And let them play in the rain sometimes, frolic in the sloppy fields and let bacteria latch on them... . forcing kids to live in too sanitised a world and they will grow up having low defense for common ailments.
Personal experience : my first 2 girls lived in Mom's Sanitised World of Dust Free / Carpet Free / No Friggin Playing in the Rain / No pets. Result : every little dumb thing triggers their asthma.
My third daughter : 7 cats during wifey's pregnancy and eventual childbirth plus no more of this sanitised nonsense : Result : right as rain and growing up well and far far less visits to the Paed.
I believe one of the Nintendo execs mentioned that the traditional review system dont lend themselves to reviewing new gameplay type games found on DS's and Wii's well.
A lot of Wii games that got lukewarm reviews have the converse effect in reality : my wife who is 37 is a regular for Wii Sports (bowling), Wii Play (Find Mii drives her nuts in trying to reach the higher levels) and Cooking Mama (she doesnt like Rayman because she sucks at timing in swinging the cow).
On the DS front, she currently loves Quickspot (DS), Cooking Mama (but of course), Cake Mania. Occasionally some of the quirkier titles like Elite Beat Agents get a big score but they dont happpen often.
Now, on paper it looks like none of these titles have substantial depth in gameplay, much less longevity. Dont even get started on the graphics. Some of these games score a measly 60% but as far as personal enjoyment goes, we'd certainly rate it higher for sheer entertainment and fun value.
So how do you find a more representative rating system where (sometimes), depth, length, graphics have little bearing on your actual enjoyment (and constant return to) of the title?
I had trouble updating for a good hour or so : the progress bar would jump up in steps to about 80% before resetting to 0%. Abt 10 secs after that, an error message would pop-up saying either my hard disk is full or there is a connection problem.
I tried this many times of course. Each time the error message occurred, I would be automatically signed out. When I tried to sign in again - on 4 occassions the machine simply hung. Display freezes. Pressing the controller gets no response and I had to turn off the Xbox and restart.
Eventually after more thatn 20 attempts, the update ran fine (my broadband line was fine and in fact i did nothing to intervene). Apart from the new features, the look and feel is pretty much the same and they have also reorganised the listings on Marketplace.
Download speed is still slow as ever. And because of the update my previous 61% download progress of MotoGP Demo has been reset to zero! Dang!
Now, slightly OT - took Ninety Nine Nights (Asian version) thru the first 3 missions and my quick thoughts were : didn't quite enjoy it. Sure it has a storyline but the button mashing require little to nil dexterity giving the player no sense of joy in pulling off moves or avoiding attacks. The only defensive move is a jump - there is no block - and with hordes of enemnies around you - u cant really tell if somone is attacking u so its either u randomly jump or just simply mash the buttons which will do just fine.
6 months is still a long time in coming and moods and appetites can whittle and change overnight.
Sure, Sony had made its life a little harder with the E3 flop, but a well executed marketing blitz can still create the line of lemmings outside the game shops on launch day.
A majority of us have short memories - be they in politics, at work, life etc. A faux pas by a politician today is easily overlooked 2 months later. Err.. a case in point : after positively dissing the 360 during the initial months after launch (shortage, power supply, same-old-same-old type of games blaa blaa), months thereafter I have one 360 sitting pretty at home. How quickly the negativity ebbs away as I have a blast of a time with GRAW and Oblivion.
It will be the same here. A well managed campaign can erase much of the negative publicity Sony gained recently. The launch is by no means a guaranteed flop and Sony still can do something about it.
Slashdot Mirror
And let them play in the rain sometimes, frolic in the sloppy fields and let bacteria latch on them ... . forcing kids to live in too sanitised a world and they will grow up having low defense for common ailments.
Personal experience : my first 2 girls lived in Mom's Sanitised World of Dust Free / Carpet Free / No Friggin Playing in the Rain / No pets. Result : every little dumb thing triggers their asthma.
My third daughter : 7 cats during wifey's pregnancy and eventual childbirth plus no more of this sanitised nonsense : Result : right as rain and growing up well and far far less visits to the Paed.
I believe one of the Nintendo execs mentioned that the traditional review system dont lend themselves to reviewing new gameplay type games found on DS's and Wii's well.
A lot of Wii games that got lukewarm reviews have the converse effect in reality : my wife who is 37 is a regular for Wii Sports (bowling), Wii Play (Find Mii drives her nuts in trying to reach the higher levels) and Cooking Mama (she doesnt like Rayman because she sucks at timing in swinging the cow).
On the DS front, she currently loves Quickspot (DS), Cooking Mama (but of course), Cake Mania. Occasionally some of the quirkier titles like Elite Beat Agents get a big score but they dont happpen often.
Now, on paper it looks like none of these titles have substantial depth in gameplay, much less longevity. Dont even get started on the graphics. Some of these games score a measly 60% but as far as personal enjoyment goes, we'd certainly rate it higher for sheer entertainment and fun value.
So how do you find a more representative rating system where (sometimes), depth, length, graphics have little bearing on your actual enjoyment (and constant return to) of the title?
I had trouble updating for a good hour or so : the progress bar would jump up in steps to about 80% before resetting to 0%. Abt 10 secs after that, an error message would pop-up saying either my hard disk is full or there is a connection problem. I tried this many times of course. Each time the error message occurred, I would be automatically signed out. When I tried to sign in again - on 4 occassions the machine simply hung. Display freezes. Pressing the controller gets no response and I had to turn off the Xbox and restart. Eventually after more thatn 20 attempts, the update ran fine (my broadband line was fine and in fact i did nothing to intervene). Apart from the new features, the look and feel is pretty much the same and they have also reorganised the listings on Marketplace. Download speed is still slow as ever. And because of the update my previous 61% download progress of MotoGP Demo has been reset to zero! Dang! Now, slightly OT - took Ninety Nine Nights (Asian version) thru the first 3 missions and my quick thoughts were : didn't quite enjoy it. Sure it has a storyline but the button mashing require little to nil dexterity giving the player no sense of joy in pulling off moves or avoiding attacks. The only defensive move is a jump - there is no block - and with hordes of enemnies around you - u cant really tell if somone is attacking u so its either u randomly jump or just simply mash the buttons which will do just fine.
6 months is still a long time in coming and moods and appetites can whittle and change overnight. Sure, Sony had made its life a little harder with the E3 flop, but a well executed marketing blitz can still create the line of lemmings outside the game shops on launch day. A majority of us have short memories - be they in politics, at work, life etc. A faux pas by a politician today is easily overlooked 2 months later. Err .. a case in point : after positively dissing the 360 during the initial months after launch (shortage, power supply, same-old-same-old type of games blaa blaa), months thereafter I have one 360 sitting pretty at home. How quickly the negativity ebbs away as I have a blast of a time with GRAW and Oblivion.
It will be the same here. A well managed campaign can erase much of the negative publicity Sony gained recently. The launch is by no means a guaranteed flop and Sony still can do something about it.