The two previous responders have already pointed out that in Smash Bros, the % damage does increase the risk of a smash attack ringing you out (at 300-400% any hard hit guarantees it, usually even if you're in a fairly enclosed area)
What they haven't pointed out is that Smash Bros does also include a mode where each character has Hit Points (typically 300) and at 0 you die/respawn. Most people don't play that way because the % based mode is more fun and requires more skill, especially when you try to keep surviving at higher and higher percentages.
The one thing in the latest addition that did remove any skill was the new insta-kill Kirby's air sled item - sure you have to collect all three pieces and you can potentially dodge it if you're fast enough, it's still a cheap kill - especially since the AI controlled opponents will always target a human player with it.
You should always tell your doctor about everything you take due to possible interactions, even if it is an OTC drug generally considered safe.
There are definately cases where acetaminophen is much safer than Ibuprofen or Aspirin; if you're pregnant or may become pregnant is a good example that's already been pointed out, and another one is if you're on any sort of blood thinner, like Warfarin. Acetaminophen can have interactions with Warfarin if you take more than 2000 mg a day or take it for several days, but it's still safer than Ibuprofen or NSAIDS, which can cause GI bleeding and reduce blood clotting when combined with warfarin.
Acetaminophen is also the preferred pain killer for small children, at least around where I live. Personally I find it more effective for my own headaches, but then again I'm smart enough to actually follow the directions on the bottle.
Just about any drug can be harmful if you take too much of it. Instead of a ban, there should just be changes in prescription labels that say "while taking , do not take ". The problem is that the could be a gigantic list.
Dragon Quest Swords is probably the best attempt at this so far, but as others have pointed out the lack of true 1:1 tracking has been the biggest hindrance.
Red Steel had great potential but was seriously flawed, and not just in the implementation of the swordplay. Hopefully Ubisoft seriously listens to all of the complaints as they are finishing up the sequel.
I typically have my web browser save my passwords for things I consider lower risk, but if masking is removed and the browser automatically loads the password into the form, then it's available to anyone. Considering that many users use the same or similar passwords for almost every application, and having it unmasked on one site could give up your info on any number of other sites.
The problem is that because the deal is based on when the computer is purchased, any early announcement of the deal would hurt sales for those Microsoft partners until the day the upgrade deal starts as anyone who didn't need a new PC immediately would wait until June 26th.
I'm sure part of the contact with all of their retail and OEM partners states that they can't announce any sort of special deals like this in advance.
They point out in the article that it is basically the same graphics as the DS New Super Mario Bros, so yes, you're right, it looks like something from DS (intentionall). I'm sure it's no where near pushing the limits of the Wii hardware, considering what it has been shown to be capable of in games like Resident Evil 4, Super Mario Galaxy and MadWorld.
The hype is about the 4 person simultaneous multiplayer in a mario game, which is a completely new feature - maybe you should try reading the article instead of just looking at the pictures.
I think the assumption is that Red Steel 2 will use the new MotionPlus add on. I'm also hoping Ubisoft learned from all of the complaints about the first game - mine being that I should be able to shoot people with swords (and possibly lose honor) and use full sword controls whenever I want, as long as I'm more mobile.
I would like to see more original Square Enix material as well, but at least they just put out their sequel to FF4 this week. If they bring out any more VC stuff, I want to see a translation of Seiken Densetsu 3.
I agree with you here. There probably are a small number of sales to teens, but the vast majority are to parents, grandparents and other relatives.
I wish I could find the article now, but back when the Hot Coffee scandal broke for GTA:SA, there was some grandmother so upset that content like that would be in a game she got for her 11 year old grandson. Apparently the fact that the game was called Grand Theft Auto wasn't enough of a clue that it wasn't child appropriate.
Side note: with the whole Hot Coffee thing, I never understood why parents took so much offense to the hidden Hot Coffee thing that you had to hack to get to, but had apparently no problems with the language, violence or rampant crime in the game.
My guess is that a lot of this confusion may stem from the Hard Drive access light. Fairly often when a computer slows down when a program is loading or virtual memory is getting swapped in large amounts, they'll hear the hard drive working away and the hard drive access light blinking. People associate this with the computer being busy/slow and equate hard drive to computer.
Also, you could figure in that in something like Windows Explorer or Finder, the majority of stuff under "My Computer" is the hard drive.
So exactly how do you explain the following Wii titles:
Resident Evil 4 No More Heroes Madworld (one of the violent and profane games I've played in a while) House of the Dead: Overkill - which just got the Guinness World Record for most swearing in a video game.
The problem isn't that Nintendo is unwilling to approve mature content, it's that many publishers aren't willing to try putting mature content on the system, and because they've been stalling on doing so, many of the gamers who would have bought those games have started to bail on the system. Just because the system has family friendly titles doesn't mean there aren't some dads out here who also want to play more mature games after the kids go to bed. At least Sega and Capcom are keeping that category alive.
I'm not sure if the target of your outrage is clear here - you're currently saying you would be just as upset as you are at the current snafu if they let you set filtering on your own personal login and searches on amazon.com without affecting others. Why would you want to be unable to filter your own searches?
Agreed. Even worse, they couldn't even bother to make their own videos of the best and most famous glitches or whatever else, so really every article is "Best videos of game feature X that we could find on Youtube in 15 minutes and manage to spread the links over 9 pages"
The bug with Relm's Sketch ability in the first batch of US FF3 carts was probably one of the biggest game glitches I've seen, but also one of the most useful. After using sketch the game would usually glitch and get screwy graphics but you could save, reset and reload and it would go away. However, your inventory would have a bunch of random changes with several stacks of 255 items. The last time I played through on a glitched cart, it gave me 255 of one of the best swords in the game (Illumina) and 255 of one of the most useful accessories (Marvel Shoes).
Also, the Oscar's don't do awards for movie categories like the Golden Globes do, other than Documentary, so there there are no Comedy or Drama nominations.
Just curious, how exactly would microbial life on Venus, Mars or any other object in our star system be evident? Microbes aren't exactly known for building large cities and transmitting radio waves. Mars is the only one we've sent a biological testing station to and it was only able to test a few samples from a very limited area.
I think the biggest limitation most people put on the idea of life elsewhere in the universe is that people always assume all life is carbon-based like us. There's no reason to believe there couldn't be life out there using different chemical models such as silicon instead of carbon or arsenic instead of phosphorus. Perhaps those are unlikely, but they aren't any more unlikely than anything about life on Earth.
All three were stolen on the same date (January 16th), but as the article points out, the more disturbing fact is that only one of the three was authorized for home use.
I'm sure why people always have this idea that all of a states electors have to match the states popular vote. While a few states have laws dictating fines or jail time for electors that change their vote, Constitution only specifies that the states' legistlatures decides how the electors are chosen.
In the old days, many states didn't even hold a popular vote for president. Look up the U.S. Presidential Election of 1824 in which all four national candidates were from the lone national party (at the time). In the original election, 6 states split their electors (NY split between all 4 candidates). Some states used a state wide popular vote, some assigned electors by districts and others were chosen directly by state legislature, and Maine used a hybrid of the last two options.
Andrew Jackson had more more Popular and Electoral votes in the election than any other candidate, but ended up not getting either the Presidential or Vice-presidential position (there were accusations that the 4th place candidate sold his electors to Adams for the Secretary of State job)
Personally, I wouldn't mind going back to having electors split up within each state, or even back to having the 2nd place guy get the VP position instead of a running mate. It would give smaller parties a chance to get some electors, it would definitely be more exciting, and it would be fun to watch the national news networks fall all over themselves during coverage.
My brother-in-law is a mathematician and has spent some time compiling a http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/list of mathematical fiction, including novels, short stories, and other mediums. Some of these might be interesting to students to see math applied in new situations.
I'm guessing that the server code (or at least the core code) for Tabula Rasa might be very similar or based upon the server code for NCSoft's other MMOs; afterall, it would save them a lot of development costs to keep the server code as similar as possible between games. Then the concern for releasing that code would be that someone might figure out from there how to hack the server code for their other still active games.
Yes, it could, unless you're running a 64-bit OS and processor. Most computers, which are 32-bit, have a total or 4 GB of addressable memory space, which includes video memory, sound card memory (if you actually still use one) and system RAM. Therefore, if you put in a 2GB video card, you can't make use more than 2 GB of system RAM.
The 4GB address limit is probably the best argument for why we should see more progression to 64 bit computing, but there isn't yet enough demand in the market to force the issue for at least a few more years.
True, but a first level character really no longer as to worry every kobold or dire rat killing them in one hit (especially the minion types), or at least, being able to take off 75% of your HP in one hit since you only started with 6. The extra HP are a plus without adding the complication of a system like SDC from the Palladium systems, although that is a good system as well.
The main things I noticed book keeping wise are as follows:
1) Effects are no longer a number of rounds, its either a) until end of next turn, b) until you save at the end of your turn or c) until end of encounter, up to 5 minutes, which are essentially the same thing.
2) You'll no longer waste 30 minutes as the spellcasters pick their new spells for the day. True wizards still pick their daily powers, but that should go quickly.
3) Thanks to minions, you have to track HP for less monsters at a time.
I think the effect tracking will be the most immediate increase in game speed. I just ran a 3.5 encounter last night with the following effects: 1) Players cast Haste and several invisibilities before combat started, as well as several buffing spells with durations in rounds. 2) BBEG had several defensive spells with duration in rounds. 3) Other monsters had an ability that caused slow, which would tempoarily negate haste for characters afflicted by it for a random number of rounds 4) BBEG was also a mind flayer, so there were mind blasts used at various times which caused stun for random number of rounds to each target.
Now, if the combat is quick, this usually isn't a problem; but this fight went for 10-13 rounds, so various effects started wearing off at various times, and with 6 PCs and 3 monsters, and people using delay actions, its really easy to lose track of which round you're actually in and what round and when in each round a given effect ends.
I don't look at the cleric only because it can heal, but the reality is that in most 3.0-3.5 campaigns, the Cleric likely spends 50% or more of his spells on various forms of healing (either HP or ability damage/drain) because players are loath to use their healing potions outside of combat, even if they barely ever use them in combat because it provokes AoO.
The Cleric PC in the campaign I'm running even has the Touch of Healing feat (can basically heal PCs up to half HP for free) and still probably spends half or more of his spells on healing. In almost any campaign I've been in, the decision to rest is usually made because the Cleric is out of healing magic, or the wizard is >90% empty.
I got a chance to view the books early, thanks to some leaked scans, and so far I like what I see; however, many changes may tick off long time players, especially changes to the standard races.
From what I've read so far, the main good things about 4th edition that I've seen so far are:
A lot less book keeping is necessary, especially for high level spell casters. DMs also have less book keeping for high level enemies, as they don't have dozens of spells or spell like abilities and minion creatures do static damage and only 1 hp). If you've ever run a high level battles against a half dozen clerics or wizards, you can see an immediate advantage.
Even at first level, characters and monsters are generally tougher, so 1st level characters are living in constant fear of being killed by 1 hit. Some might complain this is lame ("why not just start at 5th-8th level?"), but really, it makes sense, and actually sets 1st level heroes apart from your average commoner.
The Cleric is no longer a required party member, as everyone can self heal.
The main complaints I have so far is that they haven't released rules in the Monster Manual for creating your own monsters from scratch and figuring out appopriate levels, and the death penalty is really almost too minor. Raise dead still takes 10 minutes to cast, and the cost does go up as your level goes up, but the penalty is only -1 to all rolls until you rest for 6 hours. I appreciate that they were trying to lessen death effects and other affects that take your character effectively out of game (Medusa gaze, Illithid mind blast, etc), but by having such a minimal penalty for death, you'd have to wonder why any fears death.
Some will certainly complain that 4th edition is too MMO like (especially like WOW), but the new character building rules do admittedly enforce character balance quite well through all levels.
Slashdot Mirror
The two previous responders have already pointed out that in Smash Bros, the % damage does increase the risk of a smash attack ringing you out (at 300-400% any hard hit guarantees it, usually even if you're in a fairly enclosed area)
What they haven't pointed out is that Smash Bros does also include a mode where each character has Hit Points (typically 300) and at 0 you die/respawn. Most people don't play that way because the % based mode is more fun and requires more skill, especially when you try to keep surviving at higher and higher percentages.
The one thing in the latest addition that did remove any skill was the new insta-kill Kirby's air sled item - sure you have to collect all three pieces and you can potentially dodge it if you're fast enough, it's still a cheap kill - especially since the AI controlled opponents will always target a human player with it.
You should always tell your doctor about everything you take due to possible interactions, even if it is an OTC drug generally considered safe.
There are definately cases where acetaminophen is much safer than Ibuprofen or Aspirin; if you're pregnant or may become pregnant is a good example that's already been pointed out, and another one is if you're on any sort of blood thinner, like Warfarin. Acetaminophen can have interactions with Warfarin if you take more than 2000 mg a day or take it for several days, but it's still safer than Ibuprofen or NSAIDS, which can cause GI bleeding and reduce blood clotting when combined with warfarin.
Acetaminophen is also the preferred pain killer for small children, at least around where I live. Personally I find it more effective for my own headaches, but then again I'm smart enough to actually follow the directions on the bottle.
Just about any drug can be harmful if you take too much of it. Instead of a ban, there should just be changes in prescription labels that say "while taking , do not take ". The problem is that the could be a gigantic list.
Dragon Quest Swords is probably the best attempt at this so far, but as others have pointed out the lack of true 1:1 tracking has been the biggest hindrance.
Red Steel had great potential but was seriously flawed, and not just in the implementation of the swordplay. Hopefully Ubisoft seriously listens to all of the complaints as they are finishing up the sequel.
Saved Passwords.
I typically have my web browser save my passwords for things I consider lower risk, but if masking is removed and the browser automatically loads the password into the form, then it's available to anyone. Considering that many users use the same or similar passwords for almost every application, and having it unmasked on one site could give up your info on any number of other sites.
The problem is that because the deal is based on when the computer is purchased, any early announcement of the deal would hurt sales for those Microsoft partners until the day the upgrade deal starts as anyone who didn't need a new PC immediately would wait until June 26th.
I'm sure part of the contact with all of their retail and OEM partners states that they can't announce any sort of special deals like this in advance.
They point out in the article that it is basically the same graphics as the DS New Super Mario Bros, so yes, you're right, it looks like something from DS (intentionall). I'm sure it's no where near pushing the limits of the Wii hardware, considering what it has been shown to be capable of in games like Resident Evil 4, Super Mario Galaxy and MadWorld.
The hype is about the 4 person simultaneous multiplayer in a mario game, which is a completely new feature - maybe you should try reading the article instead of just looking at the pictures.
Maybe he just has a bunch of siblings with the same name, like George Foreman's kids?
I think the assumption is that Red Steel 2 will use the new MotionPlus add on. I'm also hoping Ubisoft learned from all of the complaints about the first game - mine being that I should be able to shoot people with swords (and possibly lose honor) and use full sword controls whenever I want, as long as I'm more mobile.
I would like to see more original Square Enix material as well, but at least they just put out their sequel to FF4 this week. If they bring out any more VC stuff, I want to see a translation of Seiken Densetsu 3.
I agree with you here. There probably are a small number of sales to teens, but the vast majority are to parents, grandparents and other relatives.
I wish I could find the article now, but back when the Hot Coffee scandal broke for GTA:SA, there was some grandmother so upset that content like that would be in a game she got for her 11 year old grandson. Apparently the fact that the game was called Grand Theft Auto wasn't enough of a clue that it wasn't child appropriate.
Side note: with the whole Hot Coffee thing, I never understood why parents took so much offense to the hidden Hot Coffee thing that you had to hack to get to, but had apparently no problems with the language, violence or rampant crime in the game.
My guess is that a lot of this confusion may stem from the Hard Drive access light. Fairly often when a computer slows down when a program is loading or virtual memory is getting swapped in large amounts, they'll hear the hard drive working away and the hard drive access light blinking. People associate this with the computer being busy/slow and equate hard drive to computer.
Also, you could figure in that in something like Windows Explorer or Finder, the majority of stuff under "My Computer" is the hard drive.
So exactly how do you explain the following Wii titles:
Resident Evil 4
No More Heroes
Madworld (one of the violent and profane games I've played in a while)
House of the Dead: Overkill - which just got the Guinness World Record for most swearing in a video game.
The problem isn't that Nintendo is unwilling to approve mature content, it's that many publishers aren't willing to try putting mature content on the system, and because they've been stalling on doing so, many of the gamers who would have bought those games have started to bail on the system. Just because the system has family friendly titles doesn't mean there aren't some dads out here who also want to play more mature games after the kids go to bed. At least Sega and Capcom are keeping that category alive.
I'm not sure if the target of your outrage is clear here - you're currently saying you would be just as upset as you are at the current snafu if they let you set filtering on your own personal login and searches on amazon.com without affecting others. Why would you want to be unable to filter your own searches?
Agreed. Even worse, they couldn't even bother to make their own videos of the best and most famous glitches or whatever else, so really every article is "Best videos of game feature X that we could find on Youtube in 15 minutes and manage to spread the links over 9 pages"
The bug with Relm's Sketch ability in the first batch of US FF3 carts was probably one of the biggest game glitches I've seen, but also one of the most useful. After using sketch the game would usually glitch and get screwy graphics but you could save, reset and reload and it would go away. However, your inventory would have a bunch of random changes with several stacks of 255 items. The last time I played through on a glitched cart, it gave me 255 of one of the best swords in the game (Illumina) and 255 of one of the most useful accessories (Marvel Shoes).
Also, the Oscar's don't do awards for movie categories like the Golden Globes do, other than Documentary, so there there are no Comedy or Drama nominations.
I think it was James Woods they caught that way, and they did it twice.
The second time, Peter even mentioned that they need to think of that again right away the next time because its worked twice.
Just curious, how exactly would microbial life on Venus, Mars or any other object in our star system be evident? Microbes aren't exactly known for building large cities and transmitting radio waves. Mars is the only one we've sent a biological testing station to and it was only able to test a few samples from a very limited area.
I think the biggest limitation most people put on the idea of life elsewhere in the universe is that people always assume all life is carbon-based like us. There's no reason to believe there couldn't be life out there using different chemical models such as silicon instead of carbon or arsenic instead of phosphorus. Perhaps those are unlikely, but they aren't any more unlikely than anything about life on Earth.
All three were stolen on the same date (January 16th), but as the article points out, the more disturbing fact is that only one of the three was authorized for home use.
I'm sure why people always have this idea that all of a states electors have to match the states popular vote. While a few states have laws dictating fines or jail time for electors that change their vote, Constitution only specifies that the states' legistlatures decides how the electors are chosen. In the old days, many states didn't even hold a popular vote for president. Look up the U.S. Presidential Election of 1824 in which all four national candidates were from the lone national party (at the time). In the original election, 6 states split their electors (NY split between all 4 candidates). Some states used a state wide popular vote, some assigned electors by districts and others were chosen directly by state legislature, and Maine used a hybrid of the last two options. Andrew Jackson had more more Popular and Electoral votes in the election than any other candidate, but ended up not getting either the Presidential or Vice-presidential position (there were accusations that the 4th place candidate sold his electors to Adams for the Secretary of State job) Personally, I wouldn't mind going back to having electors split up within each state, or even back to having the 2nd place guy get the VP position instead of a running mate. It would give smaller parties a chance to get some electors, it would definitely be more exciting, and it would be fun to watch the national news networks fall all over themselves during coverage.
My brother-in-law is a mathematician and has spent some time compiling a http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/list of mathematical fiction, including novels, short stories, and other mediums. Some of these might be interesting to students to see math applied in new situations.
I'm guessing that the server code (or at least the core code) for Tabula Rasa might be very similar or based upon the server code for NCSoft's other MMOs; afterall, it would save them a lot of development costs to keep the server code as similar as possible between games. Then the concern for releasing that code would be that someone might figure out from there how to hack the server code for their other still active games.
Yes, it could, unless you're running a 64-bit OS and processor. Most computers, which are 32-bit, have a total or 4 GB of addressable memory space, which includes video memory, sound card memory (if you actually still use one) and system RAM. Therefore, if you put in a 2GB video card, you can't make use more than 2 GB of system RAM.
The 4GB address limit is probably the best argument for why we should see more progression to 64 bit computing, but there isn't yet enough demand in the market to force the issue for at least a few more years.
True, but a first level character really no longer as to worry every kobold or dire rat killing them in one hit (especially the minion types), or at least, being able to take off 75% of your HP in one hit since you only started with 6. The extra HP are a plus without adding the complication of a system like SDC from the Palladium systems, although that is a good system as well.
The main things I noticed book keeping wise are as follows:
1) Effects are no longer a number of rounds, its either a) until end of next turn, b) until you save at the end of your turn or c) until end of encounter, up to 5 minutes, which are essentially the same thing.
2) You'll no longer waste 30 minutes as the spellcasters pick their new spells for the day. True wizards still pick their daily powers, but that should go quickly.
3) Thanks to minions, you have to track HP for less monsters at a time.
I think the effect tracking will be the most immediate increase in game speed. I just ran a 3.5 encounter last night with the following effects:
1) Players cast Haste and several invisibilities before combat started, as well as several buffing spells with durations in rounds.
2) BBEG had several defensive spells with duration in rounds.
3) Other monsters had an ability that caused slow, which would tempoarily negate haste for characters afflicted by it for a random number of rounds
4) BBEG was also a mind flayer, so there were mind blasts used at various times which caused stun for random number of rounds to each target.
Now, if the combat is quick, this usually isn't a problem; but this fight went for 10-13 rounds, so various effects started wearing off at various times, and with 6 PCs and 3 monsters, and people using delay actions, its really easy to lose track of which round you're actually in and what round and when in each round a given effect ends.
I don't look at the cleric only because it can heal, but the reality is that in most 3.0-3.5 campaigns, the Cleric likely spends 50% or more of his spells on various forms of healing (either HP or ability damage/drain) because players are loath to use their healing potions outside of combat, even if they barely ever use them in combat because it provokes AoO.
The Cleric PC in the campaign I'm running even has the Touch of Healing feat (can basically heal PCs up to half HP for free) and still probably spends half or more of his spells on healing. In almost any campaign I've been in, the decision to rest is usually made because the Cleric is out of healing magic, or the wizard is >90% empty.
From what I've read so far, the main good things about 4th edition that I've seen so far are:
The main complaints I have so far is that they haven't released rules in the Monster Manual for creating your own monsters from scratch and figuring out appopriate levels, and the death penalty is really almost too minor. Raise dead still takes 10 minutes to cast, and the cost does go up as your level goes up, but the penalty is only -1 to all rolls until you rest for 6 hours. I appreciate that they were trying to lessen death effects and other affects that take your character effectively out of game (Medusa gaze, Illithid mind blast, etc), but by having such a minimal penalty for death, you'd have to wonder why any fears death.
Some will certainly complain that 4th edition is too MMO like (especially like WOW), but the new character building rules do admittedly enforce character balance quite well through all levels.