Well that's a whole different argument altogether. The ESRB has no hope of being consistent across different games with their ratings so there's probably not sense in saying "if Halo has alien combat and is M then Oblivion should be M as well," even though from a practical standpoint that makes sense.
Really, I disagree with the notion of Halo being M. It's definitely a teen title and doesn't have anything that you don't see on T-rated TV shows (actually it's quite a bit milder in many ways). Oblivion can be rated M if only because it takes a rather mature mind to make the most of the title, but then the rating reflects the intended audience more than the "appropriate age group" as far as the ESRB is concerned. So... meh I hate ratings anyway.
Hm... but that's not the point! Changing a game rating from "M" to "AO" or from "T" to "M" isn't the equivalent of "placing responsibility" on Rockstar for the content. Rockstar could have released a separate free download that adds crazy levels of gore, explicit sex, and whatever else they feel like and though they would be 100% responsible for it, it wouldn't change the fact that the content of the game that you will be subject to if you play it out-of-the-box is (supposedly) appropriate for some particular age group.
Ratings should be there to tell people what they can expect from a game they buy if they do not "change" it from the way it was to begin with. You ask a very valid question: where do I draw the line? Well, I would say that if content is available as part of the original gameplay, then it should factor into the rating. If it is only available if you add stuff that isn't part of the original game, then it shouldn't factor in because then you get into too many gray areas since there's no limit to what can be "added" and it's really impractical to weigh what was added against what was there but "unavailable." Suppose Rockstar left 50% of the code needed for the AO content and the hack added the other 50%. Or what if it were 75%/25%? Is the content on the disk already?
Ratings aren't for "you", they're for parents. From the parents' point of view, it's a moot point whether content is shipped unlocked or trivially locked. Why, because everyone who raises children is an irresponsible retard who doesn't know the difference between using something out-of-the-box and using it with after-market mods? Besides the fact that ratings are for people in general, not just parents, what does it matter if something is "trivially" locked as opposed to "non-trivially"? And who decides the triviality? The ESRB?
Your analogy to the magazine is way off, though. Folding over pages doesn't make them unavailable, heh, even if they're glued shut. Besides, the point isn't about accessibility per se (a high difficulty mode-related unlock can be just as inaccessible as outright disabling content from an effort-related standpoint), as much as it is a question of *what exactly is being rated.* Is it the game you will be playing? or is it the game you could potentially be playing if you use 3rd party apps to mess with the content in some fashion?
I'm not defending Rockstar's decision necessarily, but I'm certainly not criticizing it and I am definitely criticizing the ESRB's usual reaction to these situations.
Partial nudity (not well done) was already there because the clothing was basically laid over it. But without making a mod, getting at that nudity was not possible.
Still, I don't really see how a company should have a game rating change by having locked content that cannot be accessed without a 3rd party effort. It's not "part of the game" from a practical standpoint. And ratings are *supposed* to be about practicality. (Granted they aren't; they're inconsistent and nonsensical BS, but that's not the point here, heh.)
In Oblivion's case, Bethesda could have separately released their own full-blown nude mod (just like horse armor or whatever) for free download on their site, and that still shouldn't change the rating of the game you bought. I feel that the only thing that should affect the rating is the content that is available to you if you play the game "normally" (no extra downloads, no hacks, etc.). And it's not a question of "accessibility" as much as it is one of rating *the game you are playing out of the box.* (And I say this because technically if say there's a "play as Ayane nude mode" in Ninja Gaiden if you beat it on Master Ninja that's part of the game to begin with, even though it's nearly inaccessible to anyone due to the Master Ninja difficulty, it requires no 3rd party apps to unlock.) It shouldn't matter what a game can potentially become if you screw around with it enough using separate apps.
Liability as far as publicity goes for creating the content in the first place, sure. And Rockstar in this instance has already gotten plenty of bad publicity for it. Locking the content rendering it inaccessible (unless hacked) is to me the same thing as not including it (since a hack can *add* content just the same if people are willing to put in the effort to do it).
The re-rating of Oblivion was insanely stupid. Ooh, you can mod it to include some nudity. Okay.. you can MOD a ton of games to include whatever you want! That doesn't change the fact that unless you go in changing things as (or via) a third party, the game remains the same as when it was originally rated by the ESRB.
In all of these cases, the rating should not change. A third party mod can add content, unlock content that otherwise cannot be accessed, etc. I don't see any logical, practical reason why in one case the rating shouldn't change and in another it should. Really, in all cases it shouldn't.
Well hey I can rant about bad directors all I please ^_^ But ok good thing it's not Jackson that's doing it....
As long as Chief and Arbiter have several of those Tango & Cash / Showdown in Little Tokyo buddy buddy cop scenes I'll be happy. "You're the tag-along!" "No, YOU'RE the tag-along!" "Oh yeah well I bet you can't shoot those three grunts with just two Carbine shells!" "You're on!" "By the way you have the biggest dick I've ever seen on a man." "Thanks." (Ok those last two lines were from Showdown in Little Tokyo but I think they're horrendous enough that they bear being stolen.)
A Halo movie has the potential to be absolutely fantastic. Master Chief and The Arbiter doing a buddy-buddy cop style action sci-fi movie where they kill a billion bad guys -- it can work. No-one's expecting Enemy at the Gates or Schindler's List here.
Problem is Peter Jackson. He is an atrocious director who works with supremely bad editors. A lot of y'all are saying Uwe Boll should just drive the franchise into the ground and be done with it. Peter Jackson is just as capable of doing that. Really I wouldn't trust anyone but maybe Bryan Singer or Wolfgang Petersen with a project like Halo.
There's another facet to all this which people are forgetting, and that's that the consoles themselves do not really matter when it comes to controls. And I don't even mean that MS can develop a Wiimote-style controller for the 360 if they wish (which of course they can) but rather that if you WANT to make an innovative, creatively-controlled game on the 360 or PS3 there's nothing stopping you. Hence, the popularity of Guitar Hero on the 360 and PS2! If more such games are released, the 360 and PS3 will be just as viable as game consoles for the non-hardcore (or whatever we want to call Wii's new target demographic).
MS's racing wheel for the 360 is also pretty sweet, and if set up well and coupled with something like Forza 2, can be a lot of fun for someone who's barely familiar with console gaming. (I don't have one though:-( just wanted to throw another example out there.)
Personally, though, I don't find myself craving innovative games nearly as much as craving Killer Instinct 3, Jet Force Gemini 2, Ninja Gaiden 2 (yay for this one not being a fantasy!), and basically more of what I saw as fantastic games I never grew tired of.
Physics and AI is hard. To utilize *well* more resources for AI and physics you first need to develop more sophisticated engines for them! Graphics... well making those better is non-trivial but certainly easier and that's why most of the improvement is there.
Anyway this whole "Wii is better" business has gotten really old. Different is not better. Different can be a whole lot worse, too. There's nothing inherently better about a good Wii game over a good Xbox 360 game. It comes down to a lot more than UI, most importantly a person's tastes.
Hah! Except that he retracted it BECAUSE IT DID INDEED CONTAIN ERRORS! Also, religion does not exist in science by definition buddy, no matter how many times you or anyone else copy-pastes the BS that "lack of religion is faith" etc.
Its mpg? Easy -- 0 mpg. Doesn't matter how many gallons of anything you pour into it, unless it's Liquid Schwartz, I don't see it really flying anywhere.......... "Imagine using these in New Orleans"??!? We have actual rescue helicopters here, they are big and awesome and can actually fly properly, hehehe.
Cheap and small is all well and good, but when you want complex tech to be reliable, the "cheap" goes away real quick. Especially when you're trusting lives to that tech.
(Depending on how you take this, it can mean: a) if Mario is what's needed to save Christmas, then the standards for a merry Christmas have really sunk; b) Mario might not save Christmas, period; c) I'm sitting here with a high fever about to pass out from fatigue and can't think of anything funny to type)
Yeah I share your thoughts exactly. But with Sunshine I think the problem wasn't lack of innovation, rather it was misguided innovation. That water jet pack would have been an appreciated "change" if it wasn't just plain less fun than playing as regular Mario...
Oh, and the final boss, ugh soo bad...
But what made Mario 64 so awesome wasn't just that it was new, but that what it did, it did more competently than anyone since has managed. The next best platformer of that sort was Banjo-Kazooie, and it was no Mario 64. The tightness of the controls, the "atmosphere" of the levels, it just all came together so well that the game is still fun to play to this day, despite no longer being "new" at all.
Do you REALLY want to bitch about graphics when WoW looks quite a bit worse and yet has 9 mil active accouts? (last I checked, anyway) People care about gameplay more than graphics. Guitar Hero, WoW, Second Life, STARCRAFT, man I could go on but the point is maybe over half of your criticisms shouldn't have been about graphics.
As for art direction, Halo has its share of the mediocre and the spectacular. Not everyone has Bethesda's concept artists, you know ^^
One would have thought you'd try and criticise things like the story mode, where the last level is an uninspired rehash of the last level from Halo 1, or something. But you probably don't even know about it, as who would expect you to give the game a fair shake...
As for what else an Xbox owner can buy, go to the store and see for yourself. There's a lot of good stuff out there, and there's soon to be more.
Bottom line, sometimes it's not about the graphics but about providing more of the good thing that people have come to expect from a franchise. If "Halo 2.5" can make $300 mil in a week, then that speaks for the strength of the franchise more than anything else. How is it a disaster?
Play the games you like, and stop trying to bash others.
The basic premise doesn't really matter. Zelda, FF, Halo, etc. have had the same basic premise throughout the life of each franchise. It's not about coming up with a new premise, but about setting new standards in how that premise is made into something fun. ^_^
Wow you have high hopes for this thing. Do you seriously think it'll be one of the *best games ever made* (the list that includes the games you mentioned as well as things like Starcraft, Baldur's Gate, Goldeneye, DKC, Castlevania SOTN, etc.)? Somehow I doubt it, although I hope it's at least better than Mario Sunshine.
Sacrilege. JFG is rightly considered one of the most underrated games of all time. The music alone is tremendously good, right up there with DKC and DKC2.
:-/ I wasn't trying to defeat you or anything. I agree with you that they're conditions rather than diseases; you're probably right about the journalist either way. I thought you were defending the journalist's wording at first, is all. ^^
Nintendo made them DO STUFF. I remember reading something in 2001 where Rare complained that Nintendo was "working them too hard" or something along those lines. Well, at least they had something to show for it. And by "something" I mean games that set new standards in their respective genres, from Goldeneye for FPS's to KI for fighters to DKC for side-scrolling platformers, and everything in-between. Rare kept the N64 afloat because their games were semi-frequent and they all were pure awesome.
Now it seems Rare has gotten lazy, and MS let that happen. Nintendo's probably been laughing their butts off at all this. AS IF Rare could have made $375 mil for Nintendo if they'd been this lazy releasing games for GCN.
First of all having an ICD code doesn't make it a disease; there's ICD codes for all sorts of physical conditions. Second, that's totally irrelevant to what we're talking about to begin with.
Apparently pregnancy and menopause are "diseases." I also fail to see how it makes any sense to consider those conditions as ones that would "predispose" an individual to carpal tunnel. Have there been peer-reviewed studies showing a causation there or something?
I smell BS, by which I mean Bad Science. But maybe that's just my usual lazy self not reading things carefully enough.
Slashdot Mirror
Well that's a whole different argument altogether. The ESRB has no hope of being consistent across different games with their ratings so there's probably not sense in saying "if Halo has alien combat and is M then Oblivion should be M as well," even though from a practical standpoint that makes sense.
Really, I disagree with the notion of Halo being M. It's definitely a teen title and doesn't have anything that you don't see on T-rated TV shows (actually it's quite a bit milder in many ways). Oblivion can be rated M if only because it takes a rather mature mind to make the most of the title, but then the rating reflects the intended audience more than the "appropriate age group" as far as the ESRB is concerned. So... meh I hate ratings anyway.
Hm... but that's not the point! Changing a game rating from "M" to "AO" or from "T" to "M" isn't the equivalent of "placing responsibility" on Rockstar for the content. Rockstar could have released a separate free download that adds crazy levels of gore, explicit sex, and whatever else they feel like and though they would be 100% responsible for it, it wouldn't change the fact that the content of the game that you will be subject to if you play it out-of-the-box is (supposedly) appropriate for some particular age group.
Ratings should be there to tell people what they can expect from a game they buy if they do not "change" it from the way it was to begin with. You ask a very valid question: where do I draw the line? Well, I would say that if content is available as part of the original gameplay, then it should factor into the rating. If it is only available if you add stuff that isn't part of the original game, then it shouldn't factor in because then you get into too many gray areas since there's no limit to what can be "added" and it's really impractical to weigh what was added against what was there but "unavailable." Suppose Rockstar left 50% of the code needed for the AO content and the hack added the other 50%. Or what if it were 75%/25%? Is the content on the disk already?
Your analogy to the magazine is way off, though. Folding over pages doesn't make them unavailable, heh, even if they're glued shut. Besides, the point isn't about accessibility per se (a high difficulty mode-related unlock can be just as inaccessible as outright disabling content from an effort-related standpoint), as much as it is a question of *what exactly is being rated.* Is it the game you will be playing? or is it the game you could potentially be playing if you use 3rd party apps to mess with the content in some fashion?
I'm not defending Rockstar's decision necessarily, but I'm certainly not criticizing it and I am definitely criticizing the ESRB's usual reaction to these situations.
Partial nudity (not well done) was already there because the clothing was basically laid over it. But without making a mod, getting at that nudity was not possible.
Still, I don't really see how a company should have a game rating change by having locked content that cannot be accessed without a 3rd party effort. It's not "part of the game" from a practical standpoint. And ratings are *supposed* to be about practicality. (Granted they aren't; they're inconsistent and nonsensical BS, but that's not the point here, heh.)
In Oblivion's case, Bethesda could have separately released their own full-blown nude mod (just like horse armor or whatever) for free download on their site, and that still shouldn't change the rating of the game you bought. I feel that the only thing that should affect the rating is the content that is available to you if you play the game "normally" (no extra downloads, no hacks, etc.). And it's not a question of "accessibility" as much as it is one of rating *the game you are playing out of the box.* (And I say this because technically if say there's a "play as Ayane nude mode" in Ninja Gaiden if you beat it on Master Ninja that's part of the game to begin with, even though it's nearly inaccessible to anyone due to the Master Ninja difficulty, it requires no 3rd party apps to unlock.) It shouldn't matter what a game can potentially become if you screw around with it enough using separate apps.
Liability as far as publicity goes for creating the content in the first place, sure. And Rockstar in this instance has already gotten plenty of bad publicity for it. Locking the content rendering it inaccessible (unless hacked) is to me the same thing as not including it (since a hack can *add* content just the same if people are willing to put in the effort to do it).
The re-rating of Oblivion was insanely stupid. Ooh, you can mod it to include some nudity. Okay.. you can MOD a ton of games to include whatever you want! That doesn't change the fact that unless you go in changing things as (or via) a third party, the game remains the same as when it was originally rated by the ESRB.
In all of these cases, the rating should not change. A third party mod can add content, unlock content that otherwise cannot be accessed, etc. I don't see any logical, practical reason why in one case the rating shouldn't change and in another it should. Really, in all cases it shouldn't.
Well hey I can rant about bad directors all I please ^_^ But ok good thing it's not Jackson that's doing it....
As long as Chief and Arbiter have several of those Tango & Cash / Showdown in Little Tokyo buddy buddy cop scenes I'll be happy.
"You're the tag-along!"
"No, YOU'RE the tag-along!"
"Oh yeah well I bet you can't shoot those three grunts with just two Carbine shells!"
"You're on!"
"By the way you have the biggest dick I've ever seen on a man."
"Thanks."
(Ok those last two lines were from Showdown in Little Tokyo but I think they're horrendous enough that they bear being stolen.)
A Halo movie has the potential to be absolutely fantastic. Master Chief and The Arbiter doing a buddy-buddy cop style action sci-fi movie where they kill a billion bad guys -- it can work. No-one's expecting Enemy at the Gates or Schindler's List here.
Problem is Peter Jackson. He is an atrocious director who works with supremely bad editors. A lot of y'all are saying Uwe Boll should just drive the franchise into the ground and be done with it. Peter Jackson is just as capable of doing that. Really I wouldn't trust anyone but maybe Bryan Singer or Wolfgang Petersen with a project like Halo.
There's another facet to all this which people are forgetting, and that's that the consoles themselves do not really matter when it comes to controls. And I don't even mean that MS can develop a Wiimote-style controller for the 360 if they wish (which of course they can) but rather that if you WANT to make an innovative, creatively-controlled game on the 360 or PS3 there's nothing stopping you. Hence, the popularity of Guitar Hero on the 360 and PS2! If more such games are released, the 360 and PS3 will be just as viable as game consoles for the non-hardcore (or whatever we want to call Wii's new target demographic).
:-( just wanted to throw another example out there.)
MS's racing wheel for the 360 is also pretty sweet, and if set up well and coupled with something like Forza 2, can be a lot of fun for someone who's barely familiar with console gaming. (I don't have one though
Personally, though, I don't find myself craving innovative games nearly as much as craving Killer Instinct 3, Jet Force Gemini 2, Ninja Gaiden 2 (yay for this one not being a fantasy!), and basically more of what I saw as fantastic games I never grew tired of.
Physics and AI is hard. To utilize *well* more resources for AI and physics you first need to develop more sophisticated engines for them! Graphics... well making those better is non-trivial but certainly easier and that's why most of the improvement is there.
Anyway this whole "Wii is better" business has gotten really old. Different is not better. Different can be a whole lot worse, too. There's nothing inherently better about a good Wii game over a good Xbox 360 game. It comes down to a lot more than UI, most importantly a person's tastes.
Hah! Except that he retracted it BECAUSE IT DID INDEED CONTAIN ERRORS! Also, religion does not exist in science by definition buddy, no matter how many times you or anyone else copy-pastes the BS that "lack of religion is faith" etc.
Oh crap it's Monday! Good t hing I read Slashdot gotta run!!
Its mpg? Easy -- 0 mpg. Doesn't matter how many gallons of anything you pour into it, unless it's Liquid Schwartz, I don't see it really flying anywhere. ... ... ... "Imagine using these in New Orleans"??!? We have actual rescue helicopters here, they are big and awesome and can actually fly properly, hehehe.
Cheap and small is all well and good, but when you want complex tech to be reliable, the "cheap" goes away real quick. Especially when you're trusting lives to that tech.
Christmas this year might suck.
(Depending on how you take this, it can mean: a) if Mario is what's needed to save Christmas, then the standards for a merry Christmas have really sunk; b) Mario might not save Christmas, period; c) I'm sitting here with a high fever about to pass out from fatigue and can't think of anything funny to type)
Yeah I share your thoughts exactly. But with Sunshine I think the problem wasn't lack of innovation, rather it was misguided innovation. That water jet pack would have been an appreciated "change" if it wasn't just plain less fun than playing as regular Mario...
Oh, and the final boss, ugh soo bad...
But what made Mario 64 so awesome wasn't just that it was new, but that what it did, it did more competently than anyone since has managed. The next best platformer of that sort was Banjo-Kazooie, and it was no Mario 64. The tightness of the controls, the "atmosphere" of the levels, it just all came together so well that the game is still fun to play to this day, despite no longer being "new" at all.
Howdy troll,
Do you REALLY want to bitch about graphics when WoW looks quite a bit worse and yet has 9 mil active accouts? (last I checked, anyway) People care about gameplay more than graphics. Guitar Hero, WoW, Second Life, STARCRAFT, man I could go on but the point is maybe over half of your criticisms shouldn't have been about graphics.
As for art direction, Halo has its share of the mediocre and the spectacular. Not everyone has Bethesda's concept artists, you know ^^
One would have thought you'd try and criticise things like the story mode, where the last level is an uninspired rehash of the last level from Halo 1, or something. But you probably don't even know about it, as who would expect you to give the game a fair shake...
As for what else an Xbox owner can buy, go to the store and see for yourself. There's a lot of good stuff out there, and there's soon to be more.
Bottom line, sometimes it's not about the graphics but about providing more of the good thing that people have come to expect from a franchise. If "Halo 2.5" can make $300 mil in a week, then that speaks for the strength of the franchise more than anything else. How is it a disaster?
Play the games you like, and stop trying to bash others.
The basic premise doesn't really matter. Zelda, FF, Halo, etc. have had the same basic premise throughout the life of each franchise. It's not about coming up with a new premise, but about setting new standards in how that premise is made into something fun. ^_^
Wow you have high hopes for this thing. Do you seriously think it'll be one of the *best games ever made* (the list that includes the games you mentioned as well as things like Starcraft, Baldur's Gate, Goldeneye, DKC, Castlevania SOTN, etc.)? Somehow I doubt it, although I hope it's at least better than Mario Sunshine.
Sacrilege. JFG is rightly considered one of the most underrated games of all time. The music alone is tremendously good, right up there with DKC and DKC2.
:-/ I wasn't trying to defeat you or anything. I agree with you that they're conditions rather than diseases; you're probably right about the journalist either way. I thought you were defending the journalist's wording at first, is all. ^^
Nintendo made them DO STUFF. I remember reading something in 2001 where Rare complained that Nintendo was "working them too hard" or something along those lines. Well, at least they had something to show for it. And by "something" I mean games that set new standards in their respective genres, from Goldeneye for FPS's to KI for fighters to DKC for side-scrolling platformers, and everything in-between. Rare kept the N64 afloat because their games were semi-frequent and they all were pure awesome.
Now it seems Rare has gotten lazy, and MS let that happen. Nintendo's probably been laughing their butts off at all this. AS IF Rare could have made $375 mil for Nintendo if they'd been this lazy releasing games for GCN.
First of all having an ICD code doesn't make it a disease; there's ICD codes for all sorts of physical conditions. Second, that's totally irrelevant to what we're talking about to begin with.
Apparently pregnancy and menopause are "diseases." I also fail to see how it makes any sense to consider those conditions as ones that would "predispose" an individual to carpal tunnel. Have there been peer-reviewed studies showing a causation there or something?
I smell BS, by which I mean Bad Science. But maybe that's just my usual lazy self not reading things carefully enough.
Oops yay for trying to use that rubbish URL tag instead of tried-and-true
...they're not http://www.flyntairsoft.com/cybergun1.htmlfake guns
Though almost as lame.