Yeah, I don't understand why but everyone seems to hate the new Family Guy episodes. Personally I think it's funnier than ever, but I guess there must be something different about it that is putting some people off. I can't see a difference myself though.
The recent episode that had cameos from Soundwave and Cobra Commander was the funniest ever in my book.
The only launches the 360 beats are the Jaguar and the Amstrad GX4000. Thinking back to things like the SNES launch with Mario World, F-Zero, Pilotwings, Actraiser etc it's pretty clear that the 360 hasn't had a great launch. In fact its launch reminds me of the PS2- shortages, stupid prices on eBay, rushed unfinished launch titles and nothing ground breakingly original in the lineup.
Hardly any of the 360's launch games are exclusives, those that are exclusive aren't that great and all of the games were clearly rushed out of the door in a desperate attempt to have some games on the shelf for launch. I think in the long run MS will have to concede that getting your console out the door first isn't a good idea when it means leaving a sour taste in the consumer's mouth.
Forget anything before or since, he's the pinnacle. A truck that tranforms into a fucking robot? Greatest. Toy. Ever.
I'll be happy if they do fully crack the 360...
on
Hacking the Xbox
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
... because I modded my Xbox and put a bigger hard drive in there and it's been one of the best console setups I've ever had. I can install all my games to the hard drive, reset to the menu system via the joypad, FTP files to the Xbox and watch divx/xvid and DVDs in 720p or 1080i.
Before anyone reminds me about the evils of piracy, I do buy all my games, it's just the convenience of not having to keep all my game discs around if on a whim I decide to play one I've not played in a while. I can just turn it on, browse the list and pick whatever takes my fancy. It saves on disc scratching too. In fact the only drawback is that when the hard disk dies (which I had happen a few days ago) you have to spend a few hours loading your games back onto a new drive.
So I eagerly await a mod chip for the 360 that allows me to replace the removable HD with something bigger and to allow me to run imported games from any region, to install my games to the hard disk, play any region DVDs and watch non DRM'ed movie files. I can't wait!
FFXI is just complete shit. The whole thing is is designed to waste people's time so that they don't finish everything within a few days and cancel their subscription. There's barely more game content in there than in a normal Final Fantasy.
The world map for example is massively spread out to make sure it takes ages to get anywhere, that way you can't do anything too quickly. Then when it comes to levelling up your character it takes ages to even advance one level. Plus there's the problems in trying to get a team together. The Japanese generally refuse to play with anyone who isn't Japanese for some reason and when you finally do get a team there's always some idiot who can't do their job properly and gets everyone killed (at which point you lose the precious EXP you'd earned until that point).
Look at the notorious monsters too, some of these bloody things only pop every 3 hours or more, and you can get 50 different people camping for it. So what happens when someone else steals it? Time wasted doing nothing. You can either come back and camp again later or just find something more fun to do like sticking splinters under your nails.
And then there's the subject of the in-game market. Thanks to Squeenix doing fuck all about gill sellers inflation is ridiculously rampant. Items can be priced over 10 times what they should be worth.
Next up, game patches. Can't Squeenix pay for some more bandwidth? The updates get cut off so often it's not even funny, and when it goes wrong it spends ages rechecking the files. And you don't want to know how long it takes to re-install the game after a hard disk crash.
Overall FFXI is just a dedicated time waster, it's designed to keep you playing for playing as long as possible. Just say no.
Personally I don't really like experimentation on animals, so you can try to dehumanise the animals being experimented as much as you want, it won't change my objections.
Definitely, this is my one gripe with all games like this. How hard can it be to allow me to scribble a note and attach it to an area on the map screen?
Metroid is a little bit better in that it gives you the colour of the doors on the map so you know when you can access new areas there, but when there's a big jump or obstable you cannot pass without a new suit or weapon it just gets annoying that you can't write yourself a reminder.
TFA gives a nod to Nintendogs but like you posted, games like Mario Kart, Viewtiful Joe, Sonic, Trauma Center, Advance Wars, Phoenix Wright and others were completely ignored.
I did enjoy this latest Castlevania quite a bit, but I cannot believe it would shift more systems than the sublime Mario Kart DS.
I wonder if the article writer agreed to brown nose the developers at Konami in return for the interview?
Yep, I was very disappointed with the PS2's backward compatibility as well. I thought the "texture smoothing" just made the whole image look blurry. Considering what you could do back then using PC emulators it was quite a let down. Today you can do some quite awesome stuff with the plugins to clean up the image. The N64 has it even better with the ability to create hi-res texture packs for the games.
I would rather have the limited backwards compatibility of the X360 and better graphics than the blurring of the PS2's backwards compatibility. Here's hoping Sony do a better job with the PS3.
Exactly what I was going to post. I don't think any of the biggest current PC games even use more than a 4Gb DVD.
Of course in the PC's case some of the data can be compressed as much of it is copied to the hard drive during install and uncompressed. I believe the GTA games on the consoles needed a full DVD-9 for all the radio stations, whereas the PC version compressed the radio stations to MP3s (or Ogg in San Andreas IIRC).
With the extra grunt of the 360 I would think real time decompression of data when loading levels should be possible making standard DVD-9s more than plenty for most games.
... that Sony paid for this. I mean it's the same looking characters holding PSPs appearing in cities all over the US. If it's not Sony then these are some really dedicated PSP owners out there pushing the brand.
Then again, given the lack of decent games and homebrew on the PSP I'm sure these guys have plenty of spare time to use in trekking across the country shilling for Sony.:p
What did you think was wrong with it? IMHO it had one of the best analogue sticks ever on a joypad, the analogue triggers were a great innovation (and were much nicer than the huge ones on the GC and the stiff ones on the Xbox), and the d-pad was great for fighters. I've never really understood why people hated it so much, as I've always thought it was great.
Cool site! I've got a copy of Propeller Arena, it's one of the many classic Dreamcast games, it's a real pity it never got released. Multiplayer was great fun, it's a shame we'll probably never get a sequel.:(
I love Firefox and it's all I use to browse the web thanks to its extensions, but I think there's more criticism of IE than it fully deserves. Get rid of the extensions in Firefox and I don't believe it's substantially better or worse than IE. They both have most of the features I would want in a browser. Aside from tabs, it's only when you start augmenting Firefox with extensions that it becomes head and shoulders better than IE.
The article talks about scratching "your head at sudden program lockups and crashes", I've found both browsers occasionally crash, in fact I would say IE is marginally more stable than Firefox, although FF is catching up again since 1.07. And I've had the theme in Firefox go odd on a number of occasions making Firefox unusable even in safe mode. I was glad to have IE around then.
The only real criticism of IE is the patching, but I'm not convinced Firefox is any more secure. It's just that IE has the biggest market share and therefore is targeted the most. Firefox has had its fair share of security flaws discovered, if it were at 85%-ish market share, would it be in a constant state of patching too? Not that this excuses MS for having security holes, but if Firefox gets a really good sized share of the market will it be any safer?
This isn't some sort of pro-MS, anti-Firefox rant, as I genuinely prefer Firefox, but I think many of the criticisms of IE are just things people repeat without actually bothering to decide if they are true.
To be frank I couldn't work out what the sentence you quoted was supposed to mean. Maybe it's the way the article poster capitalised the first letter of almost every word in the sentence for no apparent reason, or the way "Shut Out of Market Championed by BellSouth Officer" makes no sense in any way.
But to answer your question, I probably would look at changing my ISP if they started fiddling with the speeds at which sites load. How would I know, for example, if my website is having performance/load issues or if my ISP has just slowed down its loading speed because I haven't paid them to keep my website fast. It's kind of like a protection racket isn't it?
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Yeah, I don't understand why but everyone seems to hate the new Family Guy episodes. Personally I think it's funnier than ever, but I guess there must be something different about it that is putting some people off. I can't see a difference myself though.
The recent episode that had cameos from Soundwave and Cobra Commander was the funniest ever in my book.
I thought Half Life 2 came out last year? Unless you mean the Xbox version, but there can't be 9.5M people with modded Xboxes surely?
The only launches the 360 beats are the Jaguar and the Amstrad GX4000. Thinking back to things like the SNES launch with Mario World, F-Zero, Pilotwings, Actraiser etc it's pretty clear that the 360 hasn't had a great launch. In fact its launch reminds me of the PS2- shortages, stupid prices on eBay, rushed unfinished launch titles and nothing ground breakingly original in the lineup.
Hardly any of the 360's launch games are exclusives, those that are exclusive aren't that great and all of the games were clearly rushed out of the door in a desperate attempt to have some games on the shelf for launch. I think in the long run MS will have to concede that getting your console out the door first isn't a good idea when it means leaving a sour taste in the consumer's mouth.
Forget anything before or since, he's the pinnacle. A truck that tranforms into a fucking robot? Greatest. Toy. Ever.
... because I modded my Xbox and put a bigger hard drive in there and it's been one of the best console setups I've ever had. I can install all my games to the hard drive, reset to the menu system via the joypad, FTP files to the Xbox and watch divx/xvid and DVDs in 720p or 1080i.
Before anyone reminds me about the evils of piracy, I do buy all my games, it's just the convenience of not having to keep all my game discs around if on a whim I decide to play one I've not played in a while. I can just turn it on, browse the list and pick whatever takes my fancy. It saves on disc scratching too. In fact the only drawback is that when the hard disk dies (which I had happen a few days ago) you have to spend a few hours loading your games back onto a new drive.
So I eagerly await a mod chip for the 360 that allows me to replace the removable HD with something bigger and to allow me to run imported games from any region, to install my games to the hard disk, play any region DVDs and watch non DRM'ed movie files. I can't wait!
FFXI is just complete shit. The whole thing is is designed to waste people's time so that they don't finish everything within a few days and cancel their subscription. There's barely more game content in there than in a normal Final Fantasy.
The world map for example is massively spread out to make sure it takes ages to get anywhere, that way you can't do anything too quickly. Then when it comes to levelling up your character it takes ages to even advance one level. Plus there's the problems in trying to get a team together. The Japanese generally refuse to play with anyone who isn't Japanese for some reason and when you finally do get a team there's always some idiot who can't do their job properly and gets everyone killed (at which point you lose the precious EXP you'd earned until that point).
Look at the notorious monsters too, some of these bloody things only pop every 3 hours or more, and you can get 50 different people camping for it. So what happens when someone else steals it? Time wasted doing nothing. You can either come back and camp again later or just find something more fun to do like sticking splinters under your nails.
And then there's the subject of the in-game market. Thanks to Squeenix doing fuck all about gill sellers inflation is ridiculously rampant. Items can be priced over 10 times what they should be worth.
Next up, game patches. Can't Squeenix pay for some more bandwidth? The updates get cut off so often it's not even funny, and when it goes wrong it spends ages rechecking the files. And you don't want to know how long it takes to re-install the game after a hard disk crash.
Overall FFXI is just a dedicated time waster, it's designed to keep you playing for playing as long as possible. Just say no.
...you cross certain boundaries."
Personally I don't really like experimentation on animals, so you can try to dehumanise the animals being experimented as much as you want, it won't change my objections.
... when buying legitimate "CDs" from shops is more likely to get your machine 0wned than just downloading MP3s from Kazaa...
Definitely, this is my one gripe with all games like this. How hard can it be to allow me to scribble a note and attach it to an area on the map screen?
Metroid is a little bit better in that it gives you the colour of the doors on the map so you know when you can access new areas there, but when there's a big jump or obstable you cannot pass without a new suit or weapon it just gets annoying that you can't write yourself a reminder.
Play.com appear to have stock. :)
TFA gives a nod to Nintendogs but like you posted, games like Mario Kart, Viewtiful Joe, Sonic, Trauma Center, Advance Wars, Phoenix Wright and others were completely ignored.
I did enjoy this latest Castlevania quite a bit, but I cannot believe it would shift more systems than the sublime Mario Kart DS.
I wonder if the article writer agreed to brown nose the developers at Konami in return for the interview?
I was amused to read this study made in Germany which shows that more people keep blogs than read them!
How about some Galactica 1980? ;)
I guess you never saw Buck Rogers then? Erin Grey was the incredibly hot Wilma Deering in it.
Yep, I was very disappointed with the PS2's backward compatibility as well. I thought the "texture smoothing" just made the whole image look blurry. Considering what you could do back then using PC emulators it was quite a let down. Today you can do some quite awesome stuff with the plugins to clean up the image. The N64 has it even better with the ability to create hi-res texture packs for the games.
I would rather have the limited backwards compatibility of the X360 and better graphics than the blurring of the PS2's backwards compatibility. Here's hoping Sony do a better job with the PS3.
Exactly what I was going to post. I don't think any of the biggest current PC games even use more than a 4Gb DVD.
Of course in the PC's case some of the data can be compressed as much of it is copied to the hard drive during install and uncompressed. I believe the GTA games on the consoles needed a full DVD-9 for all the radio stations, whereas the PC version compressed the radio stations to MP3s (or Ogg in San Andreas IIRC).
With the extra grunt of the 360 I would think real time decompression of data when loading levels should be possible making standard DVD-9s more than plenty for most games.
... if he's found guilty of witchcraft?
... that Sony paid for this. I mean it's the same looking characters holding PSPs appearing in cities all over the US. If it's not Sony then these are some really dedicated PSP owners out there pushing the brand.
:p
Then again, given the lack of decent games and homebrew on the PSP I'm sure these guys have plenty of spare time to use in trekking across the country shilling for Sony.
You're not the only one who plays his DC more than the PS2. It's a classic system.
What did you think was wrong with it? IMHO it had one of the best analogue sticks ever on a joypad, the analogue triggers were a great innovation (and were much nicer than the huge ones on the GC and the stiff ones on the Xbox), and the d-pad was great for fighters. I've never really understood why people hated it so much, as I've always thought it was great.
Cool site! I've got a copy of Propeller Arena, it's one of the many classic Dreamcast games, it's a real pity it never got released. Multiplayer was great fun, it's a shame we'll probably never get a sequel. :(
Yep, plus if you don't have a DS it's a little bit more than $29.99...
Still if anyone doesn't have a DS I strongly recommend getting one, Mario Kart is amazing.
You'd think less talking would appeal less to women gamers.
I love Firefox and it's all I use to browse the web thanks to its extensions, but I think there's more criticism of IE than it fully deserves. Get rid of the extensions in Firefox and I don't believe it's substantially better or worse than IE. They both have most of the features I would want in a browser. Aside from tabs, it's only when you start augmenting Firefox with extensions that it becomes head and shoulders better than IE.
The article talks about scratching "your head at sudden program lockups and crashes", I've found both browsers occasionally crash, in fact I would say IE is marginally more stable than Firefox, although FF is catching up again since 1.07. And I've had the theme in Firefox go odd on a number of occasions making Firefox unusable even in safe mode. I was glad to have IE around then.
The only real criticism of IE is the patching, but I'm not convinced Firefox is any more secure. It's just that IE has the biggest market share and therefore is targeted the most. Firefox has had its fair share of security flaws discovered, if it were at 85%-ish market share, would it be in a constant state of patching too? Not that this excuses MS for having security holes, but if Firefox gets a really good sized share of the market will it be any safer?
This isn't some sort of pro-MS, anti-Firefox rant, as I genuinely prefer Firefox, but I think many of the criticisms of IE are just things people repeat without actually bothering to decide if they are true.
To be frank I couldn't work out what the sentence you quoted was supposed to mean. Maybe it's the way the article poster capitalised the first letter of almost every word in the sentence for no apparent reason, or the way "Shut Out of Market Championed by BellSouth Officer" makes no sense in any way.
But to answer your question, I probably would look at changing my ISP if they started fiddling with the speeds at which sites load. How would I know, for example, if my website is having performance/load issues or if my ISP has just slowed down its loading speed because I haven't paid them to keep my website fast. It's kind of like a protection racket isn't it?