Former PC-only gamer here who just recently discovered the wonders of consoles. On one hand, consoles tend to have more pick-up-and-play-type games, but on the other, they all have that bloody save-point system whereby you need to keep playing until you get to one.
Even worse is games like Devil May Cry, where you can't save your progress after you beat a tough boss; if that boss just happens to be in the middle of a level/mission, and you die later, then you have to beat it *again.*
When the big buzz in an online game is a new *race,* you know that the playerbase is starved for new content. Blizzard has already failed to bring that content to the masses; all of their new content-patches in the past year or more have brought nothing but new grinds or new raid-instances.
I left two months ago for that reason, and haven't looked back.
I hate to break it to you, but no FF game since VI has even had any sort of interesting story. It's all the same "great evil rising up to destroy generic fantasy and/or steampunk world that a reluctant hero has to stop" crap. The difference is that, in VI, the world actually *was* destroyed, and you had to pick up the pieces. (I could also go on for a while about how Kefka was the best FF villain in the series' history, but I digress.)
In fact, the only FF game after VI that sticks out in my mind is X-2 for the way that it turned the series on its head (relatively free-form gameplay, story that doesn't take after that of the "baseline" FF's, more upbeat "feel"). Too bad it's maligned by sexually-insecure fanbois who can't bear anything that looks even remotely girly.
First, get a bunch of gamers together. Give half of them the most violent video game you can think of, and give the other half a bunch of articles/rants by Jack Thompson, and tell each group to play/read for an hour. At the end of that hour, administer a few tests to see how violent each group is.
I guarantee you that the Thompson group will be much more prone to start bashing in heads, particularly Mr. Thompson's.
I recently came off of a year-and-a-half-long WoW-kick and bought a PS2. Since then, I've rediscovered exactly how fun that games with actual gameplay, storylines, and dynamic worlds can be. No MMO to date has had even two out of these three things (the gameplay is usually "push certain keys at certain times, and then wait for your enemy to die"; the storylines are non-existant; and the few MMO's with dynamic worlds, like Shadowbane, have been buggy commercial failures.) Yet they keep coming out, and gamers keep buying them. Why?
But what's even sadder is that all of the trends in gaming point to MMO's being the future. Maybe I'll be one of the few dinosaurs many years from now bemoaning the "good old days" when the majority of games were tailored to be fun, rather than "massive" and "multiplayer."
The "security culture" that the parent speaks of isn't a purely Bush-administration thing. Clinton was just as bad (he passed the DMCA, for example, and helped work toward several "think of the children" measures.) Before that, the justification for anti-freedom laws was the threat of Communism. Before that, National Socialism. Before that, thwarting the Great Depression. And so on.
There has been an anti-freedom faction in American politics ever since the Alien and Sedition Acts. Blindly blaming everything on Bush, despite his horrid presidency, will get you nowhere.
I think the parent has stumbled upon a good point.
To draw an analogy, this reminds me of the way Creationists try to draw credibility to their own pet belief system by doing nothing more than trying to disprove evolution. The logical fallacy is the same in both cases: evidence against one thing is not evidence for another.
In other words, evidence that Windows is bad is not evidence that OSX is good. A potential switcher like me (if I were affected by advertising, which I'm not) needs genuine positive reasons to drop the money to switch.
Somewhat OT, but why was the parent modded as Troll? Seems to me that for a post to be Troll-worthy it needs to be, you know, controvercial or offensive or something.
What is truly insane are all the ignorance many/. posters have. In a perfect world we would not have to worry about who comes here, who they have business with, and what they do. Unfortunately it has come to be that our freedom is easily exploited by those who wish us to do harm. The problem I have is that the very idea of trying to find these people seems to be an affront to the very people the government wants to protect.
No; the problem is that when we give up our basic freedoms to catch criminals trying to take away our freedoms, the criminals get what they want. There are plenty of legal criminal-justice procedures that can catch the bad guys without making the United States into a police state.
You cannot have it both ways.
According to whom? Since when did the choice become "give up your freedoms to us or give up your lives to them"? And need I quote Mr. Benjamin Franklin to say that anyone who makes such a demand deserves neither freedom nor security?
People are worried that some government agency is going after bank records and phone records convienently ignore the fact that businesses do it all the time and legally.
Business = private organization with voluntary membership. Government = public organization with compulsory membership. If you can't tell the difference, then go back to high school civics.
The government actually has to get permission from the courts. That is our protection.
Not according to the PATRIOT Act.
Yeah mistakes are going to be made, some people who have no guilt are going to have their records examined. Thats a small price to pay to at least try and stop another 9-11 from occuring. Yeah I know, its the right wings mantra, hide behind the fear of another 9-11. Too bad its a valid point. It sucks but there are far more loonies out there looking to deprive us of our freedom and lives than there are government workers trying to take your rights.
No, it's not a valid point. It's a demonstration of the logical fallacy of appeal to emotion, much like the "do you want the 'smoking gun' to be a mushroom cloud over Manhattan?" defense of the Iraq war.
As for your second assertion, I'm willing to bet that the government is MUCH better equipped to take away our rights than "the terrorists." The terrorists have a handful of nuts with shoe-bombs and AK-47's. The government has an army numbering in the hundreds of thousands, which, while not directly for the idea of taking away your rights, must follow the commands of the few people who *are* interested in doing so.
You freely give up your privacy to any number of corporations, publish your thoughts out in the open on the net, and yet when the government follows the laws established to insure that it operates in the intrest of you and others you cry about it?
Once again. Business and internet = voluntary. Government = compulsory.
Also, if you are so naive as to believe that every law out there is to "insure (sic) that [the government] operates in the intrest (sic) of you and others," then I can only laugh.
b. (2) the average person eighteen (18) years of age or older applying contemporary community standards would find that the material or performance depicts or describes nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement or sadomasochistic abuse in a manner that is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community with respect to what is suitable for minors, and
Hmm... since when did the First Amendment become invalid due to the prevailing standards of the majority?
Slashdot Mirror
(Obligatory mention of "Toy Story-quality renders in realtime" claim for the PS2 here)
Former PC-only gamer here who just recently discovered the wonders of consoles. On one hand, consoles tend to have more pick-up-and-play-type games, but on the other, they all have that bloody save-point system whereby you need to keep playing until you get to one.
Even worse is games like Devil May Cry, where you can't save your progress after you beat a tough boss; if that boss just happens to be in the middle of a level/mission, and you die later, then you have to beat it *again.*
For example:
Diablo - Overrun by script-kiddies
Diablo II (Realms) - Overrun by script-kiddies/exploiders; rampant game imbalances
WoW - Very few content patches; patches usually introduce more bugs than they fix; tons of server downtime
I haven't played Starcraft or the Warcraft games online, but I'd imagine that they're screwed up in the same way.
I left two months ago for that reason, and haven't looked back.
In fact, the only FF game after VI that sticks out in my mind is X-2 for the way that it turned the series on its head (relatively free-form gameplay, story that doesn't take after that of the "baseline" FF's, more upbeat "feel"). Too bad it's maligned by sexually-insecure fanbois who can't bear anything that looks even remotely girly.
I'm about 30 hours into the first game at the moment, and I plan to pick up the second soon after I'm done. Excellent console-style sci-fi RPG.
First, get a bunch of gamers together. Give half of them the most violent video game you can think of, and give the other half a bunch of articles/rants by Jack Thompson, and tell each group to play/read for an hour. At the end of that hour, administer a few tests to see how violent each group is.
I guarantee you that the Thompson group will be much more prone to start bashing in heads, particularly Mr. Thompson's.
Nintendo UK: "Wii think the name will catch on."
I recently came off of a year-and-a-half-long WoW-kick and bought a PS2. Since then, I've rediscovered exactly how fun that games with actual gameplay, storylines, and dynamic worlds can be. No MMO to date has had even two out of these three things (the gameplay is usually "push certain keys at certain times, and then wait for your enemy to die"; the storylines are non-existant; and the few MMO's with dynamic worlds, like Shadowbane, have been buggy commercial failures.) Yet they keep coming out, and gamers keep buying them. Why?
But what's even sadder is that all of the trends in gaming point to MMO's being the future. Maybe I'll be one of the few dinosaurs many years from now bemoaning the "good old days" when the majority of games were tailored to be fun, rather than "massive" and "multiplayer."
There has been an anti-freedom faction in American politics ever since the Alien and Sedition Acts. Blindly blaming everything on Bush, despite his horrid presidency, will get you nowhere.
"Wii don't care about the console's name."
To draw an analogy, this reminds me of the way Creationists try to draw credibility to their own pet belief system by doing nothing more than trying to disprove evolution. The logical fallacy is the same in both cases: evidence against one thing is not evidence for another.
In other words, evidence that Windows is bad is not evidence that OSX is good. A potential switcher like me (if I were affected by advertising, which I'm not) needs genuine positive reasons to drop the money to switch.
Somewhat OT, but why was the parent modded as Troll? Seems to me that for a post to be Troll-worthy it needs to be, you know, controvercial or offensive or something.
Using paragraphs makes something like this much more readable. You should use 'em in the future. :)
No; the problem is that when we give up our basic freedoms to catch criminals trying to take away our freedoms, the criminals get what they want. There are plenty of legal criminal-justice procedures that can catch the bad guys without making the United States into a police state.
You cannot have it both ways.
According to whom? Since when did the choice become "give up your freedoms to us or give up your lives to them"? And need I quote Mr. Benjamin Franklin to say that anyone who makes such a demand deserves neither freedom nor security?
People are worried that some government agency is going after bank records and phone records convienently ignore the fact that businesses do it all the time and legally.
Business = private organization with voluntary membership. Government = public organization with compulsory membership. If you can't tell the difference, then go back to high school civics.
The government actually has to get permission from the courts. That is our protection.
Not according to the PATRIOT Act.
Yeah mistakes are going to be made, some people who have no guilt are going to have their records examined. Thats a small price to pay to at least try and stop another 9-11 from occuring. Yeah I know, its the right wings mantra, hide behind the fear of another 9-11. Too bad its a valid point. It sucks but there are far more loonies out there looking to deprive us of our freedom and lives than there are government workers trying to take your rights.
No, it's not a valid point. It's a demonstration of the logical fallacy of appeal to emotion, much like the "do you want the 'smoking gun' to be a mushroom cloud over Manhattan?" defense of the Iraq war.
As for your second assertion, I'm willing to bet that the government is MUCH better equipped to take away our rights than "the terrorists." The terrorists have a handful of nuts with shoe-bombs and AK-47's. The government has an army numbering in the hundreds of thousands, which, while not directly for the idea of taking away your rights, must follow the commands of the few people who *are* interested in doing so.
You freely give up your privacy to any number of corporations, publish your thoughts out in the open on the net, and yet when the government follows the laws established to insure that it operates in the intrest of you and others you cry about it?
Once again. Business and internet = voluntary. Government = compulsory.
Also, if you are so naive as to believe that every law out there is to "insure (sic) that [the government] operates in the intrest (sic) of you and others," then I can only laugh.
Better keep on your toes...
It would be the "WiiVii," pronounced like "WEEEEEEEEEEEvee!"
I already have a DVD player. I don't want to pay extra money for a redundant feature, thanks.
Probably getting a bit too childish here, but mentioning "Wii" and "Dongle" just gave me gigglefits.
Then they decided to name the console after pee-pee.
Brilliant idea, Nintendo. Brilliant.
The difference is that your average BitTorrent user can configure a firewall. Your average Windows user *can't*.
Or, "if you're against the war, you're probably a commie."
Hmm... since when did the First Amendment become invalid due to the prevailing standards of the majority?
Oblivion never *was* exclusive to the XB360. It came out for PC, too. :P
Just a random comment: I would have *loved* to see Bruce Campbell circa about a decade ago play Duke Nukem. Sadly, though, he's aging.