to those of us on the plane. One time, flying out of MSP, we pulled on the runway to takeoff, and then sharply pulled back off to the left. Since I was on the left side of the plane, I looked out the window. Low and behold, another large jet just about to land on us, coming in for a landing. Wow.
The pilot comes on, and says some bullshit about weather ahead and we're going to wait a few more minutes. I wanted to yell out 'Someone nearly got us killed, you lying sack of crap!', but likely that would get me thrown off the plane.
So whenever I hear the pilot come on, and tell some shit about weather or turbulence, or why the plane is delayed, I don't believe a word of it now. I think that's the part that pisses me off most, to know we're not being dealt with at an adult and honest level.
Also, the director commentary (Joss) for many of the episodes is great to listen to. I enjoyed 'Objects in Space' *more* after watching some of the hows and whys coming from Joss as the episode played along. It was really quite engaging.
You can see the basis for the long opening continuous shot in 'Serenity' at the end of this episode - something you don't/appreciate/ until you realize there were no cuts, no different cameras... all one take. It was so subtle and well done that I hadn't realized what Joss was doing (had done) until he mentioned it in the commentary.
Firefly, canceled before finishing a full season. Does that seem right to you?
Yes, you are technically correct. My point really was : (quoting now from wikipedia)
"... system software updates have improved software backwards compatibility and added support for upscaling of PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games up to 1080p resolution. Upscaling can improve picture quality in some situations."
Which is a result of ditching the Emotion Engine hardware in the 80GB PS3 model and a benefit of doing it in software - as opposed to the no-longer-manufactured 60GB PS3 which had the EE chip.
Is there anything else you'd like to nitpick and contribute nothing meaningful to?
> WiiSports. Yes, WiiSports. People are paying $250 to play that game, so it is a Killer app.
I suppose so. It's hard for me to believe that such a/novelty/ game is garnering that much attention, but I suppose you're right. I would think "The Force Unleashed" would be a bigger draw for all the Star Wars nerds + friends who really want to swing a lightsaber and shit.
I think a FF title would probably do it for the PS3 - all the bells and whistles used on the PS3 for FF could make for a stunning game. (I've never played it FF at all, so I'm just theorizing).
What's the Wii's killer app? Once the newness of the controller has worn off, that is. I've browsed the titles / reviews and I don't see anything that I have to have.
Does the PS3 have one? I thought it was going to be Heavenly Sword - but while fun, not a must have game.
The console that will win will be the one that has the most awesome-must-have games. Xbox is a serious contender given that they have been paying big money for their-platform-only titles (Mass Effect, Halo*).
Dunno. Maybe I'm a jaded gamer. 24 years of video game playing - there's not a lot that surprises me. I still don't see the draw of any of the current platforms.
The only thing that tickles my fancy is a PS3 because I can still play the older PS2 titles, now rendered better by the ps3 80gb in software (not the 60gb chip/hardware). Oh, plus blu-ray player ability for the widescreeen LCD TV I picked up. The downside is that it's a blu-ray player which means you take a side in the ongoing HD-DVD/Blu-ray debacle.
I had two accounts and.. 5 or 6 lvl50's. And a smattering of other characters I didn't really care to break 40 with. Is it worth it for me to login for old-times sake? I haven't been back since ED. I guess the only thing I'd want to come back for would be content for my 50s.
I wonder if my Fire/Mace tank is still viable... I named her "Pepper Spray".:-)
I guess I never felt stupidly broken, because we always challenged ourselves with what the game had to offer. (Pulling way too much, fighting things likely to beat us no matter how 'broken' the complainers thought we were, etc)
> You're right, that was my main problem. The developers harped on the concept of risk versus reward for a long time, and a small element of the player base (such as the poster I replied to) hated it. They only want the reward, not the risk.
I actually wanted 'epic risk'... and a matching reward. But the rewards were all canned / weren't interesting for the most part. The difficulty slider helped with that some, but majority of the game was 'zone into boring warehouse, kill all, repeat'. So now I have boring missions, made 'riskier' by the developers... is there any wonder people min-maxxed to get past this / make themselves feel like heroes / move on to the more interesting parts of the game?
More TF's like the crystal cavern would have gone a long way. That was my absolute favorite and I would run it over and over again...
As to the 11 hour fest, we had many drops - so by the time we reached the end there weren't many of us left (4 i think?) which generally made everything take much much longer than it should have... IE careful pulling, super careful for aggro... and at the end of it at the 9 hour mark, it was bugged and we had to call for GM assistance to unbug it... we waited for 2 hours in the last map dancing and killing time.
As to 'just fire tanks', not so. Any class that took the time to spec out dodge/tough/weave (pool powers) were raped for wasting their time with diminishing returns. So all those levels were I picked the "unfun" power (Damn, another point in weave this level... ) to produce the most min-maxxed output possible by the time I hit 50 turned into a giant waste. I'm irritated because they changed the way the game was *fundamentally* played over a year into the release and told us it was how they intended it to be. Which is a load of crap.
As to epic - it depends on what you do. I went looking for challenges. Go pull the entire crystal cavern with a regen scrapper designed to be a tank (dodge,tough,provoke) to have an epic battle of epic proportions - I brought my entire SG on that run, and let me tell you, I died. A lot. But with good teamwork, we finally had a level where there was "neverending waves of highlevel mobs"... That was an epic fight.
But that's my point - you can't have "epic" battles like that anymore. You'll get reamed because you're mediocre now, whether you realize it or not. I define "epic" as more targets on my screen than I know what to do with and possibly may cause a full wipe.
I was there through almost all of the nerfs and I adapted. Invincibility tankers. Regen scrappers. Fire controllers. (Flaming monkeys ftw) - through all that right up to the ED crap... another across the board weakening of all classes without addressing fundamental problems like why mind controllers sucked (as an example).
My "supergroup" and I left CoH a long time ago. Why?
Because we no longer felt heroic. We had run every taskforce (Including the first from that portal realm - 11 HOUR MARATHON), done everything - we knew the game, constantly created new characters... AND we were still having a blast!
The characters we had planned out... from level 1 to 50 were all suddenly useless. All the planning and effort to tweak builds, respec builds and come out with something of 'heroic' proportions were deemed 'too powerful' and the system was changed to what we were told was "How the devs originally wanted it".... only a year and a half after the initial release. We didn't even get a thanks for beta testing for them (oh, and paying for it too).
Suddenly, we were no longer in the "City of Heroes" - we were in the "City of Mediocrity" as the devs continued to tune down the classes so no one could feel like an epic hero anymore.
Funny, I thought Angel was better in the 5th season, after he (Whedon) ditched whiny Connor and evil Cordelia. Plus we had Spike back - and that's always good for a laugh.
Not spoilers, past the statue of limitations.;-)
What parts of Serenity weren't consistent? Leaving out the rewrite of River's escape among other things...
Re:Netrek = 1988 ... beats Quake by a lot of years
on
The Orange Box Review
·
· Score: 1
And while we're here, let's start a Paradise vs. Bronco argument as well.
Before Zerg Rush entered the vernacular... there was 'Ogg!'.
You could tell it was a teenage boy game, given that the term for getting shot down carrying armies was a 'douche'.
Ah, the good old days. And then Diablo, followed shortly by Quake I became all the rage for online team games. Paradise practically evaporated overnight. Die hards stuck with Bronco.
And I believe Team Fortress started out as a QuakeWorld mod, not a Quake mod. (Though it's a mod of a mod I guess....)
"1) Do you have billboards in your city? Sao Paulo, Brazil, one of the biggest cities in the world does not. Sao Paulo is more advanced than most cities in that way. "
No one turned this into a nerd discussion of the merits of the game. Which, given the topic, is somewhat OT.
I will comment that it's a shame the US Army put this game out, since it's (and I will argue so) one of the more realistic FPS games out there. Fuck Rainbow Six. Fuck Counterstrike. This is the game where I can easily give out orders, or better yet, USE HAND SIGNALS to quickly communicate with my teammates. In fact, it's better to use hand signals since the sound of your own f'ing radio can give you away.
Cover-fire, positioning, and tactics all made this a great squad based game - it was a dream come true to find yourself on several teams that actually knew what they were doing.
And bless whomever made 'Pipeline'. Truly an awesome map - balanced and interesting.
I played up till I was about rank 90 or so - I had a fairly high kill to death ratio as well (no, I did not just sit around and whore on defense - I played roughly 50/50)... something like 3 or 4:1.
So yeah, for those of us anti-war / our government... don't get suckered by the propaganda - but for those of you who didn't play based purely on that, you missed a great game. I'm not sure how well that game engine has stood the test of time (especially now that the next gen games are on their way out, bioshock, etc), but it certainly was a blast.
It's just a sad, sad statement when the most informed news you can get, in the paraphrased words of John Stewart, is a fake news show lead into by puppets making crank calls. John gets that. I honestly don't know how he manages to be so chipper and funny - he has to get up on that stage and make fun of some of the saddest/worst stuff in this country. Daily. Perhaps in the hopes that he's entertaining AND informing... as opposed to places like Fox News, or CNN, which are failing us on so many levels.
You're forgetting the legal morass that is the current patent system, where there is NO INCENTIVE to look for prior art. In fact, if you do look for prior art, and do something that violates someone else's patent, you are liable for TREBLE DAMAGES. _Willfully Infringing_. Companies DO NOT WANT to know about prior art. They don't care. Submit the patent, the patent writer gets a nice bonus, let the lawyers fight it out.
Your ideas are only workable if you believe for a second that the U.S. Government, bought and paid for by companies at this point, is going to change the system to make it 'financially painful' to themselves.
Thanks. I mean seriously. I'm sure that they have tons of facial recognition programs / data collection scripts just WAITING to poll the stuff you people are throwing out into the public domain and link it to your name, address, age, anything else that they can slurp up automatically!
I hope no one on myspace and their ilk have political aspirations.... ever. You'll find your "blog" turned right back in your face when you're running for an important office.
This raises an important point. Are game companies, EA in particular, relying on their practices of purchasing game companies and studios up in order to fulfill their monopolistic fantasies of being the only show in town?
Parent poster and several other posts have pointed out how numerous game houses and their IP has been snatched up... and then never seen from again. Why buy the company then? Is it just so that there will eventually be nothing left except Madden XXIV ?
Are the big publishers relying on the fact that game consumers have a short memory, or at least their target audience is "forgetful" (re: grows up and they get new game consumers) so they can do whatever they want without alienating their client base?
As an old gamer (Well, 30. Yeah yeah, I'm sure there are older ones out there) I remember a lot of the crappy things and futile promises that have been made by game companies over the years... but few people seem to pay attention - they just need their latest crack - doesn't matter who the pusher is.
I look long and hard before I look at buying games made/published by EA... EA_Spouse made me aware of what was going on internally - nevermind their practices of discarding IP from their purchased subsidiaries, and in effect throwing away pieces of my childhood.
I wonder if Blizzard lost any sales when the crushed bnetd... or if they are simply laughing all the way to the bank. (betting on the latter).
Slashdot Mirror
to those of us on the plane. One time, flying out of MSP, we pulled on the runway to takeoff, and then sharply pulled back off to the left. Since I was on the left side of the plane, I looked out the window. Low and behold, another large jet just about to land on us, coming in for a landing. Wow.
The pilot comes on, and says some bullshit about weather ahead and we're going to wait a few more minutes. I wanted to yell out 'Someone nearly got us killed, you lying sack of crap!', but likely that would get me thrown off the plane.
So whenever I hear the pilot come on, and tell some shit about weather or turbulence, or why the plane is delayed, I don't believe a word of it now. I think that's the part that pisses me off most, to know we're not being dealt with at an adult and honest level.
>Yes, and a pine is not a plant - it's a tree.
I'm pretty sure it's also not an elm.
Also, the director commentary (Joss) for many of the episodes is great to listen to. I enjoyed 'Objects in Space' *more* after watching some of the hows and whys coming from Joss as the episode played along. It was really quite engaging.
/appreciate/ until you realize there were no cuts, no different cameras ... all one take. It was so subtle and well done that I hadn't realized what Joss was doing (had done) until he mentioned it in the commentary.
You can see the basis for the long opening continuous shot in 'Serenity' at the end of this episode - something you don't
Firefly, canceled before finishing a full season. Does that seem right to you?
Yes, you are technically correct. My point really was : (quoting now from wikipedia)
"... system software updates have improved software backwards compatibility and added support for upscaling of PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games up to 1080p resolution. Upscaling can improve picture quality in some situations."
Which is a result of ditching the Emotion Engine hardware in the 80GB PS3 model and a benefit of doing it in software - as opposed to the no-longer-manufactured 60GB PS3 which had the EE chip.
Is there anything else you'd like to nitpick and contribute nothing meaningful to?
> WiiSports. Yes, WiiSports. People are paying $250 to play that game, so it is a Killer app.
/novelty/ game is garnering that much attention, but I suppose you're right. I would think "The Force Unleashed" would be a bigger draw for all the Star Wars nerds + friends who really want to swing a lightsaber and shit.
I suppose so. It's hard for me to believe that such a
I think a FF title would probably do it for the PS3 - all the bells and whistles used on the PS3 for FF could make for a stunning game. (I've never played it FF at all, so I'm just theorizing).
I suppose Xbox360 has Halo3 (not my thing).
What's the Wii's killer app? Once the newness of the controller has worn off, that is. I've browsed the titles / reviews and I don't see anything that I have to have.
Does the PS3 have one? I thought it was going to be Heavenly Sword - but while fun, not a must have game.
The console that will win will be the one that has the most awesome-must-have games. Xbox is a serious contender given that they have been paying big money for their-platform-only titles (Mass Effect, Halo*).
Dunno. Maybe I'm a jaded gamer. 24 years of video game playing - there's not a lot that surprises me. I still don't see the draw of any of the current platforms.
The only thing that tickles my fancy is a PS3 because I can still play the older PS2 titles, now rendered better by the ps3 80gb in software (not the 60gb chip/hardware). Oh, plus blu-ray player ability for the widescreeen LCD TV I picked up. The downside is that it's a blu-ray player which means you take a side in the ongoing HD-DVD/Blu-ray debacle.
I had two accounts and .. 5 or 6 lvl50's. And a smattering of other characters I didn't really care to break 40 with. Is it worth it for me to login for old-times sake? I haven't been back since ED. I guess the only thing I'd want to come back for would be content for my 50s.
... I named her "Pepper Spray". :-)
I wonder if my Fire/Mace tank is still viable
I guess I never felt stupidly broken, because we always challenged ourselves with what the game had to offer. (Pulling way too much, fighting things likely to beat us no matter how 'broken' the complainers thought we were, etc)
> You're right, that was my main problem. The developers harped on the concept of risk versus reward for a long time, and a small element of the player base (such as the poster I replied to) hated it. They only want the reward, not the risk.
... and a matching reward. But the rewards were all canned / weren't interesting for the most part. The difficulty slider helped with that some, but majority of the game was 'zone into boring warehouse, kill all, repeat'. So now I have boring missions, made 'riskier' by the developers ... is there any wonder people min-maxxed to get past this / make themselves feel like heroes / move on to the more interesting parts of the game?
...
I actually wanted 'epic risk'
More TF's like the crystal cavern would have gone a long way. That was my absolute favorite and I would run it over and over again
As to the 11 hour fest, we had many drops - so by the time we reached the end there weren't many of us left (4 i think?) which generally made everything take much much longer than it should have ... IE careful pulling, super careful for aggro ... and at the end of it at the 9 hour mark, it was bugged and we had to call for GM assistance to unbug it ... we waited for 2 hours in the last map dancing and killing time.
... ) to produce the most min-maxxed output possible by the time I hit 50 turned into a giant waste. I'm irritated because they changed the way the game was *fundamentally* played over a year into the release and told us it was how they intended it to be. Which is a load of crap.
... That was an epic fight.
... another across the board weakening of all classes without addressing fundamental problems like why mind controllers sucked (as an example).
As to 'just fire tanks', not so. Any class that took the time to spec out dodge/tough/weave (pool powers) were raped for wasting their time with diminishing returns. So all those levels were I picked the "unfun" power (Damn, another point in weave this level
As to epic - it depends on what you do. I went looking for challenges. Go pull the entire crystal cavern with a regen scrapper designed to be a tank (dodge,tough,provoke) to have an epic battle of epic proportions - I brought my entire SG on that run, and let me tell you, I died. A lot. But with good teamwork, we finally had a level where there was "neverending waves of highlevel mobs"
But that's my point - you can't have "epic" battles like that anymore. You'll get reamed because you're mediocre now, whether you realize it or not. I define "epic" as more targets on my screen than I know what to do with and possibly may cause a full wipe.
I was there through almost all of the nerfs and I adapted. Invincibility tankers. Regen scrappers. Fire controllers. (Flaming monkeys ftw) - through all that right up to the ED crap
My "supergroup" and I left CoH a long time ago. Why?
... AND we were still having a blast!
... from level 1 to 50 were all suddenly useless. All the planning and effort to tweak builds, respec builds and come out with something of 'heroic' proportions were deemed 'too powerful' and the system was changed to what we were told was "How the devs originally wanted it" .... only a year and a half after the initial release. We didn't even get a thanks for beta testing for them (oh, and paying for it too).
Because we no longer felt heroic. We had run every taskforce (Including the first from that portal realm - 11 HOUR MARATHON), done everything - we knew the game, constantly created new characters
The characters we had planned out
Suddenly, we were no longer in the "City of Heroes" - we were in the "City of Mediocrity" as the devs continued to tune down the classes so no one could feel like an epic hero anymore.
Which really defeats the purpose of the game.
Fox: "Come on home baby. This time it will be different. We won't cancel you halfway this time. We'll change."
... I have no choice but to go back, for the sake of the children."
Whedon: "I'm in a co-dependant relationship with Fox
Funny, I thought Angel was better in the 5th season, after he (Whedon) ditched whiny Connor and evil Cordelia. Plus we had Spike back - and that's always good for a laugh.
;-)
...
Not spoilers, past the statue of limitations.
What parts of Serenity weren't consistent? Leaving out the rewrite of River's escape among other things
And while we're here, let's start a Paradise vs. Bronco argument as well.
... there was 'Ogg!'.
....)
Before Zerg Rush entered the vernacular
You could tell it was a teenage boy game, given that the term for getting shot
down carrying armies was a 'douche'.
Ah, the good old days. And then Diablo, followed shortly by Quake I became all
the rage for online team games. Paradise practically evaporated overnight. Die
hards stuck with Bronco.
And I believe Team Fortress started out as a QuakeWorld mod, not a Quake mod.
(Though it's a mod of a mod I guess
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakeworld
"1) Do you have billboards in your city? Sao Paulo, Brazil, one of the biggest cities in the world does not. Sao Paulo is more advanced than most cities in that way. "
:-)
No, I don't. I'm from Vermont.
"The whole point is that we have the freedom to assemble."
Yeah, in a 'Free Speech Zone'. Not to nit, but you're forming your argument on something the government has been 'bending' repeatedly now.
No one turned this into a nerd discussion of the merits of the game. Which, given the topic, is somewhat OT.
... something like 3 or 4:1.
... don't get suckered by the propaganda - but for those of you who didn't play based purely on that, you missed a great game. I'm not sure how well that game engine has stood the test of time (especially now that the next gen games are on their way out, bioshock, etc), but it certainly was a blast.
I will comment that it's a shame the US Army put this game out, since it's (and I will argue so) one of the more realistic FPS games out there. Fuck Rainbow Six. Fuck Counterstrike. This is the game where I can easily give out orders, or better yet, USE HAND SIGNALS to quickly communicate with my teammates. In fact, it's better to use hand signals since the sound of your own f'ing radio can give you away.
Cover-fire, positioning, and tactics all made this a great squad based game - it was a dream come true to find yourself on several teams that actually knew what they were doing.
And bless whomever made 'Pipeline'. Truly an awesome map - balanced and interesting.
I played up till I was about rank 90 or so - I had a fairly high kill to death ratio as well (no, I did not just sit around and whore on defense - I played roughly 50/50)
So yeah, for those of us anti-war / our government
It's just a sad, sad statement when the most informed news you can get, in the paraphrased words of John Stewart, is a fake news show lead into by puppets making crank calls. John gets that. I honestly don't know how he manages to be so chipper and funny - he has to get up on that stage and make fun of some of the saddest/worst stuff in this country. Daily. Perhaps in the hopes that he's entertaining AND informing ... as opposed to places like Fox News, or CNN, which are failing us on so many levels.
Don't forget the awesome summary of season 3. (For those who never watched it).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ColRwxkC1FY
I crack up every time I watch it.
I hope they manage to tie up the few loose threads left in S4.
You're forgetting the legal morass that is the current patent system, where there is NO INCENTIVE to look for prior art. In fact, if you do look for prior art, and do something that violates someone else's patent, you are liable for TREBLE DAMAGES. _Willfully Infringing_. Companies DO NOT WANT to know about prior art. They don't care. Submit the patent, the patent writer gets a nice bonus, let the lawyers fight it out.
Your ideas are only workable if you believe for a second that the U.S. Government, bought and paid for by companies at this point, is going to change the system to make it 'financially painful' to themselves.
COINTELPRO! COINTELPRO!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
Oh look, more books that will depress me if I read them are referenced. Much like 'Killing Hope'. I wish I had stopped paying attention to politics.
Haaa-leee-LUJAH!
Thanks. I mean seriously. I'm sure that they have tons of facial recognition programs / data collection scripts just WAITING to poll the stuff you people are throwing out into the public domain and link it to your name, address, age, anything else that they can slurp up automatically!
.... ever. You'll find your "blog" turned right back in your face when you're running for an important office.
I hope no one on myspace and their ilk have political aspirations
Seriously. It's a ridiculous sounding word that sounds like I'm regurgitating my food.
Um, Hurp, Caugh, BLOOOGGGGGGGGGGGG.
This raises an important point. Are game companies, EA in particular, relying on their practices of purchasing game companies and studios up in order to fulfill their monopolistic fantasies of being the only show in town?
... and then never seen from again. Why buy the company then? Is it just so that there will eventually be nothing left except Madden XXIV ?
... but few people seem to pay attention - they just need their latest crack - doesn't matter who the pusher is.
... EA_Spouse made me aware of what was going on internally - nevermind their practices of discarding IP from their purchased subsidiaries, and in effect throwing away pieces of my childhood.
... or if they are simply laughing all the way to the bank. (betting on the latter).
Parent poster and several other posts have pointed out how numerous game houses and their IP has been snatched up
Are the big publishers relying on the fact that game consumers have a short memory, or at least their target audience is "forgetful" (re: grows up and they get new game consumers) so they can do whatever they want without alienating their client base?
As an old gamer (Well, 30. Yeah yeah, I'm sure there are older ones out there) I remember a lot of the crappy things and futile promises that have been made by game companies over the years
I look long and hard before I look at buying games made/published by EA
I wonder if Blizzard lost any sales when the crushed bnetd
You forgot:
Beef Suppliers : "Old ladies tired of trying to find it."