Interestingly, there is nothing in the Constitution at all to oppose a socialist economy (though there are particular forms of socialism that would be prohibited), particularly if state governments cooperate.
Mandating a 1 party system would be unconstitutional.
Completely Acurate. The tenants of socialism say nothing about how many parties are involved in the process. That was something that evolved out of Stalin's regime (a fascist leadership I might add, not actually a socialist one) during soviet communism. Even the Russians originally had a 2-party system: the bullchaviks and the menchaviks. Stalin switched parties and then systematically killed or had arrested all his opposition, and did away with the 2-party system. There's nothing socialist about it: Stalinist? Yes. Russian? Maybe. But there is nothing inherently socialist or even communist about single-party systems, they're inherent to dictatorships and fascist regimes. Most modern-day socialist countries like Canada and Sweden (which are also capitalist hybrids) have multi-party systems similar to that of Great Brittain, France, or Japan. In fact, the US is one of the only modernized countries with a 2-party system. Not saying that 2-parties are bad, but it certainly works with more than that, and NOONE is suggesting that we ever go to a single-party system. Although, if the Republicans continue to fuck up the way they have been for the last several years, it's going to look like that for a while.
This really has nothing to do with drummers...
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Detecting Click Tracks
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· Score: 2, Interesting
It has to do with editing and modern-day DAW track editing. If all you're doing is laying down bass, guitar, drums and vocals in a garage or folk band, then you don't really need a click track. But if you're doing a high amount of production with multi-layered guitar tracks, synth lines, and orchestral mockups (midi), you HAVETO have a click track. Many times, recording a complex rock arrangement isn't that much different from doing a film score, you have to have events coming in and out along a very precise timeframe. You can pre-determine tempo variations, but they MUST be pre-determined.
This strikes me as not so much an arguement about drummer quality or production level, but an arguement about how much rock music should be pre-determined. I know folk and punk rockers will say that it is heretical to have too much determinism in rock music, but there's another side of things. I play in and produce a progressive rock band. I had over 12 years of training in piano and composition before I did 5 years of undergrad work in composition and studio production. For what I do, I want EVERYTHING to be planned out. Usually, the more planning that goes into a tune, the more unique it can be, because everyone knows what their roll is. That's why most folk and punk bands usually sound the same.
Basically, "the click track" is one of a number of tools offered by an institution of music construction that allows for a lot of flexibility and creativity within a certain framework. Click tracks free up producers, composers, and musicians to be able to have a lot more leeway in other areas. It's not a question of "my drummer can play without a click track". The reality is, no matter HOW good a drummer is, if they don't have a click, the music isn't going to line up on the grid in Pro Tools, Digital Performer, or whatever DAW your using. If that doesn't happen, then you've just killed about 50% of the production and creative possibilities you have at your disposal... including orchestra and midi (which is much more prevolent than most would like to admit) additions.
Orchestras have a click-track: it's called a conductor. They spend hours maticulously figuring out exactly how to control the tempo of the orchestra, to the point that when they finally do it live, it's going to be the same each time. When orchestras record for film scores, the conductor wears headphones and conducts to a click-track. Recording an epic-sounding rock track is pretty much the same deal.
Ask any metal or prog band to record without a click track, and they'll probably laugh in your face. Dream Theater (for instance) maps out their entire works out on Digital Performer before they even begin the recording process. Certain types of music just require it, others don't. You want detailed, highly-controlled sound the posibility of adding a lot of post-production stuff later... you HAVE TO use a click track.
He cites some limitations for insects, including a tendency for moths to approach light sources (the proverbial flames) and a powerful sex pheromone response that could override attempts at remote electronic control. "Pheromones are incredibly powerful," he says.
Even billions of dollars in US military funding can't keep a moth from getting laid.
Now that's just personal opinion probably mixed with a healthy dose of nostolgia and "grass is greener" syndrom. I don't see any objective evidance that supports an over-generalized theory that "games aren't what they use to be". The industry moves in waves. 2006 was an incredible year for games: end of a generation, start of a new one. 2008 was a relatively good one. 1994 was an incredible year, 1995 wasn't so hot. You can generalize all you want, but the MARKET is hotter than ever before. 2009 looks a little thin to me too, but that's just a byproduct of mid-generation slump. It happened with the NES, it happened with the PS1, it happened with the PS2 (big time), 2004 was an impossible year to find quality games.
Wouldn't it be kind of meaningless on Mars? I mean, Mars already has very little atmosphere, so collecting solar from the surface would be be almost as efficient as in space, and then you don't get the major energy loss during space/ground transmission. Not to mention, Mars has no population and no oceans, so there's a hell of a lot of space to put up solar collection facilities.
Earth is in a kind of weird limbo where neither solar nor wind energy solutions are SUPER efficient. On Mars, there's little atmosphere, so solar makes a lot of sense. On Venus, winds and acidic atmospheric conditions make wind and atmo-chemcial (for lack of a better name) energy generation is extremely effective. I guess that's the downside of having an atmosphere perfect for the conditions of life.
That said, I think that solar, wind, and renewable energy sources are extremely important, and would like to see them in crease 100 fold over the next decade. However, we also need to look into researching power efficiency and how to cut down on power usage. We only have so much space for windfarms and solar cells. We're fine now, but 100 years from now, we don't want to have both a fossil fuel shortage AND a space shortage.
I hate to be a killjoy on the whole, "We want are gamez as cheap as can be!" thread, but I don't actually think that paying $40-$50 for 60+ hours of entertainment is really asking too much. If an hour-long CD is $10 (on iTunes), and a feature length DVD movie is $20, why should 60 hours of gaming be priced so much less per/hour?
One could argue that games have less replay value... but I don't think they have much less than movies, which MOST (not all) people will only watch 3-4 times. Even music CDs... I'm a total music junkie, and I've worn out Tapes and CDs before... but only once in a while will a CD come along that I'll listen through more than 15 times in a year, and I know I'm on the high end of the spectrum.
The Hours of Entertainment per dollar is extremely high. Seeing that most games, nowdays, are within 30-80 hours, that's around $1/hour... a tenth that of Music and Movies. Do I believe that entertainment should be priced per quantity, as in price/hour? No. But if you consider that one gets about the same amount of enjoyment, and the same amount of creativity is put into a game for a certain length of time as a music CD or movie DVD, then asking for anything more than 1000% the price/hour just strikes me as whining.
However, does that mean that studios won't make more money if they drop prices? No it doesn't. It might make great sense from an ecconomic standpoint, but from an ethical standpoint, they're not ripping us off in the slightest.
That's because all of the developers only put their C and D teams on Wii/DS, and save their AAA teams for the 360/PS3. Then everyone's surprised, or angry at Nintendo when those games aren't good and don't sell very well. NO SHIT! If they were smart and spread their investments, giving equal time and creative resources to the Wii as they do for the 360/PS3, they'd be raking in the doah. If investment bankers used the same formula that these companies do, they'd be out of a job. Look where the money is. The Wii has about 1.5x as many users as both the 360 and PS3 COMBINED. When programming for 360/PS3, you have to hire extra programmers to port, and the PS3 is not very friendly to program on, especially when a game is already programmed for the 360. There are literally dozens of titles that do not use all the latest graphics that the 360 or PS3 offer, that would work perfectly fine on the Wii, but devs choose to release on the more troublesome duel-platform 360/PS3 option.
This is simple arrogance mixed with a Bush-esque "stay the course" type attitude. There's no good excuse for leaving the Wii in the dust
Chrono Cross was sappy, pretentious, crap as far as I'm concerned. Did the developers not learn ANYTHING from the mistakes they made with Xenogears? I want those 40 hours of my life back.
While you do make some good points, and obviously it is too soon to completely count Sony out... you need to take off your brown colored glasses when speaking of the 360. The reality is, the 360 was a HUGE improvement over the original XBox. Yes, a few people were marred by hardware problems (I'm sorry that you had to be one of them). Strangely enough, I've had both PS2 and GameCubes fail on me, and I've had my 360 for 2 years without any problems. All I'm saying is that it sounds to me like you have a little bit of angst built up against Microsoft and the 360 platform. Me, personally... I hate microsoft. I've been an Apple, Nintendo, and Sony fan all my life. I've even now practically given up on American developers for developing the kinds of games I like to play. But I have to admit, the 360 won me over. The XBox was, IMO, the antithesis of a good video game console. Yet when I really evaluated this generation, I was quite won over by the 360. And currently, it recieves more love than my Wii or PS2 by quite a bit (only outdone, as of late, by my DS Lite). I know you're upset about the hardware problems of the 360, but even as you claim that Sony has learned (a claim that is impossible to evaluate until next console cycle), Microsoft as quantitatively improved THEIR problems by clearing up the hardware issues that you seem upset about. So the reality is is that Micrsoft has corrected their mistakes, while Sony hasn't, and really can't, since their mistakes were more of a fundimental nature of their design philosophy.
And, unfortunately (and I say unfortunately because the PS1 and PS2 are my favorite video game consoles), there is a huge, fundimental difference between the progression from GameCube -> Wii and PS2 -> PS3. That is $$$$$. While most of us were "counting out" the N64 and GameCube (I owned and loved the GameCube), Nintendo was actually making quite a fair profit off of the line. Even Microsoft, which sold nominally more than Nintendo last generation, didn't even quite break even. That meant that when it came time to throw in the monitary capital toward design and marketting for the next generation, Nintendo was by no means short on assets. They had more of a profit to work with on the Wii than Microsoft did on the 360. Per unit, Nintendo was even making more than Sony was with the PS2. Nintendo has NEVER lost money on a single console. That is NOT what is going on with the PS3. Sony, which did make a huge chunk of change on the PS2, sunk a ton of money into development and marketing for the PS3, which frankly, has not panned out for the financially. Thier consoles don't make a profit (Sony consoles rarely ever make a profit, but this is worse than before), but even worse, their game sales are extremely low, lower than any system since the Dreamcast.
Basically, Sony invested a huge amount of money, took a huge risk with the PS3, and have not seen a return. Nintendo has never lost money, and Microsoft now turns a profit and is gaining in momentum. The GameCube didn't lose money, the PS3 does, so there is a fundimental difference between the occurances of last generation and this generation.
All that said, there is some hope. Sony Entertainment did fire the CEO that headed up the PS3s development, and there have been some concessions made and plans for adopting different business strategies. Unfortunately, Sony is a much larger and slower ship to turn around than Nintendo is. It's one of the curses of large beaurocracies: good efficiency on massive prolonged endevours, but terrible at changing course. And the reality is that Sony has never shown to be very good at trailblazing. The PS1 and PS2 succeeded because they were able to win over developers, and push quality titles out. They didn't do anything fundimentally different than what Nintendo, Sega, or Microsoft offered, but they just were able to market it better. Now that Sony has lost a lot of faith in developers and the general public, it's going to be VERY difficult to get them back. They can't use their image like Apple or Nint
Sora hired the Game Arts administrative staff to do a lot of the office work in getting the project off the ground. I think a few of the programmers from GA stayed on board for the project as well. However, none of the design team or the creative staff were from GameArts.
The thing that angers me about this thread's title is that GameArts has, itself, done a lot of great work, specifically the Lunar and Grandia series of RPGs, that are quite notable as well. Why wasn't the title of the thread, for instance, "Lunar Creators Behind New TMNT Game"? Unfortunately, GAs last three outtings: Grandia Extreme, Lunar Dragon Song, and Grandia III all recieved less than complementary reviews, though.
I just realized something. The voice actor who used to play Leanardo in the TV series, Cam Clarke, is a common video game voice actor (most notably for his work as Liquid Snake from the MGS series). Well, he also voiced the protagonist, Ryudo, for one of GAs best selling (and arguably the most reveared) titles, Grandia II. It's the only time you hear "Leanardo" (TMNT) voiced opposite of "Ariel" (The Little Mermaid). So this won't be Cam's first time contracted by GameArts to do a voice for them.
I think Nintendo's original strategy was to jump the track and release consoles on a much higher frequency than Sony or Microsoft. The development time, money, and resources for the Wii were far under those of the 360 and PS3. Combine that with the fact that the Wii was built for SDTV in a growing HDTV market, it seemed that Nintendo was anticipating a mid-Gen console switch. But I don't think they anticipated the current success of the Wii. Sales are still at practically 100% of output. They're raking in the dough.
Who knows what they're stategy will be from here on out. It may be worth their while to split the console line in half: create one console aimed at casual gamers, which would be the extension of the Wii, and then create a higher-powered console to compete on the hardcore market with Microsoft and Sony. This could be a risky business strategy, but it could also have it's benefits. Remember, that Ninendo has been successful in the past, running 3 console lines at once (GBA, DS, GameCube). The original strategy was for the GBA and DS to remain separate lines (which is why the DS was never called a "GameBoy"), but the DS's runnaway success ate up the GBA. But the outcome was incredibly possitive. So splitting the TV console line in two may have similarly positive responses.
The main point is that this generation has been a total clusterfuck from the get-go. In previous generations, we have seen new players suddenly jump in and surprise people (PS1 and XBox), but we have never before had a generation with the same players and have their sales and business models be so drastically different.
At this point, no one knows how the big 3 are going to play the market next generation. Sony is probably going to want to drastically change their tactics. Microsoft is the most likely to stick with how they've been doing things. Nintendo have had so much surprise success from the Wii that they have he capital to really change things around quite drastically if they wanted to. The Wii market is sort of a moving target, so they know that they've got to offer something radically different (not necessarily more "hard core" though) to stay on top.
Still, I expect Nintendo to release first, they may come out with their upgrade to the Wii line as early as 2010 or early 2011... why? Because they can. Microsoft is still trying to increase their profits, and Sony is still in debt. I expect Microsoft to be on track for release in 2011, and I expect fewer surprises from them. Sony is a total wildcard, though. They are so in debt from the PS3 that if we were to track the times that they would normally launch from their current sales figures, it probably wouldn't be until 2015... but that won't work. The next Nintendo and Microsoft consoles will obviously be more powerful than the PS3. So if Sony Entertainment wants to stay alive, they're going to have to do something pretty unconventional. It's very possible that they might abandon the "PlayStation" brand, and attempt to challenge Nintendo on the low-end market... after all, that's where the $$$ is. Maybe they'll focus on handhelds, maybe they'll drop out completely... who knows, but I doubt that if we see a PS4 it has a business strategy anything like the PS3.
Game Arts did this as far back as the Lunar games on Sega-CD, you could choose "Auto", and all characters would continue going until the end of the turn. The Shin Miegami series took this a step further with Persona 3 where the characters just kept going until told to do otherwise. Namco's "Tales of" series has multipul characters, in which any player can step in, at any time, and play as. When not activated, the characters just start playing themselves. I can theoretically setup all 4 characters to play on full auto, and just battle it out using whatever strategies I have set.
This is not new. Some multiplayer games even automatically take over when players are innactive.
I have to completely disagree that Megaton was the best town in the game. I found Megaton kinda boring, myself. Rivit City was far-and-away my home base. Other hot spots like the Citidel and the GNR building were nice too. I found myself avoiding Megaton like the pleague, except for a few quests.
I haven't played the first two Fallout games (I do mean to, though), but I absolutely LOVED Fallout 3. Far-and-away my favorite game of the year, and currently my favorite wRPG (I'm more of a jRPG fan myself). I never could get into Mass Effect, but Fallout 3 did right a lot of the thing I think Mass Effect did wrong. I actually liked and felt for the characters in this game, and felt like my work really had a lasting impact on the game world. My concern was that I'd heard the Fallout series was kind of goofy, and I usely dispise goofy games. But Fallout 3 was, for the most part, pretty series, though with a little quirky witt at times, which was okay. I love to wonder around aimlessly and explore vast regions, and Fallout 3 really did that for me. Tales of Vesparia was supposed to be my exploration orgy game, but it turned out to be not really all that enjoyable, but Fallout 3 filled in that gap quite nicely.
While I completely agree that DRM is essentially a non-issue in the world of "OMG VDO GAMEZ", I think that there are some extremely ligitimate and obvious reasons that many are switching to consoles:
- Price (of upgrades, upkeep, innitial increase of getting a "gaming PC") - Compatibility - Offline multiplayer / party gaming - Higher attition to single-player gaming on consoles - Power of Consoles (being much closer to PCs than they were a few years ago) - Online console games / servies
The reality is, most of the "advantages" that PCs have over consoles are also their disadvantages. Piece-meal hardware makes for better customization, but it makes for compatability and horsepower problems, not to mention, huge price increases. Keyboard/mouse are great for text inputting and FPS control (though I'd argue that the Wii has shown about equal capability that area), however, they're not as ergonomic and convenient for "laying back" (a big consideration for those of us who work all day). Online connection (now practically moot) makes for better multiplayer, however, it makes for buggier first releases, because of patching... it also commonly diminishes single-player development, which is a big no-no to many of us.
The reality is, there are hosts of reasons for either one. Currently, there isn't a whole lot of difference in content, since the mainstream game industry has practically merged the two. Unfortunately, this means a bit of a loss in industry development of single-player games, which is my biggest concern, but asside from that, I think that generally, this generation has been pretty good for console development.
There is one nitch not being filled: Wii motion controller innovation applied to indepth games.
I consider myself a hardcore gamer, in the sense that I like huge, lengthy epic games that take skill and dedication. I'm not an FPS or gore hound, but I fit into the "hardcore" category nevertheless. I love the Wii's control systems, the attention to innovation, and I'd like to see that applied to more indepth games. Microsoft and Sony aren't offering it, and neither is Nintendo. Why do I have to choose either gameplay innovation or involving games, but not games that offer both? The two aren't mutually exclusive, and I'm sure that a large percentage of hardcore gamers would be more than happy to get their hands on some unique interface innovations.
Where are the point-and-click adventures? Where are the RPGs that use motion sensing and light-gun to add to their gameplay? Lost Winds really demonstrated to me that you can really use the Wiis control system for more creative, and involving types of games (even if the current WiiWare version is just a prologue). Let's get some more of that, or Okami, or epic RPGs... because we're not going to see them on the 360 or PS3 with those kinds of innovations.
So in closing, no... separating the types of games filled by the Wii, 360 and PS3 doesn't satisfy everyone, because it means you can't mix-and-match the abilities of the different units. The Wii has the potential to completely satisfy me with its current capabilities (honestly, I've had an HDTV for almost 2 years now, and I still don't think it makes one shit of difference, and I'm a video producer), I'd just like to see it expand into more involving areas.
We don't have crows here in Fairbanks Alaska, they're called "Ravens". They're bigger, smarter, and more annoying. To the Native Athebascans, one of 'em created the world, and then became a right asshole to everyone around him, that was before the Burreau of Indian Affairs took over and did his job for him.
Oh, and that was a fucking terrible article. Good content... when I could find it. That could have been about 3 paragraphs, but the writer decided to try and make his mark by writing about 8 pages of self-indulgent bullshit first. I understand that it was supposed to be vaguely in the style of Hunter S Thompson... but that's irrelivant. The author made up all that shit about a connection between Roth and gonzo journalism, it was just a stupid excuse to try and write in gonzo style. I want to drop kick the author in the nutsack.
I'm a composer, myself, and a game soundtrack enthusiast, and one thing I've noticed time and time again is the drastic differences in philosophy between Japanese and western game soundtracks.
Japanese composers tend to approach scoring from a more stylized approach, more akin to opera or broadway musicals. The technique of giving each character and element its own unique theme was first pioneered by Wagner back in the 1860s, but it has become a staple of dramatic scoring and often used for "epic" film soundtracks as well (John Williams is one of the masters of this).
It's a very effective approach to scoring... but it does stylize the action to a certain extent. In the eyes of many western game developers, it over-stylizes the action. Western game developers appear to be quite phobic of stylization and mellodrama, and are far more concerned with upholding the perception of "realism" than being emotionally dynamic (dramatic). For this reason, western game soundtracks use much less of the techniques found in dramatic genres. Each piece is scored independantly, and the soundtrack generally lacks any over-arching themes or conceptualization. Western game soundtracks tend to be generally very loose, many times with different composers writing music for different sections of the game.
On one hand, it does assure that the game doesn't feel stylized, which is one of the major goals of western game soundtracks, but the caveat is that it impede on the "continuous flow" which seems to be another primary goal of western game developers.
Personally, as a fan of the dramatic, epic, and heavily conceptualized... I greatly prefer Japanese soundtracks to western ones. As a composer, I like the fact that the music plays a more dominant roll, and is used to really help style each game uniquely. I strongly dislike the realistic school of a videogame design... I like every title to have its own unique character through its music, graphic design, and writing. I think that western games become a bit monotonous because their ideal is one of characterlessness. Of course, I'm generalizing. I'm currently playing Fallout 3 now and enjoying the hell out of it... but then again, it's heavily stylized in many areas; it has the 50s kitch and futurism stylization to really weave the setting together. It's similar to how the brash art-deco stylization made Bioshock shine.
However, when I think of the greatest original soundtracks that really hit home, I'm always going to go back to Final Fantasy VIII, Metroid Prime 1, Mario Galaxy, or Chrono Trigger. They weren't afraid of the music taking on its own unique character in the context of the game, interweaving themes in interesting ways, and being highly influential in giving each game its own unique feel.
As an aspiring composer myself, I'm not sure I fit in with the current western aesthetic in game music. I simply feel that western composers and directors are too hung up on destroying any semblance of stylization, the very thing that I think really makes the genre so damn appealing in the first place. We just need to get over our fear of the dramatic. There's nothing wrong with open-ended realism, but I'm starting to feel like there's a major stigma against any games that aren't. Is stylization concidered to be a sign of weakness or caused by some kind of latent homophobia or sense of "wussiness"? Get over it, it makes life entertaining.
Well, this all depends upon whether or not you separate the overall game experience from the plot and presentation of the gamestory. In Metal Gear Solid, when psycho mantis comments on the games that the player has loaded on his save card, that is indeed breaking the fourth wall. You can make an arguement about the lack of a fourth wall from a gameplay perspective, but the actual plot construction in video games has very little philosophical difference to that of cinema. Storys take place in the game world, which is NOT connected to the physical world.
The fact that the player identifies himself as the main character is irrelivant. In fact, there have been many studies in litterature and cinema, and to a certain extent, all audiences identify themselves as the main character to a greater or lesser degree, regardless of the medium. Games may have a magnitudinal difference in that regard, but it's not a fundimental one, the same philosophy applies.
Therefor, an RPG that talks about itself being in the context of a video game (Earthbound, for instance), or Metal Gear Solid commenting on some aspect of the player from within the game world, breaks the barrier down in the same way that you will find in postmodern theatre and cinema.
One exception is tutorials, and I only say this simply because they've become an excepted evil, and people no longer really take them at face value. When an NPC says, "press the X button to swing your sword" we translate that as the game creators talking to us (as players) through a game character. It causes a fairly abrupt continuity problem, and we usually completely dismiss the concept that the game character ever said it. Once again, I would give partial exemption to the Metal Gear series, because Kojima is so desperately trying to break the fourth wall, that it's very likely that NPC tutorial explantions are a small offshoot of that... nevertheless, it's still annoying and causes continuity problems. I never like them.
Hey, don't go dissin' my Zelda II, boy... that game had it's charm. You gotta give them credit for originality at least. It was like Zelda meets Dragon Warrior.
Actually, I want to take that a step backwards. I think that FF6 was actually fully 3D gameplay with 2D graphics. The game attempted to portray a very real 3D world on a 2D plain... sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. But I think that 3D gameplay was already there before FF7. These are RPGs we're talking about, so the difference in gameplay between 2D and 3D isn't exactly going to be all that noticable in the first place. But I would say that there's more difference in the presentation of a 3D world between FF5 and FF6 than there is between FF6 and FFX. It was the first game to really explore height as noticable dimension. Tons of stairways up and over objects, buildings that you could walk behind, etc. They struggled with 2D hardware, which is why I'm so eager to see a 3D DS remake (FF4 was good but FF6 would be the biggest benefitiary of a 3D makeover, because it was already concieved in a semi-3D way). FF7 changed it's graphical format to make each camera angle uniquely fitting to the environment, but besides that, it didn't really change anything from FF6s concept of space.
First of all, I don't see Zelda's difficulty coming from the action elements, but more from the puzzles and problem solving. After the first two games, the creators were obviously more concerned with making an interesting adventure game with action elements, than the other way around. As a long time RPG and adventure game fan, I tend to agree with their direction. However, the action is intrinsicly tied in with the problem solving, which makes for a lot of interesting and difficult gameplay.
I thought Phantom Hourglass was a joke... only Zelda game I've never finished. The temple of the ocean king was absolutely horrible. People had problems with Majora's Mask's timer (though I didn't)... but that was about an hour-and-a-half. I'd take Link to the Past, Minish Cap, Link's Awakening, as well as ALL the 3D games (including Wind Waker) over it. Let Capcom go back to doing the handheld Zelda's, Nintendo seems to forgotten how to do a good one.
I agree and disagree. In the case of both series, my favorite games are 3D, but the 2D games really had their merrit, ESPECIALLY metroid. Metroid Prime is probably my favorite game in the series, however, it's the only 3D Metroid that I thought was anywhere close to being as good as Super Metroid or Zero Mission. The other 3 3D metroids (if you want to even count Hunters) were pretty terrible (well... Prime 3 had it's moments).
Zelda, I have to completely disagree. I think the nature of that series really made it shine in 3D. Since it's a more epic, cinematic adventure game, with less attention on action, and more on problem solving... adding a third dimension really opened up a lot of new possibilities in their puzzle creation and navigation... not to mention expanding the epic/cinematic feel. Twilight Princess, Majora's Mask, and OoT far surpassed their 2D counterparts, and I think the team really learned a lot about good storytelling as the series progressed (especially Twilight Princess), while Link to the Past and Minish Cap have their charm, I've been forever greatful for the mainstays of the series going 3D. The exceptions were Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass, which I thought took the series in an unbelievably boring direction.
All-in-all I think that Nintendo has been the best company to make the transition from 2D to 3D. I really trust their judgement in the matter. Metroid is Retro, who as creative as they are, do not have the 3 decades of experience behind them in game production, and sometimes end up tripping over themselves. However, Mario Galaxy, and the Zelda series really proves to me that they really know how to make the jump from 2 to 3 dimensions while a) keeping the games as easy to control as in 2D, and b) knowing what to change and what to keep when making the transition.
That's the thing. Some companies throw everything they've done previously in the series away, and basically create a new series with the same characters. This means that the series suffers, once again, from the same basic learning curve as any new series. Other companies try to keep everything EXACTLY the same... and in the process make a game that is completely out of its own dimension. The wise game designers are able to pick and choose elements that work well in the transition, and throw out the old.
RPGs don't count, however... pretty much every RPG can be done well in 3D, since the lack of timed action means that precise control is not an issue. Not that every first in an RPG series to go 3D is great (I'm not a huge fan of FF7 when compared to the games on either side of it, for instance), but there's no reason why 3D should hinder that genre. That pretty much goes for adventure too, with some exceptions.
Re:*Possible Spoiler* An Actual Ending!!
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Anathem
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· Score: 1
Hala-ja-looya!
I completely agree. Cryptonomicon is one of my all-time favorite books followed by Zodiac and Snow Crash... and all three of them have absolutely horrendous endings. The way I see it, Neal isn't a big fan of plots. His enjoyment of writing comes from the concepts and descriptions themselves, and probably sees plot development practices as simply a utilitarian neccessity. Therefor, when he gets finished saying what needs to be said, he just cuts off. Unfortunately, this makes for unsatisfying closure.
The ending of a book is the point at which all the material: the ideas, the emotions, the form, the concepts, has the opportunity to integrate itself into the real-life world of the audience. It's the final bridge between fiction and the reader's sense of reality, the point where concepts are perminantly solidified into the readers' psyche, in the same way a dream slowly transitions into reality upon awakening. If you are awoken suddenly, you loose continuity, and you're immiediately reminded that what you have felt is fictional, and can be easily discarded. A slower, more thoughtful ending, however, brings the extra-ordinary conflicts of the novel down to a state of realistic order.
While I applaud his candid response, I wouldn't have had anything against him saying, "well folks, we've put out the two best games in their respective series"... because I feel both were. Twilight Princess combind the timeless epic quality of Ocarina of Time, but gave it the drama and heart that I feel that the series has lacked. Mario Galaxy may not quite beat out Mario 3 in my book, but both felt eerily similar in their inspired quality, and I think that Mario Galaxy is the best game since Mario 3. Now, all I feel they need to do with Zelda is do to TP, what Majora's Mask did to OoT, ie: fuck with it, do something out of left field that's not "normal" for Zelda. MM was my favorite game in the series until TP came along. TP is now probably my favorite game... period.
Portal was wonderful, don't get me wrong. However, it didn't present me with a full emotional and gameplay spectrum the way that Zelda or Mario do... it was a short vignette of a game, a very perfect one, for that matter. Don't know why I can put ICO at the top of my list but not Portal (similarly short), but something keeps Portal from reaching that high eschellon for me.
Slashdot Mirror
Completely Acurate. The tenants of socialism say nothing about how many parties are involved in the process. That was something that evolved out of Stalin's regime (a fascist leadership I might add, not actually a socialist one) during soviet communism. Even the Russians originally had a 2-party system: the bullchaviks and the menchaviks. Stalin switched parties and then systematically killed or had arrested all his opposition, and did away with the 2-party system. There's nothing socialist about it: Stalinist? Yes. Russian? Maybe. But there is nothing inherently socialist or even communist about single-party systems, they're inherent to dictatorships and fascist regimes. Most modern-day socialist countries like Canada and Sweden (which are also capitalist hybrids) have multi-party systems similar to that of Great Brittain, France, or Japan. In fact, the US is one of the only modernized countries with a 2-party system. Not saying that 2-parties are bad, but it certainly works with more than that, and NOONE is suggesting that we ever go to a single-party system. Although, if the Republicans continue to fuck up the way they have been for the last several years, it's going to look like that for a while.
It has to do with editing and modern-day DAW track editing. If all you're doing is laying down bass, guitar, drums and vocals in a garage or folk band, then you don't really need a click track. But if you're doing a high amount of production with multi-layered guitar tracks, synth lines, and orchestral mockups (midi), you HAVETO have a click track. Many times, recording a complex rock arrangement isn't that much different from doing a film score, you have to have events coming in and out along a very precise timeframe. You can pre-determine tempo variations, but they MUST be pre-determined.
This strikes me as not so much an arguement about drummer quality or production level, but an arguement about how much rock music should be pre-determined. I know folk and punk rockers will say that it is heretical to have too much determinism in rock music, but there's another side of things. I play in and produce a progressive rock band. I had over 12 years of training in piano and composition before I did 5 years of undergrad work in composition and studio production. For what I do, I want EVERYTHING to be planned out. Usually, the more planning that goes into a tune, the more unique it can be, because everyone knows what their roll is. That's why most folk and punk bands usually sound the same.
Basically, "the click track" is one of a number of tools offered by an institution of music construction that allows for a lot of flexibility and creativity within a certain framework. Click tracks free up producers, composers, and musicians to be able to have a lot more leeway in other areas. It's not a question of "my drummer can play without a click track". The reality is, no matter HOW good a drummer is, if they don't have a click, the music isn't going to line up on the grid in Pro Tools, Digital Performer, or whatever DAW your using. If that doesn't happen, then you've just killed about 50% of the production and creative possibilities you have at your disposal... including orchestra and midi (which is much more prevolent than most would like to admit) additions.
Orchestras have a click-track: it's called a conductor. They spend hours maticulously figuring out exactly how to control the tempo of the orchestra, to the point that when they finally do it live, it's going to be the same each time. When orchestras record for film scores, the conductor wears headphones and conducts to a click-track. Recording an epic-sounding rock track is pretty much the same deal.
Ask any metal or prog band to record without a click track, and they'll probably laugh in your face. Dream Theater (for instance) maps out their entire works out on Digital Performer before they even begin the recording process. Certain types of music just require it, others don't. You want detailed, highly-controlled sound the posibility of adding a lot of post-production stuff later... you HAVE TO use a click track.
Even billions of dollars in US military funding can't keep a moth from getting laid.
Now that's just personal opinion probably mixed with a healthy dose of nostolgia and "grass is greener" syndrom. I don't see any objective evidance that supports an over-generalized theory that "games aren't what they use to be". The industry moves in waves. 2006 was an incredible year for games: end of a generation, start of a new one. 2008 was a relatively good one. 1994 was an incredible year, 1995 wasn't so hot. You can generalize all you want, but the MARKET is hotter than ever before. 2009 looks a little thin to me too, but that's just a byproduct of mid-generation slump. It happened with the NES, it happened with the PS1, it happened with the PS2 (big time), 2004 was an impossible year to find quality games.
Wouldn't it be kind of meaningless on Mars? I mean, Mars already has very little atmosphere, so collecting solar from the surface would be be almost as efficient as in space, and then you don't get the major energy loss during space/ground transmission. Not to mention, Mars has no population and no oceans, so there's a hell of a lot of space to put up solar collection facilities.
Earth is in a kind of weird limbo where neither solar nor wind energy solutions are SUPER efficient. On Mars, there's little atmosphere, so solar makes a lot of sense. On Venus, winds and acidic atmospheric conditions make wind and atmo-chemcial (for lack of a better name) energy generation is extremely effective. I guess that's the downside of having an atmosphere perfect for the conditions of life.
That said, I think that solar, wind, and renewable energy sources are extremely important, and would like to see them in crease 100 fold over the next decade. However, we also need to look into researching power efficiency and how to cut down on power usage. We only have so much space for windfarms and solar cells. We're fine now, but 100 years from now, we don't want to have both a fossil fuel shortage AND a space shortage.
I hate to be a killjoy on the whole, "We want are gamez as cheap as can be!" thread, but I don't actually think that paying $40-$50 for 60+ hours of entertainment is really asking too much. If an hour-long CD is $10 (on iTunes), and a feature length DVD movie is $20, why should 60 hours of gaming be priced so much less per/hour?
One could argue that games have less replay value... but I don't think they have much less than movies, which MOST (not all) people will only watch 3-4 times. Even music CDs... I'm a total music junkie, and I've worn out Tapes and CDs before... but only once in a while will a CD come along that I'll listen through more than 15 times in a year, and I know I'm on the high end of the spectrum.
The Hours of Entertainment per dollar is extremely high. Seeing that most games, nowdays, are within 30-80 hours, that's around $1/hour... a tenth that of Music and Movies. Do I believe that entertainment should be priced per quantity, as in price/hour? No. But if you consider that one gets about the same amount of enjoyment, and the same amount of creativity is put into a game for a certain length of time as a music CD or movie DVD, then asking for anything more than 1000% the price/hour just strikes me as whining.
However, does that mean that studios won't make more money if they drop prices? No it doesn't. It might make great sense from an ecconomic standpoint, but from an ethical standpoint, they're not ripping us off in the slightest.
That's because all of the developers only put their C and D teams on Wii/DS, and save their AAA teams for the 360/PS3. Then everyone's surprised, or angry at Nintendo when those games aren't good and don't sell very well. NO SHIT! If they were smart and spread their investments, giving equal time and creative resources to the Wii as they do for the 360/PS3, they'd be raking in the doah. If investment bankers used the same formula that these companies do, they'd be out of a job. Look where the money is. The Wii has about 1.5x as many users as both the 360 and PS3 COMBINED. When programming for 360/PS3, you have to hire extra programmers to port, and the PS3 is not very friendly to program on, especially when a game is already programmed for the 360. There are literally dozens of titles that do not use all the latest graphics that the 360 or PS3 offer, that would work perfectly fine on the Wii, but devs choose to release on the more troublesome duel-platform 360/PS3 option.
This is simple arrogance mixed with a Bush-esque "stay the course" type attitude. There's no good excuse for leaving the Wii in the dust
Chrono Cross was sappy, pretentious, crap as far as I'm concerned. Did the developers not learn ANYTHING from the mistakes they made with Xenogears? I want those 40 hours of my life back.
Come on, this debate's been over since the mid-1960s. Stereo won, Mono lost... end of story.
While you do make some good points, and obviously it is too soon to completely count Sony out... you need to take off your brown colored glasses when speaking of the 360. The reality is, the 360 was a HUGE improvement over the original XBox. Yes, a few people were marred by hardware problems (I'm sorry that you had to be one of them). Strangely enough, I've had both PS2 and GameCubes fail on me, and I've had my 360 for 2 years without any problems. All I'm saying is that it sounds to me like you have a little bit of angst built up against Microsoft and the 360 platform. Me, personally... I hate microsoft. I've been an Apple, Nintendo, and Sony fan all my life. I've even now practically given up on American developers for developing the kinds of games I like to play. But I have to admit, the 360 won me over. The XBox was, IMO, the antithesis of a good video game console. Yet when I really evaluated this generation, I was quite won over by the 360. And currently, it recieves more love than my Wii or PS2 by quite a bit (only outdone, as of late, by my DS Lite). I know you're upset about the hardware problems of the 360, but even as you claim that Sony has learned (a claim that is impossible to evaluate until next console cycle), Microsoft as quantitatively improved THEIR problems by clearing up the hardware issues that you seem upset about. So the reality is is that Micrsoft has corrected their mistakes, while Sony hasn't, and really can't, since their mistakes were more of a fundimental nature of their design philosophy.
And, unfortunately (and I say unfortunately because the PS1 and PS2 are my favorite video game consoles), there is a huge, fundimental difference between the progression from GameCube -> Wii and PS2 -> PS3. That is $$$$$. While most of us were "counting out" the N64 and GameCube (I owned and loved the GameCube), Nintendo was actually making quite a fair profit off of the line. Even Microsoft, which sold nominally more than Nintendo last generation, didn't even quite break even. That meant that when it came time to throw in the monitary capital toward design and marketting for the next generation, Nintendo was by no means short on assets. They had more of a profit to work with on the Wii than Microsoft did on the 360. Per unit, Nintendo was even making more than Sony was with the PS2. Nintendo has NEVER lost money on a single console. That is NOT what is going on with the PS3. Sony, which did make a huge chunk of change on the PS2, sunk a ton of money into development and marketing for the PS3, which frankly, has not panned out for the financially. Thier consoles don't make a profit (Sony consoles rarely ever make a profit, but this is worse than before), but even worse, their game sales are extremely low, lower than any system since the Dreamcast.
Basically, Sony invested a huge amount of money, took a huge risk with the PS3, and have not seen a return. Nintendo has never lost money, and Microsoft now turns a profit and is gaining in momentum. The GameCube didn't lose money, the PS3 does, so there is a fundimental difference between the occurances of last generation and this generation.
All that said, there is some hope. Sony Entertainment did fire the CEO that headed up the PS3s development, and there have been some concessions made and plans for adopting different business strategies. Unfortunately, Sony is a much larger and slower ship to turn around than Nintendo is. It's one of the curses of large beaurocracies: good efficiency on massive prolonged endevours, but terrible at changing course. And the reality is that Sony has never shown to be very good at trailblazing. The PS1 and PS2 succeeded because they were able to win over developers, and push quality titles out. They didn't do anything fundimentally different than what Nintendo, Sega, or Microsoft offered, but they just were able to market it better. Now that Sony has lost a lot of faith in developers and the general public, it's going to be VERY difficult to get them back. They can't use their image like Apple or Nint
Correct.
Sora hired the Game Arts administrative staff to do a lot of the office work in getting the project off the ground. I think a few of the programmers from GA stayed on board for the project as well. However, none of the design team or the creative staff were from GameArts.
The thing that angers me about this thread's title is that GameArts has, itself, done a lot of great work, specifically the Lunar and Grandia series of RPGs, that are quite notable as well. Why wasn't the title of the thread, for instance, "Lunar Creators Behind New TMNT Game"? Unfortunately, GAs last three outtings: Grandia Extreme, Lunar Dragon Song, and Grandia III all recieved less than complementary reviews, though.
I just realized something. The voice actor who used to play Leanardo in the TV series, Cam Clarke, is a common video game voice actor (most notably for his work as Liquid Snake from the MGS series). Well, he also voiced the protagonist, Ryudo, for one of GAs best selling (and arguably the most reveared) titles, Grandia II. It's the only time you hear "Leanardo" (TMNT) voiced opposite of "Ariel" (The Little Mermaid). So this won't be Cam's first time contracted by GameArts to do a voice for them.
I think Nintendo's original strategy was to jump the track and release consoles on a much higher frequency than Sony or Microsoft. The development time, money, and resources for the Wii were far under those of the 360 and PS3. Combine that with the fact that the Wii was built for SDTV in a growing HDTV market, it seemed that Nintendo was anticipating a mid-Gen console switch. But I don't think they anticipated the current success of the Wii. Sales are still at practically 100% of output. They're raking in the dough.
Who knows what they're stategy will be from here on out. It may be worth their while to split the console line in half: create one console aimed at casual gamers, which would be the extension of the Wii, and then create a higher-powered console to compete on the hardcore market with Microsoft and Sony. This could be a risky business strategy, but it could also have it's benefits. Remember, that Ninendo has been successful in the past, running 3 console lines at once (GBA, DS, GameCube). The original strategy was for the GBA and DS to remain separate lines (which is why the DS was never called a "GameBoy"), but the DS's runnaway success ate up the GBA. But the outcome was incredibly possitive. So splitting the TV console line in two may have similarly positive responses.
The main point is that this generation has been a total clusterfuck from the get-go. In previous generations, we have seen new players suddenly jump in and surprise people (PS1 and XBox), but we have never before had a generation with the same players and have their sales and business models be so drastically different.
At this point, no one knows how the big 3 are going to play the market next generation. Sony is probably going to want to drastically change their tactics. Microsoft is the most likely to stick with how they've been doing things. Nintendo have had so much surprise success from the Wii that they have he capital to really change things around quite drastically if they wanted to. The Wii market is sort of a moving target, so they know that they've got to offer something radically different (not necessarily more "hard core" though) to stay on top.
Still, I expect Nintendo to release first, they may come out with their upgrade to the Wii line as early as 2010 or early 2011... why? Because they can. Microsoft is still trying to increase their profits, and Sony is still in debt. I expect Microsoft to be on track for release in 2011, and I expect fewer surprises from them. Sony is a total wildcard, though. They are so in debt from the PS3 that if we were to track the times that they would normally launch from their current sales figures, it probably wouldn't be until 2015... but that won't work. The next Nintendo and Microsoft consoles will obviously be more powerful than the PS3. So if Sony Entertainment wants to stay alive, they're going to have to do something pretty unconventional. It's very possible that they might abandon the "PlayStation" brand, and attempt to challenge Nintendo on the low-end market... after all, that's where the $$$ is. Maybe they'll focus on handhelds, maybe they'll drop out completely... who knows, but I doubt that if we see a PS4 it has a business strategy anything like the PS3.
Game Arts did this as far back as the Lunar games on Sega-CD, you could choose "Auto", and all characters would continue going until the end of the turn. The Shin Miegami series took this a step further with Persona 3 where the characters just kept going until told to do otherwise. Namco's "Tales of" series has multipul characters, in which any player can step in, at any time, and play as. When not activated, the characters just start playing themselves. I can theoretically setup all 4 characters to play on full auto, and just battle it out using whatever strategies I have set.
This is not new. Some multiplayer games even automatically take over when players are innactive.
I have to completely disagree that Megaton was the best town in the game. I found Megaton kinda boring, myself. Rivit City was far-and-away my home base. Other hot spots like the Citidel and the GNR building were nice too. I found myself avoiding Megaton like the pleague, except for a few quests.
I haven't played the first two Fallout games (I do mean to, though), but I absolutely LOVED Fallout 3. Far-and-away my favorite game of the year, and currently my favorite wRPG (I'm more of a jRPG fan myself). I never could get into Mass Effect, but Fallout 3 did right a lot of the thing I think Mass Effect did wrong. I actually liked and felt for the characters in this game, and felt like my work really had a lasting impact on the game world. My concern was that I'd heard the Fallout series was kind of goofy, and I usely dispise goofy games. But Fallout 3 was, for the most part, pretty series, though with a little quirky witt at times, which was okay. I love to wonder around aimlessly and explore vast regions, and Fallout 3 really did that for me. Tales of Vesparia was supposed to be my exploration orgy game, but it turned out to be not really all that enjoyable, but Fallout 3 filled in that gap quite nicely.
While I completely agree that DRM is essentially a non-issue in the world of "OMG VDO GAMEZ", I think that there are some extremely ligitimate and obvious reasons that many are switching to consoles:
- Price (of upgrades, upkeep, innitial increase of getting a "gaming PC")
- Compatibility
- Offline multiplayer / party gaming
- Higher attition to single-player gaming on consoles
- Power of Consoles (being much closer to PCs than they were a few years ago)
- Online console games / servies
The reality is, most of the "advantages" that PCs have over consoles are also their disadvantages. Piece-meal hardware makes for better customization, but it makes for compatability and horsepower problems, not to mention, huge price increases. Keyboard/mouse are great for text inputting and FPS control (though I'd argue that the Wii has shown about equal capability that area), however, they're not as ergonomic and convenient for "laying back" (a big consideration for those of us who work all day). Online connection (now practically moot) makes for better multiplayer, however, it makes for buggier first releases, because of patching... it also commonly diminishes single-player development, which is a big no-no to many of us.
The reality is, there are hosts of reasons for either one. Currently, there isn't a whole lot of difference in content, since the mainstream game industry has practically merged the two. Unfortunately, this means a bit of a loss in industry development of single-player games, which is my biggest concern, but asside from that, I think that generally, this generation has been pretty good for console development.
There is one nitch not being filled: Wii motion controller innovation applied to indepth games.
I consider myself a hardcore gamer, in the sense that I like huge, lengthy epic games that take skill and dedication. I'm not an FPS or gore hound, but I fit into the "hardcore" category nevertheless. I love the Wii's control systems, the attention to innovation, and I'd like to see that applied to more indepth games. Microsoft and Sony aren't offering it, and neither is Nintendo. Why do I have to choose either gameplay innovation or involving games, but not games that offer both? The two aren't mutually exclusive, and I'm sure that a large percentage of hardcore gamers would be more than happy to get their hands on some unique interface innovations.
Where are the point-and-click adventures? Where are the RPGs that use motion sensing and light-gun to add to their gameplay? Lost Winds really demonstrated to me that you can really use the Wiis control system for more creative, and involving types of games (even if the current WiiWare version is just a prologue). Let's get some more of that, or Okami, or epic RPGs... because we're not going to see them on the 360 or PS3 with those kinds of innovations.
So in closing, no... separating the types of games filled by the Wii, 360 and PS3 doesn't satisfy everyone, because it means you can't mix-and-match the abilities of the different units. The Wii has the potential to completely satisfy me with its current capabilities (honestly, I've had an HDTV for almost 2 years now, and I still don't think it makes one shit of difference, and I'm a video producer), I'd just like to see it expand into more involving areas.
We don't have crows here in Fairbanks Alaska, they're called "Ravens". They're bigger, smarter, and more annoying. To the Native Athebascans, one of 'em created the world, and then became a right asshole to everyone around him, that was before the Burreau of Indian Affairs took over and did his job for him.
Oh, and that was a fucking terrible article. Good content... when I could find it. That could have been about 3 paragraphs, but the writer decided to try and make his mark by writing about 8 pages of self-indulgent bullshit first. I understand that it was supposed to be vaguely in the style of Hunter S Thompson... but that's irrelivant. The author made up all that shit about a connection between Roth and gonzo journalism, it was just a stupid excuse to try and write in gonzo style. I want to drop kick the author in the nutsack.
I'm a composer, myself, and a game soundtrack enthusiast, and one thing I've noticed time and time again is the drastic differences in philosophy between Japanese and western game soundtracks.
Japanese composers tend to approach scoring from a more stylized approach, more akin to opera or broadway musicals. The technique of giving each character and element its own unique theme was first pioneered by Wagner back in the 1860s, but it has become a staple of dramatic scoring and often used for "epic" film soundtracks as well (John Williams is one of the masters of this).
It's a very effective approach to scoring... but it does stylize the action to a certain extent. In the eyes of many western game developers, it over-stylizes the action. Western game developers appear to be quite phobic of stylization and mellodrama, and are far more concerned with upholding the perception of "realism" than being emotionally dynamic (dramatic). For this reason, western game soundtracks use much less of the techniques found in dramatic genres. Each piece is scored independantly, and the soundtrack generally lacks any over-arching themes or conceptualization. Western game soundtracks tend to be generally very loose, many times with different composers writing music for different sections of the game.
On one hand, it does assure that the game doesn't feel stylized, which is one of the major goals of western game soundtracks, but the caveat is that it impede on the "continuous flow" which seems to be another primary goal of western game developers.
Personally, as a fan of the dramatic, epic, and heavily conceptualized... I greatly prefer Japanese soundtracks to western ones. As a composer, I like the fact that the music plays a more dominant roll, and is used to really help style each game uniquely. I strongly dislike the realistic school of a videogame design... I like every title to have its own unique character through its music, graphic design, and writing. I think that western games become a bit monotonous because their ideal is one of characterlessness. Of course, I'm generalizing. I'm currently playing Fallout 3 now and enjoying the hell out of it... but then again, it's heavily stylized in many areas; it has the 50s kitch and futurism stylization to really weave the setting together. It's similar to how the brash art-deco stylization made Bioshock shine.
However, when I think of the greatest original soundtracks that really hit home, I'm always going to go back to Final Fantasy VIII, Metroid Prime 1, Mario Galaxy, or Chrono Trigger. They weren't afraid of the music taking on its own unique character in the context of the game, interweaving themes in interesting ways, and being highly influential in giving each game its own unique feel.
As an aspiring composer myself, I'm not sure I fit in with the current western aesthetic in game music. I simply feel that western composers and directors are too hung up on destroying any semblance of stylization, the very thing that I think really makes the genre so damn appealing in the first place. We just need to get over our fear of the dramatic. There's nothing wrong with open-ended realism, but I'm starting to feel like there's a major stigma against any games that aren't. Is stylization concidered to be a sign of weakness or caused by some kind of latent homophobia or sense of "wussiness"? Get over it, it makes life entertaining.
Well, this all depends upon whether or not you separate the overall game experience from the plot and presentation of the gamestory. In Metal Gear Solid, when psycho mantis comments on the games that the player has loaded on his save card, that is indeed breaking the fourth wall. You can make an arguement about the lack of a fourth wall from a gameplay perspective, but the actual plot construction in video games has very little philosophical difference to that of cinema. Storys take place in the game world, which is NOT connected to the physical world.
The fact that the player identifies himself as the main character is irrelivant. In fact, there have been many studies in litterature and cinema, and to a certain extent, all audiences identify themselves as the main character to a greater or lesser degree, regardless of the medium. Games may have a magnitudinal difference in that regard, but it's not a fundimental one, the same philosophy applies.
Therefor, an RPG that talks about itself being in the context of a video game (Earthbound, for instance), or Metal Gear Solid commenting on some aspect of the player from within the game world, breaks the barrier down in the same way that you will find in postmodern theatre and cinema.
One exception is tutorials, and I only say this simply because they've become an excepted evil, and people no longer really take them at face value. When an NPC says, "press the X button to swing your sword" we translate that as the game creators talking to us (as players) through a game character. It causes a fairly abrupt continuity problem, and we usually completely dismiss the concept that the game character ever said it. Once again, I would give partial exemption to the Metal Gear series, because Kojima is so desperately trying to break the fourth wall, that it's very likely that NPC tutorial explantions are a small offshoot of that... nevertheless, it's still annoying and causes continuity problems. I never like them.
Hey, don't go dissin' my Zelda II, boy... that game had it's charm. You gotta give them credit for originality at least. It was like Zelda meets Dragon Warrior.
Actually, I want to take that a step backwards. I think that FF6 was actually fully 3D gameplay with 2D graphics. The game attempted to portray a very real 3D world on a 2D plain... sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. But I think that 3D gameplay was already there before FF7. These are RPGs we're talking about, so the difference in gameplay between 2D and 3D isn't exactly going to be all that noticable in the first place. But I would say that there's more difference in the presentation of a 3D world between FF5 and FF6 than there is between FF6 and FFX. It was the first game to really explore height as noticable dimension. Tons of stairways up and over objects, buildings that you could walk behind, etc. They struggled with 2D hardware, which is why I'm so eager to see a 3D DS remake (FF4 was good but FF6 would be the biggest benefitiary of a 3D makeover, because it was already concieved in a semi-3D way). FF7 changed it's graphical format to make each camera angle uniquely fitting to the environment, but besides that, it didn't really change anything from FF6s concept of space.
First of all, I don't see Zelda's difficulty coming from the action elements, but more from the puzzles and problem solving. After the first two games, the creators were obviously more concerned with making an interesting adventure game with action elements, than the other way around. As a long time RPG and adventure game fan, I tend to agree with their direction. However, the action is intrinsicly tied in with the problem solving, which makes for a lot of interesting and difficult gameplay.
I thought Phantom Hourglass was a joke... only Zelda game I've never finished. The temple of the ocean king was absolutely horrible. People had problems with Majora's Mask's timer (though I didn't)... but that was about an hour-and-a-half. I'd take Link to the Past, Minish Cap, Link's Awakening, as well as ALL the 3D games (including Wind Waker) over it. Let Capcom go back to doing the handheld Zelda's, Nintendo seems to forgotten how to do a good one.
I agree and disagree. In the case of both series, my favorite games are 3D, but the 2D games really had their merrit, ESPECIALLY metroid. Metroid Prime is probably my favorite game in the series, however, it's the only 3D Metroid that I thought was anywhere close to being as good as Super Metroid or Zero Mission. The other 3 3D metroids (if you want to even count Hunters) were pretty terrible (well... Prime 3 had it's moments).
Zelda, I have to completely disagree. I think the nature of that series really made it shine in 3D. Since it's a more epic, cinematic adventure game, with less attention on action, and more on problem solving... adding a third dimension really opened up a lot of new possibilities in their puzzle creation and navigation... not to mention expanding the epic/cinematic feel. Twilight Princess, Majora's Mask, and OoT far surpassed their 2D counterparts, and I think the team really learned a lot about good storytelling as the series progressed (especially Twilight Princess), while Link to the Past and Minish Cap have their charm, I've been forever greatful for the mainstays of the series going 3D. The exceptions were Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass, which I thought took the series in an unbelievably boring direction.
All-in-all I think that Nintendo has been the best company to make the transition from 2D to 3D. I really trust their judgement in the matter. Metroid is Retro, who as creative as they are, do not have the 3 decades of experience behind them in game production, and sometimes end up tripping over themselves. However, Mario Galaxy, and the Zelda series really proves to me that they really know how to make the jump from 2 to 3 dimensions while a) keeping the games as easy to control as in 2D, and b) knowing what to change and what to keep when making the transition.
That's the thing. Some companies throw everything they've done previously in the series away, and basically create a new series with the same characters. This means that the series suffers, once again, from the same basic learning curve as any new series. Other companies try to keep everything EXACTLY the same... and in the process make a game that is completely out of its own dimension. The wise game designers are able to pick and choose elements that work well in the transition, and throw out the old.
RPGs don't count, however... pretty much every RPG can be done well in 3D, since the lack of timed action means that precise control is not an issue. Not that every first in an RPG series to go 3D is great (I'm not a huge fan of FF7 when compared to the games on either side of it, for instance), but there's no reason why 3D should hinder that genre. That pretty much goes for adventure too, with some exceptions.
Hala-ja-looya!
I completely agree. Cryptonomicon is one of my all-time favorite books followed by Zodiac and Snow Crash... and all three of them have absolutely horrendous endings. The way I see it, Neal isn't a big fan of plots. His enjoyment of writing comes from the concepts and descriptions themselves, and probably sees plot development practices as simply a utilitarian neccessity. Therefor, when he gets finished saying what needs to be said, he just cuts off. Unfortunately, this makes for unsatisfying closure.
The ending of a book is the point at which all the material: the ideas, the emotions, the form, the concepts, has the opportunity to integrate itself into the real-life world of the audience. It's the final bridge between fiction and the reader's sense of reality, the point where concepts are perminantly solidified into the readers' psyche, in the same way a dream slowly transitions into reality upon awakening. If you are awoken suddenly, you loose continuity, and you're immiediately reminded that what you have felt is fictional, and can be easily discarded. A slower, more thoughtful ending, however, brings the extra-ordinary conflicts of the novel down to a state of realistic order.
While I applaud his candid response, I wouldn't have had anything against him saying, "well folks, we've put out the two best games in their respective series"... because I feel both were. Twilight Princess combind the timeless epic quality of Ocarina of Time, but gave it the drama and heart that I feel that the series has lacked. Mario Galaxy may not quite beat out Mario 3 in my book, but both felt eerily similar in their inspired quality, and I think that Mario Galaxy is the best game since Mario 3. Now, all I feel they need to do with Zelda is do to TP, what Majora's Mask did to OoT, ie: fuck with it, do something out of left field that's not "normal" for Zelda. MM was my favorite game in the series until TP came along. TP is now probably my favorite game... period.
Portal was wonderful, don't get me wrong. However, it didn't present me with a full emotional and gameplay spectrum the way that Zelda or Mario do... it was a short vignette of a game, a very perfect one, for that matter. Don't know why I can put ICO at the top of my list but not Portal (similarly short), but something keeps Portal from reaching that high eschellon for me.