Oh, man. This is making me laugh so hard, now that I've gotten to thinking about it. I can just imagine him standing there, looking at screens...beginning to get angry..."Yowa rova is wrong! That is not Maarz!"
That reminds me a bit of StarFox 64. You could go and beat the game the easy way, sure. But it was much, much more satifying to take the hard track all the way through, fight a tough battle against StarWolf, and then fight creepy-brain-Andross. Not that that was really all that hard, either.
Sometimes I don't want to worry about my game being too hard or easy. I don't want to get stuck or a hard part or get bored if I get too good. You know, sometimes. But I think having it as an option is best.
The absolute worst attempt at scaling difficulty I've ever seen is Homeworld 2. Really all it does is takes the force you have coming into that mission, and creates an initial enemy force that will beat it (not only in numbers, but also in ship types -- if you have fighters, they have lots of anti-fighter ships). So the easiest way to play the game involves wrecking all your ships at the end of each mission, and (by far) the hardest way is to maintain a strong fleet. GAH.
Of course, no other attempts I've seen are even close to that. I think scaling AI is a good way to do it, when it should be done at all.
Erm, maybe you've never played Thief. the first-person perspective was a bit difficult to use at times, since you need to be aware of exactly where you are. How about Splinter Cell, have you played that? The games are remarkably similar -- minimal combat, what combat you do is preferably melee -- That's a club in his hand, not a throwing knife.
When I played the first two Thief games I often found myself wishing for a third-person perspective, to help me see how much of me was hidden in a niche, see how close I was to stepping into the light, ensuring that I kept walking on the moss and didn't accidently make a fatal, noisy step onto the flagstones.
I'll vote for whoever I think would do best for the country. Will that vote be insignificant? It might. Might it be a Democrat this year? Possibly. A Republican...well, I doubt that. But every election is different, and I'll vote for who I think is the best in each case. In some ways, I really like most Democrats. But there are some (many) I would never vote for. I could probably say the same about every party in the country, minor or major, to varying extents.
One common voter type I forgot to mention is the frontrunner, the one who votes not for who they think should win, but who they think will win. Bah!
I've said numerous times that the system is flawed in personal discussions, and successfully argued my point every time. If the system was fine, I wouldn't mind people being so stuck on it.
True, I once turned the tables on a cop who came in response to somebody's report of me 'trespassing' around some under-construction houses. I was 16 at the time, I was looking around, cheking out the way they were built, that was all. Some people living nearby call police, cop comes (I give him credit for this, it was skillful.) out of NOWHERE and almost runs me and my friends down in his car. Now, I know one shouldn't run from a cop, but let me repeat, he nearly ran us over. At maybe 45mph. So, yeah, there was some initial running. And...when you start running, it's hard to stop. So we kept going, but into the woods, slow going and all, and about 10 feet into the woods we see some younger kids we know. We're like, "Uh, heyyy, guys. Hi."
So the officer comes up to the edge of the woods, gun out, starts screaming at the three of us, and at the younger kids (around age 8, all of them) to get out of the woods, including much insult and profanity.
Now, I didn't appreciate that. Talk to me how you want, public servant, but leave the kids alone. My friends had the same idea, and started yelling back.
A few minutes later we're standing in front of the officer and the kids have gone on their way. We hate this guy, and he's obviously an arrogant prick -- reminded me a little of Percy from the Green Mile movie. So he starts telling us that we're tresspassing. "Actually, no, we haven't done anything illegal." say I. He says, "Tresspassing is ill--" but I interrupt, "No, not without signs or a warning. How could it be illegal if I don't even know I'm not on public land?" He's stuttering now, he knows I'm right, though he suspects now that maybe we DID do SOMETHING wrong, which we didn't, but he has no idea what and can't do anything about it. I look at him, ask his name. He starts to say something, one of my friends says, "I don't like how you yelled at those kids." Cop turns around, walks away.
And people wonder why I have so little respect for authority.
Good story, I thought. Mod it offtopic, fine, go ahead. It's still a good story.
So if a man had a gun held to your head, you'd feel fine, because he has no power? No right to hurt you? Because if that's what you're saying, all right.
But if you'd have a problem with that man threatening your life, you should also have a problem with Microsoft business practices. You just want to use a different word for it, and perpetuate a pointless argument over wording that everybody understands just fine, as was intended.
Yes. The U.S. Government is evil. No, I mean it, I'm not kidding. I don't think there's much that could have prevented it from becoming so, but that doesn't make it right.
Yeah, both the major parties suck. And there's probably more of a problem there than you realize, since it seems you don't live here. My problem is this: Most people (maybe 60%, 70% of people I encounter) say, "I'm a Republican," or "I'm a Democrat." Never "I'm an independent thinker who can make individual choices on individual issues." It's amazing to me how many people think that not quite agreeing with part of their chosen party's platform is some kind of moral dilemma. I also know about 12 people who will mindlessly vote Republican because the party doesn't support abortion -- to the extent that if a rare Rep. candidate was pro-choice, they wouldn't have paid enough attention to know that and would vote for said candidate anyway.
Yeah, the system itself is a problem, but the citizens as a whole support it very, very strongly. And they do it automatically, too -- their opinions are so ingrained it usually looks more like indoctrination than free thought.
I'm kinda confused by that. I consider all my friends' sisters impenetrable. If I considered them to be penetrable, wouldn't THAT be the problem?
Oh, wait. There is that one...
Funny...I knew what the game was before reading the last line, or checking the link. Damn fine game. I couldn't get my old copy to work anymore last time I tried...though I only put maybe 5 minutes into it. I need to get that game running and make MY GF play it. She'd love it.
For a good period of time I was a mid-teen gamer with none of the above, and parents who wouldn't keep me from buying games myself, but wouldn't encourage it too much either. I can remember sitting in my room with $200 saved up, looking at something I wanted to buy online, and being fully aware of how powerless I was to do anything about it. *Sniff*
Basically, the only way for me to get something was to go to the store and get it.
When you're driving, you can't focus on your speedometer and the road at the same time. You focus on the road and occasionally glance at the speedometer.
Compare it to having to hit a button to switch between them.
Just to give some real evidence that Nintendo knows what they're doin in this situation: They predicted that people would say that. Initially. They also predected that people would come around once they saw what could be done with it.
Yeah, agreed...I was really incredibly surprised to play the latest one and find that I liked it. That says a lot about a game, you know, when upon finding that you don't despise a related game, your jaw drops in shock.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, man. This is making me laugh so hard, now that I've gotten to thinking about it. I can just imagine him standing there, looking at screens...beginning to get angry..."Yowa rova is wrong! That is not Maarz!"
Yeah, you'll get it about three months after you're dead!
Well, attention to detail, maybe. But he has been working on it for 23 years.
That reminds me a bit of StarFox 64. You could go and beat the game the easy way, sure. But it was much, much more satifying to take the hard track all the way through, fight a tough battle against StarWolf, and then fight creepy-brain-Andross. Not that that was really all that hard, either.
Sometimes I don't want to worry about my game being too hard or easy. I don't want to get stuck or a hard part or get bored if I get too good. You know, sometimes. But I think having it as an option is best.
The absolute worst attempt at scaling difficulty I've ever seen is Homeworld 2. Really all it does is takes the force you have coming into that mission, and creates an initial enemy force that will beat it (not only in numbers, but also in ship types -- if you have fighters, they have lots of anti-fighter ships). So the easiest way to play the game involves wrecking all your ships at the end of each mission, and (by far) the hardest way is to maintain a strong fleet. GAH.
Of course, no other attempts I've seen are even close to that. I think scaling AI is a good way to do it, when it should be done at all.
Who cares about how many big developers are left? Smaller companies tend to produce just as much quality, if not quantity.
Erm, maybe you've never played Thief. the first-person perspective was a bit difficult to use at times, since you need to be aware of exactly where you are. How about Splinter Cell, have you played that? The games are remarkably similar -- minimal combat, what combat you do is preferably melee -- That's a club in his hand, not a throwing knife.
When I played the first two Thief games I often found myself wishing for a third-person perspective, to help me see how much of me was hidden in a niche, see how close I was to stepping into the light, ensuring that I kept walking on the moss and didn't accidently make a fatal, noisy step onto the flagstones.
I'll vote for whoever I think would do best for the country. Will that vote be insignificant? It might. Might it be a Democrat this year? Possibly. A Republican...well, I doubt that. But every election is different, and I'll vote for who I think is the best in each case. In some ways, I really like most Democrats. But there are some (many) I would never vote for. I could probably say the same about every party in the country, minor or major, to varying extents.
One common voter type I forgot to mention is the frontrunner, the one who votes not for who they think should win, but who they think will win. Bah!
I've said numerous times that the system is flawed in personal discussions, and successfully argued my point every time. If the system was fine, I wouldn't mind people being so stuck on it.
I'm pretty sure Microsoft is guily of extortion. And I wouldn't rule out a few of the others you mentioned, either.
Man, and I even use Windows.
True, I once turned the tables on a cop who came in response to somebody's report of me 'trespassing' around some under-construction houses. I was 16 at the time, I was looking around, cheking out the way they were built, that was all. Some people living nearby call police, cop comes (I give him credit for this, it was skillful.) out of NOWHERE and almost runs me and my friends down in his car. Now, I know one shouldn't run from a cop, but let me repeat, he nearly ran us over. At maybe 45mph. So, yeah, there was some initial running. And...when you start running, it's hard to stop. So we kept going, but into the woods, slow going and all, and about 10 feet into the woods we see some younger kids we know. We're like, "Uh, heyyy, guys. Hi."
So the officer comes up to the edge of the woods, gun out, starts screaming at the three of us, and at the younger kids (around age 8, all of them) to get out of the woods, including much insult and profanity.
Now, I didn't appreciate that. Talk to me how you want, public servant, but leave the kids alone. My friends had the same idea, and started yelling back.
A few minutes later we're standing in front of the officer and the kids have gone on their way. We hate this guy, and he's obviously an arrogant prick -- reminded me a little of Percy from the Green Mile movie. So he starts telling us that we're tresspassing. "Actually, no, we haven't done anything illegal." say I. He says, "Tresspassing is ill--" but I interrupt, "No, not without signs or a warning. How could it be illegal if I don't even know I'm not on public land?" He's stuttering now, he knows I'm right, though he suspects now that maybe we DID do SOMETHING wrong, which we didn't, but he has no idea what and can't do anything about it. I look at him, ask his name. He starts to say something, one of my friends says, "I don't like how you yelled at those kids." Cop turns around, walks away.
And people wonder why I have so little respect for authority.
Good story, I thought. Mod it offtopic, fine, go ahead. It's still a good story.
So if a man had a gun held to your head, you'd feel fine, because he has no power? No right to hurt you? Because if that's what you're saying, all right.
But if you'd have a problem with that man threatening your life, you should also have a problem with Microsoft business practices. You just want to use a different word for it, and perpetuate a pointless argument over wording that everybody understands just fine, as was intended.
Yes. The U.S. Government is evil. No, I mean it, I'm not kidding. I don't think there's much that could have prevented it from becoming so, but that doesn't make it right.
Yeah, both the major parties suck. And there's probably more of a problem there than you realize, since it seems you don't live here. My problem is this: Most people (maybe 60%, 70% of people I encounter) say, "I'm a Republican," or "I'm a Democrat." Never "I'm an independent thinker who can make individual choices on individual issues." It's amazing to me how many people think that not quite agreeing with part of their chosen party's platform is some kind of moral dilemma. I also know about 12 people who will mindlessly vote Republican because the party doesn't support abortion -- to the extent that if a rare Rep. candidate was pro-choice, they wouldn't have paid enough attention to know that and would vote for said candidate anyway.
Yeah, the system itself is a problem, but the citizens as a whole support it very, very strongly. And they do it automatically, too -- their opinions are so ingrained it usually looks more like indoctrination than free thought.
I'm kinda confused by that. I consider all my friends' sisters impenetrable. If I considered them to be penetrable, wouldn't THAT be the problem? Oh, wait. There is that one...
Funny...I knew what the game was before reading the last line, or checking the link. Damn fine game. I couldn't get my old copy to work anymore last time I tried...though I only put maybe 5 minutes into it. I need to get that game running and make MY GF play it. She'd love it.
Er...non-gamers generally don't just jump into RPGs and like them. I know it's a console RPG, but still. You need to ease them into it.
I know. I have two ex-girlfriends, both of them ex-non-gamers.
In this article, actually, in the summary, it says the screens will be configured vertically. Pay attention.
For a good period of time I was a mid-teen gamer with none of the above, and parents who wouldn't keep me from buying games myself, but wouldn't encourage it too much either. I can remember sitting in my room with $200 saved up, looking at something I wanted to buy online, and being fully aware of how powerless I was to do anything about it. *Sniff*
Basically, the only way for me to get something was to go to the store and get it.
Compare it to having to hit a button to switch between them.
Just to give some real evidence that Nintendo knows what they're doin in this situation: They predicted that people would say that. Initially. They also predected that people would come around once they saw what could be done with it.
I'd get one so that I could look cool.
Yeah, you read that right. Unless you read it to mean anything other than "I think a mouse support glove would make me look cool."
I really wouldn't call it a fun game.
The stuff you meantioned, though, yeah that's good.
It's the parts of the game dealing with subtlety that I have a problem with.
How is that a guilty pleasure? Dammit, it's Chrono Trigger, one of the greatest console RPGs ever, and one of the best parts of it, at that.
Yeah, agreed...I was really incredibly surprised to play the latest one and find that I liked it. That says a lot about a game, you know, when upon finding that you don't despise a related game, your jaw drops in shock.
I was in sixth grade when that movie came out.
My name is Steve.
All my friends saw it.
Sixth graders suck.
All hail Anachronox! PlanetAnachronox is still alive and kicking, too. That's kinda crazy. In a good way.