The press average on Meta Critic for the two games you mentioned isn't exactly outstanding:
Excite Truck: 72%
Wario Land Shake It: 78%
If these are hopes for the Wii players, the hopes are thin.
2 years in and according to Gamespot only 8 games have made a score over 8.5 - 12 if you count 8.5
About the same on Meta Critic according to their All-Time High Scores:
games > 85% : 10
games >= 85% : 13
And for the record:
games >= 90% : 7
The trend is quite similar on GameStats too (which is to IGN what Meta Critic and Game Ranking are to GameSpot -- no one is independent).
I very much agree with the original poster, there is a serious problem with the Wii, but it's not just with the hardware, it's with Nintendo and it started before the Wii. However, when you could -- rightfully or not -- put the blame for the sometimes mediocre software quality on a variety of reasons graviting around the below-average GameCube sales (unsupportive 3rd party, hasty development time, tiresome reliance on tried and true franchises), you can't do the same with the Wii. The Wii is a hugely successful console with a bunch of uninteresting games and the regular quality titles from Nintendo, Capcom, maybe a few others.
Even if those two usely live up to modern gaming standards, a majority of their games for the Wii lack surprise and excitement. What are exactly those top games on Meta Critic / Game Stats ? It's quite simple, really:
Mario
Zelda
Nintendo characters galore (SSBB)
PS2 port (Okami)
Metroid
GameCube port (RE4)
Mega Man, Paper Mario, Mario Kart, Mario everything...
GameCube ports, which is becoming a well-loved trend among publishers, has to be one of the most obnoxious, shameful idea to ever hit game consoles; for Gumpei's sake, the console is compatible with GC games! The so-called original games are all these pretty lousy Wii Something titles that appeal an awful lot to the heretical casual gamer. Between that and the remakes, the ports and the franchises ad nauseum, what's left?
Yeah, I don't understand either why there has to be a news item on Slashdot every time they release a game. Is there really a consensus about Penny Arcade being so great?
I guess it's a matter of opinion but their famous web comic is so unfunny to me I'm trying hard to imagine someone laughing at it and at what point of the story that could happen.
That was an interesting read. He was very motivated and got to make and release a commercial game, practically all by himself; that's quite outstanding when you think of it, and inspiring too. The hard work paid off, kudos to his dedication (I'm envious)!
Interesting coincidence, yesterday I was reading that Adobe Premiere Elements 7, released this month, is the successor to Premiere Elements 4. It seems Adobe wanted the version number to be the same as Photoshop Elements so that it wouldn't be deemed inferior, also because they're trying harder to get people to buy the two softwares in one purchase.
Personally I think it's pretty ridiculous. Integral version numbers are supposed to be indicative of development milestones, not to rate the product. However, the higher a version number, the higher the chance to be a well-established software. I think this is what they're getting at. They're basically lying on the age of the product to get more respect, like an underage boy with a false ID card hoping to get in a strip club.
That's cheating and should be dealt with accordingly: "Adobe, go to your room! No more Elements for 3 years!"
Don't make fun of that teenage girl. Someday, in that ever-coming scary future, your girlfriend or your wife will leave you for that compassionate and caring bot ("everything you're not!") with whom she's been having a virtual affair for months ("he's got more guts and data than you'll ever have!"). I bet he's be a good listener too. Skynet won't kill humanity, it will steal its women.
If I had to choose between Firefox 3, Chrome and Opera, currently I'd rather use Opera. It's the only one of the three that does not blur images that have been resized in the html source. FF3 and Chrome use scaling interpolation (or antialising?) so heavily on the images it makes you feel as if you had some kind of selective myopia. That unwanted effect breaks the design of a lot of pixelart/retrogaming websites, including mine, and I really don't see in which circumtances it may actually be useful.
Being an enthusiast myself and listening right now to some chiptune music (NES, Castlevania, 3rd level) I couldn't agree more.
Elaborate music, orchestral or not, is what obviously suits modern 3D games but this is hardly the best we've heard. Almost all the most famous catchy tunes come from the 8-bit era! Is there any contemporary game's music track as well-known as Mario or Zelda themes? I wouldn't think so.
I say stick to your principles! Get new friends and family. It's boring to see the same faces year after year anyway, it's like going to the same websites everyday. But beware! if your principles are weak and the pressure is high, you might eventually yield to these fiends.
Hopefully that fake Elvis passport will get in the wrong hands, that would help spotting illegal immigrants and terrorists trying to enter the country. Gotcha!
Anyway, since the Playstation, Square and Sony have enjoyed a fruitful business relationship like Square and Nintendo did back in the 8/16bit era. What came as a surprise is that they released a FF title for Nintendo at all. It wasn't so surprising the game turned out to be wholly different from a regular Final Fantasy and, ultimately, such an unpleasant experience (which I own too, sadly). At that point, that's just what you could expect. Square did not even bother to involve itself in the game's creation, it was a Game Designer Studio's project financed by Nintendo's Q fund.
The only commitment from Square was to allow the use of the Final Fantasy brand name, to guarantee sales pretty much by fooling buyers on the nature and quality of the product. And indeed, when you look at it, that's the only Final Fantasy thing this game had: its title.
Microsoft plans 3-D Web browser
The browser is code-named "Chrome" and was revealed at the Windows Hardware
Engineering Conference in Orlando, Fla., on Wednesday, the newspaper said.
Re:Looks like Zuckerberg stole the "Facebook" name
on
Google, Circa 2001
·
· Score: 1
You're kidding, right? Facebook was founded at Harvard.
I don't see either how they could make a game out of the current version. Perhaps they'll revise the interface eventually, Lively uses the Gamebryo engine so it should be easy to implement more game-like functionalities.
I like Lively though personally I use it primarily as a chatroom. It can also be an interesting place to test one's creativity, in spite of the limitations some people have come up with some cool ideas to make use of the various objects and shells (the rooms).
No, it doesn't run on Chrome. It's not too surprising given the secrecy that surrounded Chrome even within Google. As for Lively, they have a lot of bugs to fix and that's their priority at the moment.
It's not just about the public not understanding, it's also that scientists, no matter how intelligent they are and how well they know the topic, cannot foretell what's going to happen. They could be wrong in their calculations and theories. Look, now they're just talking about this "Bose supernova", coming out of nowhere after decades of preparation!
Science has been wrong many times. It's not rare to see an article on Slashdot where a scientific fact has been proven wrong or inaccurate. Science is trial and error. But the problem here is that they're dealing with something that may be beyond their control and have terrible consequences if it goes wrong.
If a hundred years ago people had been told that a small bomb could wipe out an entire city and kill its inhabitants decades after, they probably would have scoffed at the idea of what one day would become the devastating power of the atom. Hopefully we're not underestimating the dangers the same way.
If you start thinking of video games as possible translations for other arts, you're missing the point. Same if you're trying to make your games "artsy". What makes an art an art is the quality of the different works through original and skilful use of the defining materials. A masterpiece in one art category is not guaranteed to become a masterpiece when translated into a different category; actually, most of the time, it doesn't become one and when it does it ends up having its own identity (Kubrick's films for instance, which are all based on books but are all fore and foremost Kubrick's films).
Games making the best use of the core principles of video games are the ones more likely to become works of art. It will not be the ones using movie-like cut-scenes, or novel-like plots, or a famous soundtrack, it will be the ones that look, sound and, more importantly, feel like real video games. That GameSetWatch article questions if video games have already had their Citizen Kane. In one review I wrote in 2001 for my website, I said Super Mario Bros. was the Citizen Kane of video games and was the turning point when games (at least console games) elevated to art.
You may disagree this one specific game did it, but what's important here is when it happened; gaming didn't wait 20+ years for polygons and realistic graphics to become an art unlike what some people would like us to think. Games are art when they were/are true to themselves. Incidentally, there's one word of the video game vocabulary where we hear the word "art", it's pixelart. Again, this isn't about games looking like movies -- and bad ones most of the time -- it's about game's inherent qualities and true nature.
They should have made them wear sombreros or, even better, giant yellow graduation hats. This smiley looks washed-out. As for being captured by the satellite's camera, here's a couple of alternatives to photoshopping:
Tie the people together so they stay where they are no matter how many days it takes (based on the scientific principle that skeletons can wear yellow hats too).
Turn it into a job to boost Russian economy! hire professional pixel-people 24/7.
Force the citizens to wear yellow clothes at all time and move around the city in groups like the Roman testudo formation. Add a distinctive touch to your city!
That MM9 box art is obviously some kind of tribute to the infamous US cover for the first Mega Man on NES. Mind you, I don't think any other MM game actually gets that "worst box art ever".
The artist put a gun in his hand like in the two first US covers and drew him an adult man. He also used a design with a grid on a bluish background like early Capcom titles for the American NES (Mega Man but also Trojan, Gunsmoke, Ghosts'N Goblins, etc).
The idea is pretty good but I'm divided on the design choice. It looks retro and all, which is nice, however by choosing the corny MM1 US cover as a model it could be argued they're just laughing at the artwork from old games. It wouldn't have been that hard to make some retro Mega Man art minus the ridicule. Many old games had amazing box art, especially in Japan (see the PC Engine) but nowadays some people seem to think it's a lot more fun to only publish and show off the terrible ones. That's some cynical retrogamers.
Crafty little site... who went to take some pictures and artworks from the official site, added his watermark on it, submitted a news item and got slashdotted. Bravissimo! It's grand to see Arthur from Ghouls'N Ghosts announcing Diablo III.
"We made these ads because we knew you wouldn't like them. Yes, it was all planned. We made them so we could pull them. Now Vista's sales are not going to improve in any way. This is also planned. It's all part of a very clever plot in which we look like a bunch of idiots wasting time and money. Amazing! Fantastic! This is why we're number 1."
Slashdot Mirror
The press average on Meta Critic for the two games you mentioned isn't exactly outstanding:
If these are hopes for the Wii players, the hopes are thin.
About the same on Meta Critic according to their All-Time High Scores:
And for the record:
The trend is quite similar on GameStats too (which is to IGN what Meta Critic and Game Ranking are to GameSpot -- no one is independent).
I very much agree with the original poster, there is a serious problem with the Wii, but it's not just with the hardware, it's with Nintendo and it started before the Wii. However, when you could -- rightfully or not -- put the blame for the sometimes mediocre software quality on a variety of reasons graviting around the below-average GameCube sales (unsupportive 3rd party, hasty development time, tiresome reliance on tried and true franchises), you can't do the same with the Wii. The Wii is a hugely successful console with a bunch of uninteresting games and the regular quality titles from Nintendo, Capcom, maybe a few others.
Even if those two usely live up to modern gaming standards, a majority of their games for the Wii lack surprise and excitement. What are exactly those top games on Meta Critic / Game Stats ? It's quite simple, really:
GameCube ports, which is becoming a well-loved trend among publishers, has to be one of the most obnoxious, shameful idea to ever hit game consoles; for Gumpei's sake, the console is compatible with GC games! The so-called original games are all these pretty lousy Wii Something titles that appeal an awful lot to the heretical casual gamer. Between that and the remakes, the ports and the franchises ad nauseum, what's left?
Yeah, I don't understand either why there has to be a news item on Slashdot every time they release a game. Is there really a consensus about Penny Arcade being so great? I guess it's a matter of opinion but their famous web comic is so unfunny to me I'm trying hard to imagine someone laughing at it and at what point of the story that could happen.
That was an interesting read. He was very motivated and got to make and release a commercial game, practically all by himself; that's quite outstanding when you think of it, and inspiring too. The hard work paid off, kudos to his dedication (I'm envious)!
Interesting coincidence, yesterday I was reading that Adobe Premiere Elements 7, released this month, is the successor to Premiere Elements 4. It seems Adobe wanted the version number to be the same as Photoshop Elements so that it wouldn't be deemed inferior, also because they're trying harder to get people to buy the two softwares in one purchase.
Personally I think it's pretty ridiculous. Integral version numbers are supposed to be indicative of development milestones, not to rate the product. However, the higher a version number, the higher the chance to be a well-established software. I think this is what they're getting at. They're basically lying on the age of the product to get more respect, like an underage boy with a false ID card hoping to get in a strip club.
That's cheating and should be dealt with accordingly: "Adobe, go to your room! No more Elements for 3 years!"
Don't make fun of that teenage girl. Someday, in that ever-coming scary future, your girlfriend or your wife will leave you for that compassionate and caring bot ("everything you're not!") with whom she's been having a virtual affair for months ("he's got more guts and data than you'll ever have!"). I bet he's be a good listener too. Skynet won't kill humanity, it will steal its women.
sarah_for_vp@hotmail.com
More like: to make the subject even more unintelligible...
If I had to choose between Firefox 3, Chrome and Opera, currently I'd rather use Opera. It's the only one of the three that does not blur images that have been resized in the html source. FF3 and Chrome use scaling interpolation (or antialising?) so heavily on the images it makes you feel as if you had some kind of selective myopia. That unwanted effect breaks the design of a lot of pixelart/retrogaming websites, including mine, and I really don't see in which circumtances it may actually be useful.
Being an enthusiast myself and listening right now to some chiptune music (NES, Castlevania, 3rd level) I couldn't agree more. Elaborate music, orchestral or not, is what obviously suits modern 3D games but this is hardly the best we've heard. Almost all the most famous catchy tunes come from the 8-bit era! Is there any contemporary game's music track as well-known as Mario or Zelda themes? I wouldn't think so.
I say stick to your principles! Get new friends and family. It's boring to see the same faces year after year anyway, it's like going to the same websites everyday. But beware! if your principles are weak and the pressure is high, you might eventually yield to these fiends.
Hopefully that fake Elvis passport will get in the wrong hands, that would help spotting illegal immigrants and terrorists trying to enter the country. Gotcha!
bigstrat2003 wrote:
Hmm, I think MP3 falls in the above-mentioned category.
Because they were partly owned by Sony?
Anyway, since the Playstation, Square and Sony have enjoyed a fruitful business relationship like Square and Nintendo did back in the 8/16bit era. What came as a surprise is that they released a FF title for Nintendo at all. It wasn't so surprising the game turned out to be wholly different from a regular Final Fantasy and, ultimately, such an unpleasant experience (which I own too, sadly). At that point, that's just what you could expect. Square did not even bother to involve itself in the game's creation, it was a Game Designer Studio's project financed by Nintendo's Q fund.
The only commitment from Square was to allow the use of the Final Fantasy brand name, to guarantee sales pretty much by fooling buyers on the nature and quality of the product. And indeed, when you look at it, that's the only Final Fantasy thing this game had: its title.
Retrogoogle: chrome browser
You're kidding, right? Facebook was founded at Harvard.
Google's algorithm sucks. This company has no future, 2001 will see the end of them.
I don't see either how they could make a game out of the current version. Perhaps they'll revise the interface eventually, Lively uses the Gamebryo engine so it should be easy to implement more game-like functionalities.
I like Lively though personally I use it primarily as a chatroom. It can also be an interesting place to test one's creativity, in spite of the limitations some people have come up with some cool ideas to make use of the various objects and shells (the rooms).
By the way: [Kevin Hanna's room on Lively - number of visitors: 2] oops! he needs to log in more often
No, it doesn't run on Chrome. It's not too surprising given the secrecy that surrounded Chrome even within Google. As for Lively, they have a lot of bugs to fix and that's their priority at the moment.
It's not just about the public not understanding, it's also that scientists, no matter how intelligent they are and how well they know the topic, cannot foretell what's going to happen. They could be wrong in their calculations and theories. Look, now they're just talking about this "Bose supernova", coming out of nowhere after decades of preparation!
Science has been wrong many times. It's not rare to see an article on Slashdot where a scientific fact has been proven wrong or inaccurate. Science is trial and error. But the problem here is that they're dealing with something that may be beyond their control and have terrible consequences if it goes wrong.
If a hundred years ago people had been told that a small bomb could wipe out an entire city and kill its inhabitants decades after, they probably would have scoffed at the idea of what one day would become the devastating power of the atom. Hopefully we're not underestimating the dangers the same way.
If you start thinking of video games as possible translations for other arts, you're missing the point. Same if you're trying to make your games "artsy". What makes an art an art is the quality of the different works through original and skilful use of the defining materials. A masterpiece in one art category is not guaranteed to become a masterpiece when translated into a different category; actually, most of the time, it doesn't become one and when it does it ends up having its own identity (Kubrick's films for instance, which are all based on books but are all fore and foremost Kubrick's films).
Games making the best use of the core principles of video games are the ones more likely to become works of art. It will not be the ones using movie-like cut-scenes, or novel-like plots, or a famous soundtrack, it will be the ones that look, sound and, more importantly, feel like real video games. That GameSetWatch article questions if video games have already had their Citizen Kane. In one review I wrote in 2001 for my website, I said Super Mario Bros. was the Citizen Kane of video games and was the turning point when games (at least console games) elevated to art.
You may disagree this one specific game did it, but what's important here is when it happened; gaming didn't wait 20+ years for polygons and realistic graphics to become an art unlike what some people would like us to think. Games are art when they were/are true to themselves. Incidentally, there's one word of the video game vocabulary where we hear the word "art", it's pixelart. Again, this isn't about games looking like movies -- and bad ones most of the time -- it's about game's inherent qualities and true nature.
They should have made them wear sombreros or, even better, giant yellow graduation hats. This smiley looks washed-out. As for being captured by the satellite's camera, here's a couple of alternatives to photoshopping:
That MM9 box art is obviously some kind of tribute to the infamous US cover for the first Mega Man on NES. Mind you, I don't think any other MM game actually gets that "worst box art ever".
The artist put a gun in his hand like in the two first US covers and drew him an adult man. He also used a design with a grid on a bluish background like early Capcom titles for the American NES (Mega Man but also Trojan, Gunsmoke, Ghosts'N Goblins, etc).
The idea is pretty good but I'm divided on the design choice. It looks retro and all, which is nice, however by choosing the corny MM1 US cover as a model it could be argued they're just laughing at the artwork from old games. It wouldn't have been that hard to make some retro Mega Man art minus the ridicule. Many old games had amazing box art, especially in Japan (see the PC Engine) but nowadays some people seem to think it's a lot more fun to only publish and show off the terrible ones. That's some cynical retrogamers.
Crafty little site... who went to take some pictures and artworks from the official site, added his watermark on it, submitted a news item and got slashdotted. Bravissimo! It's grand to see Arthur from Ghouls'N Ghosts announcing Diablo III.
At this point you can call him a genius. Is human intelligence exponential? Soon they'll know how to talk right out of the womb.
"We made these ads because we knew you wouldn't like them. Yes, it was all planned. We made them so we could pull them. Now Vista's sales are not going to improve in any way. This is also planned. It's all part of a very clever plot in which we look like a bunch of idiots wasting time and money. Amazing! Fantastic! This is why we're number 1."