IT papa of a seven year old here, who has been touching "my" stuff for as long as he's been smart enough not to eat it. Builds pc's with me, mods, demoed the bathroom, installs his own software, does cabling, guitar tuning, even has his own pile of motherboards to creatively break. Point being, raising a kid to never touch your stuff may stick you with a kid who doesn't know how to do anything with your stuff, and suddenly here's you wondering why you have nothing in common with him/her ten years later. Don't just let the kid touch your stuff, encourage her to do it!
Amen brother, good to know mine wasn't the only heart to plummet to the boots while reading the numbers on IT folks. We all like to think we're part of communities with an ounce or two of sense, but McCain?? Cripes.
I'm sorry, but your completely wrong on the games from 98 that no longer run. Lets see here, taking a cursory glance at my currently installed games on Windows XP comes up with Descent, Incredible machine, Creatures 3, and Starflight 2 from the DOS era (without emulation). Move on a bit further and we have Diablo, Carcassonne, Starcraft, Unreal, System Shock 2, Serious Sam, Thief, also without emulation. Enter into dossbox and I've even more goodies. Point being, that the strength of a general purpose PC is that (with enough elbow grease) it can run anything. Btw, I also have four wireless 360 controllers hooked up to my pc, with which I can play N64's Goldeneye in glorious 11-foot wide 16x9 720p.
The joystick still has one advantage though, despite its clumsyness. You never have to pick it up and move it while playing. Try playing Descent 2 or Freespace with a mouse for further clarification.
Sorry to be a naysayer, but you're completely wrong here. I've played and loved console and PC FPS games from Quake and Goldeneye to Crysis and Halo 3. The game that finally swapped me was Bioshock. Played it first on the 360, then over to the PC. It's not the console games that are twitchy, it's that damn WASD walking on the pc. In Bioshock on the pc, you are ether standing still or running. You'll literally miss half the game if you play it on the PC, with so many environments that must be strolled through to be enjoyed. Same thing with the aiming, sure you're going to be less accurate on a stick. Much less accurate actually. However, try and do a smooth pan using a mouse . . . impossible. Herky Jerky award goes to the pc again. Both reasons why I went out and bought a 360 wireless adapter for my PC to enjoy the superior graphics of a pc (projected up onto a ten foot wide 720p screen) combined with the superior controls . . . of a console.
Just wanted to add here, that despite the self depreciation. . . I loved Minerva! Maybe even more than the main game (with the exception of the antlion bits). Writing was superb, and the way you left me staring down turrets with no grav-gun really opened me up to what's possible in the source engine. Running mad dash style while holding a barrel in front of your face for cover, then attempting to pick up one turret and throw it into another is simply something that never occurred to me while in possession of the mighty grav-gun. All around great mod. Still waiting for the conclusion btw.
Interesting that you should ask for references; nearly all of the "insights" from this article are actually lifted from How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker . . . without credit. http://www.tiny.cc/pinker
By disavowing pc RTS gaming you're missing out on some of the best RTS titles of all time. Ever hear of this little company called Relic? Lets see, you've got Homeworld 2, Warhammer 40,000, and most recently, Company of Heroes. I'd agree with you that most modern RTS games don't live up to Starcraft (Supreme Commander, Earth 2160, Stronghold 2, and Lord of the Rings were all crap). However, Relic has been surpassing Blizzard for years, especially on the single player side of things.
I'm sorry, but if you really need to do all that other stuff while playing a game, perhaps you need to find a more interesting game. I find WOW players to be especially guilty of this, sitting at LAN parties alt-tabing between WOW and whatever we're playing.
I see a lot of comments here referring to Gears as an FPS and no one correcting them. It is most decidedly not. Its a third person tactical shooter, not unlike Ghost Recon, or even Splinter Cell.
Games probably haven't been very good at pulling together into a cohesive art form so far; however, film also had a terrible time getting its act together, wasting years copying stage plays before discovering its own language. Personally, I think that games actually have far more potential than any of the other artistic mediums, especially as they encompass most of the other forms of art within each game. Read more of my ideas on this subject below.
It's not a question of how easy it is to hack paper vs. e-votes. Both can be hacked quite easily. The real question is which hack can be cheaply copied and distributed thousands of times by a very small group of inventors?
The component cables for the GameCube are expensive, yes, but the trade off in visual quality is fantastic. Many GameCube games visually surpass the quality of the original Xbox with the brighter color palettes and design choices. F-Zero looks absolutely fantastic on my ancient InFocus projector in progressive scan mode.
There's only so many things you can do to make a quest interesting or different, in terms of the mechanics.
I disagree with you here. There are plenty of things you can do with mechanics even with AI in RPGs being as primitive as it is. I'll mention a one of many possible examples. In one of the first Fighters Guild Quests for Oblivion you are sent next door to "take care of" a rat problem. Turns out that you are defending the rats, not killing them. You learn from the owner of the house that someone or something is killing her pet rats, you don't learn the who or the why. After a bit more chatting up the locals, you end up staking out a hole in the back of the house trying to determine the real source of the problem. The point is that even a quest with this much complexity is still done with dialog trees and map markers. The problem isn't with the game mechanics; it's with the design mentality of WOW.
This is an error that I see floating around all over the place. So here is my humble correction. Currently, there are no plans for a "second gen" 360. HD-DVD technology will be added as an external drive. Like the optional hard disk, this drive will not be used for games. Its only functionality is movie playback.
Slashdot Mirror
IT papa of a seven year old here, who has been touching "my" stuff for as long as he's been smart enough not to eat it. Builds pc's with me, mods, demoed the bathroom, installs his own software, does cabling, guitar tuning, even has his own pile of motherboards to creatively break. Point being, raising a kid to never touch your stuff may stick you with a kid who doesn't know how to do anything with your stuff, and suddenly here's you wondering why you have nothing in common with him/her ten years later. Don't just let the kid touch your stuff, encourage her to do it!
Amen brother, good to know mine wasn't the only heart to plummet to the boots while reading the numbers on IT folks. We all like to think we're part of communities with an ounce or two of sense, but McCain?? Cripes.
It was the only profession which left time for science and contemplation ;)
How do you run at 3 or more speeds using WASD?
Mouse Wheel?
I'm sorry, but your completely wrong on the games from 98 that no longer run. Lets see here, taking a cursory glance at my currently installed games on Windows XP comes up with Descent, Incredible machine, Creatures 3, and Starflight 2 from the DOS era (without emulation). Move on a bit further and we have Diablo, Carcassonne, Starcraft, Unreal, System Shock 2, Serious Sam, Thief, also without emulation. Enter into dossbox and I've even more goodies. Point being, that the strength of a general purpose PC is that (with enough elbow grease) it can run anything. Btw, I also have four wireless 360 controllers hooked up to my pc, with which I can play N64's Goldeneye in glorious 11-foot wide 16x9 720p.
The joystick still has one advantage though, despite its clumsyness. You never have to pick it up and move it while playing. Try playing Descent 2 or Freespace with a mouse for further clarification.
If anyone's interested, we just had a very similar discussion over at muyuubyou that went out into the multiple hundreds of comments.
Full Title
Brain Box: How television broke the minds of three generations and turned a Democracy into an empire.
Linky
http://www.jakepcw.com/muyuubyou/?p=595
I was playing on a midrange pc the second time through, with a 360 controller.
Sorry to be a naysayer, but you're completely wrong here. I've played and loved console and PC FPS games from Quake and Goldeneye to Crysis and Halo 3. The game that finally swapped me was Bioshock. Played it first on the 360, then over to the PC. It's not the console games that are twitchy, it's that damn WASD walking on the pc. In Bioshock on the pc, you are ether standing still or running. You'll literally miss half the game if you play it on the PC, with so many environments that must be strolled through to be enjoyed. Same thing with the aiming, sure you're going to be less accurate on a stick. Much less accurate actually. However, try and do a smooth pan using a mouse . . . impossible. Herky Jerky award goes to the pc again. Both reasons why I went out and bought a 360 wireless adapter for my PC to enjoy the superior graphics of a pc (projected up onto a ten foot wide 720p screen) combined with the superior controls . . . of a console.
Written much more about this below on my blog.
http://www.jakepcw.com/muyuubyou/?p=578
Just wanted to add here, that despite the self depreciation. . . I loved Minerva! Maybe even more than the main game (with the exception of the antlion bits). Writing was superb, and the way you left me staring down turrets with no grav-gun really opened me up to what's possible in the source engine. Running mad dash style while holding a barrel in front of your face for cover, then attempting to pick up one turret and throw it into another is simply something that never occurred to me while in possession of the mighty grav-gun. All around great mod. Still waiting for the conclusion btw.
This is also one of my favorites. Have no idea what it refers to . . . so I just pretend it refers to Star Fox.
:)
Any Tom Waits references also rule
Interesting that you should ask for references; nearly all of the "insights" from this article are actually lifted from How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker . . . without credit. http://www.tiny.cc/pinker
My company Treo is great. I simply plug it into my laptop and with a little help from PDAnet, I have a 2 Mbit internet connection anywhere. No sticks!
By disavowing pc RTS gaming you're missing out on some of the best RTS titles of all time. Ever hear of this little company called Relic? Lets see, you've got Homeworld 2, Warhammer 40,000, and most recently, Company of Heroes. I'd agree with you that most modern RTS games don't live up to Starcraft (Supreme Commander, Earth 2160, Stronghold 2, and Lord of the Rings were all crap). However, Relic has been surpassing Blizzard for years, especially on the single player side of things.
I'm sorry, but if you really need to do all that other stuff while playing a game, perhaps you need to find a more interesting game. I find WOW players to be especially guilty of this, sitting at LAN parties alt-tabing between WOW and whatever we're playing.
The only thing LUA is going to change on Vista is the user will have to type in a password for the equivalent of a sudo apt-get. Not a big deal.
or hers
Sorry . . . but you did put it in bold.
http://www.oxid.it/cain.html
Here's what we used in Security Class. Creates a ton of network traffic, but very good at tracking down every password on a network.
I see a lot of comments here referring to Gears as an FPS and no one correcting them. It is most decidedly not. Its a third person tactical shooter, not unlike Ghost Recon, or even Splinter Cell.
Games probably haven't been very good at pulling together into a cohesive art form so far; however, film also had a terrible time getting its act together, wasting years copying stage plays before discovering its own language. Personally, I think that games actually have far more potential than any of the other artistic mediums, especially as they encompass most of the other forms of art within each game. Read more of my ideas on this subject below.
i terature/
http://www.thegamechair.com/2006/02/03/games-as-l
It's not a question of how easy it is to hack paper vs. e-votes. Both can be hacked quite easily. The real question is which hack can be cheaply copied and distributed thousands of times by a very small group of inventors?
It's not wrong of you, just silly.
The component cables for the GameCube are expensive, yes, but the trade off in visual quality is fantastic. Many GameCube games visually surpass the quality of the original Xbox with the brighter color palettes and design choices. F-Zero looks absolutely fantastic on my ancient InFocus projector in progressive scan mode.
There's only so many things you can do to make a quest interesting or different, in terms of the mechanics.
I disagree with you here. There are plenty of things you can do with mechanics even with AI in RPGs being as primitive as it is. I'll mention a one of many possible examples. In one of the first Fighters Guild Quests for Oblivion you are sent next door to "take care of" a rat problem. Turns out that you are defending the rats, not killing them. You learn from the owner of the house that someone or something is killing her pet rats, you don't learn the who or the why. After a bit more chatting up the locals, you end up staking out a hole in the back of the house trying to determine the real source of the problem. The point is that even a quest with this much complexity is still done with dialog trees and map markers. The problem isn't with the game mechanics; it's with the design mentality of WOW.
This is an error that I see floating around all over the place. So here is my humble correction. Currently, there are no plans for a "second gen" 360. HD-DVD technology will be added as an external drive. Like the optional hard disk, this drive will not be used for games. Its only functionality is movie playback.