I think it's a little worrying that new laws can be passed based on the emotional reasons of one person.
I don't approve of violent porn, but if it's 100% consentual then I really don't see what the problem is. What about mainstream movies that contain extreme violence, why aren't they banned?
Sony's logic seemed ironclad: Not only would the hi-def drive's huge storage capacity allow for far-more-realistic and complex games...
Hah. Realism and complexity isn't restricted by storage capacity. I've yet to see a game that takes up two DVDs (GameCube's discs excluded), and if a game fills up one DVD, they'll just use two.
No, I wasn't assuming anything since WoW is a global game. I play with Australians and Asians all the time and Europeans on occasion.
Er, but American and European games are separate. I can't play on anything except EU servers.
I think you were not involved enough. The phrase "The game begins at 60" is very prevalent on every server and is very, very true.
Maybe it's true, but getting to lvl 60 is borderline impossible due to the sheer boredom. Leveling up becomes very slow before lvl 40, and I can't imagine how terribly slow it must be between 40 and 60.
Guild Wars is tedious. I beta tested it and could immediately see what a slow grind it would be.
It's not a slow grind. There's no grinding involved. The problem is that GW's PvE content is extremely shallow, and I'm not really into PvP (someone might ask why I bought GW, and that's a pretty good question). In PvE, there's no grinding required, there's no crafting, equipment is almost meaningless, and the game doesn't take very long to finish. The PvE is just there to prepare you for PvP. In Factions, PvE progression is insanely fast: I was level 17/20 by the time I had finished my second mission.
Yeah, I think this might partially explain why I got fed up with WoW. It does seem like a race to the top, and it doesn't feel like there's any real content. Everything is built around leveling up, grinding and getting new loot. There's no exploration and the quests are all identical repetitions of each other from level 1 to level 60. There isn't much to do except level up. Grinding professions isn't very interesting either.
You're probably assuming that I'm American. I'm not. I play on European servers.
I've played WoW for over 1,5 years, I already know all about it. It simply becomes mind-numbingly boring around lvl 30-40 and I stop playing. There isn't much of an incentive to keep leveling up, especially when you know that at lvl 60 the game stops (I don't like guilds so of course I won't be raiding). I'm having the same problem with Guild Wars, there's just no point to any of it.
I fail to understand how anyone can play a game like AO when getting to lvl 40 in WoW is impossible due to the extreme boredom that eventually creeps in.
I never reached level 60. The highest I got was level 37, but then I deleted the character for various reasons. Now I have no characters at all. Getting to level 60 in WoW is, in my opinion, an epic achievement that no other game can provide. How some people manage to do it in a month, even when they have experience with the game, is a mystery to me.
I'm not sure if and when I'll give it another shot.
That reminds me of a strip about The Sims where Gabe (could have been Tycho, but it doesn't really matter) is watching his Sim do something, and then Tycho shows up and starts watching Tycho watching his Sim.
Too bad their strips don't have keywords that can be searched, except for a fraction of them.
I'm actually a little worried about Wii... I don't know if I'll like the controller, and if it'll work well in my cramped gaming space with my shitty 14" television. I think I'll end up buying Twilight Princess for the GameCube, and then decide if I want to buy the Wii. I used to be excited about the Wiimote, but now I'm having doubts.
Not really today's industry. Graphics have always been important. It just seems like they weren't important because games from, say, the early nineties look so outdated. I remember how much Doom's graphics were praised, and you could see the same thing even in the eighties. It's nothing new. Possibly the problem is that today the graphics take so much time, money and effort to create that they threaten to overshadow other aspects of the game.
I'm not really a graphics whore (I still run 1024x768 with AA/AF off), but I like pretty graphics, and I think they can be important for immersion (depends on the game I suppose). I'm mentioning Jade Empire again, but that game just looks terrific, and really sets the mood. The sceneries and costumes are beautiful. I wonder how long it'll take before I look at that game and declare it outdated.
If someone was to take the 360 and make a 2d game, with enough time alotted they would be able to make a game in excessive of one thousand times as long as Final Fantasy VI, which only used 8 megs. I'm not even talking about processing power. But instead we devote huge amounts of our disk to the graphics in the game, where the gameplay continues to sit in the smallest amount of the game.
Quite so, but length isn't inherently a good thing. I think Final Fantasy VII was a pretty long game, for instance. There'd be no need to make it longer (never finished FFVI, but got far - seems like a long game too). And graphics? I think they're sort of demonized too often, because good graphics really immerse you into the game. Jade Empire has very beautiful scenery and character design, it wouldn't be the same if it was running on FFVI's engine.
As far as adventure and roleplaying games go, I think they're long enough.
[quote]If someone was to take the 360 and make a 2d game, with enough time alotted they would be able to make a game in excessive of one thousand times as long as Final Fantasy VI, which only used 8 megs. I'm not even talking about processing power. But instead we devote huge amounts of our disk to the graphics in the game, where the gameplay continues to sit in the smallest amount of the game.[/quote] Quite so, but length isn't inherently a good thing. I think Final Fantasy VII was a pretty long game, for instance. There'd be no need to make it longer (never finished FFVI, but got far - seems like a long game too). And graphics? I think they're sort of demonized too often, because good graphics really immerse you into the game. Jade Empire has very beautiful scenery and character design, it wouldn't be the same if it was running on FFVI's engine.
As far as adventure and roleplaying games go, I think they're long enough.
It would have been trivially, trivially easy to prevent the hostage exploits, but instead Valve gimped the game and removed a valid strategic option. Moving the hostages to a more favorable (and unknown) location really helped, and kept the game more unpredictable, like in real life.
According to this blog entry, the site tries to exploit an Internet Explorer vulnerability. I don't know if this information is accurate, and I use Firefox anyway.
Sheesh, and you wonder why you got raped so much in school. I knew plenty of ugly, short, and smart girls that did just fine in high school by wearing a burqa, instead of always wearing a miniskirt and talking to boys.
It's always the victim's fault! I was bullied in high school by people I never had any contact with, and they were from a different class. I never did anything to give them any cause to bully me. They just do it because they like it, and they'll choose anyone who seems defenceless. It's as simple as that. They're no different from other types of criminals.
Well, to be more precise, running careless tests on a very pure and unstable sample obtained from Xen could cause a resonance cascade. It could have... unforeseen consequences.
No, you're thinking of Islam, not Christianity. If Rockstar made a game about Islam, they'd be in real deep trouble... some employees might be assassinated, at worst.
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I stopped collecting them because the Brotherhood didn't tolerate my actions anymore.
I think it's a little worrying that new laws can be passed based on the emotional reasons of one person.
I don't approve of violent porn, but if it's 100% consentual then I really don't see what the problem is. What about mainstream movies that contain extreme violence, why aren't they banned?
Hah. Realism and complexity isn't restricted by storage capacity. I've yet to see a game that takes up two DVDs (GameCube's discs excluded), and if a game fills up one DVD, they'll just use two.
Er, but American and European games are separate. I can't play on anything except EU servers.
Maybe it's true, but getting to lvl 60 is borderline impossible due to the sheer boredom. Leveling up becomes very slow before lvl 40, and I can't imagine how terribly slow it must be between 40 and 60.
It's not a slow grind. There's no grinding involved. The problem is that GW's PvE content is extremely shallow, and I'm not really into PvP (someone might ask why I bought GW, and that's a pretty good question). In PvE, there's no grinding required, there's no crafting, equipment is almost meaningless, and the game doesn't take very long to finish. The PvE is just there to prepare you for PvP. In Factions, PvE progression is insanely fast: I was level 17/20 by the time I had finished my second mission.
Yeah, I think this might partially explain why I got fed up with WoW. It does seem like a race to the top, and it doesn't feel like there's any real content. Everything is built around leveling up, grinding and getting new loot. There's no exploration and the quests are all identical repetitions of each other from level 1 to level 60. There isn't much to do except level up. Grinding professions isn't very interesting either.
You're probably assuming that I'm American. I'm not. I play on European servers.
I've played WoW for over 1,5 years, I already know all about it. It simply becomes mind-numbingly boring around lvl 30-40 and I stop playing. There isn't much of an incentive to keep leveling up, especially when you know that at lvl 60 the game stops (I don't like guilds so of course I won't be raiding). I'm having the same problem with Guild Wars, there's just no point to any of it.
I fail to understand how anyone can play a game like AO when getting to lvl 40 in WoW is impossible due to the extreme boredom that eventually creeps in.
I never reached level 60. The highest I got was level 37, but then I deleted the character for various reasons. Now I have no characters at all. Getting to level 60 in WoW is, in my opinion, an epic achievement that no other game can provide. How some people manage to do it in a month, even when they have experience with the game, is a mystery to me.
I'm not sure if and when I'll give it another shot.
Well, this is odd. I read that strip just five minutes ago when I was looking for something.
That reminds me of a strip about The Sims where Gabe (could have been Tycho, but it doesn't really matter) is watching his Sim do something, and then Tycho shows up and starts watching Tycho watching his Sim.
Too bad their strips don't have keywords that can be searched, except for a fraction of them.
I'm actually a little worried about Wii... I don't know if I'll like the controller, and if it'll work well in my cramped gaming space with my shitty 14" television. I think I'll end up buying Twilight Princess for the GameCube, and then decide if I want to buy the Wii. I used to be excited about the Wiimote, but now I'm having doubts.
Not really today's industry. Graphics have always been important. It just seems like they weren't important because games from, say, the early nineties look so outdated. I remember how much Doom's graphics were praised, and you could see the same thing even in the eighties. It's nothing new. Possibly the problem is that today the graphics take so much time, money and effort to create that they threaten to overshadow other aspects of the game.
I'm not really a graphics whore (I still run 1024x768 with AA/AF off), but I like pretty graphics, and I think they can be important for immersion (depends on the game I suppose). I'm mentioning Jade Empire again, but that game just looks terrific, and really sets the mood. The sceneries and costumes are beautiful. I wonder how long it'll take before I look at that game and declare it outdated.
Quite so, but length isn't inherently a good thing. I think Final Fantasy VII was a pretty long game, for instance. There'd be no need to make it longer (never finished FFVI, but got far - seems like a long game too). And graphics? I think they're sort of demonized too often, because good graphics really immerse you into the game. Jade Empire has very beautiful scenery and character design, it wouldn't be the same if it was running on FFVI's engine.
As far as adventure and roleplaying games go, I think they're long enough.
[quote]If someone was to take the 360 and make a 2d game, with enough time alotted they would be able to make a game in excessive of one thousand times as long as Final Fantasy VI, which only used 8 megs. I'm not even talking about processing power. But instead we devote huge amounts of our disk to the graphics in the game, where the gameplay continues to sit in the smallest amount of the game.[/quote]
Quite so, but length isn't inherently a good thing. I think Final Fantasy VII was a pretty long game, for instance. There'd be no need to make it longer (never finished FFVI, but got far - seems like a long game too). And graphics? I think they're sort of demonized too often, because good graphics really immerse you into the game. Jade Empire has very beautiful scenery and character design, it wouldn't be the same if it was running on FFVI's engine.
As far as adventure and roleplaying games go, I think they're long enough.
It would have been trivially, trivially easy to prevent the hostage exploits, but instead Valve gimped the game and removed a valid strategic option. Moving the hostages to a more favorable (and unknown) location really helped, and kept the game more unpredictable, like in real life.
According to this blog entry, the site tries to exploit an Internet Explorer vulnerability. I don't know if this information is accurate, and I use Firefox anyway.
Have a look at the left sidebar. There's a Games category in there.
Could people actually present arguments instead of anonymously modding something as flamebait?
So you two are actually saying that bullying is good and should be increased? Un-fucking-believable.
You're a fucking idiot. Go hang yourself.
Let's try that in a different way:
Sheesh, and you wonder why you got raped so much in school. I knew plenty of ugly, short, and smart girls that did just fine in high school by wearing a burqa, instead of always wearing a miniskirt and talking to boys.
It's always the victim's fault! I was bullied in high school by people I never had any contact with, and they were from a different class. I never did anything to give them any cause to bully me. They just do it because they like it, and they'll choose anyone who seems defenceless. It's as simple as that. They're no different from other types of criminals.
Or, you can just go batshit insane and start gouging their eyes and biting their throat. That should send a strong message.
But seriously, physical force of some sort is the best response to bullying. If you're not strong then you'll just have to be ruthless.
Have people forgotten about Harvester? That game was seriously fucked up, and caused great controversy. I played it when I was 13 or something.
Well, to be more precise, running careless tests on a very pure and unstable sample obtained from Xen could cause a resonance cascade. It could have... unforeseen consequences.
No, you're thinking of Islam, not Christianity. If Rockstar made a game about Islam, they'd be in real deep trouble... some employees might be assassinated, at worst.