The gameplay/graphics were quite good for mgs2, but the story was an atrocity. Convoluted, unbelievable (even for a video game), and at times just silly. The voice acting was decent, but the dialog that drove that voice acting was just awful.
On a side note, the voice of Snake - David Hayter - cowrote the screenplay for X-Men and X-Men 2.
The engine definitely looks dated. Probably a function of decision to design a game that would be released on PC and the three consoles simultaneously. I'm sure that the PC version has better graphics than, say, the gamecube version, but I'm guessing that they had to shoot at a lowest common denominator with respect to the core engine. From that point, they probably just bumped up texture resolution on the platforms that could handle it and maybe added a couple additional graphical touches.
However, the graphics are good enough for me to forgive everything if the game has good gameplay and and an engaging story. I'd like to see how the wachowski's (sp?) fair in this medium. On a side note, I hear that they insisted upon the main actors doing their own mo-cap recording.
The introduction of the dock pisses me off. One of the great things about the old ipod was that you could use it as a firewire drive and just plug it into any computer.
Now with the new model if I want to share the drive amongst my work & home computers, do I need to buy two docks? If so, it seems like a step backward. I don't even see the option to buy extra docks at the apple store.
I can see why they introduced the dock (a way to accommodate usb2.0 without sacrificing smaller form-factor), but it seems they are gaining one feature people don't need (most people with usb2.0 also have firewire) at the expense of a feature that was truly useful.
Please tell me if I'm wrong about this... otherwise I need to hunt down an old iPod.
Could we soon see Apple-branded, multibutton, scrolling mice?"
No. This rumor flares up before every macworld. After macworld, apple stays with the one button mouse. This has been a consistent pattern ever since 1984.
As for the patent. Intriguing? Yes. Garuantee that this will be a product? Hardly. Between 2001-2003 Apple has been awarded around 30 patents And has applied for about 30 more patents. Of those 60+ only a fraction will probably make it into future hardware.
Hey, TF2 also appeared at E3... in 1999. It's still not out. Valve has not had an official comment since 2001. So, why is anyone getting excited about this announcement?
Don't get me wrong. Half-life was a good game. Still is. It's so good, in fact, that it has spawned a grass-roots development community that has been incredibly prolific.
Still though, I've lost patience. In five years, Valve has made one game. ONE GAME. That's only one more game than I've made and I'm not even trying.
Oh, they've also become quite good at taking the mod's and add-ons developed by other people and putting them in cardboard boxes. Kudos, Valve. Oh, and there's Steam: their nifty content delivery mechanism for downloading that one game they've made.
"You might try taking your own advice. Using an ad hominem attack because you've run out of relevant things to say isn't a very polished debate technique."
"This page-ranking nonsense almost guarantees that hard to find things remain hard to find. Why? Because the easier to find things float to the top (people have *found* them and linked to them)."
Nonsense. Google's page ranking system ensures that less popular things will remain less popular because, *shocker*, it is rarer that people will click through to things they are less interested in.
Would you prefer alternative? That google return arbitrary matches and assign no weight to more popular click throughs? You'd wind up with infoseek circa 6 years ago. You can have it man, I'll stay with google.
I don't get this counter-culture behaviour of resenting popular things. Now that Google is "big", people knock it. Grow up.
So, let me get this straight. Basically, the argument is "you stole our word!!" We're talking about one colloquialism's meaning competing with another. Spare me.
Google didn't kill your word. This is a non-issue.
So, I'm fuzzy on the whole method overloading thing (I know zilch about PHP, sorry).
If I want to have two methods with the same name (but have different number of args), I have to implement a function called "__call()"? Doesn't that mean that I have to write all the logic for which execution path gets taken based upon the method name and arguments passed into __call()?
Could a PHP expert help me out here, because unless I'm mistaken that looks unbelievably hokey. With Java, I can write two functions
foo(int a); foo(int a, int b);
...and the runtime would be able to route calls to the right function. Is this not how PHP works?
um, no... they're just subscribing with their parents' information instead. I can tell you that they *are* excluding the bank accounts of anyone under 18. Not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure they can't contractually obligate a minor in such a way (at least in the USA, probably elsewhere as well).
The problem with the Sony solution is that the consumer is left in the position of having to set up several subscriptions to different publishers. So, if you have five premium games (some ps2 online games have no subscription model) from five seperate publishers , there are five sets of forms to fill out, five credit checks, and five bills (some monthly, some bimonthly, etc). What a friggin hassle.
And that's not even addressing the technical side of things. On XBL, you have one user account, one buddy list, and the voice communication works regardless of the game. On the PS2, things aren't as consistent. Some games support voice com, some dont. Some games require seperate buddy lists. The developer is forced with figuring out a middleware solution (no small task).
I can understand EA's motives, but let's not be under any impression that the Sony solution is more consumer-friendly. In fact, calling it a "solution" is being kind -- as they are basically telling the consumer "Here's your network card... you're on your own."
I also have an ASUS board with spoken BIOS notifications. Let me tell you, if there is anything worse than booting up and hearing a slightly different beep pattern, it's hearing a metallic, 2khz sampled, vaguely feminine voice scream out "SYSTEM FAIL CPU TEST SYSTEM FAIL CPU TEST" over and over and over again on your quadraphonic speaker system. I'm surprised my wife didn't have a heart attack.
However, I'm all for losing text mode startup(and all that other 20 year old legacy cruft). If anything, it'll be one less thing the Mac crowd can point and laugh about.
Even if you removed the screenscraping modules you wouldn't even come closs to solving the "problem" these website operators are having. Both Microsoft and (I think) Sun have XML api's that allow you to ssue http requests and easily access what the server sends back. Even if you didn't have a high-level "screenscraper", you could always go through the sockets api. Hell, if I want to find out the type of server a website is using I just open a telnet connection to port 80 and type
GET <document_name> HTTP/1.0
...hit the return key twice and boom. Being that easy, I'm sure there are tons of developers that screenscrap without even using a mod.
If a website operator is having their copyrighted content lifted by another site and presented as its own, then that operator can sue using traditional copyright law. If they are having their website slammed because some clueless developer is scraping too often, they can block the IP. But trying to restrict access to the api is heavy-handed and futile.
Okay, damnit. I just don't get it. Please, tell me what is so great about Nolan Bushnell? Let's see. He drove Atari into the ground. He drove the Commodore CDTV into the ground. He drove Chuck E. Cheese into the ground. He founded a robotics company called Androbot and a technology Incubator called Catalyst. Heard of them? No?? Oh yeah, they're history.
Read the metroactivearticle -- it's the most fair. By his own admission, he didn't invent videogames, he commercialized them.
At best, Nolan Bushnell is a one hit wonder who stumbled upon an industry that would have flourished with or without him. Trip Hawkins founded EA, let's celebrate his birthday instead.
This flies in the face of the rumor mill that has been rumbling that *all* iMacs were going to be 17" or larger. Although I think this article is more believable.
I don't get the reference to the "now-history 15" iMac...". Did the poster mean to imply that the 15" iMac is being phased out, or that the 15" iMac has waned in it's popularity. Surely apple isn't phasing out *both* the 15" and 17" iMacs. right?
Actually, no, read the article, in fact, do a google search of your own.
I did.
The designers of the game actually designed the delays and risk/reward system to tightly mirror a skinner box model
You have no proof of this. The article does not make the claim that any designer from Verant specificically cited the Skinner Box model. The gameplay is not terribly different from any other online game (it's a MUD with graphics). You could level the same claim on ANY other MMORPG because they all have similar reward systems.
If you ever really played everquest you'd know what I say is true, Everquest is designed around addiction, not fun.
I have played the game. For approximately one week. I didn't like it. Strangely, I didn't experience the heroin-like withdrawl of which you speak.
Yet, given my involvment in the MMORPG community (I run one of the most successful DAoC guilds gamewide...
Oh, *now* I get it. You're a zealot. Dark Age of Camelot is a subscription-based role playing game that encourages players to ever-increasing amounts of time on-line in order to receive rewards... but is somehow TOTALLY different than EverQuest. Right. But I'll humor you: explain to me the specific ways in which DAoC differs from EverQuest and therefore is not addictive.
However, I draw the comparison from cigarettes to everquest for the very reason that it has been proven in court that Cigarette companies specifically designed their products to be more addictive. Everquest has done the same.
This is just ludicrous. The designers of the game did not purposefully create a trap to ensnare hapless passersby. They endeavored to create a game that people wanted to play. They succeeded. If there are addicts, then they are to blame for their addiction, pure and simple. The harsh fact is that they withdrew from the real world because they *wanted* to. They wanted the escapism. It's more fun to be a fireball-wielding wizard than to be a grocery store clerk. It's more fun to slay a dragon than to solve substantive problems in your *real* life. It's more fun to do these things when you wish you were someone else and are desperately unhappy with your life. It might be easier to swallow the thought that your friend was a victim but it just isn't so.
Are there people addicted to EverQuest. Sure. Is it Sony's fault? No.
I seriously doubt that verant specifically sought to create an addicting game for addictions' sake. Neither did they create anything groundbreaking. Most people that have played the text-based MUDs will tell you that the concepts and gameplay in EverQuest are extremely similar. What's new is the 3D interface (whih.
However, Verant was probably "exploiting psychologicle theory" as much as any other game developer does insofar as they wanted to make it fun and engaging enough for people to keep coming back.
In my opinion, when we cast the blame on the developer, we are infantilizing the consumer. A trend that is becoming all too popular.
The last thing we need is weapons proliferation between Disney and the monster truck people. However, it would be fun to see a throwdown between the Disney Dinosaur and the nitro-burning-fire-breating Robosaurous.
My point is: Microsoft's behaviour here cannot be construed as unjust. The submitter of this article seems to think that Microsoft is doing something out of turn or perhaps overboard in banning modded machines, because Microsoft is inherently evil. My claim is that Microsoft's actions are the logical and appropriate response to people that are trying to use pirate software on their network. Any company thrust in a similar situation would behave the same way. For example: Blizzard will ban you if they catch you using pirated copy of Warcraft III. So will Sony, as well as virtually any MMORPG operator.
I used Redhat as an example because people on slashdot seem to label them an "AntiMicrosoft": completely altruistic whose actions are not motivated at all by want of a profit. Yet I guarantee that Redhat would behave the same way if put in this situation.
Slashdot Mirror
no way! Scorpion king? I guess they can't *all* be winners ;-)
The gameplay/graphics were quite good for mgs2, but the story was an atrocity. Convoluted, unbelievable (even for a video game), and at times just silly. The voice acting was decent, but the dialog that drove that voice acting was just awful.
On a side note, the voice of Snake - David Hayter - cowrote the screenplay for X-Men and X-Men 2.
The engine definitely looks dated. Probably a function of decision to design a game that would be released on PC and the three consoles simultaneously. I'm sure that the PC version has better graphics than, say, the gamecube version, but I'm guessing that they had to shoot at a lowest common denominator with respect to the core engine. From that point, they probably just bumped up texture resolution on the platforms that could handle it and maybe added a couple additional graphical touches.
However, the graphics are good enough for me to forgive everything if the game has good gameplay and and an engaging story. I'd like to see how the wachowski's (sp?) fair in this medium. On a side note, I hear that they insisted upon the main actors doing their own mo-cap recording.
Just go to Bill Gates homepage, and hit the print button.
The introduction of the dock pisses me off. One of the great things about the old ipod was that you could use it as a firewire drive and just plug it into any computer.
Now with the new model if I want to share the drive amongst my work & home computers, do I need to buy two docks? If so, it seems like a step backward. I don't even see the option to buy extra docks at the apple store.
I can see why they introduced the dock (a way to accommodate usb2.0 without sacrificing smaller form-factor), but it seems they are gaining one feature people don't need (most people with usb2.0 also have firewire) at the expense of a feature that was truly useful.
Please tell me if I'm wrong about this... otherwise I need to hunt down an old iPod.
No. This rumor flares up before every macworld. After macworld, apple stays with the one button mouse. This has been a consistent pattern ever since 1984.
As for the patent. Intriguing? Yes. Garuantee that this will be a product? Hardly. Between 2001-2003 Apple has been awarded around 30 patents And has applied for about 30 more patents. Of those 60+ only a fraction will probably make it into future hardware.
Hey, TF2 also appeared at E3... in 1999. It's still not out. Valve has not had an official comment since 2001. So, why is anyone getting excited about this announcement?
Don't get me wrong. Half-life was a good game. Still is. It's so good, in fact, that it has spawned a grass-roots development community that has been incredibly prolific.
Still though, I've lost patience. In five years, Valve has made one game. ONE GAME. That's only one more game than I've made and I'm not even trying.
Oh, they've also become quite good at taking the mod's and add-ons developed by other people and putting them in cardboard boxes. Kudos, Valve. Oh, and there's Steam: their nifty content delivery mechanism for downloading that one game they've made.
In short, I'll believe it when I see it.
Aye, but it's fun nontheless.
Nonsense. Google's page ranking system ensures that less popular things will remain less popular because, *shocker*, it is rarer that people will click through to things they are less interested in.
Would you prefer alternative? That google return arbitrary matches and assign no weight to more popular click throughs? You'd wind up with infoseek circa 6 years ago. You can have it man, I'll stay with google.
I don't get this counter-culture behaviour of resenting popular things. Now that Google is "big", people knock it. Grow up.
So, let me get this straight. Basically, the argument is "you stole our word!!" We're talking about one colloquialism's meaning competing with another. Spare me.
Google didn't kill your word. This is a non-issue.
So, I'm fuzzy on the whole method overloading thing (I know zilch about PHP, sorry).
If I want to have two methods with the same name (but have different number of args), I have to implement a function called "__call()"? Doesn't that mean that I have to write all the logic for which execution path gets taken based upon the method name and arguments passed into __call()?
Could a PHP expert help me out here, because unless I'm mistaken that looks unbelievably hokey. With Java, I can write two functions ...and the runtime would be able to route calls to the right function. Is this not how PHP works?
um, no... they're just subscribing with their parents' information instead. I can tell you that they *are* excluding the bank accounts of anyone under 18. Not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure they can't contractually obligate a minor in such a way (at least in the USA, probably elsewhere as well).
The problem with the Sony solution is that the consumer is left in the position of having to set up several subscriptions to different publishers. So, if you have five premium games (some ps2 online games have no subscription model) from five seperate publishers , there are five sets of forms to fill out, five credit checks, and five bills (some monthly, some bimonthly, etc). What a friggin hassle.
And that's not even addressing the technical side of things. On XBL, you have one user account, one buddy list, and the voice communication works regardless of the game. On the PS2, things aren't as consistent. Some games support voice com, some dont. Some games require seperate buddy lists. The developer is forced with figuring out a middleware solution (no small task).
I can understand EA's motives, but let's not be under any impression that the Sony solution is more consumer-friendly. In fact, calling it a "solution" is being kind -- as they are basically telling the consumer "Here's your network card... you're on your own."
I expected more "In Soviet Russia..." posts. Typically, the bugs are in the webserver.
I also have an ASUS board with spoken BIOS notifications. Let me tell you, if there is anything worse than booting up and hearing a slightly different beep pattern, it's hearing a metallic, 2khz sampled, vaguely feminine voice scream out "SYSTEM FAIL CPU TEST SYSTEM FAIL CPU TEST" over and over and over again on your quadraphonic speaker system. I'm surprised my wife didn't have a heart attack.
However, I'm all for losing text mode startup(and all that other 20 year old legacy cruft). If anything, it'll be one less thing the Mac crowd can point and laugh about.
If a website operator is having their copyrighted content lifted by another site and presented as its own, then that operator can sue using traditional copyright law. If they are having their website slammed because some clueless developer is scraping too often, they can block the IP. But trying to restrict access to the api is heavy-handed and futile.
Bill Gates made money.
Okay, damnit. I just don't get it. Please, tell me what is so great about Nolan Bushnell? Let's see. He drove Atari into the ground. He drove the Commodore CDTV into the ground. He drove Chuck E. Cheese into the ground. He founded a robotics company called Androbot and a technology Incubator called Catalyst. Heard of them? No?? Oh yeah, they're history.
Read the metroactivearticle -- it's the most fair. By his own admission, he didn't invent videogames, he commercialized them.
At best, Nolan Bushnell is a one hit wonder who stumbled upon an industry that would have flourished with or without him. Trip Hawkins founded EA, let's celebrate his birthday instead.
This flies in the face of the rumor mill that has been rumbling that *all* iMacs were going to be 17" or larger. Although I think this article is more believable.
I don't get the reference to the "now-history 15" iMac...". Did the poster mean to imply that the 15" iMac is being phased out, or that the 15" iMac has waned in it's popularity. Surely apple isn't phasing out *both* the 15" and 17" iMacs. right?
I did.
You have no proof of this. The article does not make the claim that any designer from Verant specificically cited the Skinner Box model. The gameplay is not terribly different from any other online game (it's a MUD with graphics). You could level the same claim on ANY other MMORPG because they all have similar reward systems.
I have played the game. For approximately one week. I didn't like it. Strangely, I didn't experience the heroin-like withdrawl of which you speak.
Oh, *now* I get it. You're a zealot. Dark Age of Camelot is a subscription-based role playing game that encourages players to ever-increasing amounts of time on-line in order to receive rewards... but is somehow TOTALLY different than EverQuest. Right. But I'll humor you: explain to me the specific ways in which DAoC differs from EverQuest and therefore is not addictive.
This is just ludicrous. The designers of the game did not purposefully create a trap to ensnare hapless passersby. They endeavored to create a game that people wanted to play. They succeeded. If there are addicts, then they are to blame for their addiction, pure and simple. The harsh fact is that they withdrew from the real world because they *wanted* to. They wanted the escapism. It's more fun to be a fireball-wielding wizard than to be a grocery store clerk. It's more fun to slay a dragon than to solve substantive problems in your *real* life. It's more fun to do these things when you wish you were someone else and are desperately unhappy with your life. It might be easier to swallow the thought that your friend was a victim but it just isn't so.
Are there people addicted to EverQuest. Sure. Is it Sony's fault? No.
I seriously doubt that verant specifically sought to create an addicting game for addictions' sake. Neither did they create anything groundbreaking. Most people that have played the text-based MUDs will tell you that the concepts and gameplay in EverQuest are extremely similar. What's new is the 3D interface (whih .
However, Verant was probably "exploiting psychologicle theory" as much as any other game developer does insofar as they wanted to make it fun and engaging enough for people to keep coming back.
In my opinion, when we cast the blame on the developer, we are infantilizing the consumer. A trend that is becoming all too popular.
The last thing we need is weapons proliferation between Disney and the monster truck people. However, it would be fun to see a throwdown between the Disney Dinosaur and the nitro-burning-fire-breating Robosaurous.
What's next, news items ripped from The Onion?
Supposing this story is true, why the hell is *consoletalk* the only rag picking it up?
My point is: Microsoft's behaviour here cannot be construed as unjust. The submitter of this article seems to think that Microsoft is doing something out of turn or perhaps overboard in banning modded machines, because Microsoft is inherently evil. My claim is that Microsoft's actions are the logical and appropriate response to people that are trying to use pirate software on their network. Any company thrust in a similar situation would behave the same way. For example: Blizzard will ban you if they catch you using pirated copy of Warcraft III. So will Sony, as well as virtually any MMORPG operator.
I used Redhat as an example because people on slashdot seem to label them an "AntiMicrosoft": completely altruistic whose actions are not motivated at all by want of a profit. Yet I guarantee that Redhat would behave the same way if put in this situation.