Did you play the game, or even watch videos of playing it? After watching a video of the final battle, I'm very much impressed with the story element of the game, even if it didn't have the cool gun and cool JoCo song. What Portal did that no other game (that I know of) has done, was made the entire game a character. The GLaDOS is a disembodied voice that taunts you four the entire 90-120 minute game, making fun of you for screwing up and making hilarious passive-aggressive comments. For being the ONLY character in the entire story, she was developed with a surprising level of depth. Not just her witty banter, but also her ambivalence and mysterious ultimate objective, which is never clearly given, but has to be pieced together through Freudian slips and careful analysis of everything she says and the Half-Life universe. GLaDOS is an impressingly deep character for a video game NPC, especially considered she is conveyed entirely in the 'background', and not through cumbersome cutscenes and text boxes.
"...or of a profound state of cosmic bliss that reveals a universal truth."
That reveals a "universal truth"? Maybe it reveals some truth about human neurology, but you can't really extrapolate that to mean it's revealing a universal theological truth.
It could be that all human brains fire up the same way when they're thinking about the comforting notion of a higher power--it doesn't mean this is evidence of the existence of a higher power.
I've been following the site for a while, and they've cleared up some questions in the last teaser update about the story: It takes place in an alternate universe, the characters aren't the "real" canon characters, they're trophies of those characters. It's always been implied in the opening cinematic that Smash Brothers was just a kid playing with toys (which is why the final boss is a hand--kids have their action figures fight their hand when they finally run out of other toys for it to fight), but it was explicitly stated in the last update that all the characters are simply toys, and not part of the canon. When they die, they turn back into toys. They exist in an alternate universe where trophies exist to fight in tournaments, and this lifestyle has been maintained for the past two games, but now Metaknight has broken the tradition by storming the tournament and dropping some evil-looking goo that turns into evil-looking monsters, and somehow requires the trophies to stop him. Keep in mind, Smash is primarily made by the people who make Kirby, so the villain is probably going to be Dark Matter or something. Metaknight is traditionally a red herring villain that turns into a helpful rival in the end.
It's not "a series of fights with motivations for the fights" in between, it's a full on side scrolling game, like the first level of the last game's Adventure Mode. It's probably punctuated with actual fights, but it's mainly side scrolling, fighting enemies (which also appear in the main game as "assist trophy" summons, like, Hammer Brothers are enemies in the side scrolling game, but you can also summon them to aid you in the multiplayer game). It also says the plot wont be bloated, just quick-paced cutscenes between action. I doubt there's going to even be text boxes.
If Nintendo is being referred to as a single entity, shouldn't it be like "Nintendo is"? No one says "America are" they say "America is" or "Americans are"...
Yes. Steve Jobs' skewed view of reality also entails release several versions of OS X Leopard that are exactly the same, a firm belief that there is a version of Vista called "miss a turn" and setting up a computer in his attic. Come on, it was a joke. All he was saying is that Safari is competing with FireFox and Opera as an IE alternative.
The comments section is a noman's land. The video bloggers themselves are actually capable of intelligent communication. Sometimes. But not all the time.
Few games try to have dynamic AI employed for textual NPC dialog, but Animal Crossing does... sort of. I remember when I first got the game for the GCN, I was under the assumption that everything they said was dynamically plucked from every letter I wrote. Then after a few weeks I started to realize that it was just mad libs, and their responses to my letter were always generic.
I think I played Animal Crossing Wild World longer than the original one (but still not as long as the game expected me to play it, over a year? Pftt). But I played it long enough to tell that they hadn't really put that much effort in the AI. Each character had one of like six personality templates, and those templates were just madlibs where they would have blank spots that would be plugged in with human-written or quotes from letters or random items names. Meh.
If a game expects me to do but interact with AI for years at a time, then that AI damn well better be dynamic.
Interestingly, Mario Strikers Charged is a "group game" and an online game. At the same time. You can have two human beings on one Wii flailing against two other human beings on another Wii over NWFC, and it also features a robust Xbox Live-like ranking system.
I wouldn't call blocking MySpace in a place of business "censorship"--it's not like MySpace is a crucial news source. Aside from preventing soldiers from screwing around on the job, it cuts down on the tons of bandwidth that monstrosity chews through (flash movies, flash music players, streaming music... glittery gifs) in a situation where bandwidth is at a premium.
Before the Wii's concept was announced, Miyamoto stated that Twilight Princess would be the last Zelda game using that same style of gameplay. Now that the Wii has been released, it's pretty obvious that the next Zelda game will be completely reworked to be more about analog weapon and tool movement than button sequence puzzles.
...Before getting all pissed off about privacy violation? Google has always logged your web history, the only thing really new about this is the fact that you can view it all from one page and, more importantly, you can choose to delete your entire history and pause it indefinitely. Explain to me how adding this is a bad thing.
Yeah, screw using the standard currency, i'll stick to my crude bargaining system. Lets see, is it three goats and a berry for an iTunes song, or is it four?
Slashdot Mirror
It's STRESS! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YS2BaMPGSQ
"If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun." ---C. S. Lewis
[Lineage] Mario: Unknown**;
...Really? You can'ta tella what he'sa supposed to bea?
Did you play the game, or even watch videos of playing it? After watching a video of the final battle, I'm very much impressed with the story element of the game, even if it didn't have the cool gun and cool JoCo song. What Portal did that no other game (that I know of) has done, was made the entire game a character. The GLaDOS is a disembodied voice that taunts you four the entire 90-120 minute game, making fun of you for screwing up and making hilarious passive-aggressive comments. For being the ONLY character in the entire story, she was developed with a surprising level of depth. Not just her witty banter, but also her ambivalence and mysterious ultimate objective, which is never clearly given, but has to be pieced together through Freudian slips and careful analysis of everything she says and the Half-Life universe. GLaDOS is an impressingly deep character for a video game NPC, especially considered she is conveyed entirely in the 'background', and not through cumbersome cutscenes and text boxes.
"...or of a profound state of cosmic bliss that reveals a universal truth." That reveals a "universal truth"? Maybe it reveals some truth about human neurology, but you can't really extrapolate that to mean it's revealing a universal theological truth. It could be that all human brains fire up the same way when they're thinking about the comforting notion of a higher power--it doesn't mean this is evidence of the existence of a higher power.
Sephiroth did it.
I've been following the site for a while, and they've cleared up some questions in the last teaser update about the story: It takes place in an alternate universe, the characters aren't the "real" canon characters, they're trophies of those characters. It's always been implied in the opening cinematic that Smash Brothers was just a kid playing with toys (which is why the final boss is a hand--kids have their action figures fight their hand when they finally run out of other toys for it to fight), but it was explicitly stated in the last update that all the characters are simply toys, and not part of the canon. When they die, they turn back into toys. They exist in an alternate universe where trophies exist to fight in tournaments, and this lifestyle has been maintained for the past two games, but now Metaknight has broken the tradition by storming the tournament and dropping some evil-looking goo that turns into evil-looking monsters, and somehow requires the trophies to stop him. Keep in mind, Smash is primarily made by the people who make Kirby, so the villain is probably going to be Dark Matter or something. Metaknight is traditionally a red herring villain that turns into a helpful rival in the end. It's not "a series of fights with motivations for the fights" in between, it's a full on side scrolling game, like the first level of the last game's Adventure Mode. It's probably punctuated with actual fights, but it's mainly side scrolling, fighting enemies (which also appear in the main game as "assist trophy" summons, like, Hammer Brothers are enemies in the side scrolling game, but you can also summon them to aid you in the multiplayer game). It also says the plot wont be bloated, just quick-paced cutscenes between action. I doubt there's going to even be text boxes.
If Nintendo is being referred to as a single entity, shouldn't it be like "Nintendo is"? No one says "America are" they say "America is" or "Americans are"...
You have to use their software to interface with their hardware? Shock and awe.
"...an insane asylum gone mad."
An insane asylum gone mad?
Yes. Steve Jobs' skewed view of reality also entails release several versions of OS X Leopard that are exactly the same, a firm belief that there is a version of Vista called "miss a turn" and setting up a computer in his attic. Come on, it was a joke. All he was saying is that Safari is competing with FireFox and Opera as an IE alternative.
The comments section is a noman's land. The video bloggers themselves are actually capable of intelligent communication. Sometimes. But not all the time.
More like "If you had two retarded children and you can only pretend to mistakenly abandon one in a burning building, who would you abandon?"
I stopped at "a fundamentally insecure operating system".
Spend 70 bucks on a Super Card for the DS and you can do all the same things with home brew apps.
"No, I said Le Bos."
Few games try to have dynamic AI employed for textual NPC dialog, but Animal Crossing does ... sort of. I remember when I first got the game for the GCN, I was under the assumption that everything they said was dynamically plucked from every letter I wrote. Then after a few weeks I started to realize that it was just mad libs, and their responses to my letter were always generic.
I think I played Animal Crossing Wild World longer than the original one (but still not as long as the game expected me to play it, over a year? Pftt). But I played it long enough to tell that they hadn't really put that much effort in the AI. Each character had one of like six personality templates, and those templates were just madlibs where they would have blank spots that would be plugged in with human-written or quotes from letters or random items names. Meh.
If a game expects me to do but interact with AI for years at a time, then that AI damn well better be dynamic.
Interestingly, Mario Strikers Charged is a "group game" and an online game. At the same time. You can have two human beings on one Wii flailing against two other human beings on another Wii over NWFC, and it also features a robust Xbox Live-like ranking system.
I wouldn't call blocking MySpace in a place of business "censorship"--it's not like MySpace is a crucial news source. Aside from preventing soldiers from screwing around on the job, it cuts down on the tons of bandwidth that monstrosity chews through (flash movies, flash music players, streaming music... glittery gifs) in a situation where bandwidth is at a premium.
Before the Wii's concept was announced, Miyamoto stated that Twilight Princess would be the last Zelda game using that same style of gameplay. Now that the Wii has been released, it's pretty obvious that the next Zelda game will be completely reworked to be more about analog weapon and tool movement than button sequence puzzles.
...Before getting all pissed off about privacy violation? Google has always logged your web history, the only thing really new about this is the fact that you can view it all from one page and, more importantly, you can choose to delete your entire history and pause it indefinitely. Explain to me how adding this is a bad thing.
Yes all the baby boomers are on The Myspace now.
Eight of those will make a Starman.
Yeah, screw using the standard currency, i'll stick to my crude bargaining system. Lets see, is it three goats and a berry for an iTunes song, or is it four?
Wouldn't it be censorship if they didn't show so many results?