Beyond Good & Evil is a truely excellent game in a lot of regards, although it does have its shortcomings.
Presentation
The characters in the game are very stylized, with anthropomorphic animals running about everywhere alongside humans. This gives the game a very "kiddie" feel at first glance. The voice acting is very well done and after a few hours of playing the game you will find yourself genuinly liking the characters after enjoying their banter and interactions.
Gameplay
The gameplay has a strong focus on exploration throughout, and it has much diversity as you find yourself performing many different activies throughout the game (racing, puzzle-solving, ship-based combat, personal combat, stealth). The pacing is very well done in the game, keeping the gameply fresh throughout. The personal combat is probably the weakest aspect of the gameplay, and it is unfortunate that the opening scene of the game is a big combat. Some of the later stealth/photgraphic missions really put the basic combat to shame. The game also uses an interesting partner mechanic, allowing the NPCs toprovide specific help to allow you through some situations.
Plot
As I mentioned earlier, at first glance the game appears marketed towards an 8-12 year old audience. The graphics are brightly colored and the characters appear very cartoony. The plot to the game is surprisingly sophisticated. A war against the "Domz" is happening, and only the "Alpha Squadron" stands between them and the planet's helpless population. The story introduces themes of propaganda and as Jade, you pick up the responsibility of exposing the truth to the public at large. Witnessing the populace of the city slowly change their view as you bring more and more condemning evidence to light is a very rewarding experience.
All in all, I really enjoyed the game and it was one of the first games that I was able to get my journalist wife to play with me (she's since branched out and we enjoy many evenings playing games together). The production values are high, although there seems to be no particular reward for collecting 100% of the items that are strewn about the world (you only need a certain amount of them to buy the final upgrade for your hover-craft), which was a disappointment.
Recently, I've been working on virtualizing data centers. One of our big selling points is the ongoing power costs associated with a large data-center. If you're running 900 logical servers on 25 physical boxes, you're saving a LOT of energy (both in powering the systems and cooling the center).
More and more players are entering the virtual market (look at the success of Citrix over the past decade, which is a technology that comes from a similar paradigm) - and that means that more and more datacenters are converting. While the cost per kwh might be rising, the costs of running a data-center are coming back under control.
Apparently, a couple of people claim to own the G.
It looks like Google is infringing on two different companies' trademarks with their GMail service... and the two companies are working together against google. Does anyone else find it odd that they are so willing to share the mark with eachother against google?
I recently did a lot of research into LAN centers with the hopes of opening one, but have since then been moving away from that direction due to some serious issues that such a thing presents. There are three main considerations for a successful commercial LAN:
1) The hardware and space. This is probably the easiest issue to overcome because it is the most straight forward. You just need enough desks and open space to set up your systems, and a good switch/router (don't want to use a hub, if you can even find them any more) with enough open ports for your systems.
2) The liscensing issue. This is the second worst part of setting up a LAN where you are asking people to pay money to use games. The creators of the games (well, usually the publishers) demand a cut. Each publisher (and a few large developers like Blizzard and Valve) has its own hoops that you must jump through and expenses that you have to pay. There is an organization of LAN centers that can help out a new-comer (which you may not qualify as, since this is an event instead of a center) at www.igames.org
3) Insurance. This is probably the hardest aspect to deal with, because the odds are the investment will come to nothing. I don't know how it is in other states, but in CA it's pretty much a case of if someone hurts themselves while at your center, your center is responsible for shelling out the cash to heal them, both physically and mentally. Since you plan do it on campus, the insurance might not be an issue since the school already has that taken care of.
Well, that's what I know of comercial LANs, I hope my research proves useful to you.
I tend to agree with the grandparent on this that the 54.99 price is a bad move on Activision's part.
I work at GameStop so am far to familiar with games. PC games tend to debut at $39.99 whereas console games (that's X-Box, PS2 and GameCube for the uninformed) tend to come out at $49.99. This $10 increase for console games has always been explained to me as stemming from the liscensing fees that publishers have to pay the big three in order to publish the games on their systems (which is, consequently, how the big three make their profits, rather than hardware sales). PC games can be cheaper because there is no liscensing fee in order to make the game.
Doom 3, as it currently exists in our systems, is set at $54.99 on the PC and $49.99 on the X-Box. If Doom 3 cost them so much extra that they need to charge an extra $15 for the PC version, why don't they need that extra profit margin on the X-Box sales? Due to the fact that they haven't raised the X-Box price, not even to match the PC price, I tend to believe that Activision is doing it out of sheer greed - squeezing the most profit that they can out of the already profitable platform. I somehow doubt that the X-Box release of Doom 3 has been so underadvertised (they only gave us PC release swag for Doom 3) on accident.
... had an excellent soundtrack all around, but the English voice acting is phenomenal (I've never played it through with another language).
Aside from my loyalty to the man for his great movies, I wasn't impressed by Bruce Campbell's performance as the narrator in Spiderman 2. His lines seemed very flat to me, as if he was relying purely on the fact that he's Bruce freaking Campbell to carry them and make them important (which it almost does). But, I guess that the quality level that he offers is right on par for the game though, because with the exception of a few of Tobey Maguire's spiderman quips, the whole of the spoken dialogue is nuinspired.
Slashdot Mirror
-1 Lewd
Presentation
The characters in the game are very stylized, with anthropomorphic animals running about everywhere alongside humans. This gives the game a very "kiddie" feel at first glance. The voice acting is very well done and after a few hours of playing the game you will find yourself genuinly liking the characters after enjoying their banter and interactions.
Gameplay
The gameplay has a strong focus on exploration throughout, and it has much diversity as you find yourself performing many different activies throughout the game (racing, puzzle-solving, ship-based combat, personal combat, stealth). The pacing is very well done in the game, keeping the gameply fresh throughout. The personal combat is probably the weakest aspect of the gameplay, and it is unfortunate that the opening scene of the game is a big combat. Some of the later stealth/photgraphic missions really put the basic combat to shame. The game also uses an interesting partner mechanic, allowing the NPCs toprovide specific help to allow you through some situations.
Plot
As I mentioned earlier, at first glance the game appears marketed towards an 8-12 year old audience. The graphics are brightly colored and the characters appear very cartoony. The plot to the game is surprisingly sophisticated. A war against the "Domz" is happening, and only the "Alpha Squadron" stands between them and the planet's helpless population. The story introduces themes of propaganda and as Jade, you pick up the responsibility of exposing the truth to the public at large. Witnessing the populace of the city slowly change their view as you bring more and more condemning evidence to light is a very rewarding experience.
All in all, I really enjoyed the game and it was one of the first games that I was able to get my journalist wife to play with me (she's since branched out and we enjoy many evenings playing games together). The production values are high, although there seems to be no particular reward for collecting 100% of the items that are strewn about the world (you only need a certain amount of them to buy the final upgrade for your hover-craft), which was a disappointment.
More and more players are entering the virtual market (look at the success of Citrix over the past decade, which is a technology that comes from a similar paradigm) - and that means that more and more datacenters are converting. While the cost per kwh might be rising, the costs of running a data-center are coming back under control.
It looks like Google is infringing on two different companies' trademarks with their GMail service... and the two companies are working together against google. Does anyone else find it odd that they are so willing to share the mark with eachother against google?
$2000
I recently did a lot of research into LAN centers with the hopes of opening one, but have since then been moving away from that direction due to some serious issues that such a thing presents. There are three main considerations for a successful commercial LAN: 1) The hardware and space. This is probably the easiest issue to overcome because it is the most straight forward. You just need enough desks and open space to set up your systems, and a good switch/router (don't want to use a hub, if you can even find them any more) with enough open ports for your systems. 2) The liscensing issue. This is the second worst part of setting up a LAN where you are asking people to pay money to use games. The creators of the games (well, usually the publishers) demand a cut. Each publisher (and a few large developers like Blizzard and Valve) has its own hoops that you must jump through and expenses that you have to pay. There is an organization of LAN centers that can help out a new-comer (which you may not qualify as, since this is an event instead of a center) at www.igames.org 3) Insurance. This is probably the hardest aspect to deal with, because the odds are the investment will come to nothing. I don't know how it is in other states, but in CA it's pretty much a case of if someone hurts themselves while at your center, your center is responsible for shelling out the cash to heal them, both physically and mentally. Since you plan do it on campus, the insurance might not be an issue since the school already has that taken care of. Well, that's what I know of comercial LANs, I hope my research proves useful to you.
I tend to agree with the grandparent on this that the 54.99 price is a bad move on Activision's part. I work at GameStop so am far to familiar with games. PC games tend to debut at $39.99 whereas console games (that's X-Box, PS2 and GameCube for the uninformed) tend to come out at $49.99. This $10 increase for console games has always been explained to me as stemming from the liscensing fees that publishers have to pay the big three in order to publish the games on their systems (which is, consequently, how the big three make their profits, rather than hardware sales). PC games can be cheaper because there is no liscensing fee in order to make the game. Doom 3, as it currently exists in our systems, is set at $54.99 on the PC and $49.99 on the X-Box. If Doom 3 cost them so much extra that they need to charge an extra $15 for the PC version, why don't they need that extra profit margin on the X-Box sales? Due to the fact that they haven't raised the X-Box price, not even to match the PC price, I tend to believe that Activision is doing it out of sheer greed - squeezing the most profit that they can out of the already profitable platform. I somehow doubt that the X-Box release of Doom 3 has been so underadvertised (they only gave us PC release swag for Doom 3) on accident.
... had an excellent soundtrack all around, but the English voice acting is phenomenal (I've never played it through with another language). Aside from my loyalty to the man for his great movies, I wasn't impressed by Bruce Campbell's performance as the narrator in Spiderman 2. His lines seemed very flat to me, as if he was relying purely on the fact that he's Bruce freaking Campbell to carry them and make them important (which it almost does). But, I guess that the quality level that he offers is right on par for the game though, because with the exception of a few of Tobey Maguire's spiderman quips, the whole of the spoken dialogue is nuinspired.