Yeah, another vote for Fastmail (and I have a Gmail account, too). Being able to use the Mac's Mail.app with my FM account puts it ahead of Gmail for me, though Gmail does make some interesting advances. Still, Fastmail is the best webmail service I've ever tried; the online interface is highly customisable and very usable and the whole service seems extremely... ethical, I guess. It deserves to do well. I'm sure Gmail deserves to do well too, but it doesn't really need as much advocacy...
Well, according to the "20gb to 40gb upgrade" email posted later in the comments (and, as you say, the store), the 40gb model doesn't actually include the carry case or the remote. Adding both those (on the UK site) puts the price up by £60, leaving it just £40 short of the old price. It's not that great a reduction when you look at it that way - though if you were planning to get a better case anyway, you'd be grateful you didn't have to pay for the default one.
Personally, I couldn't do without the remote, regardless of the new wheel - I don't want to be pulling the iPod out every time I want to pause or skip a track. And if I *was* willing to do that, I'd certainly want to buy a decent case with wheel access to protect the iPod...
The battery life improvement is good, and there's certainly a price drop in there somewhere, but it doesn't seem like a particularly fantastic update to me. And thank God, because I can't afford to buy another one.
If you're using iTunes on an Apple rather than on a Windows PC, the easier solution is to grab one of several Applescripts that will simply copy the selected iPod tracks to your iTunes library and / or hard drive. I use this one, which does the job just fine, but there are others. I'm sure these are covered in the book.
I'd like to add my voice to the praise for SEE we've already seen. I've only tinkered with the collaborative editing on my home network (and it's very impressive), but without that feature SEE would still be my editor of choice, and I've been through the expansive.emacs and minimal vi mastery stages.
Just this morning I noticed that when editing a CSS file, SEE will not only give you a drop-down box of all your symbols / definitions, but also place an icon next to them identifying them as ID definitions, class definitions, and so on.
It's small, clean and extremely funcional - it feels pristine to use. I'd absolutely recommend trying it out, whether the collaborative features interest you or not.
Spot on. And again, it's hard to emphasise enough that the difficulty setting is CRUCIAL. I've had many conversations with people who've said they didn't see Halo's allure, and nine times out of ten they'd only played it on normal difficulty. Now maybe they still wouldn't like in on legendary, there's no law that says you have to enjoy the game - I didn't like Ico myself, which is often seen as heresy - but the game changes radically at the highest setting, where every encounter you have becomes a tactical struggle, increasingly vital as you near the next checkpoint, and you can't take a single enemy for granted.
Of course, you're toast in Legendary unless you've mastered the controls (at a lower level), so if you really don't enjoy the normal setting you've got to be willing to persevere in order to experience Legendary, but I really think the vast majority of players would find it well worth their while...
As other posts here have suggested, you can also fix the Help Viewer problem in Safari using MisFox, and in doing this you won't stop Help from working with local files and apps. I've confirmed this using the example you give at bronosky.com - it ran du the first visit (from a sacrificial account), and then I used MisFox to set textedit as the help: handler. I visited the page again and it launched textedit, which displayed nothing, and the du script had no way of launching.
Just an alternative for people who might still want to use Help locally. I've only confirmed that the MisFox solution works with Safari.
Heh! Back in my teens, I played a lot of the Spectrum (Timex in the US) turn-based strategy game, Laser Squad (precursor to the X-Com series). It had a basic routine of moving your character, costing four points per step, and aiming to leave half your points at the end of the round for opportunity fire. So you'd become very adept at gauging how many points it would take you to get from a to b.
So after one lengthy session, I go to bed, and then wake up in the middle of the night in bad need of the bathroom. I must have lay in bed for a good minute trying to figure out if I had enough points to get from where I was to the bathroom in one turn - because if I didn't, I'd have to thnk of a different plan.
Then there was the time at work - I forget the game I'd been playing, but my mind became obsessed with flaws in walls. If I saw a crack in the plaster, my brain would immediately flag it as some kind of hidden door or secret area, milliseconds before clobbering itself as if it was Laurel and Hardy combined.
Don't worry, I don't work in a nuclear power plant, as if you couldn't have guessed.
The Halo enemy AI, as I understand it, isn't especially remarkable (well, it'd be remarkable if I managed to do it, but you know what I mean), but the various AIs 'gel' together well - so you get the panicking grunts, and the 'victory surges' you mention. So the overriding impression is of a flexible and formidable enemy force. The Halo AI is more fun to play against, for my money, than the (presumably) superior AI of Far Cry, for example. And then there have been times when the Halo AI has surprised me - the first time I saw a pair of jackals covering each other as they moved down a ramp toward me, for example.
The thing about Halo is that it's so rooted in emergent gameplay that it's hard to tell when the AI is really being clever and when it's just lucky to find itself in the right situation. And it doesn't really matter, because the experience for the player remains unpredictable and exciting, game after game. You pick a different weapon, and a whole section almost becomes a new level; you need different tactics, and the AI will respond differently.
IIRC, the AI's 'simplicity' (again, not an insult) was the reason there was no bot play in Halo - it wan't designed to adapt to various situations, go roaming, capture a flag, etc. etc. - it was designed to work well in the kind of firefights the game featured (I'd still have paid twice the price for a skirmish mode on random maps, but that's by the by).
Yeah, all the enemies have weak spots - depending on the weapons you've got - but the Hunters are just reduced to fluff when you've got them sussed - a shame, because the first time you see one, it's terrifying, but after that they're a walk in the park. My favourite example is the grunts and plasma grenades; stick on to 'em, and they panic every time, usually running back to their comrades and Elite commanders, screaming 'get it off!'. Then, kaboom! Gold.
This new GTA is as groundbreaking how? They have mountains? Eating? Minigames? Ragdoll physics?
Actually, features like ragdoll physics would enhance the GTA experience, because they would add new features to the giant sandbox that is the GTA world. The genius of GTA isn't in the game missions, which are often frustrating or dull. It's in what happens between the missions, or en route to the missions; about what each player decides to do with their time, once they've tired of the set path. If you enhance and enrich the sandbox experience, you make a better game. Vice City did this by adding motorbikes, copters and 'proper' planes, by enabling you to buy property and hold up stores, by adding the stunt courses for the trail bike, etc. etc. And I'm sure San Andreas will top that in several ways. Yeah, eventually they'll have reached a plateau and will have to move on more significantly - perhaps with online console multiplayer on the next generation of hardware. But I'm confident they'll produce one more worthwhile GTA before then.
If I kill someone, will the police not just give up after 5 minutes of looking for me?
Actually, if you kill someone in GTA so that the police know it was you (e.g they or see you), you'll get a two-star crime rating and they won't stop looking for you unless you get a change of clothes or find a bribe. And with higher wanted levels, even those won't fully get the cops off your back.
Anyway, as the first reply said, you might enjoy Hitman - check out the "Mafia don" demo level of Hitman 2, where you have to be very 'clean'. You might also enjoy Manhunt, where you'll die very quickly unless you're very methodical. But a GTA with the improvements you mention would very likely beat them both...
This is an excellent comment, but I would add that many people, myself included, believe that the single player element of Halo is also well worth defending, and certainly more than average. I've been playing FPS titles since Doom, usually with a focus on single player and same-room multiplayer, and Halo is hands down among the three best titles I've played. This is because every aspect of it - as with Goldeneye, for example - is well thought-out and implemented. The vehicles integrate perfectly into the game, every weapon has its place, the dual-weapon system imposes a new layer of strategy, the AI - regardless of its actual 'intelligence' - works wonderfully, the checkpoint system is flawless - the end of a battle really feels like an achievement - and the levels are splendid, regardless of the oft-criticised (misunderstood, IMO) repetition in the latter half of the game.
I play it single-player to this day and it continues to impress me. In fact, the single aspect of it I don't care for is the fact that the Hunters are relegated to a simple nuisance once you know their weak spot. Every other enemy remains a threat throughout the game - the grunts are fodder but can easily strip your shield in one shot, the jackals can mess you up if you have the wrong kind of weapons (and bring out the beauty of the melee attack, and even the swarming flood have an edge - you can swat them off or ignore them most of the time, but in a low-shield situation they become your #1 threat.
But two caveats: Halo MUST be played on Legendary for it to really shine. This is absolutely vital, and I'm sure I'dve tired of it some time ago if Legendary wasn't an option. And secondly, I haven't played it on a PC, so I don't know how that version would appear to people. I play a fair amount of mouse/key PC FPS titles, but Halo - again, like Goldeneye - seems made for its host console's controller. I know it was originally Mac/PC bound, but it's clear that Bungie took as much care integrating the controller as they did tuning the AI and touching up the textures. Every console has these rare (sometimes Rare, arf) titles that are bound to it irrevocably; I think Halo holds that position with the Xbox.
I should add that I'm not particularly enamoured of the Xbox - I prefer the more eclectic games library of the PS2 - but Halo, in my opinion, is a brilliant example of what a game can be and why I still play games, at my age, when I ought to be out fishing or whittling 'round back.
Well, that picture won't display for me, but check out any of the spec reports since E3 or indeed Sony's news site: the PSP does have an analog pad, which was once though to be a speaker. And that pad is going to make a difference to the quality and scope of games.
Now, the DS' touchpad will also offer a lot of control potential, just to keep things balanced. And you're right that the DS is going to be more portable - I can see the PSP being more of a "take it to your friend's" kind of portable, an easy alternative to lugging your PS2 around and organising extra TVs/displays. The DS looks like more of a pocket portable. But that's fine, both have their place, and I hope they're both great.
Well, I defer to your bike knowledge. Either way, it's got to be promising, and I can't see Rockstar making the bikes all that fragile... I'm envisaging and uzi-enhanced game of Paperboy, stunt courses with great controls (the bike control in VC is wonderful) and insane back-yard / alley getaways, venturing where cars can't follow.
Plus the gentle art of bikejacking from 13-year-olds...
Yeah, good point - obviously the PSP MGS will be on a different level to the GBA one, but as you say, a portable 3D Metroid will also be new. Shame about the control options on the DS, but I do trust Nintendo to work out the best control method for the hardware.
Really, I hope Nintendo produce some great stuff for the DS - and that Sony do the same for the PSP. It all works out well for me that way. But I'd still rather see progress that updates (from both camps). Now in terms of handheld gaming, the DS has the touch screen, the PSP has the analogue controller, and they both have wireless. These seem to me to be the most promising developments, and here's hoping they lead to something good.
Nintendo has given us great stuff like Animal Crossing and Boktai recently. Sony has produced the Eye Toy and the PS2 has a good record of original titles (among the piles of slush). Both are capable of providing great gaming. Whether they will, or whether they'll take the path of least resistance / most dollar, we can only wait and see.
It wasn't just the storage system that helped the PS 'beat' the N64, though; Sony's marketing and the focus of its games played a large part - specifically titles like Wipeout, which roped in a huge casual market while Nintendo at launch were wowing the longtime gamers with Mario 64, but hardly attracting the man in the street. Sony continued this trend with titles like Gran Turismo, and generally created the casual gaming market.
That isn't to say Nintendo didn't produce some cracking games, but their market for them was always limited more by their image than by the choice of cartridge technology. Obviously the expense of cartridges didn't help (when Turok came out in the UK, it cost almost twice as much as a new PS game), but games like Resident Evil 2 (admittedly a late entry) showed that the cartridge could compete with the CD, and games from the outset like Mario 64 and Pilotwings proved that Nintendo could deliver the goods regardless of format.
Anyway, the handhelds? Well, being the owner of a NES and SNES, and therefore familiar with the original Mario Kart, Metroid and Mario games. the Game Boy Advance hasn't done much to wow me beyond Advance Wars and Wario Ware. I'm sure it's a fantastic system for someone who's playing Mario Kart or Super Mario World on it for the first time, but I'm clearly a jaded old fart. The link-up options and touch screen sound like they could be promising, if used well. At the same time, the inclusion of an analogue controller on the PSP is important and sadly missing from the DS - though it would probably boost the price and maybe raise the vulnerability of the unit.
The PSP software lineup also feels very familiar, of course, but there is the saving grace that many of these titles are seeing their first handheld iteration, and might gain some novelty points that way. A portable Metal Gear sounds and looks wonderful, if a little antisocial...
At the end of the day, I'll probably get 'em both just out of curiosity and hope. And I'm sure both will have a few great games and a lot of dross. So why on earth I've been wittering on like this, I've no idea. Go Nintendo! Go Sony! Give us hell!
Heh, looks like you can ride a BMX in GTA:SA - at least, there's one in the screenshots, so I'd be surprised if it wasn't usable (for delivery missions?). The motorbikes were a really well-implemented addition to Vice City, so I've got high hopes for BMX hijinx...
Might be a kick in the teeth going from the Xbox Vice City back to the PS2 for San Andreas, but screw it. I enjoyed VC well enough the first time through on the PS2, and Rockstar's Manhunt is a lot smoother than Vice City on the PS2, so hopefully there'll be some game engine improvements as well...
Yeah, GT's AI is pretty dull, but it's always felt like an extraneous feature to me, anyway - GT is all about mastering the driving system and adapting to the courses with a variety of vehicles, all of which have their own 'flavour'. This is the area GT has mastered and very few other games have approached. I daresay I could do without the other drivers in GT quite happily - in fact, I often play against my own time trial ghost, which I think is a lot more fun.
Similarly, the lack of damage is often mentioned in relation to GT, but again, it isn't important to the core of the game. Now there are great driving games which feature interesting AI and good damage simulation, but none of them, most people will agree, match up to GT as a driving experience.
To some gamers, GT will always seem a little dull, a little joyless - it depends what you're looking for. I appreciate being able to load up Project Gotham and launch into a kudos-grabbing show-off session, and I'll even head back to Destruction Derby 2 on the PSX for some auto carnage every now and again. But I also keep coming back to GT3, because when I'm heading through the shade of those trees, preparing to tackle the upcoming corner accoring to the specs of my car, I know that there's no other game like it. Forget the other cars, forget the fact that you can clip a barrier and not show a dent; it's all about your driving, and it has that covered completely.
Yeah, and even worse, this is just *virtual* cleaning, nothing's actually any cleaner at the end. In fact, things are probably dirtier. Depends how you do it...
Yeah, and then combine it with what Rockstar have already done in Manhunt - use a USB headset to hear instructions, and then if you accidentally speak out loud or make any noise, it alerts the characters in the game (you can also use it as a deliberate decoy tactic). That approach with the Eyetoy thrown in could be a real winner, though you'd really need to have it as an optional feature to have any commercial success - e.g. you don't NEED a headset for Manhunt, but it can add a lot to the experience.
I picked up an EyeToy last week, and it's pretty impressive. The key to getting good results is lighting - there's a game with Play that has you cleaning suds off a window (the whole screen, basically). Our front room is lit by an eco-friendly bulb, which is a fairly soft light, and as you 'wipe' the screen the remaining suds clearly cling to shadowy areas that aren't picking up movement so well. Play with a bright light, however, and the system is good enough to allow for some fast and accurate gaming. Play comes with a version of PS2 launch title Fantavision, played entirely through gestures, and it plays well.
In terms of picture quality, it's not that great. But at this stage, sheer novelty compensates for that. But I think it bodes very well for future efforts, with sharper images and HDTV resolution. And, being an 'ancient' gamer dating back to the 8-bit era, I'm given to stepping back every once in a while and trying to calculate how violently this would have blown my 12-year-old mind...
The main thing the CoC RPG had going for it was the sanity point system. That's not a criticism, I used to love Call of Cthulhu (like I'm going to use the acronym in that sentence...). But sanity has been very effectively handled as a gameplay element in Eternal Darkness on the Gamecube, so it'll be interesting to see how well this title matches up.
The article does touch on the role of sanity in the game, but it doesn't hint at anything too inspiring. Fingers crossed, though.
FWIW, I didn't really rate Eternal Darkness as a game, but I thought they handled sanity very well, with a few effects that would really shake you up. Combining a good sanity system with a good RPG plot that's not too focused on combat but more along the lines of the great Lucasarts games - with an authentic Lovecraft feel - could make for a wonderful game.
I don't know how much vertex and pixel shaders are going to help here - you could make a great Lovecraft game with just a text adventure engine (as someone did back in the 8-bit days with Pickman's Model). It's just a matter of getting the atmosphere right. Vertex shaders etc. can put a very nice sheen on an atmosphere, but they can't create one - they need a solid foundation. Hopefully Lovecaft's mythos will provide this...
Shuffle and serendipity are definitely the way to go for me. I used to use a minidisc player - 1 album / 15 songs or so per disc. I could shuffle those, but I still had to choose which particular disc to play. Once the disc was chosen (even if it was chosen randomly) I was tied into a limited set of tracks. Now my iPod has around 8000 tracks, and as I come across archived or free stuff on the web that looks interesting, I just throw it on there without giving it too much thought. I can check it out using a 'recently added' playlist, but mostly I enjoy setting the iPod to shuffle and letting all manner of new (and familiar) music stream through the 'phones. An hour's walk on shuffle is entirely different from an hour's walk with a set playlist, and I'd hate to go back now.
If that makes me brain damaged, whatever. I mean, add it to the rest of the evidence....
You mean this gut didn't pay any attention to the several anti-copying notices he must have seen before the main feature started? I am shocked and appalled. Why do we have them if they don't work?
Anyhow, tough luck, the guy's plans backfired on him. I could care less whether he gets away with a crappy copy of whatever crappy movie he's paid to see, But he knew he was in the wrong and he got busted for it. Bad luck, he took a risk and lost. But he chose to take it. The correct punishment is another matter entirely.
But wouldn't the projectionist's time be better spent scanning the back rows with his night-vision goggles?
Well, this is halfway there. Instead of spending money on actual crap, people are spending money on abstractions of crap. Now, the next step is to get them to create this crap on their own, make their own icons, and send those. Use MS Paint or whatever you've got. And that could be the start of something healthy, the path leading away from the crap. A community where people made gifts of original creations, that seems like a sound idea to me. FunHI! has achieved the important first step of removing money from the equation. Onward!
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Yeah, another vote for Fastmail (and I have a Gmail account, too). Being able to use the Mac's Mail.app with my FM account puts it ahead of Gmail for me, though Gmail does make some interesting advances. Still, Fastmail is the best webmail service I've ever tried; the online interface is highly customisable and very usable and the whole service seems extremely... ethical, I guess. It deserves to do well. I'm sure Gmail deserves to do well too, but it doesn't really need as much advocacy...
Well, according to the "20gb to 40gb upgrade" email posted later in the comments (and, as you say, the store), the 40gb model doesn't actually include the carry case or the remote. Adding both those (on the UK site) puts the price up by £60, leaving it just £40 short of the old price. It's not that great a reduction when you look at it that way - though if you were planning to get a better case anyway, you'd be grateful you didn't have to pay for the default one.
Personally, I couldn't do without the remote, regardless of the new wheel - I don't want to be pulling the iPod out every time I want to pause or skip a track. And if I *was* willing to do that, I'd certainly want to buy a decent case with wheel access to protect the iPod...
The battery life improvement is good, and there's certainly a price drop in there somewhere, but it doesn't seem like a particularly fantastic update to me. And thank God, because I can't afford to buy another one.
If you're using iTunes on an Apple rather than on a Windows PC, the easier solution is to grab one of several Applescripts that will simply copy the selected iPod tracks to your iTunes library and / or hard drive. I use this one, which does the job just fine, but there are others. I'm sure these are covered in the book.
I'd like to add my voice to the praise for SEE we've already seen. I've only tinkered with the collaborative editing on my home network (and it's very impressive), but without that feature SEE would still be my editor of choice, and I've been through the expansive .emacs and minimal vi mastery stages.
Just this morning I noticed that when editing a CSS file, SEE will not only give you a drop-down box of all your symbols / definitions, but also place an icon next to them identifying them as ID definitions, class definitions, and so on.
It's small, clean and extremely funcional - it feels pristine to use. I'd absolutely recommend trying it out, whether the collaborative features interest you or not.
Spot on. And again, it's hard to emphasise enough that the difficulty setting is CRUCIAL. I've had many conversations with people who've said they didn't see Halo's allure, and nine times out of ten they'd only played it on normal difficulty. Now maybe they still wouldn't like in on legendary, there's no law that says you have to enjoy the game - I didn't like Ico myself, which is often seen as heresy - but the game changes radically at the highest setting, where every encounter you have becomes a tactical struggle, increasingly vital as you near the next checkpoint, and you can't take a single enemy for granted.
Of course, you're toast in Legendary unless you've mastered the controls (at a lower level), so if you really don't enjoy the normal setting you've got to be willing to persevere in order to experience Legendary, but I really think the vast majority of players would find it well worth their while...
As other posts here have suggested, you can also fix the Help Viewer problem in Safari using MisFox, and in doing this you won't stop Help from working with local files and apps. I've confirmed this using the example you give at bronosky.com - it ran du the first visit (from a sacrificial account), and then I used MisFox to set textedit as the help: handler. I visited the page again and it launched textedit, which displayed nothing, and the du script had no way of launching.
Just an alternative for people who might still want to use Help locally. I've only confirmed that the MisFox solution works with Safari.
Heh! Back in my teens, I played a lot of the Spectrum (Timex in the US) turn-based strategy game, Laser Squad (precursor to the X-Com series). It had a basic routine of moving your character, costing four points per step, and aiming to leave half your points at the end of the round for opportunity fire. So you'd become very adept at gauging how many points it would take you to get from a to b.
So after one lengthy session, I go to bed, and then wake up in the middle of the night in bad need of the bathroom. I must have lay in bed for a good minute trying to figure out if I had enough points to get from where I was to the bathroom in one turn - because if I didn't, I'd have to thnk of a different plan.
Then there was the time at work - I forget the game I'd been playing, but my mind became obsessed with flaws in walls. If I saw a crack in the plaster, my brain would immediately flag it as some kind of hidden door or secret area, milliseconds before clobbering itself as if it was Laurel and Hardy combined.
Don't worry, I don't work in a nuclear power plant, as if you couldn't have guessed.
The Halo enemy AI, as I understand it, isn't especially remarkable (well, it'd be remarkable if I managed to do it, but you know what I mean), but the various AIs 'gel' together well - so you get the panicking grunts, and the 'victory surges' you mention. So the overriding impression is of a flexible and formidable enemy force. The Halo AI is more fun to play against, for my money, than the (presumably) superior AI of Far Cry, for example. And then there have been times when the Halo AI has surprised me - the first time I saw a pair of jackals covering each other as they moved down a ramp toward me, for example.
The thing about Halo is that it's so rooted in emergent gameplay that it's hard to tell when the AI is really being clever and when it's just lucky to find itself in the right situation. And it doesn't really matter, because the experience for the player remains unpredictable and exciting, game after game. You pick a different weapon, and a whole section almost becomes a new level; you need different tactics, and the AI will respond differently.
IIRC, the AI's 'simplicity' (again, not an insult) was the reason there was no bot play in Halo - it wan't designed to adapt to various situations, go roaming, capture a flag, etc. etc. - it was designed to work well in the kind of firefights the game featured (I'd still have paid twice the price for a skirmish mode on random maps, but that's by the by).
Yeah, all the enemies have weak spots - depending on the weapons you've got - but the Hunters are just reduced to fluff when you've got them sussed - a shame, because the first time you see one, it's terrifying, but after that they're a walk in the park. My favourite example is the grunts and plasma grenades; stick on to 'em, and they panic every time, usually running back to their comrades and Elite commanders, screaming 'get it off!'. Then, kaboom! Gold.
This new GTA is as groundbreaking how? They have mountains? Eating? Minigames? Ragdoll physics?
Actually, features like ragdoll physics would enhance the GTA experience, because they would add new features to the giant sandbox that is the GTA world. The genius of GTA isn't in the game missions, which are often frustrating or dull. It's in what happens between the missions, or en route to the missions; about what each player decides to do with their time, once they've tired of the set path. If you enhance and enrich the sandbox experience, you make a better game. Vice City did this by adding motorbikes, copters and 'proper' planes, by enabling you to buy property and hold up stores, by adding the stunt courses for the trail bike, etc. etc. And I'm sure San Andreas will top that in several ways. Yeah, eventually they'll have reached a plateau and will have to move on more significantly - perhaps with online console multiplayer on the next generation of hardware. But I'm confident they'll produce one more worthwhile GTA before then.
If I kill someone, will the police not just give up after 5 minutes of looking for me?
Actually, if you kill someone in GTA so that the police know it was you (e.g they or see you), you'll get a two-star crime rating and they won't stop looking for you unless you get a change of clothes or find a bribe. And with higher wanted levels, even those won't fully get the cops off your back.
Anyway, as the first reply said, you might enjoy Hitman - check out the "Mafia don" demo level of Hitman 2, where you have to be very 'clean'. You might also enjoy Manhunt, where you'll die very quickly unless you're very methodical. But a GTA with the improvements you mention would very likely beat them both...
This is an excellent comment, but I would add that many people, myself included, believe that the single player element of Halo is also well worth defending, and certainly more than average. I've been playing FPS titles since Doom, usually with a focus on single player and same-room multiplayer, and Halo is hands down among the three best titles I've played. This is because every aspect of it - as with Goldeneye, for example - is well thought-out and implemented. The vehicles integrate perfectly into the game, every weapon has its place, the dual-weapon system imposes a new layer of strategy, the AI - regardless of its actual 'intelligence' - works wonderfully, the checkpoint system is flawless - the end of a battle really feels like an achievement - and the levels are splendid, regardless of the oft-criticised (misunderstood, IMO) repetition in the latter half of the game.
I play it single-player to this day and it continues to impress me. In fact, the single aspect of it I don't care for is the fact that the Hunters are relegated to a simple nuisance once you know their weak spot. Every other enemy remains a threat throughout the game - the grunts are fodder but can easily strip your shield in one shot, the jackals can mess you up if you have the wrong kind of weapons (and bring out the beauty of the melee attack, and even the swarming flood have an edge - you can swat them off or ignore them most of the time, but in a low-shield situation they become your #1 threat.
But two caveats: Halo MUST be played on Legendary for it to really shine. This is absolutely vital, and I'm sure I'dve tired of it some time ago if Legendary wasn't an option. And secondly, I haven't played it on a PC, so I don't know how that version would appear to people. I play a fair amount of mouse/key PC FPS titles, but Halo - again, like Goldeneye - seems made for its host console's controller. I know it was originally Mac/PC bound, but it's clear that Bungie took as much care integrating the controller as they did tuning the AI and touching up the textures. Every console has these rare (sometimes Rare, arf) titles that are bound to it irrevocably; I think Halo holds that position with the Xbox.
I should add that I'm not particularly enamoured of the Xbox - I prefer the more eclectic games library of the PS2 - but Halo, in my opinion, is a brilliant example of what a game can be and why I still play games, at my age, when I ought to be out fishing or whittling 'round back.
Well, that picture won't display for me, but check out any of the spec reports since E3 or indeed Sony's news site: the PSP does have an analog pad, which was once though to be a speaker. And that pad is going to make a difference to the quality and scope of games. Now, the DS' touchpad will also offer a lot of control potential, just to keep things balanced. And you're right that the DS is going to be more portable - I can see the PSP being more of a "take it to your friend's" kind of portable, an easy alternative to lugging your PS2 around and organising extra TVs/displays. The DS looks like more of a pocket portable. But that's fine, both have their place, and I hope they're both great.
Well, I defer to your bike knowledge. Either way, it's got to be promising, and I can't see Rockstar making the bikes all that fragile... I'm envisaging and uzi-enhanced game of Paperboy, stunt courses with great controls (the bike control in VC is wonderful) and insane back-yard / alley getaways, venturing where cars can't follow.
Plus the gentle art of bikejacking from 13-year-olds...
Yeah, good point - obviously the PSP MGS will be on a different level to the GBA one, but as you say, a portable 3D Metroid will also be new. Shame about the control options on the DS, but I do trust Nintendo to work out the best control method for the hardware.
Really, I hope Nintendo produce some great stuff for the DS - and that Sony do the same for the PSP. It all works out well for me that way. But I'd still rather see progress that updates (from both camps). Now in terms of handheld gaming, the DS has the touch screen, the PSP has the analogue controller, and they both have wireless. These seem to me to be the most promising developments, and here's hoping they lead to something good.
Nintendo has given us great stuff like Animal Crossing and Boktai recently. Sony has produced the Eye Toy and the PS2 has a good record of original titles (among the piles of slush). Both are capable of providing great gaming. Whether they will, or whether they'll take the path of least resistance / most dollar, we can only wait and see.
It wasn't just the storage system that helped the PS 'beat' the N64, though; Sony's marketing and the focus of its games played a large part - specifically titles like Wipeout, which roped in a huge casual market while Nintendo at launch were wowing the longtime gamers with Mario 64, but hardly attracting the man in the street. Sony continued this trend with titles like Gran Turismo, and generally created the casual gaming market.
That isn't to say Nintendo didn't produce some cracking games, but their market for them was always limited more by their image than by the choice of cartridge technology. Obviously the expense of cartridges didn't help (when Turok came out in the UK, it cost almost twice as much as a new PS game), but games like Resident Evil 2 (admittedly a late entry) showed that the cartridge could compete with the CD, and games from the outset like Mario 64 and Pilotwings proved that Nintendo could deliver the goods regardless of format.
Anyway, the handhelds? Well, being the owner of a NES and SNES, and therefore familiar with the original Mario Kart, Metroid and Mario games. the Game Boy Advance hasn't done much to wow me beyond Advance Wars and Wario Ware. I'm sure it's a fantastic system for someone who's playing Mario Kart or Super Mario World on it for the first time, but I'm clearly a jaded old fart. The link-up options and touch screen sound like they could be promising, if used well. At the same time, the inclusion of an analogue controller on the PSP is important and sadly missing from the DS - though it would probably boost the price and maybe raise the vulnerability of the unit.
The PSP software lineup also feels very familiar, of course, but there is the saving grace that many of these titles are seeing their first handheld iteration, and might gain some novelty points that way. A portable Metal Gear sounds and looks wonderful, if a little antisocial...
At the end of the day, I'll probably get 'em both just out of curiosity and hope. And I'm sure both will have a few great games and a lot of dross. So why on earth I've been wittering on like this, I've no idea. Go Nintendo! Go Sony! Give us hell!
Heh, looks like you can ride a BMX in GTA:SA - at least, there's one in the screenshots, so I'd be surprised if it wasn't usable (for delivery missions?). The motorbikes were a really well-implemented addition to Vice City, so I've got high hopes for BMX hijinx...
Might be a kick in the teeth going from the Xbox Vice City back to the PS2 for San Andreas, but screw it. I enjoyed VC well enough the first time through on the PS2, and Rockstar's Manhunt is a lot smoother than Vice City on the PS2, so hopefully there'll be some game engine improvements as well...
But BMX action... woo and hoo!
Yeah, GT's AI is pretty dull, but it's always felt like an extraneous feature to me, anyway - GT is all about mastering the driving system and adapting to the courses with a variety of vehicles, all of which have their own 'flavour'. This is the area GT has mastered and very few other games have approached. I daresay I could do without the other drivers in GT quite happily - in fact, I often play against my own time trial ghost, which I think is a lot more fun.
Similarly, the lack of damage is often mentioned in relation to GT, but again, it isn't important to the core of the game. Now there are great driving games which feature interesting AI and good damage simulation, but none of them, most people will agree, match up to GT as a driving experience.
To some gamers, GT will always seem a little dull, a little joyless - it depends what you're looking for. I appreciate being able to load up Project Gotham and launch into a kudos-grabbing show-off session, and I'll even head back to Destruction Derby 2 on the PSX for some auto carnage every now and again. But I also keep coming back to GT3, because when I'm heading through the shade of those trees, preparing to tackle the upcoming corner accoring to the specs of my car, I know that there's no other game like it. Forget the other cars, forget the fact that you can clip a barrier and not show a dent; it's all about your driving, and it has that covered completely.
Yeah, and even worse, this is just *virtual* cleaning, nothing's actually any cleaner at the end. In fact, things are probably dirtier. Depends how you do it...
Yeah, and then combine it with what Rockstar have already done in Manhunt - use a USB headset to hear instructions, and then if you accidentally speak out loud or make any noise, it alerts the characters in the game (you can also use it as a deliberate decoy tactic). That approach with the Eyetoy thrown in could be a real winner, though you'd really need to have it as an optional feature to have any commercial success - e.g. you don't NEED a headset for Manhunt, but it can add a lot to the experience.
I picked up an EyeToy last week, and it's pretty impressive. The key to getting good results is lighting - there's a game with Play that has you cleaning suds off a window (the whole screen, basically). Our front room is lit by an eco-friendly bulb, which is a fairly soft light, and as you 'wipe' the screen the remaining suds clearly cling to shadowy areas that aren't picking up movement so well. Play with a bright light, however, and the system is good enough to allow for some fast and accurate gaming. Play comes with a version of PS2 launch title Fantavision, played entirely through gestures, and it plays well.
In terms of picture quality, it's not that great. But at this stage, sheer novelty compensates for that. But I think it bodes very well for future efforts, with sharper images and HDTV resolution. And, being an 'ancient' gamer dating back to the 8-bit era, I'm given to stepping back every once in a while and trying to calculate how violently this would have blown my 12-year-old mind...
The main thing the CoC RPG had going for it was the sanity point system. That's not a criticism, I used to love Call of Cthulhu (like I'm going to use the acronym in that sentence...). But sanity has been very effectively handled as a gameplay element in Eternal Darkness on the Gamecube, so it'll be interesting to see how well this title matches up.
The article does touch on the role of sanity in the game, but it doesn't hint at anything too inspiring. Fingers crossed, though.
FWIW, I didn't really rate Eternal Darkness as a game, but I thought they handled sanity very well, with a few effects that would really shake you up. Combining a good sanity system with a good RPG plot that's not too focused on combat but more along the lines of the great Lucasarts games - with an authentic Lovecraft feel - could make for a wonderful game.
I don't know how much vertex and pixel shaders are going to help here - you could make a great Lovecraft game with just a text adventure engine (as someone did back in the 8-bit days with Pickman's Model). It's just a matter of getting the atmosphere right. Vertex shaders etc. can put a very nice sheen on an atmosphere, but they can't create one - they need a solid foundation. Hopefully Lovecaft's mythos will provide this...
Shuffle and serendipity are definitely the way to go for me. I used to use a minidisc player - 1 album / 15 songs or so per disc. I could shuffle those, but I still had to choose which particular disc to play. Once the disc was chosen (even if it was chosen randomly) I was tied into a limited set of tracks. Now my iPod has around 8000 tracks, and as I come across archived or free stuff on the web that looks interesting, I just throw it on there without giving it too much thought. I can check it out using a 'recently added' playlist, but mostly I enjoy setting the iPod to shuffle and letting all manner of new (and familiar) music stream through the 'phones. An hour's walk on shuffle is entirely different from an hour's walk with a set playlist, and I'd hate to go back now.
If that makes me brain damaged, whatever. I mean, add it to the rest of the evidence....
You mean this gut didn't pay any attention to the several anti-copying notices he must have seen before the main feature started? I am shocked and appalled. Why do we have them if they don't work?
Anyhow, tough luck, the guy's plans backfired on him. I could care less whether he gets away with a crappy copy of whatever crappy movie he's paid to see, But he knew he was in the wrong and he got busted for it. Bad luck, he took a risk and lost. But he chose to take it. The correct punishment is another matter entirely.
But wouldn't the projectionist's time be better spent scanning the back rows with his night-vision goggles?
Well, this is halfway there. Instead of spending money on actual crap, people are spending money on abstractions of crap. Now, the next step is to get them to create this crap on their own, make their own icons, and send those. Use MS Paint or whatever you've got. And that could be the start of something healthy, the path leading away from the crap. A community where people made gifts of original creations, that seems like a sound idea to me. FunHI! has achieved the important first step of removing money from the equation. Onward!
Seek, and ye shall not find ;)