They should offer it as one of the few handhelds that let you make your own games and share them with friends. Hell, I dunno, offer a simplified development kit for the price of a game with a way to import your own art and music. Allow people to create their own games on the damn thing. Then, for maybe a bit more money, offer an advanced user package that's basically a simplified SDK.
If they wouldn't try so damn hard to break homebrew apps, I bet people might buy more games. I know for a fact that before the ability to downgrade firmware, people wouldn't buy games because it required an update first.
Open the thing up (except the UMD format -- I'll give them that much to keep), let us make our own games without implementing roadblocks to homebrew, and the thing will sell more.
If a game is to have a story, it should be built around it, not shoehorned in around a tech demo. A game with story solely in mind should use gameplay to help tell it, not the other way around. Obviously, this doesn't always happen, and there are examples of gameplay getting in the way of story and vice versa.
I don't mind cutscenes in games that help tell the story, because they give me motivation to continue. The Soul Reaver series is one such case that I actually tried my hardest to get to the cutscenes as quickly as possible because the story and voice-acting was just awesome. The Silent Hill series is another example of this, as is the Thief series.
Story belongs in games when the goal is to tell said story and make the player feel like you're letting them in on secrets their character isn't aware of yet. I don't need some long story to help me enjoy a Gradius game or some big convoluted character development just to kick ass. I don't need it, but if the story is there from the very beginning and is well thought out and integrated into the gameplay experience, then yes, I want to know why X sword is significant, or why Y wears an old, ratty strip of blood-stained cloth around his arm, or why Z is the anti-hero.
Phantom Lapboard on sale? August 15th. Purchased by me? Never. I don't care how super nifty kewl Infinium makes their products out to be, they're still not getting any of my money.
I guess it really depends on what a person considers disturbing. For me, death of the mind is a more horrible fate than death of the body, and thus I like games that mess with your head. Gore most certainly isn't all I equate disturbing to be, but given the proper context it can be. The Silent Hill series is a very good example of this, using both the mindfuck aspect and the gore aspect to maybe not really scare you in the traditional sense, but it really, really keeps you unnerved. Don't get me wrong: the Silent Hill games are VERY gory, but at the same time there's an actual REASON for the gore, not just put in there just because.
On a side note, music and whatnot can also play a large role in making something disturbing. Sometimes? Silence is the most disturbing music of all.
I find it funny that Prince of Persia -- as in the old, sprite-based version(s) -- wasn't mentioned. Surely, some of its platforming mechanics could be considered worthy of the list, like PURE, TOTAL UNFORGIVING EVIL GAMEPLAY. I swear, that game gave me some weird Stockholm Syndrome.
I kind of agree with this but only when it's spoken. When you speak, "suppose to" allows the words to roll off your tongue more smoothly than saying both the "d" and the "t" immediately after. However, it should still be written as "supposed to". You're actually supposed to say (see what I did there?) both consonant sounds (albeit a bit softly), and a lot of well-spoken people do with an uncanny sort of ease. I've tried to articulate words like that myself, and while I can do it, it's very difficult because I was exposed to more lax ways of speaking when I was younger.
All three are really very good. I hope to try my hand at a design soon and post it here for all to critique and enjoy.
The first thing I look for when viewing a site's design is where my eyes go upon first glance. If it's toward the news article headlines, then the job is done, IMHO. Both Jason Porritt's and Peter Lada's designs accomplish this. Michael Johnson's took me a second to find the headline. It just wasn't THERE enough.
Overall, I'd say that Peter Lada's design is almost exactly what I'd like to see in a Slashdot redesign. It's very clean and well sectioned, with different greys breaking up the main areas of the page. The in-between shade of green used for the headline's section title is especially nice. I'm a fan of letting a user get to different parts of the site in many different locations, but ONLY if it's relevant to its location. Sticking a section link in the heading in a darker color not only draws my focus toward the headline, but it also gives me a choice: I can either go straight to a particular section when I first hit Slashdot, or I can click to the side of a headline if a particular article interests me in reading more from that section.
The only thing I'd really change are the little 16x16 pixel icons used in the "Have you meta moderated today?" alert box and the various section collapse/expand arrows. I think that those shouldn't be in the same color family as the rest of the page. They should jump out at you with reds and yellows for alerts and maybe some grey for the arrows, I dunno. They currently blend in too well with their backgrounds to be effective.
In fact, they weren't robots at all. Labeling them as such is actually very misleading and contradictory to the plot. If I were to label them anything, cyborg is probably the closest word I'd use to describe them, and even that's not really very accurate. I can't say further without spoiling anything for folks who may or may not have watched or read anything related to the series.
The Evas are very, very important to the plot. They aren't just some mechs that were added in just for the coolness factor (though they certainly do add that). There is a very lengthy background concerning their creation, origin, and ultimate purpose. The fact that most people will watch maybe the first handful of episodes and then dismiss it as nothing more than a "mechs kill shit" series leads to the wrong ideas about what this series actually is. The Evas aren't just used for killing humanity's enemies. They're used in both political and personal agendas, and oddly enough, the Evas, well, damn, almost gave something else away.
I made it a point to watch the entire series several times to try and pick up on things I missed. End of Evangelion pretty much confirmed a lot of my suspicions about the true motivations behind the simultaneous projects going on, almost all of which were connected somehow. Granted, it went almost a bit too far with the "what the hell?" mindfuck aspect near the end of the movie, but it was an interesting picture and merely one person's interpretation of Judeo-Christian themes.
So, to dismiss this series as "just another giant robot anime" is pretty short-sighted, in my humble opinion. I'll admit that it takes a while for it to really get started, but when it does, it runs full-on.
I'm sorry, but this whole thing gets on my nerves.
The reason videogame movies blow isn't because of the source material (usually). It's because the writers/directors/studio bigwigs/what-have-you take too many damn liberties with the mythos.
Okay, let's take Silent Hill for a start.
DISCLAIMER: I am a Silent Hill fanatic.
The makers of this film had an interesting, unique mythos to work with. They had interesting characters, bizarre environments, crazy monsters, excellent music, etc. So instead of using that as it was presented, they decided to pick and choose what they wanted and slapped it all together. Granted, they nailed the visual aspect of the game, but nothing else.
For a start, let's talk about Pyramid Head (er, sorry - the Red Pyramid). He shouldn't have been in this movie at all because he's totally pointless outside his original context. Pyramid Head was only relevant to Silent Hill 2 because he a manifestation of both James Sunderland's sexual frustrations and his guilt. Including him in the movie just smacked of "hey, this guy's a cool villain, let's use him!"
And don't even get me started on the whole plot/character deviation from the first game. You know, things like the lead character being Harry Mason and not this Rose person, his daughter being Cheryl and not Sharon, etc. Harry Mason's presence in the original Silent Hill game is very important, as it plays a rather significant part in Silent Hill 3, where it wraps up some of the first games loose ends.
I could go on and on, but I won't. The fact of the matter is that they take too many liberties with the games. Don't change things that don't need changing. For the parts that can only be experienced with a controller, use your head and try and think of a way to convey that experience to the audience. Play the game through and take note of your emotions/feelings as you play a particular part, then use that to transfer it to the big screen.
I think bad game movies are more a lack of effort and adherence to canon as opposed to having nothing to work with.
If you want all this mist-swirling and stuff interacting with you as you brush past it, just wait for Crysis. The engine looks very impressive. Let's just hope there's a solid game behind it!
If players would form/join guilds based on the player's skill or helpfulness or other such ways that directly affect gameplay, then we wouldn't be having this problem.
Ultimately, who cares? If people weren't such dicks and played the game without resorting to "omg u r a fag gtfo" then people wouldn't feel the need to make these guilds.
Of course, even then it wouldn't go away entirely, as people would form guilds just to try to be different.
My guild consists of men and women of differing ages, races, nationalities, and sexual orientations (really - I'm not joking), and we all have fun and just play the damn game. We don't care if one of our members is gay because IT DOESN'T MATTER. It doesn't give you a stat bonus, it doesn't make you a better player, so who cares?
I say leave the politics out of the game and just HAVE FUN!
How can you possibly tire of playing first-person shooters?
I'm not tired of first-person shooters. I'm tired of playing first-person shooters that aren't significantly different from one another. I'm tired of playing first-person shooters that don't even try to differentiate themselves in a meaningful way from any of the other offerings available. This applies to other genres, as well, and I tried to explain this. If I didn't come across clearly, then my apologies.
I didn't watch the Spike TV Video Game Awards, and I never plan to. I never took it seriously because, I mean, come on: it's Spike TV. What did you expect?
I'd have to say that EA is one of the causes of this new-version bloat we're seeing now, but it's mostly regulated to sports games and racing, things that ultimately lend themselves to iterative releases. Sports games can only do so much: new roster, improved graphics/sound. That's it. There's not much room for improvement on such a simple game concept. It seems the same because it _is_ the same. There's no story or plot to a football game; just plays and teams.
One problem is that we're in this current state of sequel after sequel. However, "sequel" does not automatically mean "bad" or "trying to cash in on an established franchise". There is still room for growth and innovation in almost every genre and even in sequels within said genres. Good examples (sequels or not) are Metroid Prime, Half-Life, System Shock 2, Thief, Ikaruga, Gradius V, and Lumines.
In addition, I do like it when games are made that try to take an existing franchise in its original genre and move it to a new genre, but only when it's done thoughtfully. Metroid Prime is an excellent example of this, as is Ocarina of Time. Both games had lots of people (including myself!) saying that it couldn't be done without losing the very soul of what made these games special. Both titles proved me wrong.
I also think it's the constant production of Quake 9/Unreal 14/Battlefield 20/Ghost Recon 8 that tends to give us another problem: genre fatigue. All the gaming genres have been set. Where are the new ones? The Revolution just might give way to new genres, but only because of that funky controller. I have a feeling, though, that any "new" genres it creates will just be rehashes of old ones with a different control mechanism.
Until everyone gets tired of playing the same old unimaginative crap over and over.
As the industry gets bigger, fewer companies are going to risk making games that don't fit a norm. Right now we're seeing tons and tons of me-too/same-old games coming out and very few new, refreshing game experiences. One of these days people are going to get tired of playing Unreal Tournament 2600, Madden 80 Hojillion, and Need For Speed: New Cars. Well, maybe not. If people can watch the same damn sports games only with different rosters over and over and over again, then I assume they'll continue to play games of this type as well.
We're in for a shake-up, and I think that Nintendo just might be on to something. Surely, the PS3 and Xbox 360 are very powerful machines, but the cost of producing a 14-20 hour game at or beyond the quality level of all previous offerings can be staggering. I expect that we'll soon begin to see the trouble the movie industry is currently having: multimillion dollar budgets for titles that ultimately flop.
We do still have the occasional rare nugget of gaming goodness that's truly unique and fun, but I don't know how long that'll last.
Despite all this naysaying, I am still hopeful for the future of the hobby I love.
Congratulations, you know how to win boss battles. Anyone with any decent amount of game experience already knows these "tips", and anyone who doesn't needs to learn them for themselves.
Re:Because it solves the wrong problem.
on
Polite Cell Phones
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· Score: 1
Thank you.
The size of the phone doesn't enter into it. If you can remember to take it with you when you leave the house, then the same principle can be applied when entering a theatre. Train yourself to be polite (as inconveniencing as that might be to some people), and sooner or later you'll start doing it without thinking about it.
I think you're using "forgetful" as a cop-out. What's really the issue here is common courtesy. Manners. Things hardwired into your social (and private) being that almost automatically tell you, "Hey, I'm in a quiet place. I should turn my cell off or on vibrate." As soon as I enter an actual viewing room in said theatre I turn my cell off without even thinking about it. If we can program ourselves to place napkins in our laps, speak quietly in restaurants, and hold doors open for women and the elderly, then making a phone not make noise should be a no-brainer.
The vast majority of these cell phone issues would just go away if we just used a little common courtesy.
I'm a big fan of cutscenes, myself. IMHO, one of the best parts about the Soul Reaver series was that the cutscenes were a sort of reward. You got a chance to take a breather and watch more of the intriguing story unfold with awesome voice acting to boot. In fact, I played those games through faster than I normally would just so I could see what the next scene was!
However, in games like Resident Evil 4, I was very surprised and pleased with the inclusion of interactive cutscenes. There are times where I wish I could be doing the things my character's doing in those scenes, and having an option for (albeit limited) interactivity was refreshing.
The interactive cutscene formula can't be used everywhere, though. There are some games where this just wouldn't work and would break you out of the experience. Resi 4 balanced this just right, IMHO (the knife fight with Krauser was pretty intense compared to the others).
Cutscenes that aren't interactive should be skippable, and ones that are should give you the option to skip them if you fail, say, 5 times.
I think that there would be no need for a gay-/lesbian-friendly guild at all if people would just not be dicks. Who cares if someone in your guild or someone who wants to join your guild is gay? Does being gay give you stat bonuses or an epic armor set that I can't get because I'm straight? No? THEN WHO CARES?
Regardless of what the situation is, you're always going to have assholes in MMORPGs, whether they be ninja looters or general channel spammers or gold seller whisperers. Making a gay-/lesbian-friendly guild just seems kind of unnecessary. If you have people who are nice and want to play along with you because you're a genuinely fun person to play with, then the whole sexual leaning thing doesn't enter into it. Nor would race, religion, anything.
At least, in a perfect world it wouldn't.
On a bit of a side note, I decided to give a RP server a shot once and rolled up a Tauren warrior (big suprise). Within only a few seconds of wandering around the newbie area, I got whispers from some guy asking if he could give me a Bible. Some other friends were with me and were also getting these whispers. One of their responses was, "What's a 'Bible'? Is it food?"
Personally, I don't find the booth babes at these shows hot. I'm sure this will get me a lot of "lol, fag" type comments, but they just don't do it for me. I actually find it rather insulting that they're stuck there to try and make me look at someone's shitty product. I prefer to be sold on things based on their own merit and not what some eye candy tries to sell me on. Booth babes are nothing new to trade shows, but I honetly don't see how we can get past this "games are for immature, maladjusted escapists" mentality when they're using one of our basest instincts to sell product.
I've found as I've gotten older that intelligence is hotter to me than a nice figure. Don't get me wrong, being pretty is nice and all, but if I can't hold an intelligent conversation with you then the hotness factor goes down significantly.
Slashdot Mirror
They should offer it as one of the few handhelds that let you make your own games and share them with friends. Hell, I dunno, offer a simplified development kit for the price of a game with a way to import your own art and music. Allow people to create their own games on the damn thing. Then, for maybe a bit more money, offer an advanced user package that's basically a simplified SDK.
If they wouldn't try so damn hard to break homebrew apps, I bet people might buy more games. I know for a fact that before the ability to downgrade firmware, people wouldn't buy games because it required an update first.
Open the thing up (except the UMD format -- I'll give them that much to keep), let us make our own games without implementing roadblocks to homebrew, and the thing will sell more.
Oh, and actually release some damn games already.
Not all games are meant to have stories.
If a game is to have a story, it should be built around it, not shoehorned in around a tech demo. A game with story solely in mind should use gameplay to help tell it, not the other way around. Obviously, this doesn't always happen, and there are examples of gameplay getting in the way of story and vice versa.
I don't mind cutscenes in games that help tell the story, because they give me motivation to continue. The Soul Reaver series is one such case that I actually tried my hardest to get to the cutscenes as quickly as possible because the story and voice-acting was just awesome. The Silent Hill series is another example of this, as is the Thief series.
Story belongs in games when the goal is to tell said story and make the player feel like you're letting them in on secrets their character isn't aware of yet. I don't need some long story to help me enjoy a Gradius game or some big convoluted character development just to kick ass. I don't need it, but if the story is there from the very beginning and is well thought out and integrated into the gameplay experience, then yes, I want to know why X sword is significant, or why Y wears an old, ratty strip of blood-stained cloth around his arm, or why Z is the anti-hero.
I declare July 19th National Spoony Bard Day!
Phantom Lapboard on sale? August 15th. Purchased by me? Never. I don't care how super nifty kewl Infinium makes their products out to be, they're still not getting any of my money.
Thank you, drive through.
I guess it really depends on what a person considers disturbing. For me, death of the mind is a more horrible fate than death of the body, and thus I like games that mess with your head. Gore most certainly isn't all I equate disturbing to be, but given the proper context it can be. The Silent Hill series is a very good example of this, using both the mindfuck aspect and the gore aspect to maybe not really scare you in the traditional sense, but it really, really keeps you unnerved. Don't get me wrong: the Silent Hill games are VERY gory, but at the same time there's an actual REASON for the gore, not just put in there just because.
On a side note, music and whatnot can also play a large role in making something disturbing. Sometimes? Silence is the most disturbing music of all.
It would seem that the author's never played a Silent Hill game before. Or System Shock 2. Or Eternal Darkness.
I find it funny that Prince of Persia -- as in the old, sprite-based version(s) -- wasn't mentioned. Surely, some of its platforming mechanics could be considered worthy of the list, like PURE, TOTAL UNFORGIVING EVIL GAMEPLAY. I swear, that game gave me some weird Stockholm Syndrome.
I kind of agree with this but only when it's spoken. When you speak, "suppose to" allows the words to roll off your tongue more smoothly than saying both the "d" and the "t" immediately after. However, it should still be written as "supposed to". You're actually supposed to say (see what I did there?) both consonant sounds (albeit a bit softly), and a lot of well-spoken people do with an uncanny sort of ease. I've tried to articulate words like that myself, and while I can do it, it's very difficult because I was exposed to more lax ways of speaking when I was younger.
All three are really very good. I hope to try my hand at a design soon and post it here for all to critique and enjoy.
The first thing I look for when viewing a site's design is where my eyes go upon first glance. If it's toward the news article headlines, then the job is done, IMHO. Both Jason Porritt's and Peter Lada's designs accomplish this. Michael Johnson's took me a second to find the headline. It just wasn't THERE enough.
Overall, I'd say that Peter Lada's design is almost exactly what I'd like to see in a Slashdot redesign. It's very clean and well sectioned, with different greys breaking up the main areas of the page. The in-between shade of green used for the headline's section title is especially nice. I'm a fan of letting a user get to different parts of the site in many different locations, but ONLY if it's relevant to its location. Sticking a section link in the heading in a darker color not only draws my focus toward the headline, but it also gives me a choice: I can either go straight to a particular section when I first hit Slashdot, or I can click to the side of a headline if a particular article interests me in reading more from that section.
The only thing I'd really change are the little 16x16 pixel icons used in the "Have you meta moderated today?" alert box and the various section collapse/expand arrows. I think that those shouldn't be in the same color family as the rest of the page. They should jump out at you with reds and yellows for alerts and maybe some grey for the arrows, I dunno. They currently blend in too well with their backgrounds to be effective.
Overall, great offers from all three.
In fact, they weren't robots at all. Labeling them as such is actually very misleading and contradictory to the plot. If I were to label them anything, cyborg is probably the closest word I'd use to describe them, and even that's not really very accurate. I can't say further without spoiling anything for folks who may or may not have watched or read anything related to the series.
The Evas are very, very important to the plot. They aren't just some mechs that were added in just for the coolness factor (though they certainly do add that). There is a very lengthy background concerning their creation, origin, and ultimate purpose. The fact that most people will watch maybe the first handful of episodes and then dismiss it as nothing more than a "mechs kill shit" series leads to the wrong ideas about what this series actually is. The Evas aren't just used for killing humanity's enemies. They're used in both political and personal agendas, and oddly enough, the Evas, well, damn, almost gave something else away.
I made it a point to watch the entire series several times to try and pick up on things I missed. End of Evangelion pretty much confirmed a lot of my suspicions about the true motivations behind the simultaneous projects going on, almost all of which were connected somehow. Granted, it went almost a bit too far with the "what the hell?" mindfuck aspect near the end of the movie, but it was an interesting picture and merely one person's interpretation of Judeo-Christian themes.
So, to dismiss this series as "just another giant robot anime" is pretty short-sighted, in my humble opinion. I'll admit that it takes a while for it to really get started, but when it does, it runs full-on.
I'm sorry, but this whole thing gets on my nerves.
The reason videogame movies blow isn't because of the source material (usually). It's because the writers/directors/studio bigwigs/what-have-you take too many damn liberties with the mythos.
Okay, let's take Silent Hill for a start.
DISCLAIMER: I am a Silent Hill fanatic.
The makers of this film had an interesting, unique mythos to work with. They had interesting characters, bizarre environments, crazy monsters, excellent music, etc. So instead of using that as it was presented, they decided to pick and choose what they wanted and slapped it all together. Granted, they nailed the visual aspect of the game, but nothing else.
For a start, let's talk about Pyramid Head (er, sorry - the Red Pyramid). He shouldn't have been in this movie at all because he's totally pointless outside his original context. Pyramid Head was only relevant to Silent Hill 2 because he a manifestation of both James Sunderland's sexual frustrations and his guilt. Including him in the movie just smacked of "hey, this guy's a cool villain, let's use him!"
And don't even get me started on the whole plot/character deviation from the first game. You know, things like the lead character being Harry Mason and not this Rose person, his daughter being Cheryl and not Sharon, etc. Harry Mason's presence in the original Silent Hill game is very important, as it plays a rather significant part in Silent Hill 3, where it wraps up some of the first games loose ends.
I could go on and on, but I won't. The fact of the matter is that they take too many liberties with the games. Don't change things that don't need changing. For the parts that can only be experienced with a controller, use your head and try and think of a way to convey that experience to the audience. Play the game through and take note of your emotions/feelings as you play a particular part, then use that to transfer it to the big screen.
I think bad game movies are more a lack of effort and adherence to canon as opposed to having nothing to work with.
If you want all this mist-swirling and stuff interacting with you as you brush past it, just wait for Crysis. The engine looks very impressive. Let's just hope there's a solid game behind it!
Yeah, because the people throwing out the insults aren't the problem, right?
If players would form/join guilds based on the player's skill or helpfulness or other such ways that directly affect gameplay, then we wouldn't be having this problem.
Ultimately, who cares? If people weren't such dicks and played the game without resorting to "omg u r a fag gtfo" then people wouldn't feel the need to make these guilds.
Of course, even then it wouldn't go away entirely, as people would form guilds just to try to be different.
My guild consists of men and women of differing ages, races, nationalities, and sexual orientations (really - I'm not joking), and we all have fun and just play the damn game. We don't care if one of our members is gay because IT DOESN'T MATTER. It doesn't give you a stat bonus, it doesn't make you a better player, so who cares?
I say leave the politics out of the game and just HAVE FUN!
Silent Hill 2 is one of the best reasons -- IMHO -- to own a PS2, let alone wanting to backtrack and get all the Silent Hill games.
I'm not tired of first-person shooters. I'm tired of playing first-person shooters that aren't significantly different from one another. I'm tired of playing first-person shooters that don't even try to differentiate themselves in a meaningful way from any of the other offerings available. This applies to other genres, as well, and I tried to explain this. If I didn't come across clearly, then my apologies.
I didn't watch the Spike TV Video Game Awards, and I never plan to. I never took it seriously because, I mean, come on: it's Spike TV. What did you expect?
I'd have to say that EA is one of the causes of this new-version bloat we're seeing now, but it's mostly regulated to sports games and racing, things that ultimately lend themselves to iterative releases. Sports games can only do so much: new roster, improved graphics/sound. That's it. There's not much room for improvement on such a simple game concept. It seems the same because it _is_ the same. There's no story or plot to a football game; just plays and teams.
One problem is that we're in this current state of sequel after sequel. However, "sequel" does not automatically mean "bad" or "trying to cash in on an established franchise". There is still room for growth and innovation in almost every genre and even in sequels within said genres. Good examples (sequels or not) are Metroid Prime, Half-Life, System Shock 2, Thief, Ikaruga, Gradius V, and Lumines.
In addition, I do like it when games are made that try to take an existing franchise in its original genre and move it to a new genre, but only when it's done thoughtfully. Metroid Prime is an excellent example of this, as is Ocarina of Time. Both games had lots of people (including myself!) saying that it couldn't be done without losing the very soul of what made these games special. Both titles proved me wrong.
I also think it's the constant production of Quake 9/Unreal 14/Battlefield 20/Ghost Recon 8 that tends to give us another problem: genre fatigue. All the gaming genres have been set. Where are the new ones? The Revolution just might give way to new genres, but only because of that funky controller. I have a feeling, though, that any "new" genres it creates will just be rehashes of old ones with a different control mechanism.
Until everyone gets tired of playing the same old unimaginative crap over and over.
As the industry gets bigger, fewer companies are going to risk making games that don't fit a norm. Right now we're seeing tons and tons of me-too/same-old games coming out and very few new, refreshing game experiences. One of these days people are going to get tired of playing Unreal Tournament 2600, Madden 80 Hojillion, and Need For Speed: New Cars. Well, maybe not. If people can watch the same damn sports games only with different rosters over and over and over again, then I assume they'll continue to play games of this type as well.
We're in for a shake-up, and I think that Nintendo just might be on to something. Surely, the PS3 and Xbox 360 are very powerful machines, but the cost of producing a 14-20 hour game at or beyond the quality level of all previous offerings can be staggering. I expect that we'll soon begin to see the trouble the movie industry is currently having: multimillion dollar budgets for titles that ultimately flop.
We do still have the occasional rare nugget of gaming goodness that's truly unique and fun, but I don't know how long that'll last.
Despite all this naysaying, I am still hopeful for the future of the hobby I love.
Congratulations, you know how to win boss battles. Anyone with any decent amount of game experience already knows these "tips", and anyone who doesn't needs to learn them for themselves.
Thank you.
The size of the phone doesn't enter into it. If you can remember to take it with you when you leave the house, then the same principle can be applied when entering a theatre. Train yourself to be polite (as inconveniencing as that might be to some people), and sooner or later you'll start doing it without thinking about it.
I think you're using "forgetful" as a cop-out. What's really the issue here is common courtesy. Manners. Things hardwired into your social (and private) being that almost automatically tell you, "Hey, I'm in a quiet place. I should turn my cell off or on vibrate." As soon as I enter an actual viewing room in said theatre I turn my cell off without even thinking about it. If we can program ourselves to place napkins in our laps, speak quietly in restaurants, and hold doors open for women and the elderly, then making a phone not make noise should be a no-brainer.
The vast majority of these cell phone issues would just go away if we just used a little common courtesy.
I'm a big fan of cutscenes, myself. IMHO, one of the best parts about the Soul Reaver series was that the cutscenes were a sort of reward. You got a chance to take a breather and watch more of the intriguing story unfold with awesome voice acting to boot. In fact, I played those games through faster than I normally would just so I could see what the next scene was!
However, in games like Resident Evil 4, I was very surprised and pleased with the inclusion of interactive cutscenes. There are times where I wish I could be doing the things my character's doing in those scenes, and having an option for (albeit limited) interactivity was refreshing.
The interactive cutscene formula can't be used everywhere, though. There are some games where this just wouldn't work and would break you out of the experience. Resi 4 balanced this just right, IMHO (the knife fight with Krauser was pretty intense compared to the others).
Cutscenes that aren't interactive should be skippable, and ones that are should give you the option to skip them if you fail, say, 5 times.
I think that there would be no need for a gay-/lesbian-friendly guild at all if people would just not be dicks. Who cares if someone in your guild or someone who wants to join your guild is gay? Does being gay give you stat bonuses or an epic armor set that I can't get because I'm straight? No? THEN WHO CARES?
Regardless of what the situation is, you're always going to have assholes in MMORPGs, whether they be ninja looters or general channel spammers or gold seller whisperers. Making a gay-/lesbian-friendly guild just seems kind of unnecessary. If you have people who are nice and want to play along with you because you're a genuinely fun person to play with, then the whole sexual leaning thing doesn't enter into it. Nor would race, religion, anything.
At least, in a perfect world it wouldn't.
On a bit of a side note, I decided to give a RP server a shot once and rolled up a Tauren warrior (big suprise). Within only a few seconds of wandering around the newbie area, I got whispers from some guy asking if he could give me a Bible. Some other friends were with me and were also getting these whispers. One of their responses was, "What's a 'Bible'? Is it food?"
Personally, I don't find the booth babes at these shows hot. I'm sure this will get me a lot of "lol, fag" type comments, but they just don't do it for me. I actually find it rather insulting that they're stuck there to try and make me look at someone's shitty product. I prefer to be sold on things based on their own merit and not what some eye candy tries to sell me on. Booth babes are nothing new to trade shows, but I honetly don't see how we can get past this "games are for immature, maladjusted escapists" mentality when they're using one of our basest instincts to sell product.
I've found as I've gotten older that intelligence is hotter to me than a nice figure. Don't get me wrong, being pretty is nice and all, but if I can't hold an intelligent conversation with you then the hotness factor goes down significantly.
Nintendo is the master of getting people to buy the same damn thing over and over.
It's illogical.
It's irrational.
And they know damn well that I'll buy it despite what my left hemisphere tells me. I (hate|love) you, Nintendo!