"You cannot fight against evolution and win. If your solution includes telling people to go against their most basic desires and needs, it is certain failure."
Of couse that's only a half-truth, if you had courses on training in self-mastery you could do it. You're totally copping out, trying to sound scientific and all. "Evolution" is to the modern person as "God's will" was to the christian in ages past everything is viewed in terms of some narrow concept and that concept is somehow the arbiter and absolute truth. There are entire cultures who have superior values to north americans that have existed throughout history, and there are many eastern practices if implemented over here in the west that would surely transform society.
Certainly we change our values all the time based on our environment. What evolutionary reason was there to free people from slavery from example? It sure makes a lot of sense evolutionarily speaking to keep slaves. The problem is anything can be justified and claimed to be 'evolution'. It's the new "gods will" for the modern person. And quite frankly I wish people would stop worshipping it, we were given minds to self-modulate our own behaviour and instincts. It's all in what we choose to do with it.
Also your argument fails... cultures, philosophies, etc, that go against man's instincts is what CAUSED civilization. This is why man is becoming less and less brutish with time by adopting superior values. Look at religion, christianity for example goes against possibly the most powerful drive of all: Sex, many christian girls wait until they are married.
"but even this will be useless if we don't put serious brain power into improving the eficiency of our gadgets/cars/homes/etc."
How about putting some serious brainpower to changing cultural values? How much fucking space, heat, energy, electricity is wasted every year because each family/individual has a house/apartments much bigger then they need yet no people populate the extra empty rooms during the year, etc? Society in their desire for privacy / personal space creates a huge tonne of fucking waste simply through their animal prejudices and "preferences" (read programmed evolutionary emotional responses), we could save a TONNE of money and resources of we did something to develop superior cultural values. How much money would be saved on social programs if governments gave tax breaks to people that took the disabled, homeless, etc into the free space in their homes rent free, etc? How much good could come if people simply weren't dogs infected with the backward behavioural baggage of evolution.
"Our destiny is to be civilians. The soldier will cease to exist, and the supervision might be outsourced from Idaho to pods in India at 1$/hour."
Thats a bunch of baloney, robots can be hacked. The signals that control the robot remotely can be jammed or interfered with. I doubt the need for human forces will go away as quickly as you think it will, most likely it will be a hybrid battlefield.
"I happen to agree that the world needs far tougher copyright protections,"
I disagree, there is no scarcity of intellectual property only the labour to produce it, copyright protections grant monopolies on infinite revenue sources (i.e. they cannot *exhaust* the resource that produces them... i.e. especially digital downloads, you can make as many as there are people on earth or even more for near zero costs).
IP is the most dangerous form of property ever invented, it can be used to enslave others and give others passive profits for eternity if left unchecked. You get economic warlords and dictatorships with intellectal property laws and infighting amongst them like you do now with lawsuits and such nonsense. Like we need more legal bullshit clogging up an already clogged legal system.
Because people are caught on the on the money treadmill my friend... or hamsterwheel, or whatever other metaphor you like. When people are economically insecure and are busy earning money to pay down their debts and pay off their bills their time is trapped by the money system so they rarely have time to do anything, and even when they do laws have been passed and that basically neuter protestors, not to mention the corrupt police officials as the the paid gangsters of business, politicians and the money market system.
I don't care how you use it, where you put it, whatever. Once a button, always a button."
I don't necessarily agree, there are NON-Obvious placements of certain control mechanisms on a controller.... think for instance the dual analog on the dual shock or the C-stick, or the analog shoulder buttons, etc.
Some designs that make controls more intuitive are not obvious and take a lot of testing to work out. I'd say at least for some controllers, some idea combinations are in no way obvious.
Some things are simply *not* obvious and take time to put together, I agree that this lawsuit is frivolous and without merit, but I do not agree that there is no innovation in small ideas (look at how long it took for the scroll wheel, optical laser, and other buttons on the Logitech MX518 to appear for example).
"...(the first one was fantastic...not mind blowing, but fantastic)"
You got to be kidding me, God of War for the PS2 *was* mindblowing, it was one of the first games that really did 'death moves' in real-time action/platform type game that really had visceral emotional impact, the camera work for those death moves was *excellent*, as a gamer who knows a bit about developing games I was pretty fucking impressed by GoW. The art, the atmosphere, the levels, it came together to make a mind blowing experience... if you weren't blown away by some aspects of god of war there is seriously something wrong with you! Some aspects of the story were 'oldschool' and 'gamey' (i.e. followed the cookie cutter formula) but the atmosphere of the game and the camera work were first fucking rate my friend!
Thats part of gaming is! To take all those great action movie experiences and sequences and then translate them into the game while keeping the visceral and emotional impact that those movie sequences originally created by the excellent camera work.
Imagine god of war with no good camera work on the death moves, it would still look cool, but the impact would be much diminished.
"but the style of play. Metroid Prime may be first person, but it plays like a sci-fi Zelda, not a space shooter."
That my friend is a bunch of nonsense. Metroid prime is a first person shooter, people who defend the flaws in metroid unnerve me to no end. They have simply _not_ played enough games or are not a hardcore gamer and are in really no position to judge it from a historical gaming perspective. They are not experts on _fun_ and game mechanics, you may like metroid prime but you certainly do not see its faults. See for someone who's played and seen many games that metroid has copied, so much of what metroid has been doing is old hat, done by other games better. So you get the feeling of been there, done that. In the first metroid they got a lot of things right, but some things wrong, in the 2nd game, they gave you great bosses and pretty enemies, but really skimped on taking a chance to develop the metroid universe.
The perspective is _first person_ hence the name _first person shooter_. Metroid prime(1&2) just has more exploration elements, less and worse action compared to other _first_person_ games. It has more cumbersome controls, and more powerup unlock and jumping puzzles. There are other FPS games just like metroid that play much better then it, metroid is in no way unique, in no way does it's gameplay stand out from other games.
Metroid's story needs to get with the times... both metroid prime 1 and 2 had stories / aspects of the universe that were not fleshed out as well as they could have been. I could understand a crap story for Metroid years ago, but it's 2006 for god sakes! I've played halo, Warcraft 3, starcraft, Half-life, half-life2, gears of war, etc. My expectations have been raised, many gaming and storytelling lessons have been learned by developers... they have many shining examples of great formula's to copy and work from. I do not want to play the same game 20 times in a row that does not try to evolve itself and push the limits of gaming. They did some great things in metroid prime 1 and especially #2 with the bosses... but besides that not much else.
Next, metroid is nothing like zelda in any way, comparing metroid to zelda, is like comparing halo to mario brothers, they are not even in the same genre, they do not even play from the same perspective! In zelda you have a wide range of options at you disposal to control your character, in Metroid you have the typical - jump, shoot, double jump, and screw, interaction with objects is limited... in zelda you have much more you can do and interact with, in Prime you interact with sterile interfaces, there is no character interaction, emotion, or personality whatsoever injected into the games characters. The whole problem with metroid is that if you've played a wide swath of games, you know metroid should 1) control much better then it does and 2) Not dumb it down for reflex retards. 3) Could be a lot better then it is.
One thing I hated about metroid prime (1&2), was that they made aiming and character movement cumbersome, and added auto-aim so even a retard could compensate for the horrible control scheme.
There are tonnes of things I could list wrong with Metroid prime 2... One being the tedious backtracking between light and dark worlds... give me a break, light and dark world, in a metroid game?? Jesus... like this gimmick hasn't been used so many times in other games (i.e. zelda, final fantasy, etc, etc). This is 2006!
Next is the races they created based on being chozo rip-offs, lastly, the world of Metroid prime 2 was just so boring and mundane from an immersion perspective... where are the things that are *interesting*... besides powerups, puzzles, scanning (and reading)screens and the occasional boss fight?
In a 2D metroid I can forgive backtracking because traversing entire giant levels is relatively quick, in Metroid prime 1&2 it just grates on your nerves because of the time it takes to travel the distance.
The problem with Metroid prime 2 was the inconsistency in the delivery, they didn't fix any of the flaws from the first game. Believe me I liked metroid prime, but even I knew it suffered from flaws but the experience of metroid was fresh (first 3D metroid) and nostalgia helped ease it's more painful (and boring) moments. Metroid prime was not a good enough game that I could ever see myself playing it again, it's just one of those one-shot wonders because the actual game itself is first person shooter, but it plays like a 2nd rate FPS.
People can claim "Metroid isn't an fps" but that's a bunch of bull, thats like saying contra isn't about shooting people! In the original metroid the action was tight and the game control was spot on. Metroid prime was slow and lethargic in that regard, and the auto-aim and cumbersome movement controls really detracted from my enjoyment of metroid as a first person game when you compare it with other _first person games_.
Metroid prime does _not_ exist in a 'genre by itself' it is the typical "man with a gun" fps, in this case it's just samus. The truth is they made a few mistakes moving metroid to 3D, and one of them was not injecting the lessons learned from the many first person shooters made over the years.
Metroid prime 2 wasn't bad but it was a complete let-down compared to the first game, they didn't fix everything that was broken in the first game (pacing in some areas, boredom of just navigating around, the repetitiveness of going through some of the annoying puzzles to get your upgrades).
The fact is some parts of metroid are tedious for a game and are not well designed or suited to 3D, some 2D elements don't work so well in 3D.
I'd have to think about it some more to really articulate it good for you! But I've been a gamer forever and I rarely if ever judge a game unfairly. My tastes are very wide, there is usually never a well designed game I don't like.
"Our problem is cultural, there's such an anti-intellectual problem in schools and the rest of society, actively encourage exploration (you know, the heart of science) throughout the development of today's youth, and within one generation we'll be sorted."
The problem is economic, if you want scientists and well educated people... PAY THEM WELL don't enslave them with debt, make it lucrative.
1) Our concepts of property and ownership are not the root cause of class war and strife- envy is. Property rights and ownership incentivize productivity and care, where their lack encourage irresponsible exploitation. True, some will outproduce others. This is fine, up until the envious decide that they're somehow entitled to benefit from productivity they have no claim upon."
So I have to disagree with you here, all the great nations acquired their land through theft. It certainly didn't happen through "moral capitalism" or fair competition. It happened through war, bloodshed and double dealing.
Name one great nation in history that didn't come to exist through war? I bet you'd be hard pressed to find any.
It's not that I disagree with all concepts of property and ownership as they are in all domains... property is invented to solve problems and I agree and understand the pro's of rights, property, private ownership, etc... my problem is that our conceptualization in areas which goods are not scarce is backward, poor and needs revision. The way we understand 'transactions' and payment for certain goods is flawed. I'll give you a demonstration:
Take games for instance, they are 'intellectual property' but when a customer invests in your product they are *participating* in making you successful, no business can succeed without other people, if we killed all gamers tomorrow those companies would be out of business. Businesses and hence wealthy individuals are *dependents* on other people for their success, they have to understand *the value of their wealth is dependent on others* it doesn't exist in a vaccum. It ONLY has value in a society of people that support them. You can be the richest man in the world, but if everyone died tomorrow except the 100 worlds richest people, their wealth wouldn't mean much now would it? You see wealthy people are really weak and powerless without large supporting populations, they are just limited weak dependent human beings who simply found one of the niches (of the limited niches) to make money.
Now back to the consumer, the individuals are participating in the success of the business but they don't get anything out of the deal besides the product (or just its use), yet they invested the money *in* the product and in the success of the business, right now they get "liscense to use" but *not* any kind of partial ownership, despite their *investment*. It's all in the way the rights/ownership transaction is framed, ultimately if consumers gained some (limited) partial ownership or rights to works to release *their investments* from companies that have essentially abandoned them and no longer profit from them, then many great things could occur. The fact is companies steal from consumers everyday through leveraging their power to contracts that only benefit their party but not the other party (the consumer) in the transaction partly due to their market power and government protection, and the other part due to consumer ignorance and apathy.
Believe me if consumers banded together for their rights, they could implement the above and while some businesses would kick and scream, it would do a lot to mitigate backwardness of how transactions and unequal market power.
Think of all the old games that will never be updated because the company can sit on the source code, etc, etc. This is what I mean by our concepts of ownership and transactions *are* flawed, it's all in the way the are *framed*. Now I don't mean to say all transactions should happen this way, but some areas the concepts are clearly in need of re-conceptualization.
"strangely, however, almost everyone who pits it against OoT agrees that it is a far superior game, so I don't know how they get off with that."
It's because it's a sequel and as we older gamers get a bit more jaded... and don't forget Nintendo is paying for the sins of the games it messed up in the gamecube generation... Every single Nintendo franchise in the gamecube generation was worse then the N64, with the exception of maybe F-Zero GX.
Mario sunshine, Wind waker, and Starfox assault (the "real" starfox) were all littered with flaws, not ot mention the sins committed in Metroid prime 2 (i.e. metroid the expansion pack), and then starfox assault was an outright DISASTER, I wonder if starfox will *ever* recover from that. I could tolerate starfox adventures for the type of game it was, even if it wasn't the best, it was still a good game on it's own. Assault was nowhere near the game it should have been, it should have been one of the major franchises gone back to its roots... and coming out and putting the hurt on other games that didn't live up to Nintendo's usually high standard of quality... but thats what Nintendo gets for farming out Starfox Assault's development to Namco, I'm sure heads *rolled* with that games release.
"But you're picking on a tiny fraction of the wealthy in this country; the vast majority of "rich" people made their money (reference "The Millionaire Next Door"), they earned it and they were taxed when they earned it."
The problem is with our concept of "earnings" and what constitutes "ownership" of money to begin with, think about it: Rich people would not exist if we wiped out the poor and middle class population that supported them, say we kill everyone who doesn't have a net worth of at least 10 million dollars. I'd like to see how they'd cope without all the specialists and other people they rely on in society to have a high standard of living. The fact is you do not "earn" wealth in a vaccum, those people INVESTED in you, and no it was not entirely because of your competence, the fact that you could earn wealth or play the system to gain profit in no way means it was you alone responsible for the fact that you are rich.
This is what I really hate when we talk about "rich earning their money" I'm sure they did, but the fact is, if we killed everyone tomorrow and you were the only one left, your wealth wouldn't mean anything without a middle and poor class to do the work to maintain society and provide you with a high standard of living.
Capitalism is collectivist, all economic systems are systems of co-operative agreement to compete or trade in some fashion according to laws and economic doctrine of the times.
"You can tear down the wealthy all you want, and you can rationalize that as 'promoting efficiency', but it won't make for anything close to equality- because in the end, rich and poor people are that way for reasons other than their tax rates."
And those reasons have everything to do with their ignorance... our concepts of ownerhsip and property are the root cause of class war and strife.
any wealthy people certainly aren't wealthy through superiority alone. I know many rich families, and their kids get breaks and opportunities no other children get because of nepotism not because they actually esrned it... many of their kids are as dumb as rocks yet they can find "charity" jobs very easily through being well connected. i.e. its who you know.
"opposed to the cost of not dying that most of the people in third world countries are struggling to make..."
And those people over-populated their regions by making bad decisions, the world's poor created many of the problems they now face. This isn't to say rich countries have done no bad to developing nations, but think about it.... The first world became that way through hard work and not making stupid choices.
No one wants to buy extra hardware to play games and these add-ons better be dirt cheap if they expect anyone to pick them up for HD-DVD playback. That and why is there even a need to replace DVD as it stands for most people?
I understand the benefits of blue-ray and HD-DVD for computer storage for applications like games, archiving, etc. But console history is filled with failed peripherals.
"The best way to make a successful game is to be a gamer yourself,"
While this is to some extent true, you cannot replace competence with "just being a gamer", for instance art has nothing to do with "being a gamer" for instance and yet it's a huge part of the gaming experience. Although I'm sure it can help if you are a very competent artist. But how many games suffer from bad art or poor artistic direction? Lots.
While I agree that FUN is the main goal, you can make a fun, easy to get into, hardcore game, and it can still not sell worth a damn. Gaming history is full of great games not enough people bought.
I know this was meant to be funny, but to be serious for a moment. Those who still live in the basement have more serious issues beyond WoW my friend, clinical depression and possible abuse being one of them.
The psychological rewards caused by natural selection can be ruined if a minimum of some of maslow's hierarchy of needs cannot be maintained. Because some serious exterinal or biological factors interfere with social and occupational functioning, causing unnatural stress and agitation on a persons nerves to the degree the wish to cease to exist to escape the cage constant stress and agitation they find themselves in. "Depression" does not in any way capture what a clinically depressed person physically feels. Anyone interested in understanding some of the evolutionary aspects of depression better can go here - http://biology.unm.edu/Biology/pwatson/public_html /dp1.htm
I've experienced clinical depression all my life, I shit you not, it's not a fun thing to know that for your entire life you do not experience life like everyone else, you do not enjoy things other people enjoy, and even the things you should enjoy... eating, sex, social life, company, take a back seat when you are clinically depressed.
Is Depression (i.e. and its consequences like addiction, etc) a Healthy reaction to a Sick Society?
"To demand that our children feel well in the world which we leave them is an insult to their dignity." Ivan Illich
The World Health Organisation defines depression as a 'disorder that presents with depressed mood, loss of interest or pleasure, feelings of guilt or low self-worth, disturbed sleep or appetite, low energy, and poor concentration'. It declares that it is the leading cause of disability, worldwide, and by 2020 it will be the second most important disease worldwide.
WHO goes on to say that in most cases, drugs are an effective treatment. This reflects a materialistic worldview that focusses on symptoms, not root causes. A multinational drug company has claimed that "depression is caused by an imbalance of brain chemicals", but this fails to explain why it is more widespread than ever before, (9.5% of US adults suffer from a depressive disorder in any one year) and why it is still spreading. Depression is not just another disease. If it is not caused by pathogens, how can it spread?
Maslow's hierarchy of needs predicts that if securely fed and housed, people's well-being depends less on material goods, more on factors such as good relationships with and love of others. However, most people are in the thrall of an economic system that ignores this fact, punishes generosity but rewards
unnatural selfishness. This results in cognitive dissonance, because people feel forced to do things of which they disapprove, leaving them feeling guilty, disempowered and depressed. This would seem to explain why depression is booming even amidst materially prospering populations. Although a human tragedy, this epidemic of depression is a boon for the economy, since consumer culture feeds
off people's low self-esteem by encouraging self-indulgence and escapism, resulting in a vicious circle of increasing consumption and decreasing well-being.
We believe many depressive symptoms are a natural response of the mind to an unhealthy, unsustainable, diseased and generally distressed society. Many of those who dismiss it as being an 'illness' of the brain, are sadly mistaken, others cynically exploiting it for their own benefit. Among the chief causes are the priority given to the competitive money system which discourages healthy
human relationships to the point where, starved of friendship, some people even question the validity of loving others. Altruism is a side-effect free, natural way to cope with depressive symptoms and to live a longer, healthier and happier life.
"Or, you know, they can control what and how much their kid is eating."
Obviously you're not a parent are you? Come on you got to be kidding me. Especially for parents that work excess of 50-60 hours a week. You cannot be there 24/7 and spot everything your kid eats.
"Crap. Utter crap. Learning, Self-esteem, respect, etc, all start at home"
Bullshit, self-esteem, learning, respect... is a function of biology in combination with environment. Self-esteem is a function of all environments combined.
No parent can save a kid who is fat from being picked on wherever he goes. They can only suggest to the kid and show him how to take off the weight, you can't force anyone to do things they don't want to do.
"Maybe he was in the wrong. Maybe he was looking for an excuse to feel persecuted. Maybe he was looking for a fight."
Either way, I can't say ANYONE was right in this video, I've been bugged by the cops before but I've never verbally abused them, (but boy was I thinking about it when hear some of the shit that comes out of their mouths, or when they are overstepping their bounds) when they have verbally abused me, lied to me, etc.
I can tell you though that the way cops are trained unfortunately antagonizes and incites people, the way they speak with authority and aggressive intent does nothing to help the process.
Slashdot Mirror
"You cannot fight against evolution and win. If your solution includes telling people to go against their most basic desires and needs, it is certain failure."
Of couse that's only a half-truth, if you had courses on training in self-mastery you could do it. You're totally copping out, trying to sound scientific and all. "Evolution" is to the modern person as "God's will" was to the christian in ages past everything is viewed in terms of some narrow concept and that concept is somehow the arbiter and absolute truth. There are entire cultures who have superior values to north americans that have existed throughout history, and there are many eastern practices if implemented over here in the west that would surely transform society.
Certainly we change our values all the time based on our environment. What evolutionary reason was there to free people from slavery from example? It sure makes a lot of sense evolutionarily speaking to keep slaves. The problem is anything can be justified and claimed to be 'evolution'. It's the new "gods will" for the modern person. And quite frankly I wish people would stop worshipping it, we were given minds to self-modulate our own behaviour and instincts. It's all in what we choose to do with it.
Also your argument fails... cultures, philosophies, etc, that go against man's instincts is what CAUSED civilization. This is why man is becoming less and less brutish with time by adopting superior values. Look at religion, christianity for example goes against possibly the most powerful drive of all: Sex, many christian girls wait until they are married.
"but even this will be useless if we don't put serious brain power into improving the eficiency of our gadgets/cars/homes/etc."
How about putting some serious brainpower to changing cultural values? How much fucking space, heat, energy, electricity is wasted every year because each family/individual has a house/apartments much bigger then they need yet no people populate the extra empty rooms during the year, etc? Society in their desire for privacy / personal space creates a huge tonne of fucking waste simply through their animal prejudices and "preferences" (read programmed evolutionary emotional responses), we could save a TONNE of money and resources of we did something to develop superior cultural values. How much money would be saved on social programs if governments gave tax breaks to people that took the disabled, homeless, etc into the free space in their homes rent free, etc? How much good could come if people simply weren't dogs infected with the backward behavioural baggage of evolution.
"I call that good marketing."
I call it theivery and extortion, just as the *AA's of the world hate piracy, we consumers hate being gouged. It's theft either way you slice it.
"Our destiny is to be civilians. The soldier will cease to exist, and the supervision might be outsourced from Idaho to pods in India at 1$/hour."
Thats a bunch of baloney, robots can be hacked. The signals that control the robot remotely can be jammed or interfered with. I doubt the need for human forces will go away as quickly as you think it will, most likely it will be a hybrid battlefield.
"I happen to agree that the world needs far tougher copyright protections,"
I disagree, there is no scarcity of intellectual property only the labour to produce it, copyright protections grant monopolies on infinite revenue sources (i.e. they cannot *exhaust* the resource that produces them... i.e. especially digital downloads, you can make as many as there are people on earth or even more for near zero costs).
IP is the most dangerous form of property ever invented, it can be used to enslave others and give others passive profits for eternity if left unchecked. You get economic warlords and dictatorships with intellectal property laws and infighting amongst them like you do now with lawsuits and such nonsense. Like we need more legal bullshit clogging up an already clogged legal system.
"If that is the case, why don't we revolt?"
Because people are caught on the on the money treadmill my friend... or hamsterwheel, or whatever other metaphor you like. When people are economically insecure and are busy earning money to pay down their debts and pay off their bills their time is trapped by the money system so they rarely have time to do anything, and even when they do laws have been passed and that basically neuter protestors, not to mention the corrupt police officials as the the paid gangsters of business, politicians and the money market system.
"It's a trigger on the bottom of a controller.
If that's not obvious, what is?
I don't care how you use it, where you put it, whatever. Once a button, always a button."
I don't necessarily agree, there are NON-Obvious placements of certain control mechanisms on a controller.... think for instance the dual analog on the dual shock or the C-stick, or the analog shoulder buttons, etc.
Some designs that make controls more intuitive are not obvious and take a lot of testing to work out. I'd say at least for some controllers, some idea combinations are in no way obvious.
For instance go to http://www.ideazon.com/ca/
Some things are simply *not* obvious and take time to put together, I agree that this lawsuit is frivolous and without merit, but I do not agree that there is no innovation in small ideas (look at how long it took for the scroll wheel, optical laser, and other buttons on the Logitech MX518 to appear for example).
"...(the first one was fantastic...not mind blowing, but fantastic)"
You got to be kidding me, God of War for the PS2 *was* mindblowing, it was one of the first games that really did 'death moves' in real-time action/platform type game that really had visceral emotional impact, the camera work for those death moves was *excellent*, as a gamer who knows a bit about developing games I was pretty fucking impressed by GoW. The art, the atmosphere, the levels, it came together to make a mind blowing experience... if you weren't blown away by some aspects of god of war there is seriously something wrong with you! Some aspects of the story were 'oldschool' and 'gamey' (i.e. followed the cookie cutter formula) but the atmosphere of the game and the camera work were first fucking rate my friend!
Thats part of gaming is! To take all those great action movie experiences and sequences and then translate them into the game while keeping the visceral and emotional impact that those movie sequences originally created by the excellent camera work.
Imagine god of war with no good camera work on the death moves, it would still look cool, but the impact would be much diminished.
"but the style of play. Metroid Prime may be first person, but it plays like a sci-fi Zelda, not a space shooter."
That my friend is a bunch of nonsense. Metroid prime is a first person shooter, people who defend the flaws in metroid unnerve me to no end. They have simply _not_ played enough games or are not a hardcore gamer and are in really no position to judge it from a historical gaming perspective. They are not experts on _fun_ and game mechanics, you may like metroid prime but you certainly do not see its faults. See for someone who's played and seen many games that metroid has copied, so much of what metroid has been doing is old hat, done by other games better. So you get the feeling of been there, done that. In the first metroid they got a lot of things right, but some things wrong, in the 2nd game, they gave you great bosses and pretty enemies, but really skimped on taking a chance to develop the metroid universe.
The perspective is _first person_ hence the name _first person shooter_. Metroid prime(1&2) just has more exploration elements, less and worse action compared to other _first_person_ games. It has more cumbersome controls, and more powerup unlock and jumping puzzles. There are other FPS games just like metroid that play much better then it, metroid is in no way unique, in no way does it's gameplay stand out from other games.
Metroid's story needs to get with the times... both metroid prime 1 and 2 had stories / aspects of the universe that were not fleshed out as well as they could have been. I could understand a crap story for Metroid years ago, but it's 2006 for god sakes! I've played halo, Warcraft 3, starcraft, Half-life, half-life2, gears of war, etc. My expectations have been raised, many gaming and storytelling lessons have been learned by developers... they have many shining examples of great formula's to copy and work from. I do not want to play the same game 20 times in a row that does not try to evolve itself and push the limits of gaming. They did some great things in metroid prime 1 and especially #2 with the bosses... but besides that not much else.
Next, metroid is nothing like zelda in any way, comparing metroid to zelda, is like comparing halo to mario brothers, they are not even in the same genre, they do not even play from the same perspective! In zelda you have a wide range of options at you disposal to control your character, in Metroid you have the typical - jump, shoot, double jump, and screw, interaction with objects is limited... in zelda you have much more you can do and interact with, in Prime you interact with sterile interfaces, there is no character interaction, emotion, or personality whatsoever injected into the games characters. The whole problem with metroid is that if you've played a wide swath of games, you know metroid should 1) control much better then it does and 2) Not dumb it down for reflex retards. 3) Could be a lot better then it is.
One thing I hated about metroid prime (1&2), was that they made aiming and character movement cumbersome, and added auto-aim so even a retard could compensate for the horrible control scheme.
There are tonnes of things I could list wrong with Metroid prime 2... One being the tedious backtracking between light and dark worlds... give me a break, light and dark world, in a metroid game?? Jesus... like this gimmick hasn't been used so many times in other games (i.e. zelda, final fantasy, etc, etc). This is 2006!
Next is the races they created based on being chozo rip-offs, lastly, the world of Metroid prime 2 was just so boring and mundane from an immersion perspective... where are the things that are *interesting*... besides powerups, puzzles, scanning (and reading)screens and the occasional boss fight?
In a 2D metroid I can forgive backtracking because traversing entire giant levels is relatively quick, in Metroid prime 1&2 it just grates on your nerves because of the time it takes to travel the distance.
"What was wrong with Metroid Prime 2?"
The problem with Metroid prime 2 was the inconsistency in the delivery, they didn't fix any of the flaws from the first game. Believe me I liked metroid prime, but even I knew it suffered from flaws but the experience of metroid was fresh (first 3D metroid) and nostalgia helped ease it's more painful (and boring) moments. Metroid prime was not a good enough game that I could ever see myself playing it again, it's just one of those one-shot wonders because the actual game itself is first person shooter, but it plays like a 2nd rate FPS.
People can claim "Metroid isn't an fps" but that's a bunch of bull, thats like saying contra isn't about shooting people! In the original metroid the action was tight and the game control was spot on. Metroid prime was slow and lethargic in that regard, and the auto-aim and cumbersome movement controls really detracted from my enjoyment of metroid as a first person game when you compare it with other _first person games_.
Metroid prime does _not_ exist in a 'genre by itself' it is the typical "man with a gun" fps, in this case it's just samus. The truth is they made a few mistakes moving metroid to 3D, and one of them was not injecting the lessons learned from the many first person shooters made over the years.
Metroid prime 2 wasn't bad but it was a complete let-down compared to the first game, they didn't fix everything that was broken in the first game (pacing in some areas, boredom of just navigating around, the repetitiveness of going through some of the annoying puzzles to get your upgrades).
The fact is some parts of metroid are tedious for a game and are not well designed or suited to 3D, some 2D elements don't work so well in 3D.
I'd have to think about it some more to really articulate it good for you! But I've been a gamer forever and I rarely if ever judge a game unfairly. My tastes are very wide, there is usually never a well designed game I don't like.
"Our problem is cultural, there's such an anti-intellectual problem in schools and the rest of society, actively encourage exploration (you know, the heart of science) throughout the development of today's youth, and within one generation we'll be sorted."
The problem is economic, if you want scientists and well educated people... PAY THEM WELL don't enslave them with debt, make it lucrative.
"2 points:
1) Our concepts of property and ownership are not the root cause of class war and strife- envy is. Property rights and ownership incentivize productivity and care, where their lack encourage irresponsible exploitation. True, some will outproduce others. This is fine, up until the envious decide that they're somehow entitled to benefit from productivity they have no claim upon."
So I have to disagree with you here, all the great nations acquired their land through theft. It certainly didn't happen through "moral capitalism" or fair competition. It happened through war, bloodshed and double dealing.
Name one great nation in history that didn't come to exist through war? I bet you'd be hard pressed to find any.
It's not that I disagree with all concepts of property and ownership as they are in all domains... property is invented to solve problems and I agree and understand the pro's of rights, property, private ownership, etc... my problem is that our conceptualization in areas which goods are not scarce is backward, poor and needs revision. The way we understand 'transactions' and payment for certain goods is flawed. I'll give you a demonstration:
Take games for instance, they are 'intellectual property' but when a customer invests in your product they are *participating* in making you successful, no business can succeed without other people, if we killed all gamers tomorrow those companies would be out of business. Businesses and hence wealthy individuals are *dependents* on other people for their success, they have to understand *the value of their wealth is dependent on others* it doesn't exist in a vaccum. It ONLY has value in a society of people that support them. You can be the richest man in the world, but if everyone died tomorrow except the 100 worlds richest people, their wealth wouldn't mean much now would it? You see wealthy people are really weak and powerless without large supporting populations, they are just limited weak dependent human beings who simply found one of the niches (of the limited niches) to make money.
Now back to the consumer, the individuals are participating in the success of the business but they don't get anything out of the deal besides the product (or just its use), yet they invested the money *in* the product and in the success of the business, right now they get "liscense to use" but *not* any kind of partial ownership, despite their *investment*. It's all in the way the rights/ownership transaction is framed, ultimately if consumers gained some (limited) partial ownership or rights to works to release *their investments* from companies that have essentially abandoned them and no longer profit from them, then many great things could occur. The fact is companies steal from consumers everyday through leveraging their power to contracts that only benefit their party but not the other party (the consumer) in the transaction partly due to their market power and government protection, and the other part due to consumer ignorance and apathy.
Believe me if consumers banded together for their rights, they could implement the above and while some businesses would kick and scream, it would do a lot to mitigate backwardness of how transactions and unequal market power.
Think of all the old games that will never be updated because the company can sit on the source code, etc, etc. This is what I mean by our concepts of ownership and transactions *are* flawed, it's all in the way the are *framed*. Now I don't mean to say all transactions should happen this way, but some areas the concepts are clearly in need of re-conceptualization.
"strangely, however, almost everyone who pits it against OoT agrees that it is a far superior game, so I don't know how they get off with that."
It's because it's a sequel and as we older gamers get a bit more jaded... and don't forget Nintendo is paying for the sins of the games it messed up in the gamecube generation... Every single Nintendo franchise in the gamecube generation was worse then the N64, with the exception of maybe F-Zero GX.
Mario sunshine, Wind waker, and Starfox assault (the "real" starfox) were all littered with flaws, not ot mention the sins committed in Metroid prime 2 (i.e. metroid the expansion pack), and then starfox assault was an outright DISASTER, I wonder if starfox will *ever* recover from that. I could tolerate starfox adventures for the type of game it was, even if it wasn't the best, it was still a good game on it's own. Assault was nowhere near the game it should have been, it should have been one of the major franchises gone back to its roots... and coming out and putting the hurt on other games that didn't live up to Nintendo's usually high standard of quality... but thats what Nintendo gets for farming out Starfox Assault's development to Namco, I'm sure heads *rolled* with that games release.
"But you're picking on a tiny fraction of the wealthy in this country; the vast majority of "rich" people made their money (reference "The Millionaire Next Door"), they earned it and they were taxed when they earned it."
The problem is with our concept of "earnings" and what constitutes "ownership" of money to begin with, think about it: Rich people would not exist if we wiped out the poor and middle class population that supported them, say we kill everyone who doesn't have a net worth of at least 10 million dollars. I'd like to see how they'd cope without all the specialists and other people they rely on in society to have a high standard of living. The fact is you do not "earn" wealth in a vaccum, those people INVESTED in you, and no it was not entirely because of your competence, the fact that you could earn wealth or play the system to gain profit in no way means it was you alone responsible for the fact that you are rich.
This is what I really hate when we talk about "rich earning their money" I'm sure they did, but the fact is, if we killed everyone tomorrow and you were the only one left, your wealth wouldn't mean anything without a middle and poor class to do the work to maintain society and provide you with a high standard of living.
Capitalism is collectivist, all economic systems are systems of co-operative agreement to compete or trade in some fashion according to laws and economic doctrine of the times.
"You can tear down the wealthy all you want, and you can rationalize that as 'promoting efficiency', but it won't make for anything close to equality- because in the end, rich and poor people are that way for reasons other than their tax rates."
And those reasons have everything to do with their ignorance... our concepts of ownerhsip and property are the root cause of class war and strife.
any wealthy people certainly aren't wealthy through superiority alone. I know many rich families, and their kids get breaks and opportunities no other children get because of nepotism not because they actually esrned it... many of their kids are as dumb as rocks yet they can find "charity" jobs very easily through being well connected. i.e. its who you know.
"opposed to the cost of not dying that most of the people in third world countries are struggling to make..."
And those people over-populated their regions by making bad decisions, the world's poor created many of the problems they now face. This isn't to say rich countries have done no bad to developing nations, but think about it.... The first world became that way through hard work and not making stupid choices.
... usually end in failure.
-Sega CD, 32X, etc.
No one wants to buy extra hardware to play games and these add-ons better be dirt cheap if they expect anyone to pick them up for HD-DVD playback. That and why is there even a need to replace DVD as it stands for most people?
I understand the benefits of blue-ray and HD-DVD for computer storage for applications like games, archiving, etc. But console history is filled with failed peripherals.
"The maximum length I want a game to be these days is 25-30 hours"
If you don't like the length of the game, thats what cheats and gamesharks are for.
"The best way to make a successful game is to be a gamer yourself,"
While this is to some extent true, you cannot replace competence with "just being a gamer", for instance art has nothing to do with "being a gamer" for instance and yet it's a huge part of the gaming experience. Although I'm sure it can help if you are a very competent artist. But how many games suffer from bad art or poor artistic direction? Lots.
While I agree that FUN is the main goal, you can make a fun, easy to get into, hardcore game, and it can still not sell worth a damn. Gaming history is full of great games not enough people bought.
"LEAVE THE FUCKING BASEMENT!"
l /dp1.htm
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I know this was meant to be funny, but to be serious for a moment. Those who still live in the basement have more serious issues beyond WoW my friend, clinical depression and possible abuse being one of them.
The psychological rewards caused by natural selection can be ruined if a minimum of some of maslow's hierarchy of needs cannot be maintained. Because some serious exterinal or biological factors interfere with social and occupational functioning, causing unnatural stress and agitation on a persons nerves to the degree the wish to cease to exist to escape the cage constant stress and agitation they find themselves in. "Depression" does not in any way capture what a clinically depressed person physically feels. Anyone interested in understanding some of the evolutionary aspects of depression better can go here - http://biology.unm.edu/Biology/pwatson/public_htm
I've experienced clinical depression all my life, I shit you not, it's not a fun thing to know that for your entire life you do not experience life like everyone else, you do not enjoy things other people enjoy, and even the things you should enjoy... eating, sex, social life, company, take a back seat when you are clinically depressed.
The below is taken from Altruists.org
Is Depression (i.e. and its consequences like addiction, etc) a Healthy reaction to a Sick Society?
"To demand that our children feel well in the world which we leave them is an insult to their dignity." Ivan Illich
The World Health Organisation defines depression as a 'disorder that presents with depressed mood, loss of interest or pleasure, feelings of guilt or low self-worth, disturbed sleep or appetite, low energy, and poor concentration'. It declares that it is the leading cause of disability, worldwide, and by 2020 it will be the second most important disease worldwide.
WHO goes on to say that in most cases, drugs are an effective treatment. This reflects a materialistic worldview that focusses on symptoms, not root causes. A multinational drug company has claimed that "depression is caused by an imbalance of brain chemicals", but this fails to explain why it is more widespread than ever before, (9.5% of US adults suffer from a depressive disorder in any one year) and why it is still spreading. Depression is not just another disease. If it is not caused by pathogens, how can it spread?
Maslow's hierarchy of needs predicts that if securely fed and housed, people's well-being depends less on material goods, more on factors such as good relationships with and love of others. However, most people are in the thrall of an economic system that ignores this fact, punishes generosity but rewards unnatural selfishness. This results in cognitive dissonance, because people feel forced to do things of which they disapprove, leaving them feeling guilty, disempowered and depressed. This would seem to explain why depression is booming even amidst materially prospering populations. Although a human tragedy, this epidemic of depression is a boon for the economy, since consumer culture feeds off people's low self-esteem by encouraging self-indulgence and escapism, resulting in a vicious circle of increasing consumption and decreasing well-being.
We believe many depressive symptoms are a natural response of the mind to an unhealthy, unsustainable, diseased and generally distressed society. Many of those who dismiss it as being an 'illness' of the brain, are sadly mistaken, others cynically exploiting it for their own benefit. Among the chief causes are the priority given to the competitive money system which discourages healthy human relationships to the point where, starved of friendship, some people even question the validity of loving others. Altruism is a side-effect free, natural way to cope with depressive symptoms and to live a longer, healthier and happier life.
"Or, you know, they can control what and how much their kid is eating."
Obviously you're not a parent are you? Come on you got to be kidding me. Especially for parents that work excess of 50-60 hours a week. You cannot be there 24/7 and spot everything your kid eats.
I'm trying to remember is that what it's called?
... of reality because the society itself has bigger problems that contribute to people wanting to escape from it.
"Crap. Utter crap. Learning, Self-esteem, respect, etc, all start at home"
Bullshit, self-esteem, learning, respect... is a function of biology in combination with environment. Self-esteem is a function of all environments combined.
No parent can save a kid who is fat from being picked on wherever he goes. They can only suggest to the kid and show him how to take off the weight, you can't force anyone to do things they don't want to do.
"Maybe he was in the wrong. Maybe he was looking for an excuse to feel persecuted. Maybe he was looking for a fight."
Either way, I can't say ANYONE was right in this video, I've been bugged by the cops before but I've never verbally abused them, (but boy was I thinking about it when hear some of the shit that comes out of their mouths, or when they are overstepping their bounds) when they have verbally abused me, lied to me, etc.
I can tell you though that the way cops are trained unfortunately antagonizes and incites people, the way they speak with authority and aggressive intent does nothing to help the process.