I think it's safe to mention that The Sims was far from being a failure, and it was a single-player only game. While eventually they took it online, I don't believe that they had nearly as many online subscribers as offline players. What does that tell you about multiplayer?
The Sims franchise still sells like crazy. Failure? I think not.
It releases Feb 28th, so no one should have it yet. In the demo, you still have to take cover... quite a bit, actually. I couldn't get through it without dying the first time, despite all the health packs around. I'd relate the experience somewhat to Half Life 2 in the sense that everything is destructable/you can interact with everything. The ad in my EGM says "If you can't get a target in your line of sight, blast the ceiling and bring it down on top of him" and another quote "catch an enemy in the shoulder and spin him arund into the enemy behind him, blow the balcony out beneath another - get creative with your kills." I think that accurately describes the feel they were going for.
Actually, I've played the demo for Black (it's available at stores for free), and it's a lot of fun. It sets out to do what it wants to do, and it does it well, from what I've seen. Just destroy lots of stuff with badass guns. If that's not your cup of tea, then that's ok, but the game itself is actually pretty quality from what I've played of the demos. I would buy it for $50, but $40 is just icing on the cake.:) Criterion makes Black, and they usually churn out some fun games...
There are alot of other puzzle games that Tetris Push is more similar to (Lumines multiplayer, for example).
Puyo Puyo isn't one of them. The similarities between the two games end pretty much at the fact that they both have falling pieces and they're both puzzle games.
Colossus has been out for some time - if you're curious about the graphics, check out some screenshots online. I did hear that it has some slow framerates at times though...
Who the heck is Nick Starr? Forgive me, I am ignorant.
I carry a DS and a PSP with me usually (games are more important than music to me), so every little bit of space helps. The Nano is significantly smaller and thinner - I could probably fit one into my pants pockets. And don't even try to tell me that I'd fit a 60GB ipod into a pocket. Girls pants aren't designed like that.
I don't have an ipod yet (since I don't listen to music much), but I've been watching very closely to decide which one I want. If it weren't for the video feature of the new ipods, I would definitely go with the nano.
Because not everyone listens to music the same way you do.
Smaller iPod is better for me because 1) I don't listen to that much music, and 2) the less weight in my purse, the better - I have to save room for my other gadgets =P
Besides, the larger ones don't use flash memory right? With the moving parts it's not as ideal for exercising, which is why my roommate wants a shuffle.
And back in the days of the Mini... I could get it in pink. I'm not kidding, I almost bought one solely for that reason.
The levels may be static, but that doesn't necessarily make them easier or less fun.
I love them all, though I think I got far more playtime out of Ikaruga and Gradius. Which would make sense, considering Geometry Wars is $5 and the others are, like I said, 4x the cost (or more).
You have to factor in cost when you're comparing games like this, and that was the point of my post. Geometry Wars is a damn fine game, but had it been $50, I would've been rather peeved at how shallow it is. However, at $5, the price is more than right.
Your friends list leaderboard is even more compelling. It's easy to say "I can't compete with those guys, they spend all their time playing games." However, when you're faced with your friend whom you KNOW is around the same level as you... well, you're even more compelled to beat the snot out of their score so that you can rub it in their faces later.
Being able to filter the leaderboard by your friends is pure genius...
There ARE a lot of them that are much better, like Gradius V and Ikaruga.
The only thing is... Geometry Wars comes at 1/4 of the price (or in the case of Ikaruga, 1/10).
That's a lotta bang for your buck.
Beatmania has amazing music... if you like that style of music. I don't prefer it, though I do enjoy Beatmania from time to time... I'd rather play Pop'n Music - which is just as challenging as Beatmania. (And Pop'n gets its 12th release in March...) If you look at the list, some of them are there not just because of the game, but because of the impact it had on the genre or its pure innovation. I can't speak for Samba de Amigo, but VibRibon was (and still is) different in the fact that you actually can use your own songs. The game might be simple, but it had a lot of charm and if you think about it, infinite replayability since you are no longer confined to a singular songlist. Many of the Bemani games are difficult to get into if you don't start at the very early editions (I started Pop'n Music at #9, and I'm still pretty bad at it despite a LOT of playtime) so I'm not surprised that more didn't make the list. They're all rather similar when you come down to it - I'd rather that Pop'n was the representative one than say, Guitar Freaks, but they are all very very similar.
Try Karaoke Revolution on Expert mode.:) Along with the dance pad. I guarantee you won't find that easy, and your percussionist skills won't increase your ability for that game.
I'd say that Geometry Wars IS one of the best games on the Xbox360 right now. The thing you're misunderstanding is that this doesn't mean that the other games are any worse than you would expect, but rather that Geometry Wars is just phenomenal.
That is, of course, if you play games for FUN, rather than just pretty shiny graphics...
I've had about 20 people link me about the new booth babe regulations, but no one seems to be talking about the other changes that have happened to E3 this year. To me, it doesn't seem like this is some arbitrary regulation that they just happened to start, but rather just a part of an overall restructuring of the event.
For example, one of the other rules that I know which has changed is that retail folks can no longer get in just by being your regular Joe working at a game store. They are only distributing a certain number of passes for those involved in retail companies, and the upper management in said companies gets to choose whom they would like to attend. This will hopefully limit the number of gawkers and people who have a very loose connection to the industry, and keep the place less crowded.
There are probably other changed rules, how come we never hear about them? Oh, because... sex sells.;-) Or the lack of it, in this case.
I always wonder why, if people play GTA not for the violence and sex aspects...
Why isn't The Simpsons Hit & Run more popular? There are plenty of people who are Simpsons fans, and the gameplay is practically identical to GTA. But it has a kooky weird Simpson-esque story, no killing involved, and is just overall cartoony.
Ok, so maybe there just aren't as many Simpson fans? I find that hard to believe. Most gamers are also Simpson fans.
People don't like to admit that it's partially because of the violence and the general "adult" theme that attracts them to the game. Not just the open-ended gameplay.
So, I'm not going to flame you. You make some really good points.
Really, I think that the best use of blogs (at least for me) is to hear information about the folks that you're friends with, but don't see or talk to every day. I don't use blogs for news about the world (unless, of course, one of my friends links to an article on the internet), I don't read random peoples blogs, and I barely have any interest in the blog that my company's CEO writes since it's so filtered and watered down.
But I do get to keep in touch with my friends from high school, and friends from college, using blogs. Especially since I've moved 3000 miles away from them - it's nice to read about goings on in their life (promotions, hard days at work, changes in relationships, moving to new places) and then leaving a comment for them. It takes just a few minutes a day to read their posts, and to write some sort of insightful comment back to them. I find myself to be much closer now with those folks who keep a blog than those who don't, despite not being that close when we knew each other in person.
I have several blogs, each with a theme. My personal one is used for communication with family and friends about my goings on in life (parties, concerts, conventions, etc.). One of them is for my foodie obsessions and is used as a log of the restaurants I've been to, and then I have one for talking about videogames - what I've played, what I'm playing, and comments on the industry. No specific audiences (I'm not looking for a wide one) except my friends who are interested in any of those three topics.
There has been a slight "rise" of blogs, but I don't think that they'll "fall" any further than the usages that I've mentioned. Blogging grew popular because of the community aspect that it gave to its users, and that is something I don't see fading for quite a while.
I think it was the Tokyo Tower that you picked up in the first game.:) And there was an entire level where you had to just pick up fish - the Pices level.
Sadly I have a feeling that the Inquirer WAS talking about Anand, since yesterday's post was "part 1 of 2" and the guy who wrote this article talked about "half" a review.
I have a very sinking feeling that they just glanced at all the charts, rather than read what Anand actually wrote - that there's no point in comparing games right now since we already know AMD is gonna win. If you only look the charts, you can easily deduce that they just left out all the games and were bribed... but if you actually RTFA, you understand why it's a waste of people's times to read all that over again.
The Inquirer talking about bad journalism is really ironic... they can be the absolute worst sometimes.
Slashdot Mirror
What about the Saturday morning cartoon show that went along with it?
Perhaps it was undermarketed to our "demographic" but it's not like they didn't put any external effort into this game!
Though I don't watch Saturday morning cartoons anymore, maybe someone else can chime in?
I think it's safe to mention that The Sims was far from being a failure, and it was a single-player only game. While eventually they took it online, I don't believe that they had nearly as many online subscribers as offline players. What does that tell you about multiplayer?
The Sims franchise still sells like crazy. Failure? I think not.
Oh wow, Roboblitz is coming to the arcade? Time to drop some pianos on some people... :)
I'm inclined to agree with you, but I just like being a smartass. :D
Because we all know that we should believe things that come out of Sony representatives mouths. ;-)
FYI: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i =2713
http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i =2716
You might want to keep up with the news better. This /. article was about IDF, and these Anandtech articles are about IDF as well.
The Beast is Unleashed!
Even people with a mild interest in Street Fighter can appreciate the skill that took.
It releases Feb 28th, so no one should have it yet. In the demo, you still have to take cover... quite a bit, actually. I couldn't get through it without dying the first time, despite all the health packs around. I'd relate the experience somewhat to Half Life 2 in the sense that everything is destructable/you can interact with everything. The ad in my EGM says "If you can't get a target in your line of sight, blast the ceiling and bring it down on top of him" and another quote "catch an enemy in the shoulder and spin him arund into the enemy behind him, blow the balcony out beneath another - get creative with your kills." I think that accurately describes the feel they were going for.
Actually, I've played the demo for Black (it's available at stores for free), and it's a lot of fun. It sets out to do what it wants to do, and it does it well, from what I've seen. Just destroy lots of stuff with badass guns. If that's not your cup of tea, then that's ok, but the game itself is actually pretty quality from what I've played of the demos. I would buy it for $50, but $40 is just icing on the cake. :) Criterion makes Black, and they usually churn out some fun games...
2) Have you actually played Puyo Puyo?
There are alot of other puzzle games that Tetris Push is more similar to (Lumines multiplayer, for example).
Puyo Puyo isn't one of them. The similarities between the two games end pretty much at the fact that they both have falling pieces and they're both puzzle games.
Colossus has been out for some time - if you're curious about the graphics, check out some screenshots online. I did hear that it has some slow framerates at times though...
It's not... Criterion making "Black" is though.
How is a new version of windoes going to result in a new FPS that is anything other than an even-more-prettied-up revision of Quake?
It's not. Monolith did though, with FEAR.
How is a new version of windows going to do away with level grind and moster farming in MMORPGs?
It's not. Companies cracking down on it are though.
But it's ok, MS will just take the credit for all of it anyway. Would you expect any less?
I carry a DS and a PSP with me usually (games are more important than music to me), so every little bit of space helps. The Nano is significantly smaller and thinner - I could probably fit one into my pants pockets. And don't even try to tell me that I'd fit a 60GB ipod into a pocket. Girls pants aren't designed like that.
I don't have an ipod yet (since I don't listen to music much), but I've been watching very closely to decide which one I want. If it weren't for the video feature of the new ipods, I would definitely go with the nano.
Smaller iPod is better for me because 1) I don't listen to that much music, and 2) the less weight in my purse, the better - I have to save room for my other gadgets =P
Besides, the larger ones don't use flash memory right? With the moving parts it's not as ideal for exercising, which is why my roommate wants a shuffle.
And back in the days of the Mini... I could get it in pink. I'm not kidding, I almost bought one solely for that reason.
I love them all, though I think I got far more playtime out of Ikaruga and Gradius. Which would make sense, considering Geometry Wars is $5 and the others are, like I said, 4x the cost (or more).
You have to factor in cost when you're comparing games like this, and that was the point of my post. Geometry Wars is a damn fine game, but had it been $50, I would've been rather peeved at how shallow it is. However, at $5, the price is more than right.
Being able to filter the leaderboard by your friends is pure genius...
There ARE a lot of them that are much better, like Gradius V and Ikaruga. The only thing is... Geometry Wars comes at 1/4 of the price (or in the case of Ikaruga, 1/10). That's a lotta bang for your buck.
Beatmania has amazing music... if you like that style of music. I don't prefer it, though I do enjoy Beatmania from time to time... I'd rather play Pop'n Music - which is just as challenging as Beatmania. (And Pop'n gets its 12th release in March...) If you look at the list, some of them are there not just because of the game, but because of the impact it had on the genre or its pure innovation. I can't speak for Samba de Amigo, but VibRibon was (and still is) different in the fact that you actually can use your own songs. The game might be simple, but it had a lot of charm and if you think about it, infinite replayability since you are no longer confined to a singular songlist. Many of the Bemani games are difficult to get into if you don't start at the very early editions (I started Pop'n Music at #9, and I'm still pretty bad at it despite a LOT of playtime) so I'm not surprised that more didn't make the list. They're all rather similar when you come down to it - I'd rather that Pop'n was the representative one than say, Guitar Freaks, but they are all very very similar.
Try Karaoke Revolution on Expert mode. :) Along with the dance pad. I guarantee you won't find that easy, and your percussionist skills won't increase your ability for that game.
That is, of course, if you play games for FUN, rather than just pretty shiny graphics...
I've had about 20 people link me about the new booth babe regulations, but no one seems to be talking about the other changes that have happened to E3 this year. To me, it doesn't seem like this is some arbitrary regulation that they just happened to start, but rather just a part of an overall restructuring of the event. For example, one of the other rules that I know which has changed is that retail folks can no longer get in just by being your regular Joe working at a game store. They are only distributing a certain number of passes for those involved in retail companies, and the upper management in said companies gets to choose whom they would like to attend. This will hopefully limit the number of gawkers and people who have a very loose connection to the industry, and keep the place less crowded. There are probably other changed rules, how come we never hear about them? Oh, because... sex sells. ;-) Or the lack of it, in this case.
Why isn't The Simpsons Hit & Run more popular? There are plenty of people who are Simpsons fans, and the gameplay is practically identical to GTA. But it has a kooky weird Simpson-esque story, no killing involved, and is just overall cartoony.
Ok, so maybe there just aren't as many Simpson fans? I find that hard to believe. Most gamers are also Simpson fans.
People don't like to admit that it's partially because of the violence and the general "adult" theme that attracts them to the game. Not just the open-ended gameplay.
So, I'm not going to flame you. You make some really good points.
But I do get to keep in touch with my friends from high school, and friends from college, using blogs. Especially since I've moved 3000 miles away from them - it's nice to read about goings on in their life (promotions, hard days at work, changes in relationships, moving to new places) and then leaving a comment for them. It takes just a few minutes a day to read their posts, and to write some sort of insightful comment back to them. I find myself to be much closer now with those folks who keep a blog than those who don't, despite not being that close when we knew each other in person.
I have several blogs, each with a theme. My personal one is used for communication with family and friends about my goings on in life (parties, concerts, conventions, etc.). One of them is for my foodie obsessions and is used as a log of the restaurants I've been to, and then I have one for talking about videogames - what I've played, what I'm playing, and comments on the industry. No specific audiences (I'm not looking for a wide one) except my friends who are interested in any of those three topics. There has been a slight "rise" of blogs, but I don't think that they'll "fall" any further than the usages that I've mentioned. Blogging grew popular because of the community aspect that it gave to its users, and that is something I don't see fading for quite a while.
I think it was the Tokyo Tower that you picked up in the first game. :) And there was an entire level where you had to just pick up fish - the Pices level.
Sadly I have a feeling that the Inquirer WAS talking about Anand, since yesterday's post was "part 1 of 2" and the guy who wrote this article talked about "half" a review. I have a very sinking feeling that they just glanced at all the charts, rather than read what Anand actually wrote - that there's no point in comparing games right now since we already know AMD is gonna win. If you only look the charts, you can easily deduce that they just left out all the games and were bribed... but if you actually RTFA, you understand why it's a waste of people's times to read all that over again. The Inquirer talking about bad journalism is really ironic... they can be the absolute worst sometimes.