I attended Nintendo's launch event in Los Angeles Saturday night and it was packed with people. I don't think even Nintendo expected this many people to be there. The PR folks kept assuring us there would be more than enough Wiis to go around even without a preorder, but sadly that wasn't the case. They ran out of wristbands for the people in line a few hours before the launch hour and people had to be turned away. Overall, the event was pretty disorganized and when they finally started selling Wiis, the line moved at a sluggish pace.
I don't see why it should ever take this long to move a line. You go in, you say, "Hi I'd like a Wii and X games. No warantee, thanks." Then you pay. But I think there were people who actually waited in line for hours who got to the checkout counter and said, "So...what game do you think is good?"
It's not odd that Rez is absent from this list. While Rez is a game driven by music and rhythm, you don't actually need to have rhythm to play it. Your shots fire on beat in rhythm with the music automatically.
No wonder the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory game was so awful. David was too busy watching cinematics and writing articles to develop a decent game. Fortunately, the cinematics in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory skippable. Unfortunately, skipping some of the cinematics caused bugs.
I enjoyed the first released portion of the Minerva mod, but I couldn't help but feel annoyed by the AI that would tell me what to do in key parts of the map. It seemed like the AI was trying too hard to be a wise-ass and/or esoteric and it didn't really blend in with the overall mood of the rest of the mod. I did like the music picking up towards the end when the enemies really started running at me, though.
I've dated and had serious relationships with boys who are gamers and it never really worked out for me. It wasn't that he played too much games, but that we both played too much games. In one relationship, it got to be a serious strain because we were both so competetive about it. In another relationship, we ended up talking to each other through team-chat more than we did in real life. Now that I'm starting a relationship with a non-gamer boy it's different and something I'm still not used to.
Him on the phone: Blah blah blah
me: Yeah uh huh *click click click*
him: Are you playing a video game?!
me: Yeah, why?
him: Stop playing so you can pay attention to me.
me: I can play and talk at the same time!
him: Call me back when you're not playing.
*click*
I found out that L1 works wonders when paired up with the bow and arrow. L1 will target the colossus, and after that all you need to do is shoot that arrow.
I noticed that even though the game tells you to draw a circle if you want to magnifying something, the game recognizes the circle about 50% of the time. Drawing a small incomplete circle, like a 'C' almost always gets picked up as a circle.
The commentary, while informative, reminded me of sitting in class in highschool and being forced to listen to oral reports students were reading off of their paper.
I forgot how fun the gravity gun was. Picking up the harpoon from the fenced door and shooting it at a combine so that he gets stuck to the wall is worth a laugh or two.
I attended the event at the Hollywood Bowl and bought some cheap bench tickets for about $16 (pre Ticket-master eye-gouging inconvenience fees) and was pretty disappointed at the whole thing.
There was a lot of back-patting going on, for which I blame on Tommy Talarico. I still can't believe music from crap games like Advent Rising (Talarico did the music for this) and Headhunter was included in a concert that also features Mario Brothers and Halo.
My experience was further soured by sitting in front of a group of ignorant boys who referred to themselves as gamers just because they hopped on the Halo bandwagon. I'm not trying to put down the Halosexuals, but these guys were whining through-out the whole concert, "Halo! Where's Halo? OMG I wanna hear Halo!" and then they would proceed to start singing the gregorian chant that starts the theme song. In between whining, they were trying to impress each other with their gaming "knowledge." when clips of MYST were shown on screen, one of them shouted to the other, "Oh! I played that on the Playstation! It was SO awesome, but really really bloody." When Castlevania was shown on screen, another one called it Mario Brothers. I would understand it if these guys were younger and grew up after Mario Brothers, but they were at least in their mid twenties.
Then there was some sound equipment debacle when the Halo song was finally played (as the grand finale) and Steve Vai's guitar wasn't hooked up to the amp at all.
I believe the real reason the concert was cancelled was that too many people realized how much of a tool Tommy Talarico really is and demanded their money back.
I agree with most of the comments made that women should stop making a big deal about, "OMG, I'm a girl and I play games, so I should be treated equally. BTW, I'm a girl. Don't treat me like one. I'm a girl."
I don't understand how making an all girl clan is supposed to level the playing field. It only calls more attention to the fact that the players are female. I've played many online games, mainly FPS, and I've never encountered any type of harassment for being a girl and I've never been excluded an invitation to a clan. Most clans aren't exclusively men, so why the necessity to make an all-women one? It makes me think of real-life sports. Most sports teams separate men from women because men are usually physically stronger than women. By creating a clan separate from men in the gaming world, isn't that what these women are implying?
That brings me to the question of why does there need to be gender in online games? Most FPS games only have male models, so I just assume there's only one gender in the online world. It's not like gender affects gameplay, so why is it even an issue?
The only time gender comes up is when I'm using voice-chat and usually it's someone commenting, "Wow, you sound like an 10 year old boy" and I just laugh at it and continue the game.
I love how if you turn the controller horizontally, it looks like the original NES controller. That would come in handy for the old NES games in the Revolution's archive.
I think we're all forgetting that everyone's hands are different sizes. The dual shock controller is perfect for me because I have a small hands and my thumbs naturally fall on the analog sticks. The BF, however, hates that controller and prefers the Xbox S-controllers because his hands are better and his thumb naturally rests on the left analog stick on that.
Yes, there's a timer, but the game goes much faster if people would just click the "ready" button after their turn. I've had perfectly smooth games where everyone was courteous and clicked "ready" when done, and other not so smooth games where people actually said, "BRB, feeding the cat!"
In a battle with more than 5 players, it takes a while if everyone's waiting for that one person to finish feeding the cat.
I played some of it in open beta and it's a little like FF-tactics with a pretty bad French to English translation. However, it's still playable and I would have enjoyed it more if the battles weren't so slow due to players forgetting to "complete" their turns.
We all know that real gamers don't watch TV. They're too busy trying to get a mount on WoW.
I think G4 caters to the new-money type gamers who have just discovered it in the current generation. They're the ones who think Halo singleplayer is the greatest game ever made, and the ones who rush out to get Madden 200N (insert N for current year) on launch day.
This month's Game Informer has an article addressing this same issue. I think the title was "The Greying of the Super Mario Crowd" or something similar. Basically, the article talked about how the game industry is catering to the people who played Mario Bros as kids, but are now older and have more mature tastes. When they were younger, they played Nintendo; when they aged, Nintendo was too kiddy for them, so they migrated to SNES and Sega. Then it was PS, then it was PS2 and so on.
While I think this is a great idea, I have to disagree with the idea that the game industry is more focused on older gamers. I used to work for a game publisher (the one we're all sick of hearing about these days) and our most profitable games were not the M or Teen rated games, but the kids' games. I never would have thought that if I hadn't started working there, but I think it's because we're all older and out of touch with what kids (10 and under) are into.
I don't think the industry needs to market to these kids though. Most of the kids games tie in to some kind of cartoon, kids movie (Charlie And the Chocolate Factory, anyone?), toy, etc. The kids already know of the characters and would probably want to buy the game just because it has their favorite cartoon character on the box. The thing with these games is that it's parent-friendly too. A non-game-savvy parent may stop by Toys R Us on the way back from work to pick junior up a treat. Is the parent going to buy some game he's never heard of, but there are posters of all over the store? Probably not. The parent will buy Kids Next Door or Britney's Dance Beat because he knows junior likes watching that on TV.
Before I get marked as a troll, I would like to say that I'm of the fairer sex and I love video games. In all honesty, I would much rather play a game featuring a slender female body with curves in just the right places than a game featuring a 40 year old obese woman in a muumuu. Sorry, I have nothing against people who wear muumuus, but in the same way I don't want to see them on the fashion runway, I don't want to see them in my video game.
I see nothing wrong with flesh-bearing outfits on video game women. They have beautiful, cartoonish bodies which were designed to be shown off. I think people who complain about video game women not looking "realistic" should listen to themselves. It's a video game; it's not real life.
I don't know how other people play games, but when I play a game, I pay more attention to the gameplay, the graphics, the storyline, and the music, than to the measurements of each female character to grace the screen. Sure, when I play DOA, I laugh because it's amusing and think, "Wow, she's so big, bouncy, and perky when she jumps" but that's about it. I don't feel any outrage just because 99.9% of the women in the world don't have Katsumi's figure.
The type of women who complain about video game women being too busty or bearing too much skin seem maybe a bit defensive or insecure about their own looks. I'm not 5' 8", weigh 100lbs, and wear a size 34D cup like the DOA girls, but I don't mind. Those girls are designed and put into the game to look good, and they serve their purpose.
Slashdot Mirror
I attended Nintendo's launch event in Los Angeles Saturday night and it was packed with people. I don't think even Nintendo expected this many people to be there. The PR folks kept assuring us there would be more than enough Wiis to go around even without a preorder, but sadly that wasn't the case. They ran out of wristbands for the people in line a few hours before the launch hour and people had to be turned away. Overall, the event was pretty disorganized and when they finally started selling Wiis, the line moved at a sluggish pace.
I don't see why it should ever take this long to move a line. You go in, you say, "Hi I'd like a Wii and X games. No warantee, thanks." Then you pay. But I think there were people who actually waited in line for hours who got to the checkout counter and said, "So...what game do you think is good?"
There's a full recount with pics on my site.
Why can't game developers finish the story the first time around?
The cost of games makes my wallet cry.
How can you vote for something you haven't played before?
It's not odd that Rez is absent from this list. While Rez is a game driven by music and rhythm, you don't actually need to have rhythm to play it. Your shots fire on beat in rhythm with the music automatically.
No wonder the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory game was so awful. David was too busy watching cinematics and writing articles to develop a decent game. Fortunately, the cinematics in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory skippable. Unfortunately, skipping some of the cinematics caused bugs.
I enjoyed the first released portion of the Minerva mod, but I couldn't help but feel annoyed by the AI that would tell me what to do in key parts of the map. It seemed like the AI was trying too hard to be a wise-ass and/or esoteric and it didn't really blend in with the overall mood of the rest of the mod. I did like the music picking up towards the end when the enemies really started running at me, though.
Him on the phone: Blah blah blah
I think it's going well.me: Yeah uh huh *click click click*
him: Are you playing a video game?!
me: Yeah, why?
him: Stop playing so you can pay attention to me.
me: I can play and talk at the same time!
him: Call me back when you're not playing.
*click*
Yes, Flash is ok. Just look at how Alien Hominid got started.
I found out that L1 works wonders when paired up with the bow and arrow. L1 will target the colossus, and after that all you need to do is shoot that arrow.
I noticed that even though the game tells you to draw a circle if you want to magnifying something, the game recognizes the circle about 50% of the time. Drawing a small incomplete circle, like a 'C' almost always gets picked up as a circle.
I forgot how fun the gravity gun was. Picking up the harpoon from the fenced door and shooting it at a combine so that he gets stuck to the wall is worth a laugh or two.
There was a lot of back-patting going on, for which I blame on Tommy Talarico. I still can't believe music from crap games like Advent Rising (Talarico did the music for this) and Headhunter was included in a concert that also features Mario Brothers and Halo.
My experience was further soured by sitting in front of a group of ignorant boys who referred to themselves as gamers just because they hopped on the Halo bandwagon. I'm not trying to put down the Halosexuals, but these guys were whining through-out the whole concert, "Halo! Where's Halo? OMG I wanna hear Halo!" and then they would proceed to start singing the gregorian chant that starts the theme song. In between whining, they were trying to impress each other with their gaming "knowledge." when clips of MYST were shown on screen, one of them shouted to the other, "Oh! I played that on the Playstation! It was SO awesome, but really really bloody." When Castlevania was shown on screen, another one called it Mario Brothers. I would understand it if these guys were younger and grew up after Mario Brothers, but they were at least in their mid twenties.
Then there was some sound equipment debacle when the Halo song was finally played (as the grand finale) and Steve Vai's guitar wasn't hooked up to the amp at all.
I believe the real reason the concert was cancelled was that too many people realized how much of a tool Tommy Talarico really is and demanded their money back.
I agree with most of the comments made that women should stop making a big deal about, "OMG, I'm a girl and I play games, so I should be treated equally. BTW, I'm a girl. Don't treat me like one. I'm a girl." I don't understand how making an all girl clan is supposed to level the playing field. It only calls more attention to the fact that the players are female. I've played many online games, mainly FPS, and I've never encountered any type of harassment for being a girl and I've never been excluded an invitation to a clan. Most clans aren't exclusively men, so why the necessity to make an all-women one? It makes me think of real-life sports. Most sports teams separate men from women because men are usually physically stronger than women. By creating a clan separate from men in the gaming world, isn't that what these women are implying? That brings me to the question of why does there need to be gender in online games? Most FPS games only have male models, so I just assume there's only one gender in the online world. It's not like gender affects gameplay, so why is it even an issue? The only time gender comes up is when I'm using voice-chat and usually it's someone commenting, "Wow, you sound like an 10 year old boy" and I just laugh at it and continue the game.
I love how if you turn the controller horizontally, it looks like the original NES controller. That would come in handy for the old NES games in the Revolution's archive.
I think we're all forgetting that everyone's hands are different sizes. The dual shock controller is perfect for me because I have a small hands and my thumbs naturally fall on the analog sticks. The BF, however, hates that controller and prefers the Xbox S-controllers because his hands are better and his thumb naturally rests on the left analog stick on that.
I think their monthly price for the US server is $6.66 a month, but I could be wrong.
In a battle with more than 5 players, it takes a while if everyone's waiting for that one person to finish feeding the cat.
Dofus
I played some of it in open beta and it's a little like FF-tactics with a pretty bad French to English translation. However, it's still playable and I would have enjoyed it more if the battles weren't so slow due to players forgetting to "complete" their turns.We all know that real gamers don't watch TV. They're too busy trying to get a mount on WoW. I think G4 caters to the new-money type gamers who have just discovered it in the current generation. They're the ones who think Halo singleplayer is the greatest game ever made, and the ones who rush out to get Madden 200N (insert N for current year) on launch day.
Sorry, I meant it as, Charlie and the Chocolate factory game, which is very much for kids.
This month's Game Informer has an article addressing this same issue. I think the title was "The Greying of the Super Mario Crowd" or something similar. Basically, the article talked about how the game industry is catering to the people who played Mario Bros as kids, but are now older and have more mature tastes. When they were younger, they played Nintendo; when they aged, Nintendo was too kiddy for them, so they migrated to SNES and Sega. Then it was PS, then it was PS2 and so on.
While I think this is a great idea, I have to disagree with the idea that the game industry is more focused on older gamers. I used to work for a game publisher (the one we're all sick of hearing about these days) and our most profitable games were not the M or Teen rated games, but the kids' games. I never would have thought that if I hadn't started working there, but I think it's because we're all older and out of touch with what kids (10 and under) are into.
I don't think the industry needs to market to these kids though. Most of the kids games tie in to some kind of cartoon, kids movie (Charlie And the Chocolate Factory, anyone?), toy, etc. The kids already know of the characters and would probably want to buy the game just because it has their favorite cartoon character on the box. The thing with these games is that it's parent-friendly too. A non-game-savvy parent may stop by Toys R Us on the way back from work to pick junior up a treat. Is the parent going to buy some game he's never heard of, but there are posters of all over the store? Probably not. The parent will buy Kids Next Door or Britney's Dance Beat because he knows junior likes watching that on TV.
Before I get marked as a troll, I would like to say that I'm of the fairer sex and I love video games. In all honesty, I would much rather play a game featuring a slender female body with curves in just the right places than a game featuring a 40 year old obese woman in a muumuu. Sorry, I have nothing against people who wear muumuus, but in the same way I don't want to see them on the fashion runway, I don't want to see them in my video game.
I see nothing wrong with flesh-bearing outfits on video game women. They have beautiful, cartoonish bodies which were designed to be shown off. I think people who complain about video game women not looking "realistic" should listen to themselves. It's a video game; it's not real life.
I don't know how other people play games, but when I play a game, I pay more attention to the gameplay, the graphics, the storyline, and the music, than to the measurements of each female character to grace the screen. Sure, when I play DOA, I laugh because it's amusing and think, "Wow, she's so big, bouncy, and perky when she jumps" but that's about it. I don't feel any outrage just because 99.9% of the women in the world don't have Katsumi's figure.
The type of women who complain about video game women being too busty or bearing too much skin seem maybe a bit defensive or insecure about their own looks. I'm not 5' 8", weigh 100lbs, and wear a size 34D cup like the DOA girls, but I don't mind. Those girls are designed and put into the game to look good, and they serve their purpose.