"somewhere between a game reviewer and..."
on
BioShock 2 Released
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· Score: 1
Perhaps you would be interested in my game reviews then? I try to approach them as somewhere between a game reviewer and a game player.
What? What does that even begin to mean? Game critics have a tendency to inflate game quality but the reasons why are subject to speculation, conjecture and conspiracy theories. I do know know what kind of extra perspective a game critic might add that a game player hasn't.
Film critics tend to look at movies very differently from the average moviegoer because they've seen a lot more movies. It's a lot harder to impress a person who's seen thousands of films than someone who has seen a few hundred without trying to discern for quality. Imagine a teen girl whose maybe two hundred movies, mostly of the teen-girl shit variety and the best thing she's seen is probably "The Breakfast Club." Now imagine someone who loves films, seeks out the best movies to watch, gets a job as a film critic and watches every new release from that moment on. Is it any surprise that one of them loves "13 Going on 30" and the other thinks it's shit?
What's bizarre is that the experience of being game critics for years doesn't make them harder to impress. Rather, we see nearly the opposite where critics kiss the ass of every triple-A release to come along. Actual gamers who spend their money on expensive new games and spend hours getting involved in them seem to be much better at analyzing the quality of these games but there's one more tangentially related phenomenon I think is interesting enough to throw in this rant that started with me asking what the hell you meant when you said something weird.
The older gamers with lots of experience tend to love a handful of older games and feel like nothing can compare to them. The people who love off-putting games like Deus Ex and X-Com are unlikely to see anything come out that pleases them the way their old favorite did. What are others to make of these opinions? Do these older gamers have experience enough so that we should expect to trust their opinions? I dunno. Maybe it just means Deus Ex is the best game of all time and everything since is simply worse.
I recently just played through Deus Ex for the first time, and it is an outstanding game, especially for the time. However, the AI was really the Achilles Heel in terms of immersion in that game. At times, you can really get into games like that, but once the rules of the AI start to become apparent the whole experience starts to feel less like you're a hero, and more like a toy world. You shoot a guy in the chest, hide for a while, he decides it must have been the wind and goes back to his patrol without telling anyone.
It was also pretty silly how people would just stand there if you threw a gas grenade at them. A group of seven or eight guards in a corridor could be dispatched with boring ease if you threw a gas grenade and took your time aiming so you could cap each one of them off with headshots.
There was a PS2 game called Way of the Samurai that was sort of like what you describe. At most, the game was only about two hours long but you could play the scenario any way you wanted and the story would branch at virtually every player action. It wasn't done procedurally but it was a dang cool idea.
I never played it myself though. I don't know how well it achieved the things I read that it was supposed to be.
Your definition appears to alienate a lot of the genre's classics. I don't recall any choices like that in many Japanese RPGs. Most of the revered SNES RPGs are incredibly linear 16-bit novels.
I was so inspired by that promotional video that I actually wrote a poem about Joystick Johnny. It's sort of in-jokey but here goes:
"The Most Feared Video Game Warrior in All the Territory"
You know, this sounds kinda strange But I think I'll miss Joystick Johnny. Wore a helmet when he rode his bike He would ride it indoors, 'Cross office porcelain floors, Had a rear-view mirror, see what the past looked like. And he thought he was the future, But his tie-dye shirt said otherwise. And when he's gone he, Well, I think I'll miss Joystick Johnny. Most feared in all the land, Are you man enough for some 3D pinball? Up in his room, that video gamer, He thinks he's a warrior But at least he plays one on TV, And nobody calls Joystick Johnny a coward, So let's let him imagine, That he'll play Jen Anniston, And beat Bill Gates at his games. For that nostalgic nerd Won't stay true to his word, But at least it makes a damned good story. And a guy like that won't be immortalized with glory, So I guess I miss Joystick Johnny.
There's a lot of financial aid available to poor people given on a needs-basis. Most of the people I know, myself included, are barely paying anything to go to college. Money isn't the barrier to education it once was.
The barrier is that people still think that only rich people can go to college. I know scads of poor people in the local high school who don't think they could ever go to college. They come up with a lot of excuses, like how their parents never went to college and ignore the possibility.
I doubt that race has anything to do with it. Attitudes of individual communities and families are keeping people from pursuing higher education. This is the problem that needs to be solved.
Something tells me that even if people forget about lolcats, 4chan will stick around. lolcats are just a meme like dozens before it. There'll be new memes and the evil forces of/b/ will continue masterminding them all.
I think Nintendo will be able to keep Mario around through endless ports of old games to new portable systems and new games. They intend to keep their best franchises around forever.
Sadly, all hope is already lost for "Chaney" and "Rodgers."
The tech-demo games eventually sell their tech and it gets used for much better games. Doom 3 sucked but it brought us the significantly less awful Prey and Quake IV. Deus Ex was made using the Unreal Engine, and both the Half-Life games were based on heavily modified versions of the Quake Engine. It is really easy to dismiss these tech demos but they come back and do cool things to the games that come after them and license their technology allowing games that come after to have equally impressive, albeit slightly more dated tech demo graphics.
On a barely related note: I think Crysis will actually be a good game and not just graphics whoring. It just won't run on most people's computers unless they turn off every graphic whoring option. This will, in itself, be quite interesting.
As long as the game design is done, then there's a pretty clear idea what sound effects are needed for things.
Animations needed are also usually planned in advance and skeletons can be created quickly from the concept art. The model can be added later so that the animators can work throughout the dev process.
Also, a lot of the bigger companies work on multiple projects at a time. While the modelers are doing work for one game, the animators are working on another.
Seriously, how many PS1 games did you buy or play on your PS2 in the last three years? I think I played one (FFIX) and purchased none. And the only reason I played it on my PS2 was because it was already connected. I certainly could've dug out my PSOne and hooked it up.
I bought about five PS1 Games last year. I like 'em because they're dirt cheap and because I like low-poly 3D.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps you would be interested in my game reviews then? I try to approach them as somewhere between a game reviewer and a game player.
What? What does that even begin to mean? Game critics have a tendency to inflate game quality but the reasons why are subject to speculation, conjecture and conspiracy theories. I do know know what kind of extra perspective a game critic might add that a game player hasn't.
Film critics tend to look at movies very differently from the average moviegoer because they've seen a lot more movies. It's a lot harder to impress a person who's seen thousands of films than someone who has seen a few hundred without trying to discern for quality. Imagine a teen girl whose maybe two hundred movies, mostly of the teen-girl shit variety and the best thing she's seen is probably "The Breakfast Club." Now imagine someone who loves films, seeks out the best movies to watch, gets a job as a film critic and watches every new release from that moment on. Is it any surprise that one of them loves "13 Going on 30" and the other thinks it's shit?
What's bizarre is that the experience of being game critics for years doesn't make them harder to impress. Rather, we see nearly the opposite where critics kiss the ass of every triple-A release to come along. Actual gamers who spend their money on expensive new games and spend hours getting involved in them seem to be much better at analyzing the quality of these games but there's one more tangentially related phenomenon I think is interesting enough to throw in this rant that started with me asking what the hell you meant when you said something weird.
The older gamers with lots of experience tend to love a handful of older games and feel like nothing can compare to them. The people who love off-putting games like Deus Ex and X-Com are unlikely to see anything come out that pleases them the way their old favorite did. What are others to make of these opinions? Do these older gamers have experience enough so that we should expect to trust their opinions? I dunno. Maybe it just means Deus Ex is the best game of all time and everything since is simply worse.
A new car instantly loses value on purchase because the seller's profit margin has no resale value.
I recently just played through Deus Ex for the first time, and it is an outstanding game, especially for the time. However, the AI was really the Achilles Heel in terms of immersion in that game. At times, you can really get into games like that, but once the rules of the AI start to become apparent the whole experience starts to feel less like you're a hero, and more like a toy world. You shoot a guy in the chest, hide for a while, he decides it must have been the wind and goes back to his patrol without telling anyone.
It was also pretty silly how people would just stand there if you threw a gas grenade at them. A group of seven or eight guards in a corridor could be dispatched with boring ease if you threw a gas grenade and took your time aiming so you could cap each one of them off with headshots.
There was a PS2 game called Way of the Samurai that was sort of like what you describe. At most, the game was only about two hours long but you could play the scenario any way you wanted and the story would branch at virtually every player action. It wasn't done procedurally but it was a dang cool idea.
I never played it myself though. I don't know how well it achieved the things I read that it was supposed to be.
Your definition appears to alienate a lot of the genre's classics. I don't recall any choices like that in many Japanese RPGs. Most of the revered SNES RPGs are incredibly linear 16-bit novels.
I'd like to know. What features in IE and what shortcomings in Firefox helped you come to that conclusion? Did you try any of the Firefox extensions?
I was so inspired by that promotional video that I actually wrote a poem about Joystick Johnny. It's sort of in-jokey but here goes:
"The Most Feared Video Game Warrior in All the Territory"
You know, this sounds kinda strange
But I think I'll miss Joystick Johnny.
Wore a helmet when he rode his bike
He would ride it indoors,
'Cross office porcelain floors,
Had a rear-view mirror, see what the past looked like.
And he thought he was the future,
But his tie-dye shirt said otherwise.
And when he's gone he,
Well, I think I'll miss Joystick Johnny.
Most feared in all the land,
Are you man enough for some 3D pinball?
Up in his room, that video gamer,
He thinks he's a warrior
But at least he plays one on TV,
And nobody calls Joystick Johnny a coward,
So let's let him imagine,
That he'll play Jen Anniston,
And beat Bill Gates at his games.
For that nostalgic nerd
Won't stay true to his word,
But at least it makes a damned good story.
And a guy like that won't be immortalized with glory,
So I guess I miss Joystick Johnny.
There's a lot of financial aid available to poor people given on a needs-basis. Most of the people I know, myself included, are barely paying anything to go to college. Money isn't the barrier to education it once was.
The barrier is that people still think that only rich people can go to college. I know scads of poor people in the local high school who don't think they could ever go to college. They come up with a lot of excuses, like how their parents never went to college and ignore the possibility.
I doubt that race has anything to do with it. Attitudes of individual communities and families are keeping people from pursuing higher education. This is the problem that needs to be solved.
Something tells me that even if people forget about lolcats, 4chan will stick around. lolcats are just a meme like dozens before it. There'll be new memes and the evil forces of /b/ will continue masterminding them all.
I think Nintendo will be able to keep Mario around through endless ports of old games to new portable systems and new games. They intend to keep their best franchises around forever.
Sadly, all hope is already lost for "Chaney" and "Rodgers."
The tech-demo games eventually sell their tech and it gets used for much better games. Doom 3 sucked but it brought us the significantly less awful Prey and Quake IV. Deus Ex was made using the Unreal Engine, and both the Half-Life games were based on heavily modified versions of the Quake Engine. It is really easy to dismiss these tech demos but they come back and do cool things to the games that come after them and license their technology allowing games that come after to have equally impressive, albeit slightly more dated tech demo graphics.
On a barely related note: I think Crysis will actually be a good game and not just graphics whoring. It just won't run on most people's computers unless they turn off every graphic whoring option. This will, in itself, be quite interesting.
The Megaman 2 novel is also online. Here's a link: http://themechanicalmaniacs.com/downloads/mm2book. pdf
As long as the game design is done, then there's a pretty clear idea what sound effects are needed for things. Animations needed are also usually planned in advance and skeletons can be created quickly from the concept art. The model can be added later so that the animators can work throughout the dev process. Also, a lot of the bigger companies work on multiple projects at a time. While the modelers are doing work for one game, the animators are working on another.
I bought about five PS1 Games last year. I like 'em because they're dirt cheap and because I like low-poly 3D.