You mean like every Final Fantasy game since IX, excluding the online game (which I refuse to give it's numbered name, Square really screwed up that naming system there.
In case you didn't know, Revolution had openly said they weren't planning to make another Broken Sword game after The Sleeping Dragon. However, due to immense pressure from the fans, Charles Cecil turned around and said "yeah, ok" and now Broken Sword 4 is in the works.
BS3 had its flaws, most of them to do with the annoying crate puzzles and less conversation than the previous games. But some of the best puzzles were only possible thanks to the 3D engine, such as the channeling of the spooky blue light in a big tomb (puzzle with lots of mirrors!). I'm very hopeful that Revolution have taken these critisisms on board and will improve on BS4. If the story is as good as usual I'll still consider it worth the price of admission anyway.
You "apparently" don't actually know me, wow that's amazing...
Sorry but I am *not* of the mindset that I have to have omgoshlolzprettypictures to make games good. I just bought Darwinia, and I'm playing through Ocarina of Time which is pretty ugly compared to recent games.
I am also a HUGE adventure game fan, and so yes I know all about the Freelance Police fiasco, and that Telltale is mostly made up of the people who worked on it.
My comment about graphics is one that I find hard to explain, but essentially I think it looks like they didn't have the time to really polish the look of the game, and in my opinion the overall presentation suffered because of it. Grim Fandango, that's a fucking beautiful 3D adventure game, and it was released back in 1998. The Bone demo looked like a prototype, in appearance anyway.
I hate this attitude that is common among "serious" gamers that if you even give a shit about the quality of graphics (I'm not talking about the number of polygons, just how GOOD it looks, not the same as "realistic" or "shiny") then you must be a stupid kid who orgasms over pixel shaders and doesn't care about storyline.
As I said in my previous post, I really hope the demo was just a badly chosen point in the full game or that it was the only point that would work in a demo. I'd like to be proven wrong, but I was looking forward to Telltale's first adventure game and after playing the demo decided not to purchase the full game, feeling pretty disappointed.
Broken Sword dude, Broken Sword. That's all I should have to say to show I care about story.
Was "Bone: Out of Boneville", based on the Bone series of graphic novels/comics. I didn't buy the full $20 game, but I played the demo and I'm sorry but these guys have experience in making games like this and that demo is not a good example of an adventure title. I don't mind 3D, I don't mind action sequences. I do mind terrible voice-acting and bad graphics. They may have been going for a simplistic look, but....see for yourselfs at http://www.telltalegames.com/products?pc=bn0102&CI D=0&dlact=1
I'm a little worried about these guys having the Sam 'n' Max license to be honest, I hope their later attempts are better than the first Bone game. Or that the later demo versions better show what good games they are, if that's the case.
I've never played the AvP games, though I'm well aware of their accepted high level of quality and fun. I enjoyed AvP (the movie) though, certainly enough that I would see it again if I had a chance. It was fun and there was some cool action, the storyline was basic but it set up for what we wanted to see: Aliens Vx Predators Vs unlucky humans.
One could argue that lots of good games are released on more than one system. I see a lot of Nintendo fanboy friends sticking to stuff that's exclusive to their system because they believe it must be better than the "rubbish" you get on PS2 and Xbox. I feel very sorry for them:P
Also, three series I like that are PS2-only: Jak (and Daxter), Ratchet and Clank, Final Fantasy (the newer numbered ones). If Naughty Dog (J&D) and Insomniac (R&C) stay Sony-exclusive and FF games keep coming out on the PS range, I'll probably stick with Sony next-gen.
And make sure it's the Game of the Year Edition, that way you get both expansion packs. You can get it cheap too, since it's usually shelved with the budget titles (guess that makes it budget too...).
Anyway, stupidly high number of playing hours in Morrowind even without the expansions. With them.....well Oblivion might still be out too soon for you.
Perhaps the Nintendo Marketing Department should stop believing that gamers need to be told *how* to play games.
Nice suggestion though, it'd probably go down a treat and the fanboys would be able to say "Look, Nintendo listen to their fans! Aren't they so great!"
I suspect that technical specs only really matter to one group of people: the developers. I need to know the specs of my PC so I know what games it's capable of. A console has a defined specification that doesn't change during its lifetime (unless you buy a "core" system....), so you know a game for that console will run on the one you have at home. Also, much of the specs released for the Xbox360 and PS3 are gibberish to laymen. Having said that, I do like to know little things like this, but then I'm a developer.
If Nintendo's console is more powerful than rivals are suggesting maybe they should release them and say "Told you so!"?
"Halloween in real life is always much more interesting then Halloween in some computer game."
Now, I *am* making an assumption here, but...you're American, right? Here in the UK Halloween is basically a non-event, and I gather it's much like that in most other parts of the world. Oh sure the shops here sell themed crap, gives them something in between "Back to School" and "OMG only 2 months til Xmas LOL!", but it's mostly for little kids and even then there's not the trick or treat mentality that exists over the pond.
Anyway, just saying that for a lot of us, Halloween in a computer game is almost always more interesting than Halloween in real life.
Won't stop me dressing like a pimp on Monday night though.
I don't think this will happen. Estimates put around 70-80% of game production time in the next-gen being spent creating game content, as opposed to around 40% which it is now. I think all that extra time to make actual gameplay will more than make up for the more complex models/levels etc.
Re:Most ridiculous piece of hardware ever concepte
on
PS3 To Run At 120 FPS?
·
· Score: 1
Hmmm...you do know that it's not really getting ripped off? I mean, you'll be able to play the new games...so it's not like it's something that doesn't function. If it takes them a while to really get into the meat of the Cell then so what? Early adopters drive the market anyway, same with most new products.
And I *am* a programmer, and I know the Cell isn't ridiculous. Sorry, but I've just been (last week) at a Cell masterclass given by someone from the SCEE technology division. They answered all our questions straight up we all left feeling a lot more sure about things. No one said it would be perfect but trust me, it's going to be so much easier to program for than the current PS2 architecture. The bandwidth goes through the roof with this baby and the multiple processors are going to help make our code much more efficient. A lot of this is fixing the mistakes made with the Emotion Engine, but still I admire Sony's bravery at developing a multi-purpose chip for the whole gadget market.
Re:Most ridiculous piece of hardware ever concepte
on
PS3 To Run At 120 FPS?
·
· Score: 1
Think it's all a marketing tool? Read up in-depth about the Cell processor. PS3 has been pushed as the first big use for it, but as we know Sony and Co are pushing it for use in their TVs and all their other products with chips. They plan for the Cell to last at least 10 years. You can have more than one (it's apparently very easy to have 1,2,3,4... Cells linked together). It may take time to get everyone up to speed on using it (the guy that said 4 years is plain wrong, or very very mean-sprited, I've seen the charts and diagrams and it's going to be easier to work with than the PS2's Emotion Engine, thank god) but once they do the Cell will become part of all our lives, and I think for the better. As someone who is developing games for Playstation 2 on a day-by-day basis, this gets me very excited.
You have some good plans, waiting for games you want to play before buying the console is a much better idea than snapping it up in the "OMG" phase at launch. However,
"The only thing next gen consoles will have to offer is better graphics"
is very, very wrong. Next gen, games are going to change a lot. The way developers create games is going to change, with middleware becoming the "way things are done now" so that they can concentrate on content over building game engines etc. This isn't just spin, this is the hard facts. Whether developers choose to use the time they will save to add more content (read, "more gameplay") into their games is another matter, but the days of great looking games that have only a few hours playtime will be numbered, no gamer will stand for it anymore. In fact, Sony just bought a big middleware company (don't remember the name) and they are really pushing the middleware side of things to developers to help them make better games and not spend all their money on stuff that goes behind the scenes. I'm very excited about the next-gen of console gaming, and suspect the PS3 will lead in a lot of areas. Xbox 360 is almost here though and already has some kickass games (Oblivion, anyone?).
I heard most of this stuff in-person from someone in SCEE's Technology division, in case people think I'm just repeating PR ads.
Problem being when I signed up for the domain I got a 10meg inbox or something. Spam fills that up pretty fast if you're away for a few days.
But yeah you're right, if I went about it with any sense I could have a domain and not die from spam. But I like Gmail anyway, it's got nice colours!
I actually had my own domain for two years, it expired a couple of weeks back. However, I'd stopped using it for e-mail months ago. The spam load was unbearable. And this was with Thunderbird and it's "intelligent" spam filter. I think spam will likely fill any e-mail address I get, might as well get one with a massive inbox that I don't have to pay for.
And yes, I have tried to be more careful with giving out my address, seems to be working so far:)
I too was confused by this. I switched over to using Gmail as my primary e-mail account in the summer, I'd hate to have to go to all the websites I visit and change my stored address AGAIN...when this time I wouldn't be getting anything new for all the bother.
Personally this has been my final wish for a few years, and though I don't expect to die for a long time I've told my family that this is the way I want to go.
Why? Ego, possibly. Plus it sounds so fucking cool. And hey, much more chance of finding technology to bring dead people back to life out on some other planet than here on Earth.
I just need to survive long enough for high-speed space technology to be around, don't want to be a rotted corpse by the time the big-headed aliens find me.
You're correct in a general sense, but I'm an avid gamer AND a teenage "boy" (like to think of myself as a man, but maybe that's the "rather stupid" part) who likes gameplay over graphics. However, far too many gamers who try to distance themselves from the moronic public say "graphics aren't what matters! Gameplay is the only thing that matters to me"
Of course, that's until Nintendo shows off a new game trailer with realism as the style (new Zelda for instance)and they go "my god that game looks gorgeous." or I mention Grim Fandango and they say "I tried to play that recently but y'know the graphics..."
I hate fanboys.
Sorry for the rant, I'm on a course which is about 50% made up of Nintendo fanboys. Back ontopic: we're not all like that and impressed by flashy graphics with no gameplay to back them up. However, just because a game looks great doesn't mean it doesn't have great content behind it. Half-Life 2 was a game I loved to pieces, and also looks beautiful.
The movie is really quite different from the series. Not just in length, but there's a lot more action and one-liners, and a lot less of the whole gang sitting around together. But such is taking a tv show to a full length feature film, and I think Joss did a great job. If you thought the series was ok I think you'll at least think the same of the movie. I just saw it with 15 people and we all enjoyed it, I doubt the 13 people who were Firefly virgins would all enjoy the series with no exceptions.
Give it a go:)
Slashdot Mirror
You mean like every Final Fantasy game since IX, excluding the online game (which I refuse to give it's numbered name, Square really screwed up that naming system there.
In case you didn't know, Revolution had openly said they weren't planning to make another Broken Sword game after The Sleeping Dragon. However, due to immense pressure from the fans, Charles Cecil turned around and said "yeah, ok" and now Broken Sword 4 is in the works. BS3 had its flaws, most of them to do with the annoying crate puzzles and less conversation than the previous games. But some of the best puzzles were only possible thanks to the 3D engine, such as the channeling of the spooky blue light in a big tomb (puzzle with lots of mirrors!). I'm very hopeful that Revolution have taken these critisisms on board and will improve on BS4. If the story is as good as usual I'll still consider it worth the price of admission anyway.
Kings Quest games were evil, fact. As were the Space Quest series, though there was less death in them IIRC.
You "apparently" don't actually know me, wow that's amazing... Sorry but I am *not* of the mindset that I have to have omgoshlolzprettypictures to make games good. I just bought Darwinia, and I'm playing through Ocarina of Time which is pretty ugly compared to recent games. I am also a HUGE adventure game fan, and so yes I know all about the Freelance Police fiasco, and that Telltale is mostly made up of the people who worked on it. My comment about graphics is one that I find hard to explain, but essentially I think it looks like they didn't have the time to really polish the look of the game, and in my opinion the overall presentation suffered because of it. Grim Fandango, that's a fucking beautiful 3D adventure game, and it was released back in 1998. The Bone demo looked like a prototype, in appearance anyway. I hate this attitude that is common among "serious" gamers that if you even give a shit about the quality of graphics (I'm not talking about the number of polygons, just how GOOD it looks, not the same as "realistic" or "shiny") then you must be a stupid kid who orgasms over pixel shaders and doesn't care about storyline. As I said in my previous post, I really hope the demo was just a badly chosen point in the full game or that it was the only point that would work in a demo. I'd like to be proven wrong, but I was looking forward to Telltale's first adventure game and after playing the demo decided not to purchase the full game, feeling pretty disappointed. Broken Sword dude, Broken Sword. That's all I should have to say to show I care about story.
Was "Bone: Out of Boneville", based on the Bone series of graphic novels/comics. I didn't buy the full $20 game, but I played the demo and I'm sorry but these guys have experience in making games like this and that demo is not a good example of an adventure title. I don't mind 3D, I don't mind action sequences. I do mind terrible voice-acting and bad graphics. They may have been going for a simplistic look, but....see for yourselfs at http://www.telltalegames.com/products?pc=bn0102&CI D=0&dlact=1
I'm a little worried about these guys having the Sam 'n' Max license to be honest, I hope their later attempts are better than the first Bone game. Or that the later demo versions better show what good games they are, if that's the case.
I've never played the AvP games, though I'm well aware of their accepted high level of quality and fun. I enjoyed AvP (the movie) though, certainly enough that I would see it again if I had a chance. It was fun and there was some cool action, the storyline was basic but it set up for what we wanted to see: Aliens Vx Predators Vs unlucky humans.
One could argue that lots of good games are released on more than one system. I see a lot of Nintendo fanboy friends sticking to stuff that's exclusive to their system because they believe it must be better than the "rubbish" you get on PS2 and Xbox. I feel very sorry for them :P
Also, three series I like that are PS2-only: Jak (and Daxter), Ratchet and Clank, Final Fantasy (the newer numbered ones). If Naughty Dog (J&D) and Insomniac (R&C) stay Sony-exclusive and FF games keep coming out on the PS range, I'll probably stick with Sony next-gen.
And make sure it's the Game of the Year Edition, that way you get both expansion packs. You can get it cheap too, since it's usually shelved with the budget titles (guess that makes it budget too...). Anyway, stupidly high number of playing hours in Morrowind even without the expansions. With them.....well Oblivion might still be out too soon for you.
Perhaps the Nintendo Marketing Department should stop believing that gamers need to be told *how* to play games. Nice suggestion though, it'd probably go down a treat and the fanboys would be able to say "Look, Nintendo listen to their fans! Aren't they so great!"
I suspect that technical specs only really matter to one group of people: the developers. I need to know the specs of my PC so I know what games it's capable of. A console has a defined specification that doesn't change during its lifetime (unless you buy a "core" system....), so you know a game for that console will run on the one you have at home. Also, much of the specs released for the Xbox360 and PS3 are gibberish to laymen. Having said that, I do like to know little things like this, but then I'm a developer. If Nintendo's console is more powerful than rivals are suggesting maybe they should release them and say "Told you so!"?
Not if you were quoting a made up quote. I wasn't though, my bad.
The robots with male-ended cables will utter: "Hey baby, wanna destroy all humans?" And now, some more Futurama quotes from fellow Slashdotters:
Whoever modded this "funny" made my day :D
"Halloween in real life is always much more interesting then Halloween in some computer game." Now, I *am* making an assumption here, but...you're American, right? Here in the UK Halloween is basically a non-event, and I gather it's much like that in most other parts of the world. Oh sure the shops here sell themed crap, gives them something in between "Back to School" and "OMG only 2 months til Xmas LOL!", but it's mostly for little kids and even then there's not the trick or treat mentality that exists over the pond. Anyway, just saying that for a lot of us, Halloween in a computer game is almost always more interesting than Halloween in real life. Won't stop me dressing like a pimp on Monday night though.
I don't think this will happen. Estimates put around 70-80% of game production time in the next-gen being spent creating game content, as opposed to around 40% which it is now. I think all that extra time to make actual gameplay will more than make up for the more complex models/levels etc.
Hmmm...you do know that it's not really getting ripped off? I mean, you'll be able to play the new games...so it's not like it's something that doesn't function. If it takes them a while to really get into the meat of the Cell then so what? Early adopters drive the market anyway, same with most new products. And I *am* a programmer, and I know the Cell isn't ridiculous. Sorry, but I've just been (last week) at a Cell masterclass given by someone from the SCEE technology division. They answered all our questions straight up we all left feeling a lot more sure about things. No one said it would be perfect but trust me, it's going to be so much easier to program for than the current PS2 architecture. The bandwidth goes through the roof with this baby and the multiple processors are going to help make our code much more efficient. A lot of this is fixing the mistakes made with the Emotion Engine, but still I admire Sony's bravery at developing a multi-purpose chip for the whole gadget market.
Think it's all a marketing tool? Read up in-depth about the Cell processor. PS3 has been pushed as the first big use for it, but as we know Sony and Co are pushing it for use in their TVs and all their other products with chips. They plan for the Cell to last at least 10 years. You can have more than one (it's apparently very easy to have 1,2,3,4... Cells linked together). It may take time to get everyone up to speed on using it (the guy that said 4 years is plain wrong, or very very mean-sprited, I've seen the charts and diagrams and it's going to be easier to work with than the PS2's Emotion Engine, thank god) but once they do the Cell will become part of all our lives, and I think for the better. As someone who is developing games for Playstation 2 on a day-by-day basis, this gets me very excited.
You have some good plans, waiting for games you want to play before buying the console is a much better idea than snapping it up in the "OMG" phase at launch. However, "The only thing next gen consoles will have to offer is better graphics" is very, very wrong. Next gen, games are going to change a lot. The way developers create games is going to change, with middleware becoming the "way things are done now" so that they can concentrate on content over building game engines etc. This isn't just spin, this is the hard facts. Whether developers choose to use the time they will save to add more content (read, "more gameplay") into their games is another matter, but the days of great looking games that have only a few hours playtime will be numbered, no gamer will stand for it anymore. In fact, Sony just bought a big middleware company (don't remember the name) and they are really pushing the middleware side of things to developers to help them make better games and not spend all their money on stuff that goes behind the scenes. I'm very excited about the next-gen of console gaming, and suspect the PS3 will lead in a lot of areas. Xbox 360 is almost here though and already has some kickass games (Oblivion, anyone?). I heard most of this stuff in-person from someone in SCEE's Technology division, in case people think I'm just repeating PR ads.
Problem being when I signed up for the domain I got a 10meg inbox or something. Spam fills that up pretty fast if you're away for a few days. But yeah you're right, if I went about it with any sense I could have a domain and not die from spam. But I like Gmail anyway, it's got nice colours!
I actually had my own domain for two years, it expired a couple of weeks back. However, I'd stopped using it for e-mail months ago. The spam load was unbearable. And this was with Thunderbird and it's "intelligent" spam filter. I think spam will likely fill any e-mail address I get, might as well get one with a massive inbox that I don't have to pay for. And yes, I have tried to be more careful with giving out my address, seems to be working so far :)
I guess if this is all sorted nicely and I don't have to lose my gmail.com suffix I can celebrate by doing the David Brent dance :D
I too was confused by this. I switched over to using Gmail as my primary e-mail account in the summer, I'd hate to have to go to all the websites I visit and change my stored address AGAIN...when this time I wouldn't be getting anything new for all the bother.
Personally this has been my final wish for a few years, and though I don't expect to die for a long time I've told my family that this is the way I want to go. Why? Ego, possibly. Plus it sounds so fucking cool. And hey, much more chance of finding technology to bring dead people back to life out on some other planet than here on Earth. I just need to survive long enough for high-speed space technology to be around, don't want to be a rotted corpse by the time the big-headed aliens find me.
You're correct in a general sense, but I'm an avid gamer AND a teenage "boy" (like to think of myself as a man, but maybe that's the "rather stupid" part) who likes gameplay over graphics. However, far too many gamers who try to distance themselves from the moronic public say "graphics aren't what matters! Gameplay is the only thing that matters to me" Of course, that's until Nintendo shows off a new game trailer with realism as the style (new Zelda for instance)and they go "my god that game looks gorgeous." or I mention Grim Fandango and they say "I tried to play that recently but y'know the graphics..." I hate fanboys. Sorry for the rant, I'm on a course which is about 50% made up of Nintendo fanboys. Back ontopic: we're not all like that and impressed by flashy graphics with no gameplay to back them up. However, just because a game looks great doesn't mean it doesn't have great content behind it. Half-Life 2 was a game I loved to pieces, and also looks beautiful.
The movie is really quite different from the series. Not just in length, but there's a lot more action and one-liners, and a lot less of the whole gang sitting around together. But such is taking a tv show to a full length feature film, and I think Joss did a great job. If you thought the series was ok I think you'll at least think the same of the movie. I just saw it with 15 people and we all enjoyed it, I doubt the 13 people who were Firefly virgins would all enjoy the series with no exceptions. Give it a go :)