This also doesn't block kids that use something like google cache to replace the main page of a site, then after drilling down to a deeper domain that isn't in your host file, you're screwed:) But anyhow, I always applaud the kids for figuring out ways around my blocks. (I work for Boys and Girls club) I would have done the same thing.
The difference this time around is the significant percentage of 360 owners who also use the Live service in some form or another. To put it very simply, an Xbox 360 without Live is a crippled machine, drastically reducing the incentive to use this hack. A piece of hardware can always be hacked; however, a well maintained online service is a moving target that cannot be consistently hacked. The PSP is a good example of this in practice, with hacks being stamped out by firmware upgrades as fast as homebrewers can write them. Perhaps we have finally entered into the era of the unhackable console after all.
Sorry Zonk, I'm going to have to disagree with you again. The controls in this game aren't even in the same ballpark as Crimson Skies. Flying the planes in Blazing Angels is like flying a greasy pig on skates by comparison . . . with no wings. Also, the "ripped from Shadow of the Colossus" camera lock on feels pretty useless, tending to block your view with your own plane. The voice acting is done by the criminally insane, and the missing vertical sync causes frame tearing issues left and right.
I will agree with you in the graphical department though. Aside from the tearing, the graphical presentation is fantastic, especially the cityscapes which seem to stretch on into infinity. Now . . . if only we could have Crimson Skies with these graphics, oh well.
This reminds me of a story my good friend told me about Oblivion. During a certain fighter's guild quest, he had a well armored male companion. Due to an accidental pick pocketing during the quest, he was kicked out of the fighter's guild. However, his companion continued to follow him everywhere, helping out with ambushes as needed. Also turned out that his loyal fighter's guild companion was unkillable.
This wouldn't have been that funny itself . . . but, after awhile the Fighter's amour begin to fall into disrepair, eventually leaving him completely naked. So, currently, my friend has a naked man following him everywhere. On the 360 widescreen, you can just make him out . . . running behind, desperate to catch up.
Funny thing is, I got almost the exact opposite multiplayer impression from my time spent reviewing Metroid Prime: Hunters on the DS. It's really nothing like Quake 3 or Unreal at all. The difference? amount of health. It takes a lot of whittling to bring down a fully charged bounty hunter in this game. Also, the weapon affinities and alternate forms add layer upon layer to the strategy of your typical deathmatch. Check out my multiplayer play rating at The Game Chair for the full story.
Games that you can pick up and play again ten years later with nary a hitch are the ones that make it high up on my list. StarCraft, Super Mario 2, Snes Populous, Starflight II, Snes F-Zero, and Homeworld 2 to name just a few. I think a more appropriate question might be what gameS do you love? The whole swept away on a desert island which game do you bring? trick doesn't work very well without electricity anyways.
I strongly disagree with the idea of innovation bias in the firing squad article. Yes, you are going to write about a game differently having played every other game in the series, or even having played a few games in the genre. However, this is not a bad thing. Do you think a movie or book critic is hired by a major newspaper or other publication without ever having watched a movie of a particular genre before? I doubt it. One of the most important aspects about game journalism is knowing what's come before. If I can insightfully compare and contrast between Project Gotham Racing 3 and Mario Kart DS in an article it's going to add a lot of useful perspective for the audience.
I'd also like to wholeheartedly agree with his second and third points on playing through a game too quickly and rushing out the final copy of the review. There is an easy solution for this, however. Quit playing through the games so fast. You can still get an article out on release day, but don't let that be the final word on the game. Write two or even three follow-ups, so your audience can see how your feelings evolve as you play through the game. For instance, there is a big difference between a game like Starcraft, which I still play regularly, and a game like God of War, which I played through twice. Both are excellent titles, but a longer form review process would bring out the differences in the long term value between the two games. I never understood the similarities between movie reviews and game reviews with respect to length. A single game is an endeavor you could easily spend 100+ hours on. I can't think of any movies that offer that kind of replay value.
I know I've already mentioned this recently on Slashdot, but I'd also like to point out that there are plenty of review sites out there that are taking the time to relax and play through games. http://www.thegamechair.com/ which I write for being one of many. So if the major review sites aren't giving you the kind of coverage you'd like, take the time to search for a more personal, less frenzied experience.
Ed Wood, Ewe Bolle . . . quincidence? Come on now, films this bad are actually quite entertaining to watch. Anybody who doesn't believe me really needs to see GLEN OR GLENDA. Its an absolute riot. I for one plan to bring a troupe of gaming buddies to see BloodRayne and laugh it up. Mystery science theatre didn't make it through ten seasons for nothing.
I work for a progressive review site called http://www.thegamechair.com/ and would like to mention a couple points. First, we would love to be included on some of the major content aggregators. The major aggregator's sites function something like a Google search for reviews with the handy addition of a mathematical formula for determining the average score. I feel like they drive out far more traffic out to individual sites than they steal from them. I know for a fact that I regularly read 5-10 reviews of a game or film, using the links on metacritic as a starting point.
Also, I'd like to mention our approach at TheGameChair, which involves a little bit of everything. We've kept the scoring as an integral part of our review process, but we've broken up the reviews into pieces that more accurately reflects the way that we play games. Basically, we divide the amount of playtime required to make it through a game into three chunks, and write a separate review for each chunk of play. The scores can vary based on whether a particular section of the game plays better, or can be affected as tedium or boredom sets in. The entire length of the review process stretches out over a three week period; covering the average length of time it takes an ordinary person to complete a game.
Our final score for a game is based on an average over the three separate play session, so we do have a type of aggregation over a time frame built into the review. However, because of the sheer volume of review sites on the web, and the amazing speed at which the reviews are released, the only way to distinguish yourself from the aggregate crowd is to actually provide original, thought provoking or even funny content.
As far as the article on women in games go, I'd like to agree with the social aspect. That is often what brings the women into gaming. I've seen women pick up titles as diverse as Burnout 3, Call of Duty, or Dead or Alive, but only after being dragged to a LAN party by significant coercion. Once games are properly experienced nobody (Male or Female) sets them down lightly. The games speak for themselves.
What is significant here is the gaming stereotypes that are keeping women away from gaming in the first place. You only need to turn on G4$ T.V. for approximately 5 seconds to see what I'm talking about. What you need to do to bring women into gaming is to stop marketing to 13 year old boys alone. It's pretty simple.
I agree with you wholeheartedly on realism, health packs certainly aren't any better. However, what the recharging health system does for my experience is this. I cease to care about getting shot. With health being a finite resource, you have to care about getting shot, and plan your strategies carefully. I found that being able to duck behind anything for 5 seconds to recharge changed my play style in COD2 considerably. I would run into a room and gun down everybody Serious Sam style instead of shooting from cover and using my teammates like I did in COD1 by necessity. Granted, YMMV, and this may just be a personal thing with me.
On the other hand, I found the system in Halo 1 to be perfect where you had both a recharging shield and a finite health bar providing you with a little bit of room for error while preserving the need for strategic gameplay.
On the grenade indicator, I found the more subtle clues in COD1 to be more enjoyable. I felt plenty of panic hearing a grenade clatter across the floor at me, and part of the tension is created by not knowing exactly were the grenade is. The grenade indicator feels like supernatural ability to me, not something that your basic ww2 grunt possessed. In COD2 its more like, "Yawn, another grenade, I'll just step over here for a moment then . .."
One of the greatest gaming uses I've discovered for my laptop is a couple of emulators and this device from lik-sang.com. It allows you to use one of the best controllers of all time to play your favorite NES SNES and MAME games. It works flawlessly, is cheap (if you have the PC already), and doesn't require the complicated process of blowing/erasing the connections on aging game carts.
Unreal 2k3, 2k4, and GOTY have been staples at our LAN parties for ages. No, they don't offer quite the level of strategic depth of other FPS titles like Halo PC, Battlefield 2, or Call of Duty, but the UT series does offer a ton of benefits. Backward compatibility is a big one. UT will run like butter on damn near any crappy video setup, including GeForce FX and even some embedded cards. Also, platform compatibly is a big issue for our LAN parties. UT is one of the few games that has our Mac, Linux, and Windows users happily playing together with minimal fuss. The shear variety of gameplay offered is another staggering benefit. The number of vanilla install maps and gametypes is phenomenal. If 2k7 continues in these traditions, it will happily find a place in our future LANs as well.
My only fear with 2k7 being a PS3 launch is that the PC version will suffer for it. I don't mean graphically because I'm sure the new engine will look fantastic on every platform. I'm more worried about the problems that COD2 suffered from being a 360 title including many simplifications of gameplay to make it more accessible to a console audience. The grenade indicator and ridiculous recharging health system come to mind.
Negative, you can't do anything but stare at a progress bar while downloading a game. You can't even listen to your mp3s. Good thing my 360 is on a kvm with the rest of my computers:)
Was there ever any doubt that this kind of thing happens occasionally in the game review business? Thankfully there are alternatives to basing your purchases on these big-name low-integrity publishers. Websites like http://www.metacritic.com/ or http://www.gamerankings.com/ provide averages of many collected reviews, and cannot be corrupted as easily as if you trusted a single source review. You could also take your reviews more personally and visit one of the smaller Blog type sites like the one I write for, http://www.thegamechair.com/ A volunteer run sight like ours has a double advantage, no bribery, and all of the writers are passionate about the games they play.
Well, I always doubted there would be a HD-drive version of the 360. An update this soon would split the install base of 360's again, which is already split between hard drive and no-hard drive users. This kind of move would be nothing short of economic suicide for Microsoft. I think it's much more likely that the 360 will go to multiple disk games (like the PS1 and GameCube have done in the past). Multi-disk games are annoying, but they don't split your userbase into different camps, leaving developers wondered which base to shoot for.
I can't imagine the PS3 being ready for launch in 5-6 months. However, no one will be happier than me if it is. Competition between Sony and Microsoft is going to be brutal this time around, especially with the added concern both companies have for the support of their next-gen video disk formats. This can only be good for the gamer. We will see cheaper consoles, better games, and amazing high-definition video formats flying at us from every angle very soon. The 360 got in early with a launch somewhere in-between bad and mediocre, but definitely pushing an advantage now, with the 360 now available in limited amounts throughout the world.
As a game reviewer, and owner of all the current systems (including the 360), I am pretty exited to see what Sony can pull out of its hat. I've got nothing but disrespect for the rest of their DRM/Rootkit laden company, but its gaming division is the single most powerful force in gaming and the PS3 will prove whether or not they can hold their market dominance over Microsoft for another generation, and kill two birds with massive penetration or the blu-ray format.
I agree with you that that Dawn of Sorrow is very very close to being the same thing we had on the NES; however, I'd disagree with you that this is a bad thing. Human art is something that's been derivative since the dawn of time. Why? Because looking at that cave painting of the antelope on the wall, we got the idea that we'd like to do something similar, but maybe with a man and women in the foreground, or a mountain off in the distance.
Incremental additions to existing formula's are the bedrock of any artistic endeavor, in fact you could even go further and say that perfect copies of existing art go a long way in connecting one human emotion to another. Because the artist is not only dealing with their own emotions/memories/expectations, but those of their audience as well. Take a look at some of the most experimental artists or musicians out there as an example, and you'll still see a metric ton of derivative work even there. It is how the human mind operates.
Also, once you have a cultural set of expectations for something, such as a side-scrolling 2d action/exploration/beat-em-up, there also comes a set of connected emotions to these experiences. These emotions draw on a large range of memories as far back as your first play session with Castlevania on the NES. This drawing on memory and expectation adds a whole new depth to the art that simply would not be there otherwise.
Elijah is four years old; his computer sits directly in-between mama and papa's computer in the living room. He games for 2-3 hours every day; his favorites being Novadex Rocket, MoonBase Commander, Incredible Machine, Homeworld 2, Don Pachi (Mame), Takumi Fighters, Unreal 2k4, and Google image search + Photoshop. Elijah's gaming habits were definitely something we thought long and hard over, but eventually we decided to give him access to almost everything we play and do on computers. Keeping him from playing things like Unreal Tournament (gibs off) is going to hurt him more in the long run, by virtue of him feeling left out of what his papa and mama are doing. I remember being horribly scared as a kid, by not being allowed to play Starflight 2, and I don't want to pass that kind of thing on to Elijah. I knew I was smart enough to play Starflight, and so does Elijah. We even include him (for a couple hours) in LAN parties, so he gets an idea of the social aspects of gaming.
I think the most important thing you can do with raising kids into a gaming world, is make sure you're participating with them. Both through multiplayer and simply by being in the same room with them and seeing the kind of experience they're getting from the game. I'd much rather have Elijah experiencing an interaction with his PC than watch his brain draining away into the occasional spurts of drivel that air between the commercials on TV. Also important are the interests that he gains through gaming that help him learn about the computer itself. For instance, Unreal Tournament leads to Unreal Editor, which leads to lessons on 3d modeling, textures, and lighting (he now tries to spot CG while watching TV shows.) Or Novadex Rocket, which leads to all kind of interest in the physical world, including the way blocks tumble off each other, or how the human body can move.
I like how you mention Civ4, as I feel that about the worst thing you can do for your kid is buy them "educational" software, which is often underdeveloped crap. I do work for the Boys and Girls club, so I know all about educational software. We also plan to Home School Elijah when he gets to that age and we are starting early in that respect. Games that are professionally made to be both fun and educational (like civ4) are your best bet. And you'd be surprised what unintentional learning happens even when playing something as non-educational as Unreal Tournament.
Am I the only one who thinks that the 360 is going to be easier to hack than its predecessor? After all, the 360 already gets a lot of data from network devices, such as streaming audio from media connect, or streaming video from a Media Center. Perfect opportunities for buffer overflows (if any exist). Also, the 360 has been reported to run actual streamed code such as the browser from Media Center.
Yea, the good news is, after the the Xbox 360 launch fails miserably in Japan. I can import hundred of Japanese 360's (with Final Fantasy XI preinstalled), and make a fortune on EBay. Of course the unsuspecting buyers will have to . . . err . . . import all of there games from Japan as well, but a small price to pay for 4x full scene anti-aliasing.
No wait . . . I just discovered Usenet.
on
Requiem for Usenet
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· Score: 1
I'm old enough to have been around for telnet MUDing, and other such joys, but USEnet was always something I was going to get around to trying eventually. (Google Groups really doesn't count.) Twelve years later, I finally downloaded a real client and started swimming around in there. My God . . . I can't believe I didn't do it sooner. I used to think that the WWW was a den of thieves and villainy, but this is ridiculous. I downloaded a demo for Gish, painstakingly glued it back together (thankfully without the use of parity files), and thanked the makers for such wonderful software like Bittorent and Direct Connect. Charter Pipeline still offers a free connection to USEnet, so I'm not out of the loop quite yet. Please just give me a little more time to relish in USEnet trolling before its unceremoniously dumped?
It's also worth mentioning here that the PC port of Halo 1 didn't support anti-aliasing at all. So, this will be our first opportunity to play the original with this feature. I consider this to be a MAJOR boon for the Xbox 360. If this sets a precedent for all backwards compatible games to be unconverted in this manner, it will extend their lives onto HD televisions quite nicely.
However, just like we were all abysmally disappointed with the PC port, if there are any framerate issues with Halo 1 or 2 in 720P there will be hell to pay. Especially on Xbox live. If 360 players suffer from a multiplayer disadvantage there will be uproar.
Driven to riot is certainly not appropriate in this case. It does seem to absolve the participants from all responsibilty. However, mentioning character flaws offers no more explanation for the actions we are seeing in France. Cultural and economic conditions can influence people to do things, including riot. Character traits also influence people's choices. In a world obsessed with violent media (U.S. specifically and "The West" in general) it is impossible not to be influenced. No human being exists in a vacuum were all decisions emerge fully formed from ego alone, like Athena from the head of Zeus. We develop. We are formed by what surrounds us. Religion, culture, media, biology, parents, schools, and peers all form the soup of a human soul.
The one thing that the monthly fee absolutely wrecks is the gaming hiatus. Say you want to take a 6 month break from a game, then hop back on with full access to all your characters and items. This is something that most MMORPGs don't support, and even the ones that do support this it require more than the minimum effort of clicking on an icon to resubscribe to the game. However, in a game with no monthly fee, you can keep coming back to it years later as long a minimum of activity is maintained. For instance, I recently picked up Diablo II again after a year-long hiatus. My characters are all still "living" (thanks to logging in once every three months to reactivate them), and delving back into the world is as simple as clicking on an icon.
A partially massive online game like Diablo II or Guild Wars has a chance to capture a huge initial market of cheapskates (like me) that fee-based games will never see. Also, using an advertising based system of revenue (like battle.net does), you will continue to see profits from these users that log back into your world years after first playing the game through.
Slashdot Mirror
This also doesn't block kids that use something like google cache to replace the main page of a site, then after drilling down to a deeper domain that isn't in your host file, you're screwed :) But anyhow, I always applaud the kids for figuring out ways around my blocks. (I work for Boys and Girls club) I would have done the same thing.
The difference this time around is the significant percentage of 360 owners who also use the Live service in some form or another. To put it very simply, an Xbox 360 without Live is a crippled machine, drastically reducing the incentive to use this hack. A piece of hardware can always be hacked; however, a well maintained online service is a moving target that cannot be consistently hacked. The PSP is a good example of this in practice, with hacks being stamped out by firmware upgrades as fast as homebrewers can write them. Perhaps we have finally entered into the era of the unhackable console after all.
Sorry Zonk, I'm going to have to disagree with you again. The controls in this game aren't even in the same ballpark as Crimson Skies. Flying the planes in Blazing Angels is like flying a greasy pig on skates by comparison . . . with no wings. Also, the "ripped from Shadow of the Colossus" camera lock on feels pretty useless, tending to block your view with your own plane. The voice acting is done by the criminally insane, and the missing vertical sync causes frame tearing issues left and right.
I will agree with you in the graphical department though. Aside from the tearing, the graphical presentation is fantastic, especially the cityscapes which seem to stretch on into infinity. Now . . . if only we could have Crimson Skies with these graphics, oh well.
This reminds me of a story my good friend told me about Oblivion. During a certain fighter's guild quest, he had a well armored male companion. Due to an accidental pick pocketing during the quest, he was kicked out of the fighter's guild. However, his companion continued to follow him everywhere, helping out with ambushes as needed. Also turned out that his loyal fighter's guild companion was unkillable.
This wouldn't have been that funny itself . . . but, after awhile the Fighter's amour begin to fall into disrepair, eventually leaving him completely naked. So, currently, my friend has a naked man following him everywhere. On the 360 widescreen, you can just make him out . . . running behind, desperate to catch up.
Funny thing is, I got almost the exact opposite multiplayer impression from my time spent reviewing Metroid Prime: Hunters on the DS. It's really nothing like Quake 3 or Unreal at all. The difference? amount of health. It takes a lot of whittling to bring down a fully charged bounty hunter in this game. Also, the weapon affinities and alternate forms add layer upon layer to the strategy of your typical deathmatch. Check out my multiplayer play rating at The Game Chair for the full story.
Games that you can pick up and play again ten years later with nary a hitch are the ones that make it high up on my list. StarCraft, Super Mario 2, Snes Populous, Starflight II, Snes F-Zero, and Homeworld 2 to name just a few. I think a more appropriate question might be what gameS do you love? The whole swept away on a desert island which game do you bring? trick doesn't work very well without electricity anyways.
I strongly disagree with the idea of innovation bias in the firing squad article. Yes, you are going to write about a game differently having played every other game in the series, or even having played a few games in the genre. However, this is not a bad thing. Do you think a movie or book critic is hired by a major newspaper or other publication without ever having watched a movie of a particular genre before? I doubt it. One of the most important aspects about game journalism is knowing what's come before. If I can insightfully compare and contrast between Project Gotham Racing 3 and Mario Kart DS in an article it's going to add a lot of useful perspective for the audience.
I'd also like to wholeheartedly agree with his second and third points on playing through a game too quickly and rushing out the final copy of the review. There is an easy solution for this, however. Quit playing through the games so fast. You can still get an article out on release day, but don't let that be the final word on the game. Write two or even three follow-ups, so your audience can see how your feelings evolve as you play through the game. For instance, there is a big difference between a game like Starcraft, which I still play regularly, and a game like God of War, which I played through twice. Both are excellent titles, but a longer form review process would bring out the differences in the long term value between the two games. I never understood the similarities between movie reviews and game reviews with respect to length. A single game is an endeavor you could easily spend 100+ hours on. I can't think of any movies that offer that kind of replay value.
I know I've already mentioned this recently on Slashdot, but I'd also like to point out that there are plenty of review sites out there that are taking the time to relax and play through games. http://www.thegamechair.com/ which I write for being one of many. So if the major review sites aren't giving you the kind of coverage you'd like, take the time to search for a more personal, less frenzied experience.
Ed Wood, Ewe Bolle . . . quincidence? Come on now, films this bad are actually quite entertaining to watch. Anybody who doesn't believe me really needs to see GLEN OR GLENDA. Its an absolute riot. I for one plan to bring a troupe of gaming buddies to see BloodRayne and laugh it up. Mystery science theatre didn't make it through ten seasons for nothing.
I work for a progressive review site called http://www.thegamechair.com/ and would like to mention a couple points. First, we would love to be included on some of the major content aggregators. The major aggregator's sites function something like a Google search for reviews with the handy addition of a mathematical formula for determining the average score. I feel like they drive out far more traffic out to individual sites than they steal from them. I know for a fact that I regularly read 5-10 reviews of a game or film, using the links on metacritic as a starting point.
Also, I'd like to mention our approach at TheGameChair, which involves a little bit of everything. We've kept the scoring as an integral part of our review process, but we've broken up the reviews into pieces that more accurately reflects the way that we play games. Basically, we divide the amount of playtime required to make it through a game into three chunks, and write a separate review for each chunk of play. The scores can vary based on whether a particular section of the game plays better, or can be affected as tedium or boredom sets in. The entire length of the review process stretches out over a three week period; covering the average length of time it takes an ordinary person to complete a game.
Our final score for a game is based on an average over the three separate play session, so we do have a type of aggregation over a time frame built into the review. However, because of the sheer volume of review sites on the web, and the amazing speed at which the reviews are released, the only way to distinguish yourself from the aggregate crowd is to actually provide original, thought provoking or even funny content.
As far as the article on women in games go, I'd like to agree with the social aspect. That is often what brings the women into gaming. I've seen women pick up titles as diverse as Burnout 3, Call of Duty, or Dead or Alive, but only after being dragged to a LAN party by significant coercion. Once games are properly experienced nobody (Male or Female) sets them down lightly. The games speak for themselves.
What is significant here is the gaming stereotypes that are keeping women away from gaming in the first place. You only need to turn on G4$ T.V. for approximately 5 seconds to see what I'm talking about. What you need to do to bring women into gaming is to stop marketing to 13 year old boys alone. It's pretty simple.
I agree with you wholeheartedly on realism, health packs certainly aren't any better. However, what the recharging health system does for my experience is this. I cease to care about getting shot. With health being a finite resource, you have to care about getting shot, and plan your strategies carefully. I found that being able to duck behind anything for 5 seconds to recharge changed my play style in COD2 considerably. I would run into a room and gun down everybody Serious Sam style instead of shooting from cover and using my teammates like I did in COD1 by necessity. Granted, YMMV, and this may just be a personal thing with me.
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On the other hand, I found the system in Halo 1 to be perfect where you had both a recharging shield and a finite health bar providing you with a little bit of room for error while preserving the need for strategic gameplay.
On the grenade indicator, I found the more subtle clues in COD1 to be more enjoyable. I felt plenty of panic hearing a grenade clatter across the floor at me, and part of the tension is created by not knowing exactly were the grenade is. The grenade indicator feels like supernatural ability to me, not something that your basic ww2 grunt possessed. In COD2 its more like, "Yawn, another grenade, I'll just step over here for a moment then . .
One of the greatest gaming uses I've discovered for my laptop is a couple of emulators and this device from lik-sang.com. It allows you to use one of the best controllers of all time to play your favorite NES SNES and MAME games. It works flawlessly, is cheap (if you have the PC already), and doesn't require the complicated process of blowing/erasing the connections on aging game carts.
Unreal 2k3, 2k4, and GOTY have been staples at our LAN parties for ages. No, they don't offer quite the level of strategic depth of other FPS titles like Halo PC, Battlefield 2, or Call of Duty, but the UT series does offer a ton of benefits. Backward compatibility is a big one. UT will run like butter on damn near any crappy video setup, including GeForce FX and even some embedded cards. Also, platform compatibly is a big issue for our LAN parties. UT is one of the few games that has our Mac, Linux, and Windows users happily playing together with minimal fuss. The shear variety of gameplay offered is another staggering benefit. The number of vanilla install maps and gametypes is phenomenal. If 2k7 continues in these traditions, it will happily find a place in our future LANs as well.
My only fear with 2k7 being a PS3 launch is that the PC version will suffer for it. I don't mean graphically because I'm sure the new engine will look fantastic on every platform. I'm more worried about the problems that COD2 suffered from being a 360 title including many simplifications of gameplay to make it more accessible to a console audience. The grenade indicator and ridiculous recharging health system come to mind.
Negative, you can't do anything but stare at a progress bar while downloading a game. You can't even listen to your mp3s. Good thing my 360 is on a kvm with the rest of my computers :)
Was there ever any doubt that this kind of thing happens occasionally in the game review business? Thankfully there are alternatives to basing your purchases on these big-name low-integrity publishers. Websites like http://www.metacritic.com/ or http://www.gamerankings.com/ provide averages of many collected reviews, and cannot be corrupted as easily as if you trusted a single source review. You could also take your reviews more personally and visit one of the smaller Blog type sites like the one I write for, http://www.thegamechair.com/ A volunteer run sight like ours has a double advantage, no bribery, and all of the writers are passionate about the games they play.
Well, I always doubted there would be a HD-drive version of the 360. An update this soon would split the install base of 360's again, which is already split between hard drive and no-hard drive users. This kind of move would be nothing short of economic suicide for Microsoft. I think it's much more likely that the 360 will go to multiple disk games (like the PS1 and GameCube have done in the past). Multi-disk games are annoying, but they don't split your userbase into different camps, leaving developers wondered which base to shoot for.
I can't imagine the PS3 being ready for launch in 5-6 months. However, no one will be happier than me if it is. Competition between Sony and Microsoft is going to be brutal this time around, especially with the added concern both companies have for the support of their next-gen video disk formats. This can only be good for the gamer. We will see cheaper consoles, better games, and amazing high-definition video formats flying at us from every angle very soon. The 360 got in early with a launch somewhere in-between bad and mediocre, but definitely pushing an advantage now, with the 360 now available in limited amounts throughout the world.
As a game reviewer, and owner of all the current systems (including the 360), I am pretty exited to see what Sony can pull out of its hat. I've got nothing but disrespect for the rest of their DRM/Rootkit laden company, but its gaming division is the single most powerful force in gaming and the PS3 will prove whether or not they can hold their market dominance over Microsoft for another generation, and kill two birds with massive penetration or the blu-ray format.
I agree with you that that Dawn of Sorrow is very very close to being the same thing we had on the NES; however, I'd disagree with you that this is a bad thing. Human art is something that's been derivative since the dawn of time. Why? Because looking at that cave painting of the antelope on the wall, we got the idea that we'd like to do something similar, but maybe with a man and women in the foreground, or a mountain off in the distance.
Incremental additions to existing formula's are the bedrock of any artistic endeavor, in fact you could even go further and say that perfect copies of existing art go a long way in connecting one human emotion to another. Because the artist is not only dealing with their own emotions/memories/expectations, but those of their audience as well. Take a look at some of the most experimental artists or musicians out there as an example, and you'll still see a metric ton of derivative work even there. It is how the human mind operates.
Also, once you have a cultural set of expectations for something, such as a side-scrolling 2d action/exploration/beat-em-up, there also comes a set of connected emotions to these experiences. These emotions draw on a large range of memories as far back as your first play session with Castlevania on the NES. This drawing on memory and expectation adds a whole new depth to the art that simply would not be there otherwise.
Elijah is four years old; his computer sits directly in-between mama and papa's computer in the living room. He games for 2-3 hours every day; his favorites being Novadex Rocket, MoonBase Commander, Incredible Machine, Homeworld 2, Don Pachi (Mame), Takumi Fighters, Unreal 2k4, and Google image search + Photoshop. Elijah's gaming habits were definitely something we thought long and hard over, but eventually we decided to give him access to almost everything we play and do on computers. Keeping him from playing things like Unreal Tournament (gibs off) is going to hurt him more in the long run, by virtue of him feeling left out of what his papa and mama are doing. I remember being horribly scared as a kid, by not being allowed to play Starflight 2, and I don't want to pass that kind of thing on to Elijah. I knew I was smart enough to play Starflight, and so does Elijah. We even include him (for a couple hours) in LAN parties, so he gets an idea of the social aspects of gaming.
I think the most important thing you can do with raising kids into a gaming world, is make sure you're participating with them. Both through multiplayer and simply by being in the same room with them and seeing the kind of experience they're getting from the game. I'd much rather have Elijah experiencing an interaction with his PC than watch his brain draining away into the occasional spurts of drivel that air between the commercials on TV. Also important are the interests that he gains through gaming that help him learn about the computer itself. For instance, Unreal Tournament leads to Unreal Editor, which leads to lessons on 3d modeling, textures, and lighting (he now tries to spot CG while watching TV shows.) Or Novadex Rocket, which leads to all kind of interest in the physical world, including the way blocks tumble off each other, or how the human body can move.
I like how you mention Civ4, as I feel that about the worst thing you can do for your kid is buy them "educational" software, which is often underdeveloped crap. I do work for the Boys and Girls club, so I know all about educational software. We also plan to Home School Elijah when he gets to that age and we are starting early in that respect. Games that are professionally made to be both fun and educational (like civ4) are your best bet. And you'd be surprised what unintentional learning happens even when playing something as non-educational as Unreal Tournament.
Am I the only one who thinks that the 360 is going to be easier to hack than its predecessor? After all, the 360 already gets a lot of data from network devices, such as streaming audio from media connect, or streaming video from a Media Center. Perfect opportunities for buffer overflows (if any exist). Also, the 360 has been reported to run actual streamed code such as the browser from Media Center.
Yea, the good news is, after the the Xbox 360 launch fails miserably in Japan. I can import hundred of Japanese 360's (with Final Fantasy XI preinstalled), and make a fortune on EBay. Of course the unsuspecting buyers will have to . . . err . . . import all of there games from Japan as well, but a small price to pay for 4x full scene anti-aliasing.
I'm old enough to have been around for telnet MUDing, and other such joys, but USEnet was always something I was going to get around to trying eventually. (Google Groups really doesn't count.) Twelve years later, I finally downloaded a real client and started swimming around in there. My God . . . I can't believe I didn't do it sooner. I used to think that the WWW was a den of thieves and villainy, but this is ridiculous. I downloaded a demo for Gish, painstakingly glued it back together (thankfully without the use of parity files), and thanked the makers for such wonderful software like Bittorent and Direct Connect. Charter Pipeline still offers a free connection to USEnet, so I'm not out of the loop quite yet. Please just give me a little more time to relish in USEnet trolling before its unceremoniously dumped?
It's also worth mentioning here that the PC port of Halo 1 didn't support anti-aliasing at all. So, this will be our first opportunity to play the original with this feature. I consider this to be a MAJOR boon for the Xbox 360. If this sets a precedent for all backwards compatible games to be unconverted in this manner, it will extend their lives onto HD televisions quite nicely.
However, just like we were all abysmally disappointed with the PC port, if there are any framerate issues with Halo 1 or 2 in 720P there will be hell to pay. Especially on Xbox live. If 360 players suffer from a multiplayer disadvantage there will be uproar.
Driven to riot is certainly not appropriate in this case. It does seem to absolve the participants from all responsibilty. However, mentioning character flaws offers no more explanation for the actions we are seeing in France. Cultural and economic conditions can influence people to do things, including riot. Character traits also influence people's choices. In a world obsessed with violent media (U.S. specifically and "The West" in general) it is impossible not to be influenced. No human being exists in a vacuum were all decisions emerge fully formed from ego alone, like Athena from the head of Zeus. We develop. We are formed by what surrounds us. Religion, culture, media, biology, parents, schools, and peers all form the soup of a human soul.
The one thing that the monthly fee absolutely wrecks is the gaming hiatus. Say you want to take a 6 month break from a game, then hop back on with full access to all your characters and items. This is something that most MMORPGs don't support, and even the ones that do support this it require more than the minimum effort of clicking on an icon to resubscribe to the game. However, in a game with no monthly fee, you can keep coming back to it years later as long a minimum of activity is maintained. For instance, I recently picked up Diablo II again after a year-long hiatus. My characters are all still "living" (thanks to logging in once every three months to reactivate them), and delving back into the world is as simple as clicking on an icon. A partially massive online game like Diablo II or Guild Wars has a chance to capture a huge initial market of cheapskates (like me) that fee-based games will never see. Also, using an advertising based system of revenue (like battle.net does), you will continue to see profits from these users that log back into your world years after first playing the game through.