Or they could just run the game at Sd resolutions and see how it holds up then, most TVs would display it like that anyway. Allows more bitrate per pixel to get a better image reproduction
That depends on what you're making. Obviously a one man team can't make the next Call of Duty or whatever, making what's essentially a new, AAA grade game needs a professional development team, making the mod equivalent of a flash game doesn't take long and can feasibly be done in one's free time. I've made loads of smaller mods (for the Spring engine, modding that involves making a new set of units as well as scripting any game logic you need beyond the standard Total Annihilation hehaviour it offers) in my spare time.
And hell, modding that engine almost requires making a TC and it's not much work either.
Naah, with even a modicum of creativity one can copy an existing work without it being immediately apparent. Eragon got called Star Wars with dragons, copyright didn't exactly stop that.
I'm stull surprised how few games actually let you properly queue actions, often even simple waypoint movement is pretty damn clunky already, never mind actually queueing different kinds of orders (and if it's just "move here and shoot that, then that")
I disagree on the variety of situations 2d can produce, people just aren't trying. Many 3d games aren't really using the third dimension well anyway, they could just as well be done in 2d. The inherent complexity of 3d also doesn't help, in a 2d game you can shoot things by being horizontally or vertically aligned with them, no biggie. In 3d games you have to align your aiming line with the target or just rely on the autotargetting the game provides. Dodging things in 3d is just a pure pain, as is accurate platforming since you can only see 2 dimensions on the TV but the game uses 3. Moving stuff in the air (be it your character or whatever else) means you almost always have to guess where it is, leading to positioning errors that you didn't even knew were there.
I think many games would be better served by simply dropping this 3d-at-all-costs pursuit since it tends to complicate things without much real gain.
God of War? It seemed like a bog standard beat'em up/"platformer" with a "lol im badass" main character when I played it just like the dozens of such games that came before it. Is there some hidden super mode I missed or what?
A bigger complaint about Samus's gun is how it shoots over most enemies since most are just 1 tile high or how you need to shoot tons of bullets into even simple enemies to kill them. Overall I hate that game, no map + repetitive map design + awful combat + horrible restart system (30 health?) = pure annoyance. I think Adventure of Link could have been fixed up by making a game over move you back to the beginning of the current dungeon or to the last town but Metroid has too many things wrong with it to be worth playing anymore, everyone should just grab Zero Mission instead (and maybe pretend it ends after the Mother Brain is destroyed) or better yet Super Metroid. I don't mind difficulty but I mind death penalties that pretty much require mindless grinding to make up for.
That the Zelda shield blocks projectiles is fine, of course, it would be kinda OP if it made you completely invulnerable from the front since it's always out. I think it was the same in LTTP, only LA changed it.
Er, hello? Videogame crash? Caused by countless crappy clones? Even before the crash there were tons of clones (even Pong had them), it's just natural for people to think "hey, we can make something better than that" and try to sell that. The clones are forgotten but they did exist. Of course these days the arcade is in a terrible state since noone really cares about it anymore, noone really puts much effort into big new arcade games. The arcade is dead, look at home consoles for the current games.
I think a factor is that many people have to have played them so a good guess would be a selection of the best selling games available. Even if they're just copies of less popular games they'd get recognized for bringing the concept to the masses.
Updating the engine allows better maintenance. You can patch more issues (especially hardware ones), update it to work on newer OSes (or port it to ones that weren't supported), add features that weren't invented until later (e.g. Doom sourceports with full 3D aiming instead of vertical autoaim) and possibly even create a good base platform for mods.
Naah, they just had lower standards for what counts as cutting edge graphics. Back then they would boast about free scrolling into all directions (as opposed to scrolling in only one), large sprites, many sprites, 3d rendered sprites, photographed sprites, mode 7, (flat colored) polygons, "blast processing",...
I didn't like OOT when I got it with my copy of Wind Waker, I hate limited camera systems. I had no problem going back to the old 2d Zeldas though, even Zelda 1.
The tankrush is only a bug if it's the unconditionally best way to win, many RTSes allow it as one valid strategy but make it possible to counter as well so it's a massive gamble, try to defeat the enemy early but risk economic growth in the process or build up more econ and risk less.
Hell, even in Kernel Panic we've got that mechanism, you can go and spam cheap units quickly and hope theys win you the game or you can use a con unit and expand to increase your production capabilities. If the first rush fails you're usually left crippled so going tank rush all the time isn't a good idea, especially once your opponent expects it.
If the tankrush seems impossible to stop to you maybe you're just not playing well enough.
Building up "kill zones" is just excessive defensive play. You ceede territory to the enemy and invest your money into strength you can't move (also most games include fortification busters that can destroy all kinds of fortifications). In most if not all games that's a way to get a slow and painful guaranteed loss. Unless the map is very heavy on chokepoints the enemy will just move around your killzone (hell, it happened to the French twice, once in each World War) and wreck your base, having a resource disadvantage plus investing a lot of money into defenses leaves you with a weaker mobile army. Railroading an enemy into them isn't going to be easy and will only work once.
Besides, the matches of TA I see these days are usually all about raiding, trying to eliminate the enemy's territory expansion and possibly even vital structures of his base. You can't get defense up fast enough to protect against that completely.
Maybe unique when they were made. Many games of the 80s got sequels, clones, etc that sometimes were genuinely better. Of course the original game will probably be remembered for longer since it has a famous name.
Conversely I don't think the "focus on realism" has any meaning here other than being a popular meme to complain about. Even bad games that sold only because of graphics occassionally get remembered later (Myst, anyone?). Other than that I expect people to remember games more for defining a phase in their life (the phase in which the console the game was on was current) and that would make any really popular game well remembered.
What I wonder more is what the new players the Wii brought into gaming will remember about this generation.
The 360 is still ahead of the PS3 and since both MS and Sony have managed to convince themselves into believing that Nintendo is in a completely different market they'll think they won. Both MS and Sony will probably keep this futile battle up because they dream of being able to tie all kinds of extra services into their console to make more and more money. Meanwhile Nintendo is pulling out the market from under them but hey, that fad is going to end any day and people will go back to their same-thing-with-better-graphics consoles, right?
Make something fool-proof and the universe will invent a better fool. Adding security helps against automatic attacks (which are becoming less important, even Windows is getting more secure) but social engineering will still depend on the intelligence of the user to defeat.
Slashdot Mirror
Or they could just run the game at Sd resolutions and see how it holds up then, most TVs would display it like that anyway. Allows more bitrate per pixel to get a better image reproduction
People have ported worse things than that. Way worse.
AFAIK most archievements on XBox Live don't affect the game either, they're just stamps you get for completing some extra challenges
It's funny that you mention Quake 3 since it had those medals you got for some actions before archievements were commonplace.
I liked that on Earth 2160 and I think it's good here too, it even has a positive in the form of not needing the disc to play.
A revolution only installs a new dictator. It's pointless.
To be fair the engine is now opensource so he could feasibly release his mod as a full game instead of a mod for anything.
That depends on what you're making. Obviously a one man team can't make the next Call of Duty or whatever, making what's essentially a new, AAA grade game needs a professional development team, making the mod equivalent of a flash game doesn't take long and can feasibly be done in one's free time. I've made loads of smaller mods (for the Spring engine, modding that involves making a new set of units as well as scripting any game logic you need beyond the standard Total Annihilation hehaviour it offers) in my spare time.
And hell, modding that engine almost requires making a TC and it's not much work either.
Naah, with even a modicum of creativity one can copy an existing work without it being immediately apparent. Eragon got called Star Wars with dragons, copyright didn't exactly stop that.
something about gold sinking and some other material floating up :/
Is it ducks?
I'm stull surprised how few games actually let you properly queue actions, often even simple waypoint movement is pretty damn clunky already, never mind actually queueing different kinds of orders (and if it's just "move here and shoot that, then that")
I disagree on the variety of situations 2d can produce, people just aren't trying. Many 3d games aren't really using the third dimension well anyway, they could just as well be done in 2d. The inherent complexity of 3d also doesn't help, in a 2d game you can shoot things by being horizontally or vertically aligned with them, no biggie. In 3d games you have to align your aiming line with the target or just rely on the autotargetting the game provides. Dodging things in 3d is just a pure pain, as is accurate platforming since you can only see 2 dimensions on the TV but the game uses 3. Moving stuff in the air (be it your character or whatever else) means you almost always have to guess where it is, leading to positioning errors that you didn't even knew were there.
I think many games would be better served by simply dropping this 3d-at-all-costs pursuit since it tends to complicate things without much real gain.
God of War? It seemed like a bog standard beat'em up/"platformer" with a "lol im badass" main character when I played it just like the dozens of such games that came before it. Is there some hidden super mode I missed or what?
A bigger complaint about Samus's gun is how it shoots over most enemies since most are just 1 tile high or how you need to shoot tons of bullets into even simple enemies to kill them. Overall I hate that game, no map + repetitive map design + awful combat + horrible restart system (30 health?) = pure annoyance. I think Adventure of Link could have been fixed up by making a game over move you back to the beginning of the current dungeon or to the last town but Metroid has too many things wrong with it to be worth playing anymore, everyone should just grab Zero Mission instead (and maybe pretend it ends after the Mother Brain is destroyed) or better yet Super Metroid. I don't mind difficulty but I mind death penalties that pretty much require mindless grinding to make up for.
That the Zelda shield blocks projectiles is fine, of course, it would be kinda OP if it made you completely invulnerable from the front since it's always out. I think it was the same in LTTP, only LA changed it.
Er, hello? Videogame crash? Caused by countless crappy clones? Even before the crash there were tons of clones (even Pong had them), it's just natural for people to think "hey, we can make something better than that" and try to sell that. The clones are forgotten but they did exist. Of course these days the arcade is in a terrible state since noone really cares about it anymore, noone really puts much effort into big new arcade games. The arcade is dead, look at home consoles for the current games.
I think a factor is that many people have to have played them so a good guess would be a selection of the best selling games available. Even if they're just copies of less popular games they'd get recognized for bringing the concept to the masses.
Updating the engine allows better maintenance. You can patch more issues (especially hardware ones), update it to work on newer OSes (or port it to ones that weren't supported), add features that weren't invented until later (e.g. Doom sourceports with full 3D aiming instead of vertical autoaim) and possibly even create a good base platform for mods.
Naah, they just had lower standards for what counts as cutting edge graphics. Back then they would boast about free scrolling into all directions (as opposed to scrolling in only one), large sprites, many sprites, 3d rendered sprites, photographed sprites, mode 7, (flat colored) polygons, "blast processing", ...
I didn't like OOT when I got it with my copy of Wind Waker, I hate limited camera systems. I had no problem going back to the old 2d Zeldas though, even Zelda 1.
Flashspam says hi.
The tankrush is only a bug if it's the unconditionally best way to win, many RTSes allow it as one valid strategy but make it possible to counter as well so it's a massive gamble, try to defeat the enemy early but risk economic growth in the process or build up more econ and risk less.
Hell, even in Kernel Panic we've got that mechanism, you can go and spam cheap units quickly and hope theys win you the game or you can use a con unit and expand to increase your production capabilities. If the first rush fails you're usually left crippled so going tank rush all the time isn't a good idea, especially once your opponent expects it.
If the tankrush seems impossible to stop to you maybe you're just not playing well enough.
Building up "kill zones" is just excessive defensive play. You ceede territory to the enemy and invest your money into strength you can't move (also most games include fortification busters that can destroy all kinds of fortifications). In most if not all games that's a way to get a slow and painful guaranteed loss. Unless the map is very heavy on chokepoints the enemy will just move around your killzone (hell, it happened to the French twice, once in each World War) and wreck your base, having a resource disadvantage plus investing a lot of money into defenses leaves you with a weaker mobile army. Railroading an enemy into them isn't going to be easy and will only work once.
Besides, the matches of TA I see these days are usually all about raiding, trying to eliminate the enemy's territory expansion and possibly even vital structures of his base. You can't get defense up fast enough to protect against that completely.
PacMan would have been very different if other humans controlled the ghosts.
Yes but PacMan Vs. is still considered a pretty good game.
Maybe unique when they were made. Many games of the 80s got sequels, clones, etc that sometimes were genuinely better. Of course the original game will probably be remembered for longer since it has a famous name.
Conversely I don't think the "focus on realism" has any meaning here other than being a popular meme to complain about. Even bad games that sold only because of graphics occassionally get remembered later (Myst, anyone?). Other than that I expect people to remember games more for defining a phase in their life (the phase in which the console the game was on was current) and that would make any really popular game well remembered.
What I wonder more is what the new players the Wii brought into gaming will remember about this generation.
The 360 is still ahead of the PS3 and since both MS and Sony have managed to convince themselves into believing that Nintendo is in a completely different market they'll think they won. Both MS and Sony will probably keep this futile battle up because they dream of being able to tie all kinds of extra services into their console to make more and more money. Meanwhile Nintendo is pulling out the market from under them but hey, that fad is going to end any day and people will go back to their same-thing-with-better-graphics consoles, right?
Make something fool-proof and the universe will invent a better fool. Adding security helps against automatic attacks (which are becoming less important, even Windows is getting more secure) but social engineering will still depend on the intelligence of the user to defeat.