I wonder how the LCD screen will respond after being put in pockets/backpacks. Whats great about the DS/SP is the clamshell design: sure the outer parts may get scratched, but the screens are always protected. It seems that the DS is still smaller than the PSP; it's definitely smaller in width and they seem to have the same height, even with the clamshell design...
As for load-times, I've got to see those are ridiculous. It's great being able to start playing immediately with the DS (if you have it in Auto-start). Heck, the best thing about portables is being able to play them in a bus/subway ride...those load times are just too damn long!
With all that said, the PSP does look like a sexy, sexy beast.
Blizzard? Worlds of Warcraft sold like cup-cakes. Valve? Half-Life 2 was snatched off the shelves faster than you can say saskatoon. Rockstar? GTA4 was car-jacked by a shitload of people. Nintendo? The DS was sold out, Metroid Prime 2, Paper Mario 2 and Mario 64 DS all had excellent sales. Konami's Metal Gear Solid 3 also had friggin' good sales.
Now, if you chose Ubisoft (Prince of Persia), or Namco (Baten Kaitos) , or Capcom (Viewtiful Joe 2), maybe you'd have a point. But the examples you chose were sort of weird.
Ya I agree. It's really sad when that happens. It happened with Jak and Daxter too. It went from a nice fun platformer to a dark gritty (and boring) GTA-like Jak 2. I don't even know what's happened with Jak 3 since I've really lost interested...It's really a shame when game companies ruin a perfectly good franchise/game to try to be more 'adult'.
Ubisoft made some good franchises over the last couple of years, but since then seem to be content in releasing sequel after sequel. Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia, their Tom Clancy games have seen multiple releases. Now, if only they'd make a sequel of the one game I'd like to delve more into...where's Beyond Good and Evil 2 dognabbit?!
I've never heard of this ET thing. Sources? Info? At least a link to a respectable gaming site that has something about it?
Sony will begin to produce over 700,000 units a month, with a year 2005 ending total of 10 million PSPs worldwide. Those are numbers that Nintendo has never faced before and could spell the downfall of a once great portable gaming empire at the hands of the PSP.
I like this part. Nintendo has never faced large numbers before? Wow, what about the PS2? And the GBA's install base is far larger than what the PSP will have in produced units at the end of 2005...
The games were paid for from inmates' purchases -- mostly of snacks -- at the prison canteen. The canteen generates up to $20,000 monthly and a committee of corrections officials, prison staffers and several inmates decides how to spend it.
Much of the cash is used for weightlifting and exercise equipment. Video games are a new purchase in Jefferson City; prison officials say other facilities have done the same, though it doesn't appear to be the norm.
"It has a good effect on helping us run the prison and make sure they're busy and not trying to work on ways to escape or harm others," Dormire said. "That's kind of our bottom line -- public safety."
A) the prisoners paid for them.
B) It helps keep them busy.
Yes. Because the Washington Post is the number one source for gaming info. Tell that to Ninteno, who are still churning in a profit from the GameCube. Not to mention the GBA and the DS.
Everyone here, including the poster, forgot one important thing: this is a beta! Things could change in the final release! Errors will happen, bugs will occur. Things will go down.
And I love all this talk about how Microsoft bundles software and is therefore evil. Apple bundles iTunes, iMovie, Safari, Mail, Quicktime, iChat and other programs with OS X. But on the other hand, when Microsoft bundles IE, it's evil. When it bundles media player, it's evil. When it bundles MSN, it's evil.
Well, if they didn't, they'd be seen as having the inferior product (yes, we know all you geeks say XP is the inferior product already...but all the non-geeks will begin to think that too). Right now, in terms of functionality right out of the box, both XP and OS X are basically the same.
As for this, I don't really care much for MSN Spaces, or blogger, or what have you. Microsoft is trying to create a hub for it's users in one place, with hotmail, MSN, blogging, search, all in one place. It's much more fun than managing a different account for everything. Most people don't care that you can't rewrite the HTML code. They just want something where they can type something, post it, and other people can read it with minimal fuss. Basically, something that just works. (And once again, this is still a beta).
I don't really care for all these blog sites or blog software. Writing your own code that does exactly what you want is very easy if you know a little PHP/MySQL (and I know very little). And I'll probably be voted as a troll here just for not being anti-MS. Wee.
It does, and it has done so since version 2. Go to your Message Windows in preferences, there's something about containers and what have you. It's a bit confusing in v2, the v3 alpha has a much friendlier preferences window.
They had a problem authenticating because of the mad rush of people that logged on to their server at once. Imagine the slashdot effect, imagine that 1000x worse, and thats what probably hit Valve. It happened to Blizzard and WoW too. If you authenticate now, you're not gonna have any problems.
That's the simple way of switching to IE rendering. Just right click, and it'll reload the page. Your other pages/tabs would still be working using the Gecko engine. When you're in IE mode, right click, and hit 'Display like Netscape', and you're back to using Gecko.
You can also set individual controls for sites in the options: you can set a certain webpage to always render using the IE engine: microsoft's site is set to this by default (hence why Windows Updates works). You can even enable/disable ActiveX for websites (even if they're set to render in the IE engine), including javascript, images, popups and so on. It's a really nice feature...
Many people here seem to hate the IE rendering capability. Frankly, as a web developer, I LOVE this...no longer do I have to have IE open when designing a site, I can just right click, and voila! And it defaults to Gecko for everything, unless you specifically tell it to open in IE, so I don't see why so many are complaining about the security issues...
I'd actually consider using this full time once their are better themes, and extensions like the web developer tools is ported over. Right now the 'get more extensions' and 'get more themes' links in Netscape seem to link to update.mozilla.org...but the site seems to be down. So who knows? Some stuff might work...
I bought Half-Life 2 through Steam. I'm all for the developer breaking away from Publishers, the whole (one-time) authentication thing.
Other that that, I absolutely hate steam. I don't want to start it up everytime I want to play a game. Why? It takes about 30 seconds to login on startup. It takes about 20 megs of memory that Half-Life 2 could be using. It forces updates on me when I don't care, and just want to bloody play.
Besides, it's interface is bloody awful. I lost count of the times when I hit "browse games" by accident only to open up a window that wants me to buy games. And why does a different window pop-up for every sub-menu? It's stupid.
Furthermore, the writer talks of Valve not being liable for any hack of Steam that may infect anyone's computer. It hasn't dawned on the writer that it is standard practice to disclaim all liability.
Yes...the only problem is that it updates automatically. You have no power over stopping updates. You either have the update install by itself, or just never run Steam. It's stupid.
Yes. And comparing an average PC with the most powerful console on the market? An XBox has 64 megs of RAM, a PC has 512 RAM. An XBox has a 733 Mhz Pentium III, a PC has 2 GHz. With a far more powerful graphics card.
If it can be done on a console in quite a CPU intensive game (Halo 2) with such weak hardware, there's no reason why it can't be done on a PC.
And Valve wasn't trying to be like Doom 3, Painkiller or Far Cry: it was trying to be something much, much more than all three.
Ahh. The good old tried it/didn't like it excuse. Which usually translates to: "Oh I can't be bothered doing it. I'll just say it sucks." How can it be stupid and take you out of the game if the vehicle adhered to the natural laws of physics and had to have someone have its hand on its wheels to turn it instead of using the magical "no hands instantly teleport your commands into the brains of the vehicle" to make it move;).
Oh, and yes, Halo 2 does have 'legs' when you look down. Never took me out of the game. In fact, it kept me IN the game. You could also see y our body in Max Payne 2 with the first person mod installed. That too was bloody awesome.
There's a difference here: they're not offering to sell you something. You rented something from them, and they're calling you to tell you that you're being charged extra because its late. It's a service, a helpful reminder, not an offer to take $50 off you for something that you don't even use.
Firstly, as others have pointed out, the longer a game stays in Gamerankings the lower its score gets. In fact earlier Half-Life 2 was even higher in Gameranking's all all time best. It slowly went down to 5th, and it might even slip further. As to whoever said Gamerankings is skewed towards PC results, look at that list: there's like 3 PC games in the all time top 20...
As for Half-Life 2, frankly, I was disappointed. The on-rails gameplay is boring, there aren't that many opportunities to go 'off-rail' and when you do, it's usually blocked and you have to backtrack. There was only one genuine moment where I went "OMG! THIS IS SO FRIGGIN' COOL" (when the dog joined you towards the end...). In all honesty, the game seems more like a very long tech demo than anything that will hold my interest for long. And heck, if it wasn't for the gravity gun, the game would suck...
Plus, I really miss being able to smack your enemy with your weapon...I think there should be a law that all FPS incorporate that feature...I'm even trying to do it in MP2 now...
As for realism? Sure, the game's all nice and pretty and the physics are awesome, but in some aspects it seems that Valve's still living in the 20th century, not the 21st:
The in-game loading...no game should have loading nowadays, especially not one that claims to be ultra realistic, and especially not Half-Life 2, which thrives on immersing you into the environment. As soon as you hit that 'Loading' screen, which can take over a minute (2200+, 1 gig ram, radeon 9700 pro), you're immediately yanked right out of wherever you were. It's ridiculous.
You look down...what do you see? Oh wait...I HAVE NO LEGS! In realistic environments people have legs. Many FPS' incorporated that 'feature'...why not valve? It would sure make it look much better.
When you drive a vehicle...oh wait! IT DRIVES ITSELF! Seriously...how did they let this one go by? Where's the guy's hands? How's the vehicle driving itself? Another area where it takes you away from the 'realistic' environments.
The startup loading. Here's the process: launch steam, wait for it to login (which can take a minute sometimes), if steam needs to update, it'll update itself, even if you just want to play. Then, 'preparing to play Half-Life 2', which can take another minute. Then Loading the damn menu (ya, you can put -console in the launch options...but if you can load the game faster, WHY NOT SET IT AS DEFAULT?!). Then load your save...and you better hope you're not at the end of your current 'level', cuz if you step further, you'll hit another loading screen. Weeeeeeeee.
I just wanted to point out that I'm not just complaining for the heck of it. It's just that Half-Life 2 was set out to be something revolutionary, something no other game would come close to, but in that aspect, it failed. It's still a fun game, but I don't think it's what Valve was trying to achieve.
Realism? I don't recall walking around outside and have to wait for 5 minutes, while the screen fades out and a big huge LOADING sign comes out telling me to wait until I can move forward again.
Wow. I'd like whoever modded this as a troll to explain to me how the hell I was trolling. I'm giving my two cents on my experience with my Powerbook. If that's trolling, then troll me right up again.
It seems that OS X has two people in mind: complete idiots who go "ooh! this is flashy!", ie people who don't know how to use computers and just use the defaults, even though the interface is horribly inefficient in terms of workflow (as 'nice' as the Dock is, it's no way near as intuitive or useful as the taskbar).
On the other hand are basically Linux geeks who know how to do things with Linux/terminal and like to fiddle with Linux apps and all that jazz.
For the 'medium-pro' power user, people who don't know how to program or use Linux, they're completely lost. I fall into this category: I can fiddle around things to my hearts content with Windows, stuff that I merely can't do on a Mac unless I'm a Linux expert...
Oh, and I write this just after Disk Utility on the Mac deleted my whole hard-drive when I specifically told it to 'erase' one of the partitions. Thank God it was empty.
I'm assuming you mean Canada by the 'great white north', because Comedy Network has the Daily Show Mondays-Thursdays (when its on in the US) at 11pm EST and CTV has it at midnight.
Slashdot Mirror
or the two engines just have different methods of indexing? Try googling zelda and then acconaing zelda. They have a very different result set.
As for load-times, I've got to see those are ridiculous. It's great being able to start playing immediately with the DS (if you have it in Auto-start). Heck, the best thing about portables is being able to play them in a bus/subway ride...those load times are just too damn long!
With all that said, the PSP does look like a sexy, sexy beast.
edit...nevermind. I miss-read what you typed. I blame this on lack of food...now where's that damn pizza?
Now, if you chose Ubisoft (Prince of Persia), or Namco (Baten Kaitos) , or Capcom (Viewtiful Joe 2), maybe you'd have a point. But the examples you chose were sort of weird.
Because they think stapling the Star Wars license on an already established genre in a piss-poor game is innovative.
Ubisoft made some good franchises over the last couple of years, but since then seem to be content in releasing sequel after sequel. Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia, their Tom Clancy games have seen multiple releases. Now, if only they'd make a sequel of the one game I'd like to delve more into...where's Beyond Good and Evil 2 dognabbit?!
Sony will begin to produce over 700,000 units a month, with a year 2005 ending total of 10 million PSPs worldwide. Those are numbers that Nintendo has never faced before and could spell the downfall of a once great portable gaming empire at the hands of the PSP.
I like this part. Nintendo has never faced large numbers before? Wow, what about the PS2? And the GBA's install base is far larger than what the PSP will have in produced units at the end of 2005...
A) the prisoners paid for them.
B) It helps keep them busy.
Yes. Because the Washington Post is the number one source for gaming info. Tell that to Ninteno, who are still churning in a profit from the GameCube. Not to mention the GBA and the DS.
Everyone here, including the poster, forgot one important thing: this is a beta! Things could change in the final release! Errors will happen, bugs will occur. Things will go down.
And I love all this talk about how Microsoft bundles software and is therefore evil. Apple bundles iTunes, iMovie, Safari, Mail, Quicktime, iChat and other programs with OS X. But on the other hand, when Microsoft bundles IE, it's evil. When it bundles media player, it's evil. When it bundles MSN, it's evil.
Well, if they didn't, they'd be seen as having the inferior product (yes, we know all you geeks say XP is the inferior product already...but all the non-geeks will begin to think that too). Right now, in terms of functionality right out of the box, both XP and OS X are basically the same.
As for this, I don't really care much for MSN Spaces, or blogger, or what have you. Microsoft is trying to create a hub for it's users in one place, with hotmail, MSN, blogging, search, all in one place. It's much more fun than managing a different account for everything. Most people don't care that you can't rewrite the HTML code. They just want something where they can type something, post it, and other people can read it with minimal fuss. Basically, something that just works. (And once again, this is still a beta).
I don't really care for all these blog sites or blog software. Writing your own code that does exactly what you want is very easy if you know a little PHP/MySQL (and I know very little). And I'll probably be voted as a troll here just for not being anti-MS. Wee.
It does, and it has done so since version 2. Go to your Message Windows in preferences, there's something about containers and what have you. It's a bit confusing in v2, the v3 alpha has a much friendlier preferences window.
They had a problem authenticating because of the mad rush of people that logged on to their server at once. Imagine the slashdot effect, imagine that 1000x worse, and thats what probably hit Valve. It happened to Blizzard and WoW too. If you authenticate now, you're not gonna have any problems.
the image Sorry, I fudged up the link to the screenshot...
That's the simple way of switching to IE rendering. Just right click, and it'll reload the page. Your other pages/tabs would still be working using the Gecko engine. When you're in IE mode, right click, and hit 'Display like Netscape', and you're back to using Gecko.
You can also set individual controls for sites in the options: you can set a certain webpage to always render using the IE engine: microsoft's site is set to this by default (hence why Windows Updates works). You can even enable/disable ActiveX for websites (even if they're set to render in the IE engine), including javascript, images, popups and so on. It's a really nice feature...
Many people here seem to hate the IE rendering capability. Frankly, as a web developer, I LOVE this...no longer do I have to have IE open when designing a site, I can just right click, and voila! And it defaults to Gecko for everything, unless you specifically tell it to open in IE, so I don't see why so many are complaining about the security issues...
I'd actually consider using this full time once their are better themes, and extensions like the web developer tools is ported over. Right now the 'get more extensions' and 'get more themes' links in Netscape seem to link to update.mozilla.org...but the site seems to be down. So who knows? Some stuff might work...
Other that that, I absolutely hate steam. I don't want to start it up everytime I want to play a game. Why? It takes about 30 seconds to login on startup. It takes about 20 megs of memory that Half-Life 2 could be using. It forces updates on me when I don't care, and just want to bloody play.
Besides, it's interface is bloody awful. I lost count of the times when I hit "browse games" by accident only to open up a window that wants me to buy games. And why does a different window pop-up for every sub-menu? It's stupid.
Yes...the only problem is that it updates automatically. You have no power over stopping updates. You either have the update install by itself, or just never run Steam. It's stupid.
How the heck are those people gonna get their money back? When they bought Half-Life Steam didn't exist.
Yes. And comparing an average PC with the most powerful console on the market? An XBox has 64 megs of RAM, a PC has 512 RAM. An XBox has a 733 Mhz Pentium III, a PC has 2 GHz. With a far more powerful graphics card.
If it can be done on a console in quite a CPU intensive game (Halo 2) with such weak hardware, there's no reason why it can't be done on a PC.
And Valve wasn't trying to be like Doom 3, Painkiller or Far Cry: it was trying to be something much, much more than all three.
Ahh. The good old tried it/didn't like it excuse. Which usually translates to: "Oh I can't be bothered doing it. I'll just say it sucks." How can it be stupid and take you out of the game if the vehicle adhered to the natural laws of physics and had to have someone have its hand on its wheels to turn it instead of using the magical "no hands instantly teleport your commands into the brains of the vehicle" to make it move ;).
Oh, and yes, Halo 2 does have 'legs' when you look down. Never took me out of the game. In fact, it kept me IN the game. You could also see y our body in Max Payne 2 with the first person mod installed. That too was bloody awesome.
Wee. Labelled as troll for expressing some legitimate issues I have with the game. Only on /.!
I dont think this'll fall under telemarketing.
As for Half-Life 2, frankly, I was disappointed. The on-rails gameplay is boring, there aren't that many opportunities to go 'off-rail' and when you do, it's usually blocked and you have to backtrack. There was only one genuine moment where I went "OMG! THIS IS SO FRIGGIN' COOL" (when the dog joined you towards the end...). In all honesty, the game seems more like a very long tech demo than anything that will hold my interest for long. And heck, if it wasn't for the gravity gun, the game would suck...
Plus, I really miss being able to smack your enemy with your weapon...I think there should be a law that all FPS incorporate that feature...I'm even trying to do it in MP2 now...
As for realism? Sure, the game's all nice and pretty and the physics are awesome, but in some aspects it seems that Valve's still living in the 20th century, not the 21st:
I just wanted to point out that I'm not just complaining for the heck of it. It's just that Half-Life 2 was set out to be something revolutionary, something no other game would come close to, but in that aspect, it failed. It's still a fun game, but I don't think it's what Valve was trying to achieve.
Realism? I don't recall walking around outside and have to wait for 5 minutes, while the screen fades out and a big huge LOADING sign comes out telling me to wait until I can move forward again.
Wow. I'd like whoever modded this as a troll to explain to me how the hell I was trolling. I'm giving my two cents on my experience with my Powerbook. If that's trolling, then troll me right up again.
On the other hand are basically Linux geeks who know how to do things with Linux/terminal and like to fiddle with Linux apps and all that jazz.
For the 'medium-pro' power user, people who don't know how to program or use Linux, they're completely lost. I fall into this category: I can fiddle around things to my hearts content with Windows, stuff that I merely can't do on a Mac unless I'm a Linux expert...
Oh, and I write this just after Disk Utility on the Mac deleted my whole hard-drive when I specifically told it to 'erase' one of the partitions. Thank God it was empty.
I'm assuming you mean Canada by the 'great white north', because Comedy Network has the Daily Show Mondays-Thursdays (when its on in the US) at 11pm EST and CTV has it at midnight.