I disagree about css. Unfortunatly it is STILL not supported properly in IE, so perhaps waiting a few more years before you move to it would be prudent...
But seriously css makes the designing and layout of a page SO INCREDABLY EASY!!! I used to create pages by making a photoshop picture of the page, then went to work slicing up the image so it would layout in html tables correctly. That process would take me almost all day. Then by the time I was done, making any drastic changes to the site would invovle lots of work to shift things around.
I redid my page in css. Not only does it look better, but changing the layout is phenominally easy. Granted I am new to css so the design is not as strong as the html table layouts I am used to doing, but the simplicity of css design is something that shouldn't be dismissed.
For the fun of it, I started designing different layouts for my page around holidays. With css, I just toss up a new style sheet in the directory, have the asp load one according to the date, and that's all I have to do for a new look.
Do a search on google for css zen garden. You'll see what can be done with style sheets. You wouldn't be able do anything like that without css.
Don't dismiss it because IE doens't know how to implement it. It is a wonderful tool.
Thank you, you took the words right out of my mouth. I agree with you 100%. I created a personal site on my machine that allows myself, and my friends to post on it. We check it daily. It keeps us in touch. We are all in different states, but keep in touch through the board. We post pictures of things that happened, and make little stories or interesting urls. It's just our outlet to keep track of what is going on in our lives, and it matters to me, and my friends.
That's my corner of the web, I bought the computer, I'm paying for the connection that it's hosted on, and I built it with my own time. I frankly don't care if it offends someone by clogging up a slot on google. God knows what you would have to type to get it to come up anyways.
Personal web spaces don't need to be praised or critiszed. There's no need to defend having them, it's just one more freedom that we can exercise if we so choose to. Just the fact that the "common man" can create such a powerful outlet for his voice with geocities and 30 minutes of his time is such a wonderful thing.
Either way, personal websites aren't going away, and hopefully they never will.
I was pretty young when it came out, so I just got enjoyment from running and dieing on the booby traps in various interesting ways. I also spent a lot of time changing directions on cliff edges to watch him do the turning around animation in midair and run back onto solid ground. I was just blown away by how smooth the prince was.
For the second one, I just spent lots and lots of time killing guys on the dock until they overwhelmed me.
You beat me to that post. I agree with the author, but wouldn't use Morrowind as a counter example. For whatever reason, that game really did get me into my character. The whole game _was_ your character. It was so open ended, and you were so free to craft him exactly how you wanted, and associate him with whomever you wanted, that you couldn't help but get into "your guy". I guess when I think back to morrowind, I think of my balding televani mage with his black stronghold out in the blight. I don't really have a name to give to him when I remember him, but I definatly remember the personality I created for him.
This wasn't as true with games like baldurs gate and icewind dale. I'm not sure why though. But for the same tolken, I don't remember my guy from Ultima Underworld either.
But yeah, the rpg's with the plot on rails, create more memorable characters. I definatly enjoyed ff7 - 10 characters (less so of 10). I think 8 is a good example of what the author is saying. The plot for it was just so... well, stupid and lame, but I really liked the characters and their conflicts. Well, it started out really strong, and turned stupid halfway through it and just plain dumb at the end, but the characters were really good.
Morrowind is sort just an exception becuase it's such a wonderful game. I think I need to go buy those expansions now...
These days, teams of hundreds of people work on eye candy and very few develop the actual gameplay
Please go find an old pc review magazine from say the 1990's and I'm sure you'll dig up this quote in some form or another back then. Back then, they spent just as much time working on those "primative" graphics as they do now (probably alot more now actually), but either way, the "you fuck up gameplay by wasting your gime on graphics" is getting a little tired and old.
We know, they know, everybody knows, but that doesn't stop people from dislinking a game that suffers in graphics. How many times have you read "graphics are looking dated" in one reveiw or another?
Face the truth, we want graphics AND gameplay, and developers aren't sitting there saying "oh, well, we only have 12 months to do this, so lets just work on graphics for 10 months, then we can figure out something to do with the graphics later"
Why don't people be an individual by not "being an individual". That "I don't do mainstream" is such a fad by now. Look at reviews, look at gameplay movies, look at screen shots, PLAY the game, and if you like it, you like it. If it happens to be "mainstream", and you don't like it because of that one fact, I'm sorry you have to be that sad.
Anyway, I ramble, just face it, the first time you touched a genera defining game way back is an experience you aren't going to repeate ever again, until they come up with a new genera that is. My first adventure game was kings quest IV, nothing's going to ever be that fun and memorable again like that game.
Ok, I need to shut up now, I had much more fun gaming when I never talked about it or read about it and just liked what I liked and hated what I hated.
I play both consols and pc games, though I've been playing pc games for much longer and more frequently then the consols. Halo was great. It should have come out on the pc first though as was oringally planned, those bastards.
In any event, I didn't play halo until a few months ago. I loved it, and I don't know why. Level design was so so, graphics weren't that good, most of the time you were going to one end of a level then fighting back out of it, yawn?
But, wow, I loved killing aliens. I would say the best feature of halo was not the vehicles, those bored me, but the grenades. I don't know how much fun I'd have giggling when a plasma grenade stuck to an alien and he ran around screaming "get it off get it off" then would blow up and fly into the air and send his buddies with him. Even better was when it would ignite a pile of grenades laying on the ground near by, I could do that all day.
I love the sound and feel of the pistol and the marine machine gun, they are just so fun to light aliens up with. I also love clubbing them on the head with it, it was just very cool.
And that's where it sold me, It was just very cool. My roomate was playing it the other day on the pc (we were disapoitned with the debacle, no co op, wtf?) but he said "i'm halfway through the game already and I dont even know why I'm playing it, it doesnt look good, I've already played through it 3 times, but I just cant put it down".
To me, that's what makes a good game. I dont care about theme, I dont care about story, I dont care about level design (unless its really bad), hell, I even had a pretty easy time with the xbox controler. I care about the gameplay, and halo's was great, and thats why I couldn't put it down, and that's why it deserves the attention it gets. It's just one of those rare games where everything clicks, and it plays like the developers intended, and is just FUN to be playing.
That's pretty funny, because I used to be the same way with my dad. I'm 23 now, but I would sit there and watch him play games all the time. I don't know if I made the "this is boring" comments, but I probably did. I think I was pretty annoying, I don't know how he put up with me. But we did play a lot of adventure games together and such, but he wouldnt really wait too long for me to finish up reading stuff, so concequently, when reading video game text on the screen I power through it faster then a lot of people, because I had to do that to make sure I got to read it all before he moved on to the next block of text.
But I've played games in front of younger kids who get "bored" or even worse, already know the game inside and out. For example, I was very late in coming to the zelda game on the n64, so when I did get around to playing through it, my gf at the time's younger brother kept wincing and making frustarted noises when I walked past something i was supposed to do. This ruined the game for me because I wanted to figure stuff out, not be tipped off at something by the noises someone else was making when you walk by it.
Hopefully when I become a parent I'll be the game master and wont have to worry about this:P
I think it should be up to the parents to decide what games are appropriate for their children, not a rating system. I grew up playing all sorts of games from an early age because my dad got all sorts of them. The only games he didn't let me play were the liesure suit larry ones (but I did get to play them when they came out in vga!:) ).
Other then that, I played all sorts of violent games. Anyone remember manhunter, those awesome sierra adventure game? Those were bloody violent, let me tell you. I played doom, wolfstien, all those fps games. I played those incredibly violent flight sims where I'd send tons of ammuntion on ground targets and shoot down multitudes of human flown planes. I played the violent perfect general against my father, where we'd bombard towns with artillery and destroy tanks and transports full of infantry. Anyone play phantasmagoria?
Ahh, about every game I can think of thats out there is violent. I don't see why GTA is worse then any others, as everyone likes to bring up. I guess everyone has trouble accepting it because its set in present times, and not a distant fantsy world?
Well anyway, the point is, I grew up on violent video games, and my dad knew just what he was giving me to play, and in fact played a lot of them with me, or I would sit there watching him play. We grew up fine, in fact, that is probably the only thing I am comfortable talking to my father about, the violent video games we played and still do play.
They brought my family closer together. Why don't the stores leave well enough alone, and let their parents restrict what their kids are playing. Violence in video games is not a bad thing at all, not by a long shot.
Does this mean I have to dig out all those fancy grid system passwords I have written down from way back? I hope they make use of the memory cards now:)
I agree with you. Mark of Kri for the ps2 also had this system. It was broken up into longer levels. You would find save scrolls scattered throughout the level. Sometimes they would even be hidden. When you got to a point where other games would "autosave" they would just throw a scroll in the middle of the path that you couldn't miss. This system worked great, because you can save at designated save points on the level, and you can save the game whenever if you have to run somewhere and shut the game off. The balance with them was so good, that you would only want to use your extra save scrolls for when you had to leave the game, and not as you would quicksave/load.
I agree with you to some extent. You do lose out on pure driving experience with all the safty features. In my roomate's vw GTI we usually turn off the ESP when driving in the snow so we can enjoy our driving.
The thing is, when you are enjoying driving, chances are you aren't driving as you should be on public roads. Not for one second should you be drifting through a turn as fast as you can like a rally driver on the public roads.
If you want to be driving like that, you should be on a race track, or in an area designated for that type of driving, not out on what you think are abandoned roads. You never know when that guy decided to take his dog out for a walk on the road, and is standing in the middle of it because cars dont come there.
Anyway, if such is the case, and that's what you like doing, chances are you will have a car designed for driving hard on the track, and that's where the car should stay, on the track.
Driving on public streets should be dull and boring and safe. For every person out there who can't make a quick decision and follow traffic patterns unknown to them, theres a guy who thinks he knows the road too well and is driving too hard for the traffic. Both of these people cause accidents.
Enjoy your driving on the track, and keep it off the streets, where you could hit me, because I didn't see you coming up on me at 120mph when I decided to change lanes.
ABS saved me from an accident. A car to my right, up ahead in front of me, was making a left. The car stopped, looked (??), and still pulled out in front of me while I was traveling 40 mph and was so close that full on breaking in good conditions would have plowed me into her driver side door.
I hadn't been in a panic situation like that. I had played around with the car before, so I was familiar with driving it somewhat out of control. But when something unexpected like that happens and you panic, my foot went right to the break. I managed to steer left of the car, actually heading towards cars waiting to make a left onto the road the driver was pulling out of. I then steered the car right, past those cars, back into my lane, and then I just recall my car fishtaling a bit before getting straight again.
Without the ABS my full breaking would have probably locked the wheels and I would have drove right into the cars making the left, or I might not have even been able to swerve around the car in front of me.
There was no option to stop the car and have a tighter stopping distance, it was just too close. ABS doesn't increase your stop distance so much that it's a signifcent advantage not to have it.
A good driver should be able to identify anything that would cause hard breaking soon enough to slow up and break before hitting whatever it is. Anything else that pops out at you has to be steered around, there won't be time to stop.
Maybe later in life after I have been driving for a lot longer and in more near hits, I'll be calm enough to not panic and pulse my breaks and control the skid around the obsticle, until then, give me abs please, thanks.
Leveling and skilling up do not work in a competative environment. They work in single player vs ai. As has been stated numerous times above, players want power, to be stronger then the other guys, so they can walk their level 65 guy back to the starting point and awe the newbies with their greatness, or kill them, depending on the game.
This does not work, because, as was said, 75% of the guys are on the bottom rung. Being bottom rung sucks, but of coarse the upper tier wont have as much fun if the bottom rung isnt below them. How do you accomodate both? Take the action route.
How about, as soon as I get into the game, I can experience all the content? I picked a warrior. My friend picked a mage. I spent my starting points (the only points I get at all during my gaming experience) on a certain skill route. I can do x skill, and my friend can cast x spells. This is my character.
I walk into the game, and my character can get all the way to the bottom of death cave, or climb widows peak and beat Bargfart the oger.
But wait, it's hard to get to Bargfart, I can't do it by myself, I need at liest 30 other guys to make the dungeon crawl and get to him and kill him. We all assemble at the bottom of widows peak. We let anyone in the group, because we dont care about experience being bogged down.
There's a lot to do to get to Bargfart. We first have to go kill each of his henchmen located in the surrounding areas, and get the keys to his castle. This takes a few hours. We lose some people in the group and gain a few. Theres maybe 10 of us left when we get to Bargfart's castle keep. There's a group of 5 or so waiting for more to come by so that we can kill Bargfart. We group up, we go in, we kill Bargfart, and all get a nifty Bargfart helmet we can wear.
Let's say theres no pvp in the game, because that works and makes most people happy. Bargfarts helm lets me take more damage then before. But most imporantly, it looks like I have a giant caved out oger skull on my head. Thats cool. I can walk around and people can say, awesome Bargfart helm.
The best part about EQ, one of the most successful MMORPG's out there, was the world itself. Lots of variety, each zone was extreemly fun to explore, and be a part of, there was just so much variety and character all over the game world it was just a delight to be in the game itself and walking around.
Getting items are fun to. If everyone's the same powerbase, and the only thing modifying you are items, and a stack of certain items wont make you powerful enough to do everything on your own, you have a huge game world to play in all of a sudden.
You remove the, we made this area for low skill players, this ones for high level players, and the mid range players get this zone. Whats that you say, your friends aren't the same level as you? Guess your fucked.
Get rid of that, make every area accessable, use zoning so you get more content, make a shit load of items that you can wear and use with a different look, let you do things to mod the look of your items and clothing. Let the person get horses or wierd mounts.
Make the dungeon crawling challenging, needing a large group. Do odd things to zones like have monsters that are immune to all missle weapons, or can only be harmed by silver daggers.
Make a fucking world where you can all play together and be social, and the only thing you are competing for is a cooler looking character. The challenge should be the volume of mobs and difficulty in defeating them. Maybe to get to kill Bargfart I needed to go kill the Dragon back there to get a dragon scale spear that can pierce bargfart's armor.
That's adventure folks, that'll keep people, that'll let you shit out content for breakfast that everyone can appreciate. Leveling, skills, that's so 1960's, move on please.
Moving from 2D to 3D games was more then just a change in graphics... it was the dump of a whole genera. The playstyle in any 3d game is much different then the 3d, if not just for the fact that in 3d you have to fight with the camera.
Done well, a 3d game is a lot of fun and can look great. But games that handle the 3d camera properly are few and far between. But you miss stuff in a 3d game. I recal watching my friend play half life, missing out on some great scripted sequences because he was looking the wrong way.
2D is just great with no camera hastles, not missing any content, and the gameplay can be just all around fun. Like was mentioned above, the snes zelda was the best. Zelda was awesome for that top down view, moved to n64, and gc, it was ho hum.
Really, they should make more games ala donkey kong, creating the world in 3d, then generating the sprites from the renders. I really enjoy that look to a game.
Anyway, this reminds me of the old duke nukem games which I loved, this should be fun:)
If you give it a try, please come in and try SVS (standard VIE settings) zones, rather then the insta kill zones that seem to be so popular. SVS suffers from a lack of players, but the gameplay is infinatly more rewarding then the super zones once you get it down.
"As an off-and-on FFXI player, I've had to deal with Square taking the latter position (albeit on bugs rather than cracks) far too often."
Isn't FFXI in beta still? Why are you complaining about what you lost in a beta test? You are beta testing the game... good job finding the bug... go find the next one, stop complaining, and do your job there.
If that still happens during release, then thats a problem, but not in a beta.
...so I didn't get to read.
That said, I think the biggest problem with not having girl gamers is the fact that video games are still not a "girl toy", much like a barby doll isnt a "boy toy". (I'm sure someones going to think of something funny to say to that).
Most female gamer's I've run across started because of their boyfriend or husband's addiction. They'll start seeing them, then jump on the gaming bandwagon.
Intrest isn't usually enough to keep the player either. A lot of women will be interested in gaming, and pick it up and give it a try, and simply find it too hard to get into.
I'm a long time gamer, so picking up a new game isn't too hard for me. That said, I still have a hell of a time doing well in multiplayer games. I don't have the time it takes to get good at them. Usually this drives me away from many games, because going online, losing all the time, and being told to "stfu newb" whenever you say something, is quite frustrating. Really good games I'll stay on for the stretch though.
But what if I had never touched a computer game in my life? The frustration would be so much I'd just go back to doing what I've always been doing. Jumpping on a computer isn't natrual to non computer users. Way back I had my fiance jump on rogue squadron because she loves star wars. She couldnt even operate the arrow keys correctly to fly the plane around. I thought using the arrow keys was a natraul skill and easy to use, but she had a lot of difficutly with it.
I remember making the switch from doom/duke3d on the keyboard to quake. I tried so hard to play quake with a keyboard, but you just couldn't do it. It took me a while to pick up the mouse/keyboard control scheme.
Now throw a novice into a game of q3 or UT and see how hard it is to get going? How can you learn to walk when you are getting blow up ever 2 seconds?
Consol gaming is easy to get them into it. Its very entertainment oriented, and the controls aren't overly complex to start out.
Actually my last girlfriend kicked my ass left and right on any nintendo game we played together. I couldn't touch her in sf2 on the snes. Her timing in all the competative nes games just dominated mine. She also showed me where everything was in zelda on the snes so I could actually get through the game quite easily.
But we broke up, and she's got a girlfriend now... So maybe it is genetic;)
I think the grid has more do do with gameplay then simplicity. When you have to measure out who is going to be struck by a target and where you are able to move, the grid makes it managable. If there is a bad guy 6 squares away from me, and I can only move 4 squares, its really hard to judge how far away he is without a grid, as well as hard for me to judge how close I need to be to strike him with a weapon. Basically the grid allows you to make much better tactical decision without having to use a lot of trial an error systems (clicking on move, showing in green where i can move and in red where i cant, then another click to move to the location).
Strait tactical shooting games like jagged alliance didn't need a visable grid system and they worked, but when you have melee and the need to get in close, the grid is much more prefered. To add complication to the matter they could use a hex system or shrink the size of the grid. But I guess if they shrunk it enough it would be the same as "not having a grid".
Either way, it does add a lot to the gameplay and lets you move your units with much more precision then you would in a gridless system.
Slashdot Mirror
heh loved the pawn connecting to the knights balls with his staff, followed by the comical expression and topple of the knight. Good stuff.
I disagree about css. Unfortunatly it is STILL not supported properly in IE, so perhaps waiting a few more years before you move to it would be prudent...
But seriously css makes the designing and layout of a page SO INCREDABLY EASY!!! I used to create pages by making a photoshop picture of the page, then went to work slicing up the image so it would layout in html tables correctly. That process would take me almost all day. Then by the time I was done, making any drastic changes to the site would invovle lots of work to shift things around.
I redid my page in css. Not only does it look better, but changing the layout is phenominally easy. Granted I am new to css so the design is not as strong as the html table layouts I am used to doing, but the simplicity of css design is something that shouldn't be dismissed.
For the fun of it, I started designing different layouts for my page around holidays. With css, I just toss up a new style sheet in the directory, have the asp load one according to the date, and that's all I have to do for a new look.
Do a search on google for css zen garden. You'll see what can be done with style sheets. You wouldn't be able do anything like that without css.
Don't dismiss it because IE doens't know how to implement it. It is a wonderful tool.
Thank you, you took the words right out of my mouth. I agree with you 100%. I created a personal site on my machine that allows myself, and my friends to post on it. We check it daily. It keeps us in touch. We are all in different states, but keep in touch through the board. We post pictures of things that happened, and make little stories or interesting urls. It's just our outlet to keep track of what is going on in our lives, and it matters to me, and my friends.
That's my corner of the web, I bought the computer, I'm paying for the connection that it's hosted on, and I built it with my own time. I frankly don't care if it offends someone by clogging up a slot on google. God knows what you would have to type to get it to come up anyways.
Personal web spaces don't need to be praised or critiszed. There's no need to defend having them, it's just one more freedom that we can exercise if we so choose to. Just the fact that the "common man" can create such a powerful outlet for his voice with geocities and 30 minutes of his time is such a wonderful thing.
Either way, personal websites aren't going away, and hopefully they never will.
I was pretty young when it came out, so I just got enjoyment from running and dieing on the booby traps in various interesting ways. I also spent a lot of time changing directions on cliff edges to watch him do the turning around animation in midair and run back onto solid ground. I was just blown away by how smooth the prince was.
:)
For the second one, I just spent lots and lots of time killing guys on the dock until they overwhelmed me.
I never got very far in either game
You beat me to that post. I agree with the author, but wouldn't use Morrowind as a counter example. For whatever reason, that game really did get me into my character. The whole game _was_ your character. It was so open ended, and you were so free to craft him exactly how you wanted, and associate him with whomever you wanted, that you couldn't help but get into "your guy". I guess when I think back to morrowind, I think of my balding televani mage with his black stronghold out in the blight. I don't really have a name to give to him when I remember him, but I definatly remember the personality I created for him.
This wasn't as true with games like baldurs gate and icewind dale. I'm not sure why though. But for the same tolken, I don't remember my guy from Ultima Underworld either.
But yeah, the rpg's with the plot on rails, create more memorable characters. I definatly enjoyed ff7 - 10 characters (less so of 10). I think 8 is a good example of what the author is saying. The plot for it was just so... well, stupid and lame, but I really liked the characters and their conflicts. Well, it started out really strong, and turned stupid halfway through it and just plain dumb at the end, but the characters were really good.
Morrowind is sort just an exception becuase it's such a wonderful game. I think I need to go buy those expansions now...
Only started at ultima V... hows IV compare to final fantasy tactic's story?
These days, teams of hundreds of people work on eye candy and very few develop the actual gameplay
Please go find an old pc review magazine from say the 1990's and I'm sure you'll dig up this quote in some form or another back then. Back then, they spent just as much time working on those "primative" graphics as they do now (probably alot more now actually), but either way, the "you fuck up gameplay by wasting your gime on graphics" is getting a little tired and old.
We know, they know, everybody knows, but that doesn't stop people from dislinking a game that suffers in graphics. How many times have you read "graphics are looking dated" in one reveiw or another?
Face the truth, we want graphics AND gameplay, and developers aren't sitting there saying "oh, well, we only have 12 months to do this, so lets just work on graphics for 10 months, then we can figure out something to do with the graphics later"
Why don't people be an individual by not "being an individual". That "I don't do mainstream" is such a fad by now. Look at reviews, look at gameplay movies, look at screen shots, PLAY the game, and if you like it, you like it. If it happens to be "mainstream", and you don't like it because of that one fact, I'm sorry you have to be that sad.
Anyway, I ramble, just face it, the first time you touched a genera defining game way back is an experience you aren't going to repeate ever again, until they come up with a new genera that is. My first adventure game was kings quest IV, nothing's going to ever be that fun and memorable again like that game.
Ok, I need to shut up now, I had much more fun gaming when I never talked about it or read about it and just liked what I liked and hated what I hated.
I play both consols and pc games, though I've been playing pc games for much longer and more frequently then the consols. Halo was great. It should have come out on the pc first though as was oringally planned, those bastards.
In any event, I didn't play halo until a few months ago. I loved it, and I don't know why. Level design was so so, graphics weren't that good, most of the time you were going to one end of a level then fighting back out of it, yawn?
But, wow, I loved killing aliens. I would say the best feature of halo was not the vehicles, those bored me, but the grenades. I don't know how much fun I'd have giggling when a plasma grenade stuck to an alien and he ran around screaming "get it off get it off" then would blow up and fly into the air and send his buddies with him. Even better was when it would ignite a pile of grenades laying on the ground near by, I could do that all day.
I love the sound and feel of the pistol and the marine machine gun, they are just so fun to light aliens up with. I also love clubbing them on the head with it, it was just very cool.
And that's where it sold me, It was just very cool. My roomate was playing it the other day on the pc (we were disapoitned with the debacle, no co op, wtf?) but he said "i'm halfway through the game already and I dont even know why I'm playing it, it doesnt look good, I've already played through it 3 times, but I just cant put it down".
To me, that's what makes a good game. I dont care about theme, I dont care about story, I dont care about level design (unless its really bad), hell, I even had a pretty easy time with the xbox controler. I care about the gameplay, and halo's was great, and thats why I couldn't put it down, and that's why it deserves the attention it gets. It's just one of those rare games where everything clicks, and it plays like the developers intended, and is just FUN to be playing.
That's pretty funny, because I used to be the same way with my dad. I'm 23 now, but I would sit there and watch him play games all the time. I don't know if I made the "this is boring" comments, but I probably did. I think I was pretty annoying, I don't know how he put up with me. But we did play a lot of adventure games together and such, but he wouldnt really wait too long for me to finish up reading stuff, so concequently, when reading video game text on the screen I power through it faster then a lot of people, because I had to do that to make sure I got to read it all before he moved on to the next block of text.
:P
But I've played games in front of younger kids who get "bored" or even worse, already know the game inside and out. For example, I was very late in coming to the zelda game on the n64, so when I did get around to playing through it, my gf at the time's younger brother kept wincing and making frustarted noises when I walked past something i was supposed to do. This ruined the game for me because I wanted to figure stuff out, not be tipped off at something by the noises someone else was making when you walk by it.
Hopefully when I become a parent I'll be the game master and wont have to worry about this
I think it should be up to the parents to decide what games are appropriate for their children, not a rating system. I grew up playing all sorts of games from an early age because my dad got all sorts of them. The only games he didn't let me play were the liesure suit larry ones (but I did get to play them when they came out in vga! :) ).
Other then that, I played all sorts of violent games. Anyone remember manhunter, those awesome sierra adventure game? Those were bloody violent, let me tell you. I played doom, wolfstien, all those fps games. I played those incredibly violent flight sims where I'd send tons of ammuntion on ground targets and shoot down multitudes of human flown planes. I played the violent perfect general against my father, where we'd bombard towns with artillery and destroy tanks and transports full of infantry. Anyone play phantasmagoria?
Ahh, about every game I can think of thats out there is violent. I don't see why GTA is worse then any others, as everyone likes to bring up. I guess everyone has trouble accepting it because its set in present times, and not a distant fantsy world?
Well anyway, the point is, I grew up on violent video games, and my dad knew just what he was giving me to play, and in fact played a lot of them with me, or I would sit there watching him play. We grew up fine, in fact, that is probably the only thing I am comfortable talking to my father about, the violent video games we played and still do play.
They brought my family closer together. Why don't the stores leave well enough alone, and let their parents restrict what their kids are playing. Violence in video games is not a bad thing at all, not by a long shot.
Does this mean I have to dig out all those fancy grid system passwords I have written down from way back? I hope they make use of the memory cards now :)
I agree with you. Mark of Kri for the ps2 also had this system. It was broken up into longer levels. You would find save scrolls scattered throughout the level. Sometimes they would even be hidden. When you got to a point where other games would "autosave" they would just throw a scroll in the middle of the path that you couldn't miss. This system worked great, because you can save at designated save points on the level, and you can save the game whenever if you have to run somewhere and shut the game off. The balance with them was so good, that you would only want to use your extra save scrolls for when you had to leave the game, and not as you would quicksave/load.
I agree with you to some extent. You do lose out on pure driving experience with all the safty features. In my roomate's vw GTI we usually turn off the ESP when driving in the snow so we can enjoy our driving. The thing is, when you are enjoying driving, chances are you aren't driving as you should be on public roads. Not for one second should you be drifting through a turn as fast as you can like a rally driver on the public roads. If you want to be driving like that, you should be on a race track, or in an area designated for that type of driving, not out on what you think are abandoned roads. You never know when that guy decided to take his dog out for a walk on the road, and is standing in the middle of it because cars dont come there. Anyway, if such is the case, and that's what you like doing, chances are you will have a car designed for driving hard on the track, and that's where the car should stay, on the track. Driving on public streets should be dull and boring and safe. For every person out there who can't make a quick decision and follow traffic patterns unknown to them, theres a guy who thinks he knows the road too well and is driving too hard for the traffic. Both of these people cause accidents. Enjoy your driving on the track, and keep it off the streets, where you could hit me, because I didn't see you coming up on me at 120mph when I decided to change lanes.
ABS saved me from an accident. A car to my right, up ahead in front of me, was making a left. The car stopped, looked (??), and still pulled out in front of me while I was traveling 40 mph and was so close that full on breaking in good conditions would have plowed me into her driver side door.
I hadn't been in a panic situation like that. I had played around with the car before, so I was familiar with driving it somewhat out of control. But when something unexpected like that happens and you panic, my foot went right to the break. I managed to steer left of the car, actually heading towards cars waiting to make a left onto the road the driver was pulling out of. I then steered the car right, past those cars, back into my lane, and then I just recall my car fishtaling a bit before getting straight again.
Without the ABS my full breaking would have probably locked the wheels and I would have drove right into the cars making the left, or I might not have even been able to swerve around the car in front of me.
There was no option to stop the car and have a tighter stopping distance, it was just too close. ABS doesn't increase your stop distance so much that it's a signifcent advantage not to have it.
A good driver should be able to identify anything that would cause hard breaking soon enough to slow up and break before hitting whatever it is. Anything else that pops out at you has to be steered around, there won't be time to stop.
Maybe later in life after I have been driving for a lot longer and in more near hits, I'll be calm enough to not panic and pulse my breaks and control the skid around the obsticle, until then, give me abs please, thanks.
...or does GTA mymic real life and idiots like these two kids?
How about we blame the people that pointed the gun at human beings and pulled the trigger?
I agree 100%.
Leveling and skilling up do not work in a competative environment. They work in single player vs ai. As has been stated numerous times above, players want power, to be stronger then the other guys, so they can walk their level 65 guy back to the starting point and awe the newbies with their greatness, or kill them, depending on the game.
This does not work, because, as was said, 75% of the guys are on the bottom rung. Being bottom rung sucks, but of coarse the upper tier wont have as much fun if the bottom rung isnt below them. How do you accomodate both? Take the action route.
How about, as soon as I get into the game, I can experience all the content? I picked a warrior. My friend picked a mage. I spent my starting points (the only points I get at all during my gaming experience) on a certain skill route. I can do x skill, and my friend can cast x spells. This is my character.
I walk into the game, and my character can get all the way to the bottom of death cave, or climb widows peak and beat Bargfart the oger.
But wait, it's hard to get to Bargfart, I can't do it by myself, I need at liest 30 other guys to make the dungeon crawl and get to him and kill him. We all assemble at the bottom of widows peak. We let anyone in the group, because we dont care about experience being bogged down.
There's a lot to do to get to Bargfart. We first have to go kill each of his henchmen located in the surrounding areas, and get the keys to his castle. This takes a few hours. We lose some people in the group and gain a few. Theres maybe 10 of us left when we get to Bargfart's castle keep. There's a group of 5 or so waiting for more to come by so that we can kill Bargfart. We group up, we go in, we kill Bargfart, and all get a nifty Bargfart helmet we can wear.
Let's say theres no pvp in the game, because that works and makes most people happy. Bargfarts helm lets me take more damage then before. But most imporantly, it looks like I have a giant caved out oger skull on my head. Thats cool. I can walk around and people can say, awesome Bargfart helm.
The best part about EQ, one of the most successful MMORPG's out there, was the world itself. Lots of variety, each zone was extreemly fun to explore, and be a part of, there was just so much variety and character all over the game world it was just a delight to be in the game itself and walking around.
Getting items are fun to. If everyone's the same powerbase, and the only thing modifying you are items, and a stack of certain items wont make you powerful enough to do everything on your own, you have a huge game world to play in all of a sudden.
You remove the, we made this area for low skill players, this ones for high level players, and the mid range players get this zone. Whats that you say, your friends aren't the same level as you? Guess your fucked.
Get rid of that, make every area accessable, use zoning so you get more content, make a shit load of items that you can wear and use with a different look, let you do things to mod the look of your items and clothing. Let the person get horses or wierd mounts.
Make the dungeon crawling challenging, needing a large group. Do odd things to zones like have monsters that are immune to all missle weapons, or can only be harmed by silver daggers.
Make a fucking world where you can all play together and be social, and the only thing you are competing for is a cooler looking character. The challenge should be the volume of mobs and difficulty in defeating them. Maybe to get to kill Bargfart I needed to go kill the Dragon back there to get a dragon scale spear that can pierce bargfart's armor.
That's adventure folks, that'll keep people, that'll let you shit out content for breakfast that everyone can appreciate. Leveling, skills, that's so 1960's, move on please.
Moving from 2D to 3D games was more then just a change in graphics... it was the dump of a whole genera. The playstyle in any 3d game is much different then the 3d, if not just for the fact that in 3d you have to fight with the camera.
:)
Done well, a 3d game is a lot of fun and can look great. But games that handle the 3d camera properly are few and far between. But you miss stuff in a 3d game. I recal watching my friend play half life, missing out on some great scripted sequences because he was looking the wrong way.
2D is just great with no camera hastles, not missing any content, and the gameplay can be just all around fun. Like was mentioned above, the snes zelda was the best. Zelda was awesome for that top down view, moved to n64, and gc, it was ho hum.
Really, they should make more games ala donkey kong, creating the world in 3d, then generating the sprites from the renders. I really enjoy that look to a game.
Anyway, this reminds me of the old duke nukem games which I loved, this should be fun
It's free and has been going strong for years.
If you want to call that mess "going strong"...
If you give it a try, please come in and try SVS (standard VIE settings) zones, rather then the insta kill zones that seem to be so popular. SVS suffers from a lack of players, but the gameplay is infinatly more rewarding then the super zones once you get it down.
"As an off-and-on FFXI player, I've had to deal with Square taking the latter position (albeit on bugs rather than cracks) far too often."
Isn't FFXI in beta still? Why are you complaining about what you lost in a beta test? You are beta testing the game... good job finding the bug... go find the next one, stop complaining, and do your job there.
If that still happens during release, then thats a problem, but not in a beta.
...so I didn't get to read. That said, I think the biggest problem with not having girl gamers is the fact that video games are still not a "girl toy", much like a barby doll isnt a "boy toy". (I'm sure someones going to think of something funny to say to that). Most female gamer's I've run across started because of their boyfriend or husband's addiction. They'll start seeing them, then jump on the gaming bandwagon. Intrest isn't usually enough to keep the player either. A lot of women will be interested in gaming, and pick it up and give it a try, and simply find it too hard to get into. I'm a long time gamer, so picking up a new game isn't too hard for me. That said, I still have a hell of a time doing well in multiplayer games. I don't have the time it takes to get good at them. Usually this drives me away from many games, because going online, losing all the time, and being told to "stfu newb" whenever you say something, is quite frustrating. Really good games I'll stay on for the stretch though. But what if I had never touched a computer game in my life? The frustration would be so much I'd just go back to doing what I've always been doing. Jumpping on a computer isn't natrual to non computer users. Way back I had my fiance jump on rogue squadron because she loves star wars. She couldnt even operate the arrow keys correctly to fly the plane around. I thought using the arrow keys was a natraul skill and easy to use, but she had a lot of difficutly with it. I remember making the switch from doom/duke3d on the keyboard to quake. I tried so hard to play quake with a keyboard, but you just couldn't do it. It took me a while to pick up the mouse/keyboard control scheme. Now throw a novice into a game of q3 or UT and see how hard it is to get going? How can you learn to walk when you are getting blow up ever 2 seconds? Consol gaming is easy to get them into it. Its very entertainment oriented, and the controls aren't overly complex to start out. Actually my last girlfriend kicked my ass left and right on any nintendo game we played together. I couldn't touch her in sf2 on the snes. Her timing in all the competative nes games just dominated mine. She also showed me where everything was in zelda on the snes so I could actually get through the game quite easily. But we broke up, and she's got a girlfriend now... So maybe it is genetic ;)
I think the grid has more do do with gameplay then simplicity. When you have to measure out who is going to be struck by a target and where you are able to move, the grid makes it managable. If there is a bad guy 6 squares away from me, and I can only move 4 squares, its really hard to judge how far away he is without a grid, as well as hard for me to judge how close I need to be to strike him with a weapon. Basically the grid allows you to make much better tactical decision without having to use a lot of trial an error systems (clicking on move, showing in green where i can move and in red where i cant, then another click to move to the location). Strait tactical shooting games like jagged alliance didn't need a visable grid system and they worked, but when you have melee and the need to get in close, the grid is much more prefered. To add complication to the matter they could use a hex system or shrink the size of the grid. But I guess if they shrunk it enough it would be the same as "not having a grid". Either way, it does add a lot to the gameplay and lets you move your units with much more precision then you would in a gridless system.