even being mentioned. Then there was their review of "Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness" that somehow managed to miss all or the bugs. And lets not get started on their MGS2 review except to say "Emperor's New Clothes".
IGN reviews should be taken with enough salt to cause arterial hardening.
Good point. I could remove the cover from the case and print a picture of tub girl on the back of it. We clearly must ban San Andreas now before children everywhere are exposed to this disgusting mod! Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children???
Yep, I'm sure the review for 24: The Game (stupid title) will be as impartial and fair handed as Fox News' coverage of George Bush's election campaign.
Still I'm sure this won't stop IGN pimping Jessica Chobot on every page as though a girl who plays games is some sort of pull for readers (maybe it is if you're 13 and "like teh playstashun and boobies". I bet the IGN editors were really impressed with her journalistic abilities and hiring her had nothing to do with her having breasts and them having no social skillz.
While I'm sure it won't happen because Squeenix are busy making Final Fantasy sequels, I'd love a new version of Actraiser. The touch screen would be excellent for the "sim" mode where you have to help the people build a town and survive, while normal controls could be used for the "action" parts.
The two screens could also be used to good effect by perhaps having the "action" and "sim" portions of the game occurring simultaneously (with the "action" on the top screen) forcing players to switch between looking after the people and fighting off monsters.
Ha, just what I was about to post. The PS1 made gaming cool, but it also started the trend of shallow franchises being endlessly rehashed into sequels.
As much as I enjoyed gaming on my old PS1, I don't know whether to look back on it fondly or as the catalyst of the mediocre and unoriginal franchises we get today...
Yeah me too, it was great catching up with Luigi each time to hear more about his adventure. Despite looking like a "kiddie" game Paper Mario was one of the best games I've played in ages.
I don't know why Nintendo doesn't do something like Super Smash Bros with Mario Kart and open it up to all their franchises. Something like "Nintendo Kart" with characters from all of their popular games could be the tweak needed to break the Mario Kart series out of its current lack of innovation.
What with the vast numbers of people without homes, food or water the ideal solution is clearly to make sure everyone has internet access ASAP so that they can check their email before starving to death or collapsing from dehydration.
Ha! I use Double-ROT13, no one looks at my f1l3z!
Good point, given that it takes fairly exotic cooling to get 550Mhz+ speeds out of the 7800GTX it's likely the higher clock speed of the RSX means a different kind of chip. Probably it has fewer pipelines, so a 24 pipe 7800GTX at 450Mhz would likely be quicker than an RSX with 16 pipelines at 550Mhz.
Presumably Sony will play the yield game and go for something like a 20 pipeline part and disable the non-working pipes on each chip to maximise the number of working chips they can churn out. They're apparently doing that with the Cell chip too by disabling 1 of the 8 "cores".
Please stop making movies
"No, Halo 2 polarizes fans because of its multiplayer mode... and, more to the point, the problems therein"
No, the single player game wasn't finished and that's the problem with it. I've never played Halo 2's multiplayer as I don't want to pay for Live. The simple fact is the game was too short, towards the end it had too many "copied and pasted" sections of levels and it didn't have an ending.
Comparing Halo 2's "ending" to The Empire Stikes Back is misleading, TESB clearly had a conclusion to its story, Halo 2 just felt like it had a bug that skipped the last level of the game. The game wasn't finished, it was rushed out and it suffered for it. Halo 2 did have some very good, very fun levels early on, but pretty much once you left Earth the game became repetitive and lost the epic feel the Earth levels had.
I was beginning to think everyone had forgotten about Shenmue, Pro-G's prediction that it has a 60% chance of returning is encouraging too. I know there's Shenmue Online but that sounds like it's China only and it's not really a "proper" Shenmue game. I've stopped replaying Shenmue I + II as it's so sad to get to the end of II and know there's every chance I won't find out how the story ends...
:(
I'd also add that NiGHTS is begging for a sequel too, personally I think a DS version could work really well using a tilt sensor cart like the one Nintendo used with Wario Ware Twisted.
It's a somewhat depressing sign how many great Sega titles are in that list. Sega haven't been releasing the same quantity of excellent games like that since the Dreamcast.
Maybe this is the excuse to buy a ceramic white PSP that I've been looking for... ;)
Exactly, I expect I'm going to have to make the choice between playing GTA:LCS or Mario, Zelda, Street Fighter 2, Chrono Trigger etc. It's going to be a tough one to decide...
Any idea if they improved on that with Doom 2 for the GBA? I know they gave it to a different development team and I thought Doom 2 looked more high-res (maybe higher res textures?) but it seemed to have a lower frame rate than the first GBA one.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed. Admittedly the SNES needed a SuperFX chip to do it, but it did do it (and it was considered by many to be a better port than the 32X and Jaguar conversions too).
Also the article says the 16-bit consoles ran at 7Mhz the SNES actually only ran at 3.58Mhz! It was the MD that ran at 7Mhz. That said the GBA has a 16.7Mhz CPU and it could do Doom too...
Intel should hire the guy in Japan who clocked a P4 to 7.1Ghz to supply some liquid nitrogen cooling, I'm sure Intel would win comfortably then!
Yeah they've made some hints about that, but they were pretty enigmatic about it so I'm not sure if it means they've just added some filtering to remove jagged edges and removed sprite flickering like some emulators do or if they plan on actually re-writing the games with new graphics.
I think Nintendo's time would be better spent making new games rather than polishing up old ones, but we'll have to wait and see I suppose.
I'd be willing to bet given the massive success Nintendo has had with their re-release of old NES games for the GBA and the NES-coloured GBAs, Nintendo will be watching this very closely to see if they can stop it.
With one of Revolution's biggest known features being backwards compatibility right back to the NES I'm sure Nintendo won't want a competing product out there that might cost them a Revolution sale.