Silent Running wasn't exactly grubby... but it was more "real." On a continuum, you might see:
Grubby Clean Star Wars - Silent Running - Star Trek
Or something. I'm sure that'll look like total ass when hit submit. Why they set the editor field to monospaced, and the actual site to variable width, I'll never figure out.
Lameness filter is the true lameness, lameness filter is the true lameness.
Leslie Nielsen was the captain of the Poseidon in the ORIGINAL "The Poseidon Adventure." I think that's my favorite role of his... all the other stuff is just too goofy.
I think Star Trek: First Contact is the best of the Star Trek movies, and that one had B&B very much involved. Personally, I think they're a scapegoat by the "hard-core" fans... but the first season of Next Generation, it really sucked.
I hear that explanation over and over again and I don't think anybody's refusing to buy a product because it's a few cubic inches larger than some "ideal" for that class of product. That smells of complete BS. I think it's more likely that Microsoft simply doesn't have enough Japanese game development studios signed up, and therefore there's not enough games that they find entertaining. They do have Team Ninja, which is a step in the right direction, but that's the only real step they've taken.
That said, playing games doesn't work on an mpeg2 card because it introduces about 300 milliseconds or so of latency between you pressing a button on the controller and seeing an image on the screen. I've tried it; it's unplayable for all but the slowest turn-based games.
Same here. Anybody on a cable modem is getting at *least* 3mbps and probably averaging about 5-7mbps in the US. Anybody on DSL is getting 3mbps unless they're miles away from a switching station, or they're using some crummy provider.
The only people this really leaves out is modem users, but they were left out anyway.
Please. Amazon pulls in enough money to write their own DRM if they wanted. They CHOSE Microsoft DRM, and thus they CHOSE to go with an option they knew was not Macintosh compatible... blaming Apple is moronic.
I get the sense that you kind of missed the point in Oblivion, and presumably Morrowind as well. But that's all I'm going to say; I've devoted enough words to this already.
Around Win95 or 98, things were actually looking pretty good for Linux. Many developers were still using OpenGL, so Wine could play games. Windows crashed horribly, and was incredibly slow compared to anything else, even a Mac. Linux just seemed to be getting everything right, so that's when we were pushing the hardest for desktop users, because it was so much better, and we wanted to have native software -- sure, Wine works now, but it never worked for everything, certainly not drivers to really obscure hardware.
Oh please. I used Red Hat 6.2, which is closer to Windows 2000 timeline than Windows 98, and, the most popular Linux distro, out-of-the-box didn't have working DHCP support. I plugged in my DSL modem and... nothing. My sound card, a Creative Soundblaster 128 at the time, was on Red Hat's supported hardware list and, yet, didn't work... and I never got it working.
(After calling up a guru friend of mine, I did eventually figure out how to turn DHCP on, but don't try to scam me saying that Linux of that time period was better for the desktop than Windows 95/98 or Macintosh 7.0-8.0. That's BS.)
I think the point is, why would they spend resources developing crap like that, instead of making the software actually work?
Because they thought it would help more people than it actually helped?
There are a million reasons to attempt to improve the age-old online help most programs have. Especially considering how dismal the help situation is now... Apple got rid of their nice help system in Mac OS 7.0+ that could actually circle the relevant parts of the screen and do other nifty stuff in favor of... just HTML files. Microsoft's help has always been in the form of HTML files, although their tooltips were a great invention.
And, hey, at least Office *has* help. That's more than you can say for a good proportion of Linux applications.
But MS continues to develop cute things like Vista's Aero, while IE still doesn't even come close to being a decent piece of software.
1) The people working on Aero are not on the same team as the people working on IE. Improvement in one has nothing to do with improvement in the other... Microsoft is organized is a rather unique way where each product group is basically given the go-ahead to operate more-or-less independantly.
2) Do you think it might be possible that Aero improves usability? Obviously, you're part of the Linux elite, so I'm sure you don't give a crap if mere mortals can use your software or not, but I happen to think improving usability is a noble cause.
It never occured to you that the vendor might just be full of crap? Defrag maybe once a year, reboot maybe once a month. Anything more than that just means their software is crappy and has unfixed memory leaks in it... you're rebooting to clear out the leaked memory.
I have an alternate explanation. The people saying this are Linux-users who haven't even LOOKED at Windows in years and years, and yet somehow think that Windows never changes. CmdrTaco's last Windows experience might be with Windows 3.11, or maybe Windows 95, and yeah, those crashed. So did Mac OS at the same period of time. And while Linux may have been more stable, you couldn't DO jack with it (at least compared to Windows 95 and Mac OS 7.)
Look at the other evidence:
Constant mentions of "Clippy", which has been turned off by default for ages. (Yes, you can still turn on "Clippy" in Office 2003... you know why? A lot of people LIKE it! God-forbid Microsoft keep a feature people like!)
Mentions of Microsoft Bob. If I posted about how much Red Hat sucked in 1994, you'd get turned into -1 Flamebait instantly here. If you post about how much Microsoft Bob sucked, you'll get a +5 Informative.
Mentions of things that no regular Windows user would deal with, for instance: auto-correct and auto-format in Word. If you used Windows for longer than 20 seconds, you'd realize you can TURN OFF those features if you don't like them. (And again, a lot of people DO like them, that's why Microsoft keeps them on.)
Here's a tip: I've never heard the phrase "surprise, surprise" uttered by somebody who wasn't a condescending prick. If you're not trying for hostility, you might want to avoid that one.
Anyway. The difference is that Japanese-style games give you a pre-made plot, where American-style games are more into letting you create your own story as you progress. That doesn't mean that Japanese-style games have *more* plot, that just means that the plot they do have is less reliant on imagination, and more reliant on reading massive quantities of dialog or watching long cut-scenes. A game like Morrowind or Oblivion, or Wizardry, will have a story going on in the background of your actions, but your actions are the real story of the game... you could play through Oblivion and keep a diary for your character, and you'd have a plot at least as interesting as any Japanese-style RPG.
The equivalent in cinema might be a comparison between, say, Aliens and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Both are excellent movies, but Aliens tells you the exact plot during the course of the film with little doubt about what's happening at any given moment. 2001: A Space Odyssey, on the other hand, doesn't really tell you what's happening in the final third of the film and it's up to the viewer to create a personal meaning of the film for themselves.
Well, look, if the show sucks, it gets cancelled. I loved Sliders, too, but by the second season it was well into wacky-ville and I began to hate the show and turn it off.
I guess my point is to lament the shows that have a consistent quality and get cancelled despite it. If the cast/crew/writers of the show can't keep up the originality longer than 12 episodes, it *deserves* to be cancelled, IMO.
The first thing you do in Morrowind and Oblivion is create a character from scratch. You choose the race, you choose the class, the skills, the sex, everything. Ditto Wizardry games, but with an entire party. Ditto the other games I mentioned.
In a Japanese-style game, like Chrono Trigger, you've given a character whose appearance you can't change, whose name you (often) can't change, whose set of skills you usually can't change, except for maybe selecting some skills over others. When new members are added to your party, they come pre-formed... you can't choose their race, sex, or skills either.
Admittedly, I haven't played a ton of Final Fantasy because, frankly, that style of gameplay doesn't appeal to me. So if I'm wrong, and if FF is nothing like Chrono Trigger (which I have played), then go ahead and move those games into the other group. But I stand by what I said originally about the difference between the games.
Japanese RPG: Focus on plot. American RPG: Focus on action.
I don't like this way of thinking, because both genres of games have about an even amount of plot and action. (Discounting "dungeon digger" Diablo-like games, which have very little plot.) If you think Morrowind or Oblivion didn't have any kind of story behind them, then you really weren't paying attention. And Chrono Trigger had so many fights and random encounters (none of which had anything to do with the plot) that it actually got annoying towards the middle of the game.
I think what you're doing here is drawing an artificial distinction. At best, you might be able to say that Japanese-style RPGs have a linear plot while American-style RPGs have a more open and less linear plot, but... even that doesn't work for a lot of titles.
Calling the intro to Morrowind a "background" is generous, IMO. The only reason it's there is to provide you with a more-or-less blank slate to start your character from. Other American-style RPGs, like say the Wizardry series or Might and Magic series, give you about the same level of background: "you're an adventurer." That doesn't mean they have no plot, that only means that the player is given more leeway to make the character they choose without an emphasis on pre-made characters.
Oh hey, now the 'dungeon diggers' also fit under American. Surprise surprise.
Well, all of them I know of are from American developers. But I think they're more of a mix of both:
Dungeon Diggers, generally, don't allow you to create your characters, or if they do, they have very rudimentary character creation. For instance, in Diablo you can select from 3 different characters, all of them pre-built with certain skills. The gameplay in a Dungeon Digger is based almost entirely around combat. Where another type of RPG would have dialog choices that influence gameplay, Dungeon Diggers have only set quests from only a few questgivers. (When they have questgivers at all.) There are no puzzles to solve, nor is there much of a strategic element. (In a RPG with a party, you might need to determine their positioning and facing, or whether to sacrifice a warrior's life to save a mage's.)
Back in the 80s, we called these games "Dungeon Diggers." Sometime before Diablo was released, the term "Action RPG" came about to describe them. I liked "Dungeon Digger" better, even though it's kind of a stupid term.
American-style RPG (defined by the ability to create your own character): Morrowind, Oblivion, old Might and Magic, Wizardry and Ultima games. Fallout. Perhaps KOTOR, but that's kind of a hybrid.
Japanese-style RPG (having to choose a character created for you by the developer): Final Fantasy, Sudeki, etc. Despite being American, "Quest for Glory" is a Japanese-style RPG by this definition.
Dungeon Digger (Choose a character created for you; no, or few puzzle elements): Diablo series, Dungeon Siege.
MS rushed the X360 (in my opinion) for Xmas and ended up making too many faulties plus they dropped the old Xbox 1 like a hot potato, hence treating their customers like shit.
1) If you think Sony won't have the same percentage of faulties when the PS3 comes out, you're deluding yourself. Nintendo might have better quality control, but it might not.
2) What makes you think they've "dropped the XBox 1 like a hot potato?" There's still tons of games coming out for it, they keep Live and Live Arcade running for it... what exactly more do you want of them?
Stop wheeling out that goddamned nostalgia-inspired "games suck nowadays, when I was a kid they were good." Guess what else? You could get a hamburger for a nickel! The reason you think games were good is because BAD GAMES DO NOT GET REMEMBERED. They don't show up on top 10 of all-time lists, they don't get talked about fondly, they get forgotten. And so when you think back, you're thinking of only the best of the best.
Christ. What we need on the Internet is some kind of device that can detect nostalgia and gives you a shock whenever you start to type a grumpy grandpa-type post like the parent's.
Oh, and of course, Nintendo is going to rise and save us all from our dreary fate... that's a staple of Slashdot posts.
They made a christmas special episode where the aliens decided not to kill them because of the 'spirit of the season' or something equally moronic. Plus the acting sucked and the show didn't make much sense in the first place... but the christmas episode is where I said "no more, this show bites."
Slashdot Mirror
Silent Running wasn't exactly grubby... but it was more "real." On a continuum, you might see:
Grubby Clean
Star Wars - Silent Running - Star Trek
Or something. I'm sure that'll look like total ass when hit submit. Why they set the editor field to monospaced, and the actual site to variable width, I'll never figure out.
Lameness filter is the true lameness, lameness filter is the true lameness.
Leslie Nielsen was the captain of the Poseidon in the ORIGINAL "The Poseidon Adventure." I think that's my favorite role of his... all the other stuff is just too goofy.
I think Star Trek: First Contact is the best of the Star Trek movies, and that one had B&B very much involved. Personally, I think they're a scapegoat by the "hard-core" fans... but the first season of Next Generation, it really sucked.
I hear that explanation over and over again and I don't think anybody's refusing to buy a product because it's a few cubic inches larger than some "ideal" for that class of product. That smells of complete BS. I think it's more likely that Microsoft simply doesn't have enough Japanese game development studios signed up, and therefore there's not enough games that they find entertaining. They do have Team Ninja, which is a step in the right direction, but that's the only real step they've taken.
It's quicker to just type "wooosh!" when a joke goes over someone's head.
That said, playing games doesn't work on an mpeg2 card because it introduces about 300 milliseconds or so of latency between you pressing a button on the controller and seeing an image on the screen. I've tried it; it's unplayable for all but the slowest turn-based games.
Same here. Anybody on a cable modem is getting at *least* 3mbps and probably averaging about 5-7mbps in the US. Anybody on DSL is getting 3mbps unless they're miles away from a switching station, or they're using some crummy provider.
The only people this really leaves out is modem users, but they were left out anyway.
Please. Amazon pulls in enough money to write their own DRM if they wanted. They CHOSE Microsoft DRM, and thus they CHOSE to go with an option they knew was not Macintosh compatible... blaming Apple is moronic.
Your metaphor doesn't work, because the Wii is simply more fun.
It's not even OUT yet. For all you know, it's about as fun as the Virtual Boy. Criminy.
I get the sense that you kind of missed the point in Oblivion, and presumably Morrowind as well. But that's all I'm going to say; I've devoted enough words to this already.
Around Win95 or 98, things were actually looking pretty good for Linux. Many developers were still using OpenGL, so Wine could play games. Windows crashed horribly, and was incredibly slow compared to anything else, even a Mac. Linux just seemed to be getting everything right, so that's when we were pushing the hardest for desktop users, because it was so much better, and we wanted to have native software -- sure, Wine works now, but it never worked for everything, certainly not drivers to really obscure hardware.
... nothing. My sound card, a Creative Soundblaster 128 at the time, was on Red Hat's supported hardware list and, yet, didn't work... and I never got it working.
Oh please. I used Red Hat 6.2, which is closer to Windows 2000 timeline than Windows 98, and, the most popular Linux distro, out-of-the-box didn't have working DHCP support. I plugged in my DSL modem and
(After calling up a guru friend of mine, I did eventually figure out how to turn DHCP on, but don't try to scam me saying that Linux of that time period was better for the desktop than Windows 95/98 or Macintosh 7.0-8.0. That's BS.)
I think the point is, why would they spend resources developing crap like that, instead of making the software actually work?
Because they thought it would help more people than it actually helped?
There are a million reasons to attempt to improve the age-old online help most programs have. Especially considering how dismal the help situation is now... Apple got rid of their nice help system in Mac OS 7.0+ that could actually circle the relevant parts of the screen and do other nifty stuff in favor of... just HTML files. Microsoft's help has always been in the form of HTML files, although their tooltips were a great invention.
And, hey, at least Office *has* help. That's more than you can say for a good proportion of Linux applications.
But MS continues to develop cute things like Vista's Aero, while IE still doesn't even come close to being a decent piece of software.
1) The people working on Aero are not on the same team as the people working on IE. Improvement in one has nothing to do with improvement in the other... Microsoft is organized is a rather unique way where each product group is basically given the go-ahead to operate more-or-less independantly.
2) Do you think it might be possible that Aero improves usability? Obviously, you're part of the Linux elite, so I'm sure you don't give a crap if mere mortals can use your software or not, but I happen to think improving usability is a noble cause.
Ok, fine, so it's an idiotic idea. It's off by default. Why are you still complaining? It's OFF BY DEFAULT!
Your complaint is 5 years out-of-date. Get fucking OVER IT already. That's what I'm saying.
It never occured to you that the vendor might just be full of crap? Defrag maybe once a year, reboot maybe once a month. Anything more than that just means their software is crappy and has unfixed memory leaks in it... you're rebooting to clear out the leaked memory.
I have an alternate explanation. The people saying this are Linux-users who haven't even LOOKED at Windows in years and years, and yet somehow think that Windows never changes. CmdrTaco's last Windows experience might be with Windows 3.11, or maybe Windows 95, and yeah, those crashed. So did Mac OS at the same period of time. And while Linux may have been more stable, you couldn't DO jack with it (at least compared to Windows 95 and Mac OS 7.)
Look at the other evidence:
Constant mentions of "Clippy", which has been turned off by default for ages. (Yes, you can still turn on "Clippy" in Office 2003... you know why? A lot of people LIKE it! God-forbid Microsoft keep a feature people like!)
Mentions of Microsoft Bob. If I posted about how much Red Hat sucked in 1994, you'd get turned into -1 Flamebait instantly here. If you post about how much Microsoft Bob sucked, you'll get a +5 Informative.
Mentions of things that no regular Windows user would deal with, for instance: auto-correct and auto-format in Word. If you used Windows for longer than 20 seconds, you'd realize you can TURN OFF those features if you don't like them. (And again, a lot of people DO like them, that's why Microsoft keeps them on.)
Here's a tip: I've never heard the phrase "surprise, surprise" uttered by somebody who wasn't a condescending prick. If you're not trying for hostility, you might want to avoid that one.
Anyway. The difference is that Japanese-style games give you a pre-made plot, where American-style games are more into letting you create your own story as you progress. That doesn't mean that Japanese-style games have *more* plot, that just means that the plot they do have is less reliant on imagination, and more reliant on reading massive quantities of dialog or watching long cut-scenes. A game like Morrowind or Oblivion, or Wizardry, will have a story going on in the background of your actions, but your actions are the real story of the game... you could play through Oblivion and keep a diary for your character, and you'd have a plot at least as interesting as any Japanese-style RPG.
The equivalent in cinema might be a comparison between, say, Aliens and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Both are excellent movies, but Aliens tells you the exact plot during the course of the film with little doubt about what's happening at any given moment. 2001: A Space Odyssey, on the other hand, doesn't really tell you what's happening in the final third of the film and it's up to the viewer to create a personal meaning of the film for themselves.
Well, look, if the show sucks, it gets cancelled. I loved Sliders, too, but by the second season it was well into wacky-ville and I began to hate the show and turn it off.
I guess my point is to lament the shows that have a consistent quality and get cancelled despite it. If the cast/crew/writers of the show can't keep up the originality longer than 12 episodes, it *deserves* to be cancelled, IMO.
Why the hostile tone?
The first thing you do in Morrowind and Oblivion is create a character from scratch. You choose the race, you choose the class, the skills, the sex, everything. Ditto Wizardry games, but with an entire party. Ditto the other games I mentioned.
In a Japanese-style game, like Chrono Trigger, you've given a character whose appearance you can't change, whose name you (often) can't change, whose set of skills you usually can't change, except for maybe selecting some skills over others. When new members are added to your party, they come pre-formed... you can't choose their race, sex, or skills either.
Admittedly, I haven't played a ton of Final Fantasy because, frankly, that style of gameplay doesn't appeal to me. So if I'm wrong, and if FF is nothing like Chrono Trigger (which I have played), then go ahead and move those games into the other group. But I stand by what I said originally about the difference between the games.
Japanese RPG: Focus on plot.
American RPG: Focus on action.
I don't like this way of thinking, because both genres of games have about an even amount of plot and action. (Discounting "dungeon digger" Diablo-like games, which have very little plot.) If you think Morrowind or Oblivion didn't have any kind of story behind them, then you really weren't paying attention. And Chrono Trigger had so many fights and random encounters (none of which had anything to do with the plot) that it actually got annoying towards the middle of the game.
I think what you're doing here is drawing an artificial distinction. At best, you might be able to say that Japanese-style RPGs have a linear plot while American-style RPGs have a more open and less linear plot, but... even that doesn't work for a lot of titles.
Calling the intro to Morrowind a "background" is generous, IMO. The only reason it's there is to provide you with a more-or-less blank slate to start your character from. Other American-style RPGs, like say the Wizardry series or Might and Magic series, give you about the same level of background: "you're an adventurer." That doesn't mean they have no plot, that only means that the player is given more leeway to make the character they choose without an emphasis on pre-made characters.
Oh hey, now the 'dungeon diggers' also fit under American. Surprise surprise.
Well, all of them I know of are from American developers. But I think they're more of a mix of both:
Dungeon Diggers, generally, don't allow you to create your characters, or if they do, they have very rudimentary character creation. For instance, in Diablo you can select from 3 different characters, all of them pre-built with certain skills. The gameplay in a Dungeon Digger is based almost entirely around combat. Where another type of RPG would have dialog choices that influence gameplay, Dungeon Diggers have only set quests from only a few questgivers. (When they have questgivers at all.) There are no puzzles to solve, nor is there much of a strategic element. (In a RPG with a party, you might need to determine their positioning and facing, or whether to sacrifice a warrior's life to save a mage's.)
... so is Dungeon Siege. I honestly don't get how Dungeon Siege would be in a different category than Diablo. Can you go into more detail, please?
Back in the 80s, we called these games "Dungeon Diggers." Sometime before Diablo was released, the term "Action RPG" came about to describe them. I liked "Dungeon Digger" better, even though it's kind of a stupid term.
But what goes into RPG? I'd suggest three types:
American-style RPG (defined by the ability to create your own character):
Morrowind, Oblivion, old Might and Magic, Wizardry and Ultima games. Fallout. Perhaps KOTOR, but that's kind of a hybrid.
Japanese-style RPG (having to choose a character created for you by the developer):
Final Fantasy, Sudeki, etc. Despite being American, "Quest for Glory" is a Japanese-style RPG by this definition.
Dungeon Digger (Choose a character created for you; no, or few puzzle elements):
Diablo series, Dungeon Siege.
Those are all very different games.
Or Xbox 360, which lets you do it now this second over Live Arcade
When are the people here on Slashdot going to start realizing that the Wii is going to be the major competitor, not the PS3?
Do you READ Slashdot? This place is so pro-Wii it's insane. Here's a way to instantly get a post modded down, watch:
I think that motion sensing controller is stupid.
MS rushed the X360 (in my opinion) for Xmas and ended up making too many faulties plus they dropped the old Xbox 1 like a hot potato, hence treating their customers like shit.
1) If you think Sony won't have the same percentage of faulties when the PS3 comes out, you're deluding yourself. Nintendo might have better quality control, but it might not.
2) What makes you think they've "dropped the XBox 1 like a hot potato?" There's still tons of games coming out for it, they keep Live and Live Arcade running for it... what exactly more do you want of them?
Stop wheeling out that goddamned nostalgia-inspired "games suck nowadays, when I was a kid they were good." Guess what else? You could get a hamburger for a nickel! The reason you think games were good is because BAD GAMES DO NOT GET REMEMBERED. They don't show up on top 10 of all-time lists, they don't get talked about fondly, they get forgotten. And so when you think back, you're thinking of only the best of the best.
Christ. What we need on the Internet is some kind of device that can detect nostalgia and gives you a shock whenever you start to type a grumpy grandpa-type post like the parent's.
Oh, and of course, Nintendo is going to rise and save us all from our dreary fate... that's a staple of Slashdot posts.
They made a christmas special episode where the aliens decided not to kill them because of the 'spirit of the season' or something equally moronic. Plus the acting sucked and the show didn't make much sense in the first place... but the christmas episode is where I said "no more, this show bites."