What's really odd is that Fox Interactive was sold off in March 2003 (with all the game properties) to Vivendi Universal. It doesn't exist any more, unless Newscorp intends to recreate it.
Trying to go to foxinteractive.com takes you to Fox's main website, where there is nary a mention of videogames at all.
This exact parasite was used in one of the opening scenes of the movie "Parasite Eve" (yes, same as the video game and the novel) to introduce the story's main concept.
Only in the movie we humans have our own deathwish-inducing parasite - mitochondria.
The cancellations that I was most surprised to not see mentioned in the article, were:
- Babylon 5: Into the Fire
- Fear Effect 3
- Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury (mentioned above)
The grapes you eat are only sour because you bought ones that were picked before they were ripe. This is typical in chain supermarkets, where most of the fruit is picked before it's ripe. That way it can be shipped cross-country (or inter-country) without spoilage.
I've had ripe grapes from a roadside stand, and I can tell you there's little that's sweeter - or more delicious.
4. I'm referring to Story Mode, wherein you battle a series of computer-controlled opponents. AFAIK, there's no feedback to indicate whether you've violated the Bushido Code. If you do, the game stops after the sixth opponent and puts up a screen about the drawbacks of cowardice.
Not only is there no feedback in the game, there's nothing in the manual that spells out the code - all it mentions is "striking someone from behind while running or climbing away". Had to look at an online game guide to find out.
I follow all those rules and I *still* get the coward's ending. Sigh.
Some kind of feedback - a flash of lightning, boom of thunder, screen turns yellow, whatever - to warn me of Code violations would have made the game far more enjoyable.
9. A quicksave you can only restore once? Sounds like the perfect solution, when combined with savepoints at reasonable intervals.
11. I know that a lot of console games allow reprogramming the controller, but I think it's those that don't that inspired that item in the Bill. For instance, Driver on PS1.
Right to Win Not sure on this one, unless he means arcade-style games that don't have an end. Perhaps he's referring to games which have a bug that prevents finishing, none of which I've had the misfortune to encounter yet.
Right to instructions Mortal Kombat, Tekken, and other fighting games that make you figure out the combos by trial and error.
Right to Feedback Bushido Blade
Right to Motivation Sim City, Populous
Right to Make Decisions Not sure, unless he means rhythm games like Parappa the Rapper or Space Channel Five
The Right to a Swift Death Sierra's Quest games (especially Space Quest) and any number of old adventure games.
The Right to Control Cut-Scenes Final Fantasy X
The Right to Quit, Pause, Save and Resume the Game Final Fantasy games, Tomb Raider games, and lots of other console titles. Not to mention a horde of games based entirely on checkpoints. These are why at least one PS1 emulator comes with a "save state" function.
The Right to Choose Not to Save the Game Checkpoint-only games like Killzone
The Right to Reconfigure the Input Device Lots and lots of console games. Final Fantasy Tactics comes to mind. Non-console, X-Wing comes to mind.
The Right Not To Be Insulted Never encountered this, myself.
There's a big difference between the pressure-sensitive stickmouse and a position-sensitive analog stick.
I've used both, and the stickmouse offers two significant benefits over the analog stick:
- finer control without having to move anything. It's not the position of the stickmouse (it doesn't move), but rather how hard you push it. And you can tap the stickmouse for click/drag, you don't have to move a button.
- stickmouse is placed under index finger rather than thumb. The index finger can provide finer control than the thumb.
- Aliens vs. Predator - but with Rebellion's wandering/patrolling enemies instead of AvP2's more standard room-entry-triggered ones. - Bushido Blade - only fighting game I ever liked. - Colony Wars - Crimson Skies - Descent - Deus Ex - Duke Nukem 3D - Freelancer - Frontier (Elite II) - Fear Effect - Freespace - Jet Set Radio - Marble Madness - Mercury - No One Lives Forever - Privateer - Spider-Man (the corny one with Stan Lee narration, not the new movie-based ones) - Star Trek DS9: The Fallen - Star Wars X-Wing (simulators not Rogue Squadron or Starfighter) - Starlancer - Tron (sequel to Killer App) - Unreal (SP, not the Tournament stuff) - Wing Commander
If next-gen systems came with decent pointing devices (eraser-mouse (like on laptops between g and h on keyboard) would do fine), I'd add the following game franchises:
- Black and White - Command and Conquer (Tiberian world, not Generals) - Earth 21x0 - Freedom Force - Ground Control - Homeworld - Star Trek Starfleet Command - Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds - Starcraft - Total Annihilation
Actually, you're right. It's mentioned in Savage's FAQ (the last link on the home page), 19th question out of 33, that there's no singleplayer campaign.
As for Project Offset, it's mentioned on the Gameplay page, near the bottom of the first paragraph, that you can play alone so presumably there's a singleplayer campaign.
So it's not as bad as I thought at 2AM. Mea Culpa.
I don't mind at all that companies make MP-only games; more power to them if that's where the money is. What I do object to is having my time wasted; having to dig and make inferences and sometimes download a demo just to find out what the prereqs are.
Some games don't directly tell you they're MP only - you have to infer it from game docs. Many of Valve's games and third-party content available through Steam are like this. Action Half-Life sounded like fun until I read between the lines and realized there was no SP campaign. In the stores, Planetfall sounded like fun until I read between the lines and realized there was no SP.
Other games don't tell you that you need another game to make them work. Especially some TCs like Industri and Infection. Infection in particular didn't make it clear that a copy of Quake 3 Arena was required to make it work. Not all TCs need the original game - Code Red: Battle for Earth and Code Red: The Martian Chronicles are good examples of ones that don't.
This is exactly the kind of attitude I'm talking about.
Maybe 'better' means something different to someone else than it does to you.
To me, 'better' means a solid plotline and storytelling, interesting characters, the game as essentially a big puzzle to beat.
It does not mean, griefers, cheaters, getting my ass kicked constantly because I'm no good at multiplayer (a man's got to know his limitations and I learned mine in America's Army), having to play when my friends are available or playing with strangers, having nothing to do but see who can make the other guys respawn more, "pwning" enemies, just fighting, fighting and more fighting, who's got the quickest trigger finger rather than the best logic-solver, getting killed in under 30 seconds, etc., etc.
Having wasted my time checking out Savage, and looking at the video, it's time to rant:
Why is it that so many people who put out multiplayer-only games fail to mention it anywhere in their game descriptions, websites, etc? There are those of us who prefer single player games.
It took quite a bit of looking at reviews of Savage and reading between the lines to figure out that it has no single-player component.
Since the game devs seem to think that MP games are the only kind that count, I'll have to assume that "Project Offset" is also MP-only. Too bad. A single-player fantasy FPS with pretty graphics might have attracted my gaming dollars.
Yeah, I bought Doom3 for the graphics engine as much as anything. And enjoyed it. So sue me.
Some choice quotes from the article: "source at EA says 'we did expect something which would be suitable for children to play'"
"...the head honchos at EA. After this bomb they cancelled the PS2 versions quickly, citing spiralling development costs, poor PC sales and the need to return money to investors..."
As for whether it was original...well, it certainly wasn't a sequel to another game. And this may be a matter of opinion and where you draw the line, but I count as original taking something familiar and giving it a different twist.
"West Side Story" lifted its plot from Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet". Did that make it unoriginal? Stale? A cheap knock-off?
Was "My Fair Lady" a tired re-hash of "Pygmalion"?
Was Shakespeare's "Julius Ceasar" unoriginal because it lifted its plot from history?
Was "The Matrix" unoriginal because it borrowed so liberally from every philosophy, religion and myth under the sun?
I think what makes originality is not so much what you borrow from as what you do with it. That which is new is merely that which is old, rearranged in a novel way.
American McGee's Alice.
Clive Barker's Undying.
Black and White.
Of course, the history of Alice actually proves the point.
EA thought they were going to get a kid's game based on Lewis Carroll's books. When they saw what had actually been made - something edgy and original, and definitely not for children - they backed away as fast as they could.
At this rate, I won't have enough money to buy all the games he's going after!
Re:Narrative is the weakest point
on
Power Up
·
· Score: 1
A good example of the kind of combination you speak of is the set of western-written Dirty Pair comics, which were excellent.
I've seen some of the Japanese Dirty Pair anime with the same characters, and while the visual and other stylistic aspects are equivalent, considerations of motivation and plot seem to be lacking.
I think one of the reasons the Final Fantasy movie didn't work for Westerners was that the plot and motivational aspects had a Japanese flavor while the rest (visuals, design, etc) leaned West - exactly the opposite of the combination the parent poster advocates.
"I think in the old days we would not have worried about this so much,"
should be immediately followed by,
"but of course in the old days we lost two shuttles because we didn't worry so much, and I'm not the one who has to ride the inside of a flaming torch across a couple thousand miles of sky, so who am I to say?"
The Adventure Company, a division of Dreamcatcher Interactive, still publishes new ones. I don't know how good they are in any objective sense, but I've enjoyed the ones I've played.
Ubisoft is still publishing new entries in the Myst series; Myst 4 came out quite recently, and Myst 5 is in production.
The genre no longer rules gaming as it once did, but it's by no means dead.
Slashdot Mirror
What's really odd is that Fox Interactive was sold off in March 2003 (with all the game properties) to Vivendi Universal. It doesn't exist any more, unless Newscorp intends to recreate it.
Trying to go to foxinteractive.com takes you to Fox's main website, where there is nary a mention of videogames at all.
Dan
Of course first Enigma machine was not captured and decoded by Amewicans...
It was famous Wussian scientist that cweated first decoder for Enigma, in same facility where they kept nuclear wessels.
- Pavel Checkov
This exact parasite was used in one of the opening scenes of the movie "Parasite Eve" (yes, same as the video game and the novel) to introduce the story's main concept.
Only in the movie we humans have our own deathwish-inducing parasite - mitochondria.
I got spam today from eWeek.
What was it selling? An eSeminar on "Winning the War on Spam"
How ironic.
The cancellations that I was most surprised to not see mentioned in the article, were: - Babylon 5: Into the Fire - Fear Effect 3 - Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury (mentioned above)
The grapes you eat are only sour because you bought ones that were picked before they were ripe. This is typical in chain supermarkets, where most of the fruit is picked before it's ripe. That way it can be shipped cross-country (or inter-country) without spoilage.
I've had ripe grapes from a roadside stand, and I can tell you there's little that's sweeter - or more delicious.
The same goes double for strawberries.
4. I'm referring to Story Mode, wherein you battle a series of computer-controlled opponents. AFAIK, there's no feedback to indicate whether you've violated the Bushido Code. If you do, the game stops after the sixth opponent and puts up a screen about the drawbacks of cowardice.
Not only is there no feedback in the game, there's nothing in the manual that spells out the code - all it mentions is "striking someone from behind while running or climbing away". Had to look at an online game guide to find out.
I follow all those rules and I *still* get the coward's ending. Sigh.
Some kind of feedback - a flash of lightning, boom of thunder, screen turns yellow, whatever - to warn me of Code violations would have made the game far more enjoyable.
9. A quicksave you can only restore once? Sounds like the perfect solution, when combined with savepoints at reasonable intervals.
11. I know that a lot of console games allow reprogramming the controller, but I think it's those that don't that inspired that item in the Bill. For instance, Driver on PS1.
Final Fantasy X
Not sure on this one, unless he means arcade-style games that don't have an end. Perhaps he's referring to games which have a bug that prevents finishing, none of which I've had the misfortune to encounter yet.
Mortal Kombat, Tekken, and other fighting games that make you figure out the combos by trial and error.
Bushido Blade
Sim City, Populous
Not sure, unless he means rhythm games like Parappa the Rapper or Space Channel Five
Sierra's Quest games (especially Space Quest) and any number of old adventure games.
Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy games, Tomb Raider games, and lots of other console titles. Not to mention a horde of games based entirely on checkpoints. These are why at least one PS1 emulator comes with a "save state" function.
Checkpoint-only games like Killzone
Lots and lots of console games. Final Fantasy Tactics comes to mind. Non-console, X-Wing comes to mind.
Never encountered this, myself.
No, not analog sticks.
There's a big difference between the pressure-sensitive stickmouse and a position-sensitive analog stick.
I've used both, and the stickmouse offers two significant benefits over the analog stick:
- finer control without having to move anything. It's not the position of the stickmouse (it doesn't move), but rather how hard you push it. And you can tap the stickmouse for click/drag, you don't have to move a button.
- stickmouse is placed under index finger rather than thumb. The index finger can provide finer control than the thumb.
...of wanted but unlikely next-gen franchises:
- Aliens vs. Predator - but with Rebellion's wandering/patrolling enemies instead of AvP2's more standard room-entry-triggered ones.
- Bushido Blade - only fighting game I ever liked.
- Colony Wars
- Crimson Skies
- Descent
- Deus Ex
- Duke Nukem 3D
- Freelancer
- Frontier (Elite II)
- Fear Effect
- Freespace
- Jet Set Radio
- Marble Madness
- Mercury
- No One Lives Forever
- Privateer
- Spider-Man (the corny one with Stan Lee narration, not the new movie-based ones)
- Star Trek DS9: The Fallen
- Star Wars X-Wing (simulators not Rogue Squadron or Starfighter)
- Starlancer
- Tron (sequel to Killer App)
- Unreal (SP, not the Tournament stuff)
- Wing Commander
If next-gen systems came with decent pointing devices (eraser-mouse (like on laptops between g and h on keyboard) would do fine), I'd add the following game franchises:
- Black and White
- Command and Conquer (Tiberian world, not Generals)
- Earth 21x0
- Freedom Force
- Ground Control
- Homeworld
- Star Trek Starfleet Command
- Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds
- Starcraft
- Total Annihilation
Yes, Tomb Raider 7, and it's coming: Tomb Raider Legends.
Somebody call the CDC - the karaoke virus has mutated and jumped species from bars to MMO gaming!
Am I the only one who finds this concept unutterably creepy? Gives me the willies just thinking about it.
"The Dark Knight Returns" is Miller, not Moore.
Sigh. I should get modded both offtopic and flamebait for feeding the trolls, but sometimes it's just too hard to resist...
At least I have an excuse for having been a jackass that one time.
Yeah. Broke a cardinal rule: Never post at 4AM.
Actually, you're right. It's mentioned in Savage's FAQ (the last link on the home page), 19th question out of 33, that there's no singleplayer campaign.
As for Project Offset, it's mentioned on the Gameplay page, near the bottom of the first paragraph, that you can play alone so presumably there's a singleplayer campaign.
So it's not as bad as I thought at 2AM. Mea Culpa.
I don't mind at all that companies make MP-only games; more power to them if that's where the money is. What I do object to is having my time wasted; having to dig and make inferences and sometimes download a demo just to find out what the prereqs are.
Some games don't directly tell you they're MP only - you have to infer it from game docs. Many of Valve's games and third-party content available through Steam are like this. Action Half-Life sounded like fun until I read between the lines and realized there was no SP campaign. In the stores, Planetfall sounded like fun until I read between the lines and realized there was no SP.
Other games don't tell you that you need another game to make them work. Especially some TCs like Industri and Infection. Infection in particular didn't make it clear that a copy of Quake 3 Arena was required to make it work. Not all TCs need the original game - Code Red: Battle for Earth and Code Red: The Martian Chronicles are good examples of ones that don't.
This is exactly the kind of attitude I'm talking about.
Maybe 'better' means something different to someone else than it does to you.
To me, 'better' means a solid plotline and storytelling, interesting characters, the game as essentially a big puzzle to beat.
It does not mean, griefers, cheaters, getting my ass kicked constantly because I'm no good at multiplayer (a man's got to know his limitations and I learned mine in America's Army), having to play when my friends are available or playing with strangers, having nothing to do but see who can make the other guys respawn more, "pwning" enemies, just fighting, fighting and more fighting, who's got the quickest trigger finger rather than the best logic-solver, getting killed in under 30 seconds, etc., etc.
Having wasted my time checking out Savage, and looking at the video, it's time to rant:
Why is it that so many people who put out multiplayer-only games fail to mention it anywhere in their game descriptions, websites, etc? There are those of us who prefer single player games.
It took quite a bit of looking at reviews of Savage and reading between the lines to figure out that it has no single-player component.
Since the game devs seem to think that MP games are the only kind that count, I'll have to assume that "Project Offset" is also MP-only. Too bad. A single-player fantasy FPS with pretty graphics might have attracted my gaming dollars.
Yeah, I bought Doom3 for the graphics engine as much as anything. And enjoyed it. So sue me.
Apparently EA didn't think it was such a huge hit. A PS2 version was planned, but cancelled.
_ companies/74668
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/computer_game
Some choice quotes from the article: "source at EA says 'we did expect something which would be suitable for children to play'"
"...the head honchos at EA. After this bomb they cancelled the PS2 versions quickly, citing spiralling development costs, poor PC sales and the need to return money to investors..."
As for whether it was original...well, it certainly wasn't a sequel to another game. And this may be a matter of opinion and where you draw the line, but I count as original taking something familiar and giving it a different twist.
"West Side Story" lifted its plot from Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet". Did that make it unoriginal? Stale? A cheap knock-off?
Was "My Fair Lady" a tired re-hash of "Pygmalion"?
Was Shakespeare's "Julius Ceasar" unoriginal because it lifted its plot from history?
Was "The Matrix" unoriginal because it borrowed so liberally from every philosophy, religion and myth under the sun?
I think what makes originality is not so much what you borrow from as what you do with it. That which is new is merely that which is old, rearranged in a novel way.
American McGee's Alice.
Clive Barker's Undying.
Black and White.
Of course, the history of Alice actually proves the point.
EA thought they were going to get a kid's game based on Lewis Carroll's books. When they saw what had actually been made - something edgy and original, and definitely not for children - they backed away as fast as they could.
Jack Thompson needs to slow down.
At this rate, I won't have enough money to buy all the games he's going after!
A good example of the kind of combination you speak of is the set of western-written Dirty Pair comics, which were excellent.
I've seen some of the Japanese Dirty Pair anime with the same characters, and while the visual and other stylistic aspects are equivalent, considerations of motivation and plot seem to be lacking.
I think one of the reasons the Final Fantasy movie didn't work for Westerners was that the plot and motivational aspects had a Japanese flavor while the rest (visuals, design, etc) leaned West - exactly the opposite of the combination the parent poster advocates.
"I think in the old days we would not have worried about this so much,"
should be immediately followed by,
"but of course in the old days we lost two shuttles because we didn't worry so much, and I'm not the one who has to ride the inside of a flaming torch across a couple thousand miles of sky, so who am I to say?"
The genre is not quite dead.
The Adventure Company, a division of Dreamcatcher Interactive, still publishes new ones. I don't know how good they are in any objective sense, but I've enjoyed the ones I've played.
Ubisoft is still publishing new entries in the Myst series; Myst 4 came out quite recently, and Myst 5 is in production.
The genre no longer rules gaming as it once did, but it's by no means dead.