Rockstar is one of the game developers out there that is at the height of whoring a franchise. It's the big developers like this that continue re-releasing the same game over and over that is leading to the stagnating gaming industry. As far as I'm concerned, they should have stopped after GTA3.
Nintendo on the other hand, has it's franchise characters (Mario and such) but each time they release a game they make it a different one. Every Mario release might fall under the platformer genre, but they all play/look different. Transfering the franchise characters to other genres is also a positive. Kart, Smash Brothers, Tennis, and Strikers are all very different games with similar characters. This makes for good brand awareness while giving the diversity in gameplay that I wish more people would demand.
So I give props to Rockstar on this one, but please don't make anymore GTAs... it's as tired and played out as WW2 based FPS games.
I sort of liked how Final Fantasy 7 did it. I don't remember the cutscenes being overly many. It was more of a RPGRPGRPGRPG-break with fancy tech demo of the hardware-RPGRPGRPG. I rememebr some of them being a great way for the story to progress (weapon attacking Midgarr and such). They're good tools for setting mood, and quick plot advances but should not be used to tell the whole story. I don't want cutscene->grind grind grind grind->cutscene.
Don't get me wrong.. I havent come close to finishing them mostly because of that. I've moved onto other types of RPGs now where the combat part is paramount (tactics styles mostly). I like the idea of a 6 game series story, but the delivery has been lacking. They seem to be catering towards what NA perceives as anime. Bubbly girls and gruff guys. I'm still waiting for a scene in it w/ a girl bouncing up and down w/ giant pink lines drawn around her.
I was just making a point of how the cutscenes themselves are handled.. though they definately abuse it to the extreme.
I've put some time into Xenosage a couple times through now. It's one game that's HEAVY on cutscences for progressing the story. I don't mind it in an RPG but the one thing they did that I love is give you the option to pause/skip the cutscenes. The other biggies is that I guess they realized how crappy the ps2 can be at reading dual layer discs and when you get read errors, you can actually restart he cutscene.
I agree with him in one way. As far as being a mainstream mega-game console manufacturer in the North American gaming market... Nintendo is dead. As far as a niche market manufacturer/developer, they are as strong as ever. Nintendo is now to Sony/Microsoft what independant movie makers/publishers are to the big movie houses. This isn't a bad thing though. Nintendo makes money and stays in business, and as long as there are the "real gamers" out there to support them we will keep getting the quality and well designed products they make. If Nintendo was to try and go mainstream with the revolution I think they'd end up like Sega did.
I for one, will continue to buy my Sony products for RPGS/Mainstream games, and Nintendo products for something interesting and innovative.
I didnt find the BES 4.0 install all so bad. Its more a matter of the Java memory leak that they say existed in a previous JVM but I still seem to find. And the activation process can cause headaches (especially w/ the BES and Exchange 2003 pairup). It's pretty bad when we have abotu 15 blackberry users so far and I have to
well.. for basic, i went with the antec sonata. its cheap ($130 CAD), black (nice glossy finish on the case), nice built in power supply (truepower 380), and yes it has the 120mm fan spots but they do make it noticeably quieter.
I always put my system specs in my sig on hardware forums (a basic one at least) and I do it for good reason. It lets everyone know what I'm using if I'm asking questions, and that I have experience with certain things when answering theirs.
I will however, agree with you on the people who list every last litte detail.
I just bought the pioneer 16X, and also got 25 dvd-rs for $10 CAD.. so I'd say the price has almost dropped. (Of course they are opto 4x blanks.. but for that price I'm willing to get a few coasters)
An interesting thing to note is that (at least in Canada), with the huge amount of tax we pay on cigarettes we smokers die long before we use up enough of the medical system. Its the non-smokers that cling to life and add that extra 10-20 years of medical bills on the medicare system here. Smokers are essentially paying for non-smokers to live longer... so maybe we should be saluted:P
except for a change.. directX is very well made. Its probably one of the few mSOFT products I truly enjoy. I think the main reason directX has been ahead of openGL for so long is that is it ONE company that makes the choices.. having panels/discussions for everything has just bogged down openGL.
hmm.. I'm running KDE3.2.2, kernel 2.6.6, slack 9.1 on a 1200, with 512MB RAM, full install with a bunch of unnecessary crap running ( - n00b), but it runs faster than my 2500+ o/ced to 2.2, w/ 512MB ddr400 running xp w/ all the crap turned off. maybe some tuning is needed
even better idea for game reviews, just to let you know. Check out www.gametab.com and look at their review listings. They just grab an average of a bunch of different sites. So I can check that, see that 15 sites reviewed a game, then I'll read the lowest few to see any problems with a game and decide if it's a worthy purchase. Plus with gametab, you get all the current news from all the big sites right on their frontpage. They also have their deals section which is nice (though I live in Canada, so most of them arent worth it when you add shipping).
what about viewtiful joe for the gamecube? 3dish game w/ a 2d cartoon feel. Get's amazing reviews.. big seller.. and a wicked awsome game. And as far as 3rd person cameras.... yes... almost every 3rd person camera ever put into a game sucks! bad! really bad!!! If a devloper is gonna put a crappy made rail system or chase camera, at least let the player have some control over it to get around your level designers mistakes.
ATI says they support 3rd party linux drivers.. does anyone know how well? They make many references to it in the linux section of their drivers page ATI
so I wonder how well they support projects like DRI. My main complaint is that the newest drivers (just released) still are only for the 2.4 kernel.
I think it has more to do with the IP involved in video card drivers. The hardware on newer vid cards is so similar that a lot of performance and image quality comes from the driver. If ATI and NVIDIA open sourced their drivers, it would make it very difficult for them to compete with each other. It would just come down to brand loyalty or pre-bundled stuff w/ pre-built pcs. One of the reasons ATI is competitive at this point with NVIDIA is that they have a higher image quality in their renderings than NVIDIA. The video card market is not just about hardware at this point, bad drivers will result in crappy sales as much as bad hardware. Look at the ATI of the past... before the 9700pro came out ATI was notorious for crappy drivers. They fixed them, brought out good hardware.. and have steadily gained on NVIDIA ever since. [/ramblin] Now that I'm done w/ that, I'm all in favour of open source software.. but for some things I'll gladly support binary only.
ahh.. they can go bigger than that... Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut are all owned by TRICON. And guess who owns TRICON...... PEPSI! so now pepsi can invest some billions in it and oust exxon/shell:) Then we can have Britney sporting sexy clothes pushing "pepsi" branch biodiesel on us at the pumps. WOO!
They use DirectX probably for the same reason many others do. OpenGL sucks to program for. I know, I've done both. Wanna spend some time playing with driver extentions because GL is so outdated or just check some caps in d3d. Once OpenGL 2.0 comes out, things might change, but for now, I'd take DX over anything else.
Slashdot Mirror
I usually use tweakUI to turn off balloon tips to get rid of this. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx Of course the Intel manager is far more annoying than the windows one.
Lies.. this one is clearly better WE'RE BACK
Rockstar is one of the game developers out there that is at the height of whoring a franchise. It's the big developers like this that continue re-releasing the same game over and over that is leading to the stagnating gaming industry. As far as I'm concerned, they should have stopped after GTA3. Nintendo on the other hand, has it's franchise characters (Mario and such) but each time they release a game they make it a different one. Every Mario release might fall under the platformer genre, but they all play/look different. Transfering the franchise characters to other genres is also a positive. Kart, Smash Brothers, Tennis, and Strikers are all very different games with similar characters. This makes for good brand awareness while giving the diversity in gameplay that I wish more people would demand. So I give props to Rockstar on this one, but please don't make anymore GTAs... it's as tired and played out as WW2 based FPS games.
I sort of liked how Final Fantasy 7 did it. I don't remember the cutscenes being overly many. It was more of a RPGRPGRPGRPG-break with fancy tech demo of the hardware-RPGRPGRPG. I rememebr some of them being a great way for the story to progress (weapon attacking Midgarr and such). They're good tools for setting mood, and quick plot advances but should not be used to tell the whole story. I don't want cutscene->grind grind grind grind->cutscene.
Don't get me wrong.. I havent come close to finishing them mostly because of that. I've moved onto other types of RPGs now where the combat part is paramount (tactics styles mostly). I like the idea of a 6 game series story, but the delivery has been lacking. They seem to be catering towards what NA perceives as anime. Bubbly girls and gruff guys. I'm still waiting for a scene in it w/ a girl bouncing up and down w/ giant pink lines drawn around her. I was just making a point of how the cutscenes themselves are handled.. though they definately abuse it to the extreme.
I've put some time into Xenosage a couple times through now. It's one game that's HEAVY on cutscences for progressing the story. I don't mind it in an RPG but the one thing they did that I love is give you the option to pause/skip the cutscenes. The other biggies is that I guess they realized how crappy the ps2 can be at reading dual layer discs and when you get read errors, you can actually restart he cutscene.
Hey fishboy... *stab to the grill*
I for one, will continue to buy my Sony products for RPGS/Mainstream games, and Nintendo products for something interesting and innovative.
1) add exchange/AD user and wait 20 minutes
2) add BES user and wait 15 minutes
3) Enterprise act new bb and wait 15 minutes
I for one also HATE the BES :)
well.. for basic, i went with the antec sonata. its cheap ($130 CAD), black (nice glossy finish on the case), nice built in power supply (truepower 380), and yes it has the 120mm fan spots but they do make it noticeably quieter.
I always put my system specs in my sig on hardware forums (a basic one at least) and I do it for good reason. It lets everyone know what I'm using if I'm asking questions, and that I have experience with certain things when answering theirs. I will however, agree with you on the people who list every last litte detail.
I just bought the pioneer 16X, and also got 25 dvd-rs for $10 CAD.. so I'd say the price has almost dropped. (Of course they are opto 4x blanks.. but for that price I'm willing to get a few coasters)
An interesting thing to note is that (at least in Canada), with the huge amount of tax we pay on cigarettes we smokers die long before we use up enough of the medical system. Its the non-smokers that cling to life and add that extra 10-20 years of medical bills on the medicare system here. Smokers are essentially paying for non-smokers to live longer... so maybe we should be saluted :P
or as a symbol of your virginity :)
except for a change.. directX is very well made. Its probably one of the few mSOFT products I truly enjoy. I think the main reason directX has been ahead of openGL for so long is that is it ONE company that makes the choices.. having panels/discussions for everything has just bogged down openGL.
hmm.. I'm running KDE3.2.2, kernel 2.6.6, slack 9.1 on a 1200, with 512MB RAM, full install with a bunch of unnecessary crap running ( - n00b), but it runs faster than my 2500+ o/ced to 2.2, w/ 512MB ddr400 running xp w/ all the crap turned off. maybe some tuning is needed
even better idea for game reviews, just to let you know. Check out www.gametab.com and look at their review listings. They just grab an average of a bunch of different sites. So I can check that, see that 15 sites reviewed a game, then I'll read the lowest few to see any problems with a game and decide if it's a worthy purchase. Plus with gametab, you get all the current news from all the big sites right on their frontpage. They also have their deals section which is nice (though I live in Canada, so most of them arent worth it when you add shipping).
what about viewtiful joe for the gamecube? 3dish game w/ a 2d cartoon feel. Get's amazing reviews.. big seller.. and a wicked awsome game. And as far as 3rd person cameras.... yes... almost every 3rd person camera ever put into a game sucks! bad! really bad!!! If a devloper is gonna put a crappy made rail system or chase camera, at least let the player have some control over it to get around your level designers mistakes.
the ??? is easy to figure out: 4: Release dvd sets of all the seasons and generate renewed interest in show then bring back on air!
ATI says they support 3rd party linux drivers.. does anyone know how well? They make many references to it in the linux section of their drivers page ATI so I wonder how well they support projects like DRI. My main complaint is that the newest drivers (just released) still are only for the 2.4 kernel.
I think it has more to do with the IP involved in video card drivers. The hardware on newer vid cards is so similar that a lot of performance and image quality comes from the driver. If ATI and NVIDIA open sourced their drivers, it would make it very difficult for them to compete with each other. It would just come down to brand loyalty or pre-bundled stuff w/ pre-built pcs. One of the reasons ATI is competitive at this point with NVIDIA is that they have a higher image quality in their renderings than NVIDIA. The video card market is not just about hardware at this point, bad drivers will result in crappy sales as much as bad hardware. Look at the ATI of the past... before the 9700pro came out ATI was notorious for crappy drivers. They fixed them, brought out good hardware.. and have steadily gained on NVIDIA ever since. [/ramblin] Now that I'm done w/ that, I'm all in favour of open source software.. but for some things I'll gladly support binary only.
ahh.. they can go bigger than that... Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut are all owned by TRICON. And guess who owns TRICON... ... PEPSI! so now pepsi can invest some billions in it and oust exxon/shell :) Then we can have Britney sporting sexy clothes pushing "pepsi" branch biodiesel on us at the pumps. WOO!
common thats easy... slack/vi/kde :) anyone who thinks differently is just "confused". -and yes I'm joking... please don't hunt me down ;)
They use DirectX probably for the same reason many others do. OpenGL sucks to program for. I know, I've done both. Wanna spend some time playing with driver extentions because GL is so outdated or just check some caps in d3d. Once OpenGL 2.0 comes out, things might change, but for now, I'd take DX over anything else.