Back in the day, whether or not you had problems with Final Fantasy VII on PC was largely down to your PC's setup. Some systems would get along fine with it, others wouldn't (whether or not you had a Glide-supporting card was a big factor). However, as time went on and PC hardware and operating systems moved on, running the PC version became harder and harder.
Modern PS1 emulators essentially invalidate most of the old PC version; you can bump the resolution up as far as your graphics card and monitor will support (though it will look a bit odd in very high resolutions) and you can use the emulator's own save-state features to get an even better save system than the PC original's (though be careful not to over-write your save in the middle of an unwinnable battle). You also get the benefit of the superior sound of the PS1 version (where the music in particular was much better than on the PC).
VIII has fared a little better. You can still get the PC version running with fairly minimal effort. However, the patch that fixes a few non-game-breaking but still irritating issues can be hard to find these days. And, of course, the emulated version still has the advantages I mention above.
If you want to play Final Fantasy VII on a modern PC, don't even bother looking at the PC version - it was a bumpy ride even back when it was new, let alone with modern hardware and operating systems. Buy a copy of the Playstation version (can be found very cheap second hand) and grab ePSXe (or your emulator of choice). The same goes for Final Fantasy VIII. You'll get better, more configurable graphics, fewer bugs and a few useful (if slightly cheaty) extra features like fast-forward and a save-anywhere option.
Alternatively, VII and VIII are available on the Playstation Network for a few dollars each which gets you an electronic copy portable between the PS3 and PSP (though this is probably still less "nice" than playing the original version emulated).
I think the worst example has to be Ghostbusters. The console versions are fairly good and somewhat quirky, if ultimately flawed, third person shooters. The PC version is actually broken. As in, it can't even reasonably be described as "working". If you want to install to a drive other than c:\ you're out of luck. If you have anything other than "generic Windows sound card" drivers installed, you won't be hearing any voices in-game. And some of the early fights are essentially unbeatable without cheating, due to collision detection and clipping issues. Oh, and it does the whole "console controller analogues" thing.
There are plenty of other awful examples. The Prince of Persia reboots have been mentioned (justly so) and I think the more recent installments in the Tomb Raider franchise also deserve a mention. Last Remnant is another good example; Square-Enix titles have never been particularly kindly treated on the PC anyway. Fire one of these up on even a top end PC with an Xbox controller plugged in and it's still very much apparent that you're playing the "second best" version of the game.
That said, there are plenty of decent ports out there. While I know others disagreed, Fallout 3 felt pretty good to me on the PC. Mass Effect 2 likewise feels as though they've spent a lot of time optimising the PC version so that it feels at home on the platform. In fact, there are even a few cases where it is the console version that feels like a nasty port. Pretty much any RTS that makes it onto the consoles can be chalked up in that category. The recent AvP game looks and feels far better on the PC than on the consoles; the Predator is an over-complicated nightmare to control on any platform, but the PC version does work out somewhat less toxic.
If I were part of that class, I would be scrupulously avoid cheating myself (don't want to be suspended), but would take every possible opportunity to encourage my class-mates to cheat (and get caught).
I've always performed better in exam situations than at course-work. I work much better when I have an examination hall dumping adrenelin into my system. I've seen plenty of research that suggests that I'm by no means alone in this, with males being particularly likely to perform better in exams than coursework.
Noted and agreed. However, I don't think we need to worry too much.
Looking at the Fallout 3 manual, you can see that it's also written in Vault-Tec style, but also refers to Fallout 3 as "simulation" in places. I think the implication is supposed to be that Vault-Tec is real world coroporation, and the game we have bought is the simulation.
Oh, and for the record, I thought Operation: Anchorage was basically... well... ok. Adequate, I guess. If there was a real stinker among the DLCs, it was surely Mothership Zeta (which was pure monotony). I also didn't care that much for the new areas or missions added by Broken Steel, though I did like having the level cap raised to 30.
Of course, when you run your nice, DRM-free, cracked awesomegame.exe, what also often happens is that three separate bits of actual (not figurative) bits of malware that were included in the cracked awesomegame.exe also start up. These have the wonderful side-benefits of installing a keylogger (allowing for innovative social-network-style sharing of all of your passwords etc), giving you exciting NSFW pop-ups 24/7 (no need to go browsing for your dirty pictures any more) and reducing your system performance even more than Norton does (which I admit takes some doing).
Seriously, I do semi-regular tech-support for a variety of friends, relatives and acquaintances and cracked games and applications are probably the most common vector these days for the swarms of malware the consistently infect their PCs. The last thing you should assume is that a cracked game won't be starting off any processes you don't want it to.
Re:Cheating
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PS3 Hacked?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Because while these servers exist, they aren't very popular. The user-base of the average 3rd-party server is, as I understand it, less than 100. Most WoW players are aware of them... and make the decision to steer well clear and stick with the better resourced, better administered official servers. If anything, I'd take the "open" WoW servers as an example that the third-party server model just doesn't work for MMOs.
There may be a market for middlingly-multiplayer (say... up to 40 people) persistent world games with third party servers (like the old MUDs, but updated for the modern age). But I'm talking here about the kind of thing that Neverwinter Nights has made a nod towards in the past with some of its more ambitious modules, not something on the scale of WoW.
Re:Cheating
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PS3 Hacked?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Why on earth has the parent been modded up? It's one of the most blatantly misinformed rants I've read in a long time.
Before I go any further, let me make one thing clear; for certain genres of games (fpses and RTSes, in particular), I very much like having a dedicated server option. I'm absolutely not arguing against this; I was annoyed by the Modern Warfare 2 fiasco as well.
However the simple fact is that cheating is less prevalent in games which use a centralised server system, or a closed matchmaking system than in games which have a more distributed public model. At the extreme end of the scale, you have MMOs, where the server infrastructure is more or less provided exclusively by the publisher. The server is therefore pretty much locked down. Yes, you occasionally get cheats detected from the client-side (Final Fantasy XI had a bad rash of these for a while), but they tend to get addressed very quickly and the consequences for getting caught cheating are severe (usually the deletion of your account, with the loss of all progress).
At the other extreme you have Counter-Strike, back as it used to be in the wild before Valve finally developed half-way useful anticheat. If you joined a public game, you could almost take it for granted that at least one person on the server would be cheating. I used to be the head-admin of a league, with a few hundred players, and every season, a couple of those players would be caught cheating. It used to be pretty steady... in the 1-2% range. And by and large, the consequences were pretty low. Until fairly late in the day, the worst that would happen if you cheated on a public server would be that the admin would notice and ban you. If you were stupid enough to do it in a league, your team would get kicked out. Moreover, while bans could theoretically be enforced using a unique ID linked to your Half-Life CD key, the system was so badly broken that it was trivial for even your average idiot to get around it. Over time, Valve tightened up on this - and how did they do it? By more centralised anti-cheat, centralised player-registries and so on.
Allowing cheating in multiplayer games is a very, very bad thing for a developer or publisher to be seen to do. It annoys honest players (who are, anecdotally, more liable to have bought the game legitimately rather than be using a pirated version) and makes them less likely to buy your products in future.
Single-player cheat codes are an entirely different kettle of fish. Nobody really cares if you cheat in a single-player game. It doesn't detract from anybody else's experience. So if companies want to include singleplayer cheat codes, then let them. To be honest, the whole "achievements" thing, and the "socialisation" (I know that's an ugly term, but I can't think of a better one) of single-player gaming on the 360 and PS3 has meant that single-player cheat codes have actually become far rarer than they used to be.
There's an entirely separate discussion over whether "premium" content in multiplayer focussed games is starting to intrude on gameplay mechanics, as opposed to being purely cosmetic, but this probably isn't the time or the place for that.
Maybe, but the C&C series was being driven into the ground by Westwood at the time they were acquired. C&C2 was horrible, while Red Alert 2 was a bad joke. Sure, Generals, the first title that EA put out after acquiring the licence, was hardly fantastic, but C&C3 and RA3 have both been pretty decent games. I think in this case, EA put the developer out of its misery and saved the franchise.
MS certainly seem to have slackened up a lot on this. Even leaving aside their indie sections on Xbox Live Arcade, we've seen more and more user-created content permitted in games recently.
The best recent example is Forza 3, with its custom car skins. Anything outright offensive (eg. featuring nudity or bad language) will get squashed by the mods, but it's perfectly possible to download user-made car designs covering most conceivable eventualities (or upload your own), including designs which I would have thought have at least the potential to raise trademark issues. Happily, these are all traded using only in-game currency; no doubt a relief to those who remember being asked to play 400 MS points for a new skin for a plane in Ace Combat 6.
Amusingly (and for once, this reflects well on MS in a way), it is quite possible to download car designs with Playstation logos plastered all over them, and drive them around in what is a single-platform Xbox-flagship game.
I think there are two distinct issues highlighted in the story, which don't necessarily have a particularly strong connection.
The first is the creep of RPG elements into other genres. I've certainly noticed this myself, and there are a few obvious manifestations. The most obvious is the idea that the player should get more powerful over the course of the game, and that said power should not be subject to resets. If you look at a traditional shoot-em-up, the player picks up new weapons as he plays through the game, but once he gets shot and loses a life, he's generally back to the pea-shooter he started the game with. This model is now almost dead, at least in its pure form. If you look at any recent action game - Bayonetta, for example - some items (such as health potions and the disposable weapons) may be temporary, but as the player gets further into the game, they accumulate persistent upgrades, such as a longer health bar, more special moves and better weapons. In fact, a lot of games give players who have already beaten them the option of starting over, while carrying over their upgrades from previous cycles.
So why has this happened? I think the gaming industry has realised that, now that gaming is primarily an activity that takes place in the home rather than in arcades, people do not like excessive penalties for failure. Allowing a power-curve in games is pretty much established in most genres these days, but resetting that curve whenever a player makes a mistake results in people switching off the console - and loses future sales for games in that series. There are still a few titles that hold out - Mario, in particular, which even still preserves the obsolete concept of "lives" in some installments - but they increasingly look like antiquated oddities. We always seem to get a few odd cases here on slashdot who like to post on threads about MMOs saying "they'd be more fun if they had permadeath", but it's interesting that commercial MMO operators, who have to put their money where their mouth is, have never seen fit to pursue this. I think they know what they're doing.
The second issue is around the restriction of modding, which I don't really see as being at all related to the spread of RPG elements. After all, RPGs are historically highly moddable, from their roots in the pen and paper market onwards. The Neverwinter Nights games were heavily marketed with their modability as a key selling point. However, there does seem to be a trend towards restriction of modding in some genres, including fpses. I think there are two drivers for this. The first, simply put, is a "hot coffee" reaction. As certain countries (eg. Germany and Australia) adopt wildly restrictive attitudes towards video game content, developers are naturally more paranoid about being criticised (or sued) for game content that was actually added or unlocked by a third party mod. The other cause is the desire to deliver a more consistent experience.
I think this stems from the console market. Consoles have many disadvantages compared to the PC as platforms for multiplayer gaming, but they do have a big advantage; consistency of hardware. While there will still be imbalances due to connection quality, the hardware is the same in every case, so there are fewer non-skill-related variables invovled in gaming. In some ways, this actually makes the game more suitable for serious competition. There may be another factor related to something I remember relating to Quake 3; graphical "vandalism". I remember how when Quake 3 had its brief honeymoon with the gaming community (before being buried by Counter-Strike), almost all high level players (and most of the wannabes) played with graphical details that made the game look more like Carrier Command than a modern fps. I remember reading that ID weren't happy about how their game was being shown off, and that this fed into the more restrictive graphical options within Quake 3.
Dirt 2 is an almost-excellent game, ruined by the inclusion of what I am going to call "Tad". Tad does the voice-overs work for the game. He might even have an actual name, but I've willed myself to forget it. Tad personifies every negative stereotype of the idiot XTREME FRAT BOY XTREME SPORTS XTREME DUDE. I own Dirt 2 for the PS3 and have tried to play it a number of times. The graphics are excellent, the physics are good, if slightly arcadey, and the opponent AI is adequate. But every time I start to enjoy myself, Tad comes out with an even more statlingly hideous inanity than I had previously believed to be possible.
I don't think it's actually possible to hate somebody more than I hate Tad. I have ideas about what I'd like to do to him. They involve a packet of cheap razor blades, a vat of acid, a three square mile stretch of frozen lake, an over-ripe aubergine, 7 ordinary red bricks and a chainsaw. But even these sadistic fantasies are brutally undercut by the knowledge that, as I inflicted agonies fit to tear the human soul to shreds upon him, Tad would probably yell "DUDE! You're IN THE ZONE... you're torturing me to death TO THE MAX!!!!" THIS IS XTREME TO THE MAX!!!!!!"
You cannot turn Tad off. Believe me, I've tried.
So yes, in summary, Dirt 2 had potential, but it also had... some issues.
That's not the kind of rubberband I meant. Apologies if I was unclear (the term is ambiguous). I meant that the cars followed a set path around the track and, if knocked off it, would return to that path as though on a rubber band.
The inclusion of the rewind function (which in fairness, first appeared in Grid) was one of the single greatest humanitarian acts of the 21st Century so far. I agree that pretty much any racing game developed from this point onwards should include it (perhaps allowing for a "hardcore" mode which disables it).
Yes, I agree that iRacing is a more realistic simulation. Unfortunately, I'm primarily a gamer rather than a racer (I've thrown a car around a track on track days a few times, but that's about it), and this is where iRacing falls down badly compared to Forza 3 and Gran Turismo. Those series have historically struck a pretty fine balance between realism and fun. The entry curve on iRacing is pitched just a bit too high for me.
Part of my problem with GT5 so far is actually that they've shown quite a lot; and it's all been underwhelming. I played GT5 Prologue and leaving aside the slimmed down options and feature-set (which you'd expect from a Prologue title), it was just GT4 with high def graphics.
I remember an almost physically painful sense of disappointment as I played it. The AI opponents were still acting exactly as they did in GT4 - following a pre-defined route around the track with almost no ability to react to the player, or indeed to each other. By contrast in Forza 2 (we didn't have 3 at the time), the AI would duck and dive when you were up close with it, and put real pressure on you when chasing you. Forza 3 takes this even further, by allowing for AI which will sometimes make very human mistakes. I had a spectacular moment in-game the other night, where in a Class A race, I went into a corner with a fraction of a second's lead over the second placed car, noticed him trying to pass me on the outside in the corner, thought "he's going way too fast for this" and then found out I was right, as he spun off the track. Things like that don't happen often, but they do mean that if there were a racing-game AI equivalent of the Turing Test, Forza 3 would come pretty close to passing it. But GT5:Prologue gave absolutely no indication that PD have any intention to replicate this. The AI was just the same old rubberband.
The lack of a damage model in Prologue was particularly bad, though it's reassuring to see that this is apparently being addressed for the final game. This isn't because I like smashing up cars; it's fun in the Burnout games, but in a GT or Forza title, I'd rather be winning races. It's more because having a damage model in place influences driver behaviour. Back when I was playing GT3 and GT4, I used to cheat horribly. I knew that with no damage model, I could use walls and even other cars to "bounce" myself around corners at speeds I'd never manage with "proper" grip or drift turning techniques. It was worse in multiplayer; sitting around a TV with friends playing GT3 and GT4 would usually degenerate into a game of high-speed dodgems. Fun at first, but it does get old fast. Doing the same with Forza 3 produces a far better experience, that remains fun for a lot longer, as people start to actually race properly.
I remember reading an article, when the PS2 was in its infancy, that the three franchises it needed to have installments in to cement its dominance (the PS2 wasn't actually an instant mega-success) were: Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy and Gran Turismo. Now, you could argue that list is a little too exclusive, but there's certainly a nugget of truth in there.
And now this generation, the PS3 is in a less-than-commanding position, and despite now being several years into this console generation, gamers outside of Japan can only purchase one of those franchises for the PS3. For this reason, I suspect Sony are actually pretty nervous about this delay; you're by no means alone in having bought a PS3 primarily for GT5.
Of all the reasons for the delay, there's only one I can think of that makes any real sense to me. This is that Polyphony have taken a look at the recently-released Forza 3 and have, correctly, realised: "This has redefined the realistic racing-sim genre. Nothing we have put out so far has had anything like the feature set or the robustness of this. We need to match Forza 3's feature set, while going beyond it in terms of track and car selection if we don't want underwhelming reviews and sales."
Competing with Forza 3 properly would mean having a proper damage model, having opponent driver AI that is far better than anything we've previously seen in a Gran Turismo game, having all of Forza's advanced online options, such as the auction house, and allowing for the kind of visual customisation of cars that Forza 3 allows. Given that Gran Turismo games to date have basically been updates of the original with better graphics and more cars, but no changes to fundamental features (AI in particular), this may have been a bit of a culture shock for them. But then, Forza 2 and 3 have both come out since the release of Gran Turismo 4, and have provided Polyphony with the kind of competition within the realistic racing genre that they've never had before.
Fortunately for them, the genre is a bit sparser than the first person shooter market, so they probably don't have to fall into the Duke Nukem Forever trap of trying to out-feature a rapidly evolving set of competitors.
Yes, getting a bit off the original topic, the anime industry does seem to have a few specific bad habits that it falls into regularly regarding endings (and even middles).
The most common, of course, is the "shonen power escalator", where a show that might originally have been interesting and quirky (the original Dragon Ball being the classic example, though there are others) eventually boils down to having the (teenaged, male, skilled-in-martial-arts) male lead go through a never-ending cycle of power-ups to fight apparently ever-stronger foes. Apparently this kind of thing sells really well to 13 year olds (internationally as well as in Japan), so the temptation to take this direction with show (or manga series) that has the potential to fit the template must be huge.
Then there's the "rolling cliffhangers", you mention, with, as I agree, Code Geass being one of the worst examples. For a show that made such a strong impression with its first 10-15 episodes, that show ended up as a complete train-wreck. When they did finally "resolve" the cliff-hanger of the first season ending, they copped out massively and then spent most of the second series doing a near-identical re-telling of the first. From what I've heard, Geass had a pretty troubled development, with the production team being messed around something rotten by the studio/networks etc. I kind of hope this is true, because it would at least add some semblance of reason to the matter.
And then there's the "incredibly abrupt ending", particularly prevalent in action series, where the end credits start rolling as soon as the "big bad" bites the dust. Gundam series have a particularly awful record here; Wing and the original SEED being perhaps the worst. That said, Turn A's ending was done properly, and the extended version of the SEED Destiny ending works reasonably well. But yes, if you're going to make me sit through a 26 episode series, I kind of want a bit of "aftermath" at the end. If it's a 50 episode series, then giving proper closure is absolutely not optional.
Apologies for the mix-up on the developer. I did have a subscription for a while and just remembered seeing "Codemasters" on my credit card bills. I should have checked.
Unfortunately, playing two MMOs at the same wasn't going to work for me and while LOTR:O looked pretty good to me, I was deeply enough embedded in WoW at the time that I didn't feel like starting afresh.
I don't really think it's a big corporation thing. Square-Enix, who are really pretty big, usually take care to wrap up their stories properly. Yes, there are an awful lot of Final Fantasy games, but most of them are completely fresh stories. Occasionally, they'll revisit a story they've already created, such as with FFX-2 or FFVII: Crisis Core, but in each of those cases, the original story pretty much stands by itself, and you're free to ignore the new component if you want (in fact, FFX has one of my favorite game endings ever). Bioware are also very good at wrapping up stories; yes, there are often a few loose ends at the end of their games, but by and large, the plot has been resolved perfectly well (usually with a choice of endings). And then there's Metal Gear Solid 4; the plot is far from flawless (it's confusing, often badly told and massively over-convoluted), but the ending is as comprehensive an ending to both a game and a franchise as you could ever want to get.
I guess the counter-example must come from a recent EA game: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, which had the worst ending of any game I've encountered for years. However, there are other EA titles with perfectly satisfactory endings. At the same time, I can think of low-budget indie-type games which have been blatantly angling for a sequel.
For MMOs, I think this is forgivable. After all, they're supposed to be persistent worlds. That said, a competent MMO developer will set up storylines for players to work through (either at their own pace, or a pace forced by in-game world events). The two MMOs I've played both do this; WoW and Final Fantasy XI. I understand that the real masters in this field are Codemasters, with Lord of the Rings Online, but a variety of other factors have always kept me away from that game. Interestingly, I understand that Blizzard will actually be adding a proper ending cutscene in the next WoW patch, for guilds that manage to take down Arthas. Given this will be the culmination of a major plot arc that kicked off years ago in Warcraft 3, I heartily approve.
For non-MMO story-based, however, I do want a story with a definite beginning, middle and end. This isn't to say that the game can't continue after the story has ended; I much preferred the way the Broken Steel DLC allowed you to continue exploring the Capital Wastelands in Fallout 3, after you'd beaten the original game and the continuation story. However, if your game has a story, that story needs an ending, even if this ending is open enough to allow for continuation.
My real bug-bear are the games which eschew a real ending because they're angling for a sequel (or even an entire franchise), but never deliver on this. In my opinion, unless you already have funding in place for a sequel, you should avoid tagging a cliff-hanger ending onto your game. Doesn't mean you can't continue the story later if you want to; look at the first Star Wars movie - it has a perfectly satisfactory ending in itself, but still allowed for sequels. Then with funding secure, Empire was able to have an appropriate cliff-hanger ending. But if your ending is "the real story is just beginning" and then you never do continue it, then I'm definitely not impressed.
It's not just games that suffer from this. So many TV shows are developed these days with the philosophy that you should continue making series until your audience figures fall low enough to shut you down. If there's an ending at all, only a tiny number of ultra-hardcore viewers ever see it. We're being bombarded with stories that have a beginning and an endless middle, but no ending. Sometimes, ending a show can be the best thing that's ever happened to it. I understand this was the case with the original Mobile Suit Gundam, which flew completely below the radar (probably because it wasn't very good) until the staff were told that they were being terminated, at which point they gave it a proper storyline and ending. The result - the show got noticed and went on to become a genuine cultural phenomenon in Japan (and attracted a good bit of nerdly attention in the wider world), with sequels and reimaginings running for decades.
Nope. I seem to think that "fair" means "comparing like with like" (in this instance). Comparing an acknowledged classic from one era to a game recognised as mediocre from another and basing your entire argument around this does not qualify as this.
I don't really think there's a bright future for you anywhere, outside of forum trolling.
Not a particularly fair comparison. Thief was acknowledged at the time as a classic; there are usually one or two games per year that achieve this status. The original Assassin's Creed had distinctly mixed reviews, with criticism particularly levelled at poor and unintuitive controls and mechanics (apparently the sequel is better, but I haven't played it).
I've played plenty of recent games from the same genre that I'd rate more highly than Thief in objective terms; Batman: Arkham Asylum being probably the best example of the last few months.
Actually, the best example of this I've heard didn't come from an application I was processing myself. It was one my dad received, for an engineering position in his small business. The e-mail address was cokefiend@isp.com
Needless to say, the applicant didn't get the job. However, this being a small business (where people tend to worry a bit less about form and procedure), the rejection letter included the following line:
Slashdot Mirror
Back in the day, whether or not you had problems with Final Fantasy VII on PC was largely down to your PC's setup. Some systems would get along fine with it, others wouldn't (whether or not you had a Glide-supporting card was a big factor). However, as time went on and PC hardware and operating systems moved on, running the PC version became harder and harder.
Modern PS1 emulators essentially invalidate most of the old PC version; you can bump the resolution up as far as your graphics card and monitor will support (though it will look a bit odd in very high resolutions) and you can use the emulator's own save-state features to get an even better save system than the PC original's (though be careful not to over-write your save in the middle of an unwinnable battle). You also get the benefit of the superior sound of the PS1 version (where the music in particular was much better than on the PC).
VIII has fared a little better. You can still get the PC version running with fairly minimal effort. However, the patch that fixes a few non-game-breaking but still irritating issues can be hard to find these days. And, of course, the emulated version still has the advantages I mention above.
If you want to play Final Fantasy VII on a modern PC, don't even bother looking at the PC version - it was a bumpy ride even back when it was new, let alone with modern hardware and operating systems. Buy a copy of the Playstation version (can be found very cheap second hand) and grab ePSXe (or your emulator of choice). The same goes for Final Fantasy VIII. You'll get better, more configurable graphics, fewer bugs and a few useful (if slightly cheaty) extra features like fast-forward and a save-anywhere option.
Alternatively, VII and VIII are available on the Playstation Network for a few dollars each which gets you an electronic copy portable between the PS3 and PSP (though this is probably still less "nice" than playing the original version emulated).
I think the worst example has to be Ghostbusters. The console versions are fairly good and somewhat quirky, if ultimately flawed, third person shooters. The PC version is actually broken. As in, it can't even reasonably be described as "working". If you want to install to a drive other than c:\ you're out of luck. If you have anything other than "generic Windows sound card" drivers installed, you won't be hearing any voices in-game. And some of the early fights are essentially unbeatable without cheating, due to collision detection and clipping issues. Oh, and it does the whole "console controller analogues" thing.
There are plenty of other awful examples. The Prince of Persia reboots have been mentioned (justly so) and I think the more recent installments in the Tomb Raider franchise also deserve a mention. Last Remnant is another good example; Square-Enix titles have never been particularly kindly treated on the PC anyway. Fire one of these up on even a top end PC with an Xbox controller plugged in and it's still very much apparent that you're playing the "second best" version of the game.
That said, there are plenty of decent ports out there. While I know others disagreed, Fallout 3 felt pretty good to me on the PC. Mass Effect 2 likewise feels as though they've spent a lot of time optimising the PC version so that it feels at home on the platform. In fact, there are even a few cases where it is the console version that feels like a nasty port. Pretty much any RTS that makes it onto the consoles can be chalked up in that category. The recent AvP game looks and feels far better on the PC than on the consoles; the Predator is an over-complicated nightmare to control on any platform, but the PC version does work out somewhat less toxic.
If I were part of that class, I would be scrupulously avoid cheating myself (don't want to be suspended), but would take every possible opportunity to encourage my class-mates to cheat (and get caught).
I've always performed better in exam situations than at course-work. I work much better when I have an examination hall dumping adrenelin into my system. I've seen plenty of research that suggests that I'm by no means alone in this, with males being particularly likely to perform better in exams than coursework.
Noted and agreed. However, I don't think we need to worry too much.
Looking at the Fallout 3 manual, you can see that it's also written in Vault-Tec style, but also refers to Fallout 3 as "simulation" in places. I think the implication is supposed to be that Vault-Tec is real world coroporation, and the game we have bought is the simulation.
Oh, and for the record, I thought Operation: Anchorage was basically... well... ok. Adequate, I guess. If there was a real stinker among the DLCs, it was surely Mothership Zeta (which was pure monotony). I also didn't care that much for the new areas or missions added by Broken Steel, though I did like having the level cap raised to 30.
Of course, when you run your nice, DRM-free, cracked awesomegame.exe, what also often happens is that three separate bits of actual (not figurative) bits of malware that were included in the cracked awesomegame.exe also start up. These have the wonderful side-benefits of installing a keylogger (allowing for innovative social-network-style sharing of all of your passwords etc), giving you exciting NSFW pop-ups 24/7 (no need to go browsing for your dirty pictures any more) and reducing your system performance even more than Norton does (which I admit takes some doing).
Seriously, I do semi-regular tech-support for a variety of friends, relatives and acquaintances and cracked games and applications are probably the most common vector these days for the swarms of malware the consistently infect their PCs. The last thing you should assume is that a cracked game won't be starting off any processes you don't want it to.
Here's a better idea... ban crimes!
Nip the problem in the bud.
Because while these servers exist, they aren't very popular. The user-base of the average 3rd-party server is, as I understand it, less than 100. Most WoW players are aware of them... and make the decision to steer well clear and stick with the better resourced, better administered official servers. If anything, I'd take the "open" WoW servers as an example that the third-party server model just doesn't work for MMOs.
There may be a market for middlingly-multiplayer (say... up to 40 people) persistent world games with third party servers (like the old MUDs, but updated for the modern age). But I'm talking here about the kind of thing that Neverwinter Nights has made a nod towards in the past with some of its more ambitious modules, not something on the scale of WoW.
Why on earth has the parent been modded up? It's one of the most blatantly misinformed rants I've read in a long time.
Before I go any further, let me make one thing clear; for certain genres of games (fpses and RTSes, in particular), I very much like having a dedicated server option. I'm absolutely not arguing against this; I was annoyed by the Modern Warfare 2 fiasco as well.
However the simple fact is that cheating is less prevalent in games which use a centralised server system, or a closed matchmaking system than in games which have a more distributed public model. At the extreme end of the scale, you have MMOs, where the server infrastructure is more or less provided exclusively by the publisher. The server is therefore pretty much locked down. Yes, you occasionally get cheats detected from the client-side (Final Fantasy XI had a bad rash of these for a while), but they tend to get addressed very quickly and the consequences for getting caught cheating are severe (usually the deletion of your account, with the loss of all progress).
At the other extreme you have Counter-Strike, back as it used to be in the wild before Valve finally developed half-way useful anticheat. If you joined a public game, you could almost take it for granted that at least one person on the server would be cheating. I used to be the head-admin of a league, with a few hundred players, and every season, a couple of those players would be caught cheating. It used to be pretty steady... in the 1-2% range. And by and large, the consequences were pretty low. Until fairly late in the day, the worst that would happen if you cheated on a public server would be that the admin would notice and ban you. If you were stupid enough to do it in a league, your team would get kicked out. Moreover, while bans could theoretically be enforced using a unique ID linked to your Half-Life CD key, the system was so badly broken that it was trivial for even your average idiot to get around it. Over time, Valve tightened up on this - and how did they do it? By more centralised anti-cheat, centralised player-registries and so on.
Allowing cheating in multiplayer games is a very, very bad thing for a developer or publisher to be seen to do. It annoys honest players (who are, anecdotally, more liable to have bought the game legitimately rather than be using a pirated version) and makes them less likely to buy your products in future.
Single-player cheat codes are an entirely different kettle of fish. Nobody really cares if you cheat in a single-player game. It doesn't detract from anybody else's experience. So if companies want to include singleplayer cheat codes, then let them. To be honest, the whole "achievements" thing, and the "socialisation" (I know that's an ugly term, but I can't think of a better one) of single-player gaming on the 360 and PS3 has meant that single-player cheat codes have actually become far rarer than they used to be.
There's an entirely separate discussion over whether "premium" content in multiplayer focussed games is starting to intrude on gameplay mechanics, as opposed to being purely cosmetic, but this probably isn't the time or the place for that.
Maybe, but the C&C series was being driven into the ground by Westwood at the time they were acquired. C&C2 was horrible, while Red Alert 2 was a bad joke. Sure, Generals, the first title that EA put out after acquiring the licence, was hardly fantastic, but C&C3 and RA3 have both been pretty decent games. I think in this case, EA put the developer out of its misery and saved the franchise.
MS certainly seem to have slackened up a lot on this. Even leaving aside their indie sections on Xbox Live Arcade, we've seen more and more user-created content permitted in games recently.
The best recent example is Forza 3, with its custom car skins. Anything outright offensive (eg. featuring nudity or bad language) will get squashed by the mods, but it's perfectly possible to download user-made car designs covering most conceivable eventualities (or upload your own), including designs which I would have thought have at least the potential to raise trademark issues. Happily, these are all traded using only in-game currency; no doubt a relief to those who remember being asked to play 400 MS points for a new skin for a plane in Ace Combat 6.
Amusingly (and for once, this reflects well on MS in a way), it is quite possible to download car designs with Playstation logos plastered all over them, and drive them around in what is a single-platform Xbox-flagship game.
I think there are two distinct issues highlighted in the story, which don't necessarily have a particularly strong connection.
The first is the creep of RPG elements into other genres. I've certainly noticed this myself, and there are a few obvious manifestations. The most obvious is the idea that the player should get more powerful over the course of the game, and that said power should not be subject to resets. If you look at a traditional shoot-em-up, the player picks up new weapons as he plays through the game, but once he gets shot and loses a life, he's generally back to the pea-shooter he started the game with. This model is now almost dead, at least in its pure form. If you look at any recent action game - Bayonetta, for example - some items (such as health potions and the disposable weapons) may be temporary, but as the player gets further into the game, they accumulate persistent upgrades, such as a longer health bar, more special moves and better weapons. In fact, a lot of games give players who have already beaten them the option of starting over, while carrying over their upgrades from previous cycles.
So why has this happened? I think the gaming industry has realised that, now that gaming is primarily an activity that takes place in the home rather than in arcades, people do not like excessive penalties for failure. Allowing a power-curve in games is pretty much established in most genres these days, but resetting that curve whenever a player makes a mistake results in people switching off the console - and loses future sales for games in that series. There are still a few titles that hold out - Mario, in particular, which even still preserves the obsolete concept of "lives" in some installments - but they increasingly look like antiquated oddities. We always seem to get a few odd cases here on slashdot who like to post on threads about MMOs saying "they'd be more fun if they had permadeath", but it's interesting that commercial MMO operators, who have to put their money where their mouth is, have never seen fit to pursue this. I think they know what they're doing.
The second issue is around the restriction of modding, which I don't really see as being at all related to the spread of RPG elements. After all, RPGs are historically highly moddable, from their roots in the pen and paper market onwards. The Neverwinter Nights games were heavily marketed with their modability as a key selling point. However, there does seem to be a trend towards restriction of modding in some genres, including fpses. I think there are two drivers for this. The first, simply put, is a "hot coffee" reaction. As certain countries (eg. Germany and Australia) adopt wildly restrictive attitudes towards video game content, developers are naturally more paranoid about being criticised (or sued) for game content that was actually added or unlocked by a third party mod. The other cause is the desire to deliver a more consistent experience.
I think this stems from the console market. Consoles have many disadvantages compared to the PC as platforms for multiplayer gaming, but they do have a big advantage; consistency of hardware. While there will still be imbalances due to connection quality, the hardware is the same in every case, so there are fewer non-skill-related variables invovled in gaming. In some ways, this actually makes the game more suitable for serious competition. There may be another factor related to something I remember relating to Quake 3; graphical "vandalism". I remember how when Quake 3 had its brief honeymoon with the gaming community (before being buried by Counter-Strike), almost all high level players (and most of the wannabes) played with graphical details that made the game look more like Carrier Command than a modern fps. I remember reading that ID weren't happy about how their game was being shown off, and that this fed into the more restrictive graphical options within Quake 3.
Dirt 2 is an almost-excellent game, ruined by the inclusion of what I am going to call "Tad". Tad does the voice-overs work for the game. He might even have an actual name, but I've willed myself to forget it. Tad personifies every negative stereotype of the idiot XTREME FRAT BOY XTREME SPORTS XTREME DUDE. I own Dirt 2 for the PS3 and have tried to play it a number of times. The graphics are excellent, the physics are good, if slightly arcadey, and the opponent AI is adequate. But every time I start to enjoy myself, Tad comes out with an even more statlingly hideous inanity than I had previously believed to be possible.
I don't think it's actually possible to hate somebody more than I hate Tad. I have ideas about what I'd like to do to him. They involve a packet of cheap razor blades, a vat of acid, a three square mile stretch of frozen lake, an over-ripe aubergine, 7 ordinary red bricks and a chainsaw. But even these sadistic fantasies are brutally undercut by the knowledge that, as I inflicted agonies fit to tear the human soul to shreds upon him, Tad would probably yell "DUDE! You're IN THE ZONE... you're torturing me to death TO THE MAX!!!!" THIS IS XTREME TO THE MAX!!!!!!"
You cannot turn Tad off. Believe me, I've tried.
So yes, in summary, Dirt 2 had potential, but it also had... some issues.
That's not the kind of rubberband I meant. Apologies if I was unclear (the term is ambiguous). I meant that the cars followed a set path around the track and, if knocked off it, would return to that path as though on a rubber band.
The inclusion of the rewind function (which in fairness, first appeared in Grid) was one of the single greatest humanitarian acts of the 21st Century so far. I agree that pretty much any racing game developed from this point onwards should include it (perhaps allowing for a "hardcore" mode which disables it).
Yes, I agree that iRacing is a more realistic simulation. Unfortunately, I'm primarily a gamer rather than a racer (I've thrown a car around a track on track days a few times, but that's about it), and this is where iRacing falls down badly compared to Forza 3 and Gran Turismo. Those series have historically struck a pretty fine balance between realism and fun. The entry curve on iRacing is pitched just a bit too high for me.
Part of my problem with GT5 so far is actually that they've shown quite a lot; and it's all been underwhelming. I played GT5 Prologue and leaving aside the slimmed down options and feature-set (which you'd expect from a Prologue title), it was just GT4 with high def graphics.
I remember an almost physically painful sense of disappointment as I played it. The AI opponents were still acting exactly as they did in GT4 - following a pre-defined route around the track with almost no ability to react to the player, or indeed to each other. By contrast in Forza 2 (we didn't have 3 at the time), the AI would duck and dive when you were up close with it, and put real pressure on you when chasing you. Forza 3 takes this even further, by allowing for AI which will sometimes make very human mistakes. I had a spectacular moment in-game the other night, where in a Class A race, I went into a corner with a fraction of a second's lead over the second placed car, noticed him trying to pass me on the outside in the corner, thought "he's going way too fast for this" and then found out I was right, as he spun off the track. Things like that don't happen often, but they do mean that if there were a racing-game AI equivalent of the Turing Test, Forza 3 would come pretty close to passing it. But GT5:Prologue gave absolutely no indication that PD have any intention to replicate this. The AI was just the same old rubberband.
The lack of a damage model in Prologue was particularly bad, though it's reassuring to see that this is apparently being addressed for the final game. This isn't because I like smashing up cars; it's fun in the Burnout games, but in a GT or Forza title, I'd rather be winning races. It's more because having a damage model in place influences driver behaviour. Back when I was playing GT3 and GT4, I used to cheat horribly. I knew that with no damage model, I could use walls and even other cars to "bounce" myself around corners at speeds I'd never manage with "proper" grip or drift turning techniques. It was worse in multiplayer; sitting around a TV with friends playing GT3 and GT4 would usually degenerate into a game of high-speed dodgems. Fun at first, but it does get old fast. Doing the same with Forza 3 produces a far better experience, that remains fun for a lot longer, as people start to actually race properly.
I remember reading an article, when the PS2 was in its infancy, that the three franchises it needed to have installments in to cement its dominance (the PS2 wasn't actually an instant mega-success) were: Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy and Gran Turismo. Now, you could argue that list is a little too exclusive, but there's certainly a nugget of truth in there.
And now this generation, the PS3 is in a less-than-commanding position, and despite now being several years into this console generation, gamers outside of Japan can only purchase one of those franchises for the PS3. For this reason, I suspect Sony are actually pretty nervous about this delay; you're by no means alone in having bought a PS3 primarily for GT5.
Of all the reasons for the delay, there's only one I can think of that makes any real sense to me. This is that Polyphony have taken a look at the recently-released Forza 3 and have, correctly, realised: "This has redefined the realistic racing-sim genre. Nothing we have put out so far has had anything like the feature set or the robustness of this. We need to match Forza 3's feature set, while going beyond it in terms of track and car selection if we don't want underwhelming reviews and sales."
Competing with Forza 3 properly would mean having a proper damage model, having opponent driver AI that is far better than anything we've previously seen in a Gran Turismo game, having all of Forza's advanced online options, such as the auction house, and allowing for the kind of visual customisation of cars that Forza 3 allows. Given that Gran Turismo games to date have basically been updates of the original with better graphics and more cars, but no changes to fundamental features (AI in particular), this may have been a bit of a culture shock for them. But then, Forza 2 and 3 have both come out since the release of Gran Turismo 4, and have provided Polyphony with the kind of competition within the realistic racing genre that they've never had before.
Fortunately for them, the genre is a bit sparser than the first person shooter market, so they probably don't have to fall into the Duke Nukem Forever trap of trying to out-feature a rapidly evolving set of competitors.
Yes, getting a bit off the original topic, the anime industry does seem to have a few specific bad habits that it falls into regularly regarding endings (and even middles).
The most common, of course, is the "shonen power escalator", where a show that might originally have been interesting and quirky (the original Dragon Ball being the classic example, though there are others) eventually boils down to having the (teenaged, male, skilled-in-martial-arts) male lead go through a never-ending cycle of power-ups to fight apparently ever-stronger foes. Apparently this kind of thing sells really well to 13 year olds (internationally as well as in Japan), so the temptation to take this direction with show (or manga series) that has the potential to fit the template must be huge.
Then there's the "rolling cliffhangers", you mention, with, as I agree, Code Geass being one of the worst examples. For a show that made such a strong impression with its first 10-15 episodes, that show ended up as a complete train-wreck. When they did finally "resolve" the cliff-hanger of the first season ending, they copped out massively and then spent most of the second series doing a near-identical re-telling of the first. From what I've heard, Geass had a pretty troubled development, with the production team being messed around something rotten by the studio/networks etc. I kind of hope this is true, because it would at least add some semblance of reason to the matter.
And then there's the "incredibly abrupt ending", particularly prevalent in action series, where the end credits start rolling as soon as the "big bad" bites the dust. Gundam series have a particularly awful record here; Wing and the original SEED being perhaps the worst. That said, Turn A's ending was done properly, and the extended version of the SEED Destiny ending works reasonably well. But yes, if you're going to make me sit through a 26 episode series, I kind of want a bit of "aftermath" at the end. If it's a 50 episode series, then giving proper closure is absolutely not optional.
Apologies for the mix-up on the developer. I did have a subscription for a while and just remembered seeing "Codemasters" on my credit card bills. I should have checked.
Unfortunately, playing two MMOs at the same wasn't going to work for me and while LOTR:O looked pretty good to me, I was deeply enough embedded in WoW at the time that I didn't feel like starting afresh.
I don't really think it's a big corporation thing. Square-Enix, who are really pretty big, usually take care to wrap up their stories properly. Yes, there are an awful lot of Final Fantasy games, but most of them are completely fresh stories. Occasionally, they'll revisit a story they've already created, such as with FFX-2 or FFVII: Crisis Core, but in each of those cases, the original story pretty much stands by itself, and you're free to ignore the new component if you want (in fact, FFX has one of my favorite game endings ever). Bioware are also very good at wrapping up stories; yes, there are often a few loose ends at the end of their games, but by and large, the plot has been resolved perfectly well (usually with a choice of endings). And then there's Metal Gear Solid 4; the plot is far from flawless (it's confusing, often badly told and massively over-convoluted), but the ending is as comprehensive an ending to both a game and a franchise as you could ever want to get.
I guess the counter-example must come from a recent EA game: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, which had the worst ending of any game I've encountered for years. However, there are other EA titles with perfectly satisfactory endings. At the same time, I can think of low-budget indie-type games which have been blatantly angling for a sequel.
For MMOs, I think this is forgivable. After all, they're supposed to be persistent worlds. That said, a competent MMO developer will set up storylines for players to work through (either at their own pace, or a pace forced by in-game world events). The two MMOs I've played both do this; WoW and Final Fantasy XI. I understand that the real masters in this field are Codemasters, with Lord of the Rings Online, but a variety of other factors have always kept me away from that game. Interestingly, I understand that Blizzard will actually be adding a proper ending cutscene in the next WoW patch, for guilds that manage to take down Arthas. Given this will be the culmination of a major plot arc that kicked off years ago in Warcraft 3, I heartily approve.
For non-MMO story-based, however, I do want a story with a definite beginning, middle and end. This isn't to say that the game can't continue after the story has ended; I much preferred the way the Broken Steel DLC allowed you to continue exploring the Capital Wastelands in Fallout 3, after you'd beaten the original game and the continuation story. However, if your game has a story, that story needs an ending, even if this ending is open enough to allow for continuation.
My real bug-bear are the games which eschew a real ending because they're angling for a sequel (or even an entire franchise), but never deliver on this. In my opinion, unless you already have funding in place for a sequel, you should avoid tagging a cliff-hanger ending onto your game. Doesn't mean you can't continue the story later if you want to; look at the first Star Wars movie - it has a perfectly satisfactory ending in itself, but still allowed for sequels. Then with funding secure, Empire was able to have an appropriate cliff-hanger ending. But if your ending is "the real story is just beginning" and then you never do continue it, then I'm definitely not impressed.
It's not just games that suffer from this. So many TV shows are developed these days with the philosophy that you should continue making series until your audience figures fall low enough to shut you down. If there's an ending at all, only a tiny number of ultra-hardcore viewers ever see it. We're being bombarded with stories that have a beginning and an endless middle, but no ending. Sometimes, ending a show can be the best thing that's ever happened to it. I understand this was the case with the original Mobile Suit Gundam, which flew completely below the radar (probably because it wasn't very good) until the staff were told that they were being terminated, at which point they gave it a proper storyline and ending. The result - the show got noticed and went on to become a genuine cultural phenomenon in Japan (and attracted a good bit of nerdly attention in the wider world), with sequels and reimaginings running for decades.
Nope. I seem to think that "fair" means "comparing like with like" (in this instance). Comparing an acknowledged classic from one era to a game recognised as mediocre from another and basing your entire argument around this does not qualify as this.
I don't really think there's a bright future for you anywhere, outside of forum trolling.
Not a particularly fair comparison. Thief was acknowledged at the time as a classic; there are usually one or two games per year that achieve this status. The original Assassin's Creed had distinctly mixed reviews, with criticism particularly levelled at poor and unintuitive controls and mechanics (apparently the sequel is better, but I haven't played it).
I've played plenty of recent games from the same genre that I'd rate more highly than Thief in objective terms; Batman: Arkham Asylum being probably the best example of the last few months.
Actually, the best example of this I've heard didn't come from an application I was processing myself. It was one my dad received, for an engineering position in his small business. The e-mail address was cokefiend@isp.com
Needless to say, the applicant didn't get the job. However, this being a small business (where people tend to worry a bit less about form and procedure), the rejection letter included the following line:
"PS. I prefer Pepsi myself"