I’m currently watching the Microsoft press conference as I write this. So don’t mind the occasional “Oooooohhh”s and “Aaaaaah”s and “eh?”s. Wait, I can edit this.
I do like G4’s coverage of E3 events - their commentary is on par of what my friends and I discuss and I gotta say, I do thoroughly enjoy Kevin Pereira’s wit. “Halo made chanting monks cool again”. <3
I'm gonna have to get back to that later... I plan on posting in the next few days a bit more in depth - right now I'm playing catch up.
Sony - you know what I want to hear from your press conference. Two words: PRICE DROP! Blu Ray players are down to $150, you cannot warrant your system being so damn expensive. Refusing to admit your system is not worth as much money as you think it does shows a blatant disregard for your fans - the consumers. And that excuse for a PS3 bundle? Please. PUH-LEASE!
EA Sports Active arrived last week on Thursday. That day I set it up and proceeded to start a 30 Day Challenge. Since I praised Wii Fit at the time I got it, and then changed my mind - I’m going to do an update every few weeks on my review. Bottom line thus far: Thank you EA. Thank you.
I implemented a calendar widget I’m more excited about than I should be. I actually plan on scheduling gaming appointments through this. I’ve been wanting to organize times to play Left 4 Dead, Rock Band 2, Gears of War 2, etc with friends and family. I also wanted to find better ways of posting when webcam is up and running. Twitter was getting a bit old with that. By the way, anyone find a better free webcam agent than Stickam - lemme know.
In social news, I gotta say shame on you California Supreme Court. I’ve been thinking about what to say about this for a while but that’s all I can muster. It’s a crushing blow to human rights that I can’t believe passed. Calling the Prop 8 an amendment and not a revision was a gross mistake that I can’t figure out how it happened. All I can do is leave you with Stewart on this subject, while making fun of such an easy target: Michael Steele.
Yeah I’m watching Baseketball. Don’t hate, you know it’s a great movie. I respect any movie that uses Steve Perry as a strategy.
I’m thinking about cracking open Star Ocean today. Even tho I’m almost coming up on the end of the main story, I’ve come to a crossroad in deciding what to do. You see, there’s no way I’m going to get full completion on this playthru, so I do as many sidequests as possible or wait til the second time before doing all the extra work? Grargh! It sucks I even am considering passing it up - I blame achievements for this. I really honestly don’t care about having achievements that much on Xbox Live, but when you mix the aspect of achievements with RPG sidequests, it messes up my modjo.
I will say this, shame on you Star Ocean for poor planning. I’m now at the point where the game is basically done, so the sidequests I do want to work on I have to travel all over the galaxy for. This isn’t shocking - it’s a staple of RPGs to have this. Now Star Ocean is a three disc game, which isn’t normally a big deal. But get this, In order to go to some worlds, I have to swap discs. So to do the myriad of sidequests I have to spend a good portion of my time actively swapping discs. *Additionally* some of this stuff I have to do for quests involve making things thru item creation. So I’ll go to the first world, farm some monsters to get the materials to make items, then I have to go back to another world, which is on a seperate disc, to make the item (because you can only create items in one specific location). THEN I get to swap discs back to go to the first world to turn the damn quest in. Really?! What genius said “Nobody will think this will get old!”
There’s two worlds on one disc (that also contains the item creator), and three worlds on the other disc, it’s split nice and annoyingly even. Also, you can only hold 20 items. Now, it can take upwards of seven of one type of component to make one item through the creation process. Then the actual quest requires three of the end result item. Yes, that’s right, I’d need 21 of one component when I can only hold 20. Here’s exactly how this plays out. Disc swap to world, get 20 components, disc swap back, make two items, disc swap back, get one more item, disc swap back make the third and final item, and finally disc swap back to turn in. Really? Bad! Fail! Bad!
You know what they could’ve done? Made this easier on people who have the game installed to the harddrive. While you still need the game disc in tray to access a game installed on your harddrive, they could have just incorporated the same activation license on all discs. So, I could install disc two on my drive, have the game play off of disc three, and instead of swapping disc it just accesses the second disc on my drive since one of the game discs is in the tray and not require the exact disc to play it! It’s not that insane of an idea!
*Sigh* but alas… that’s just too logical I guess, I apologize. Even tho your characters are 85% irritating, and some of this crap is inexcusable, I still love ya Star Ocean. You’re still fun to play.
Speaking of fun to play I got a game called God Hand yesterday. It was on Amazon for 11 bucks, and I heard that it’s just stupid fun so I figured what the hell. I’ll play it a bit this week and let you all know if this two year old PS2 game is worth the cheap ass bones it’s selling for, but I got a good feeling.
OK and now to bitch. Family Guy and Adult Swim, it’s time we had a talk. I’ll start with Family Guy. Now we had some fun Guy. Your first season sucked some serious balls, but you picked up and did exceptionally well the following seasons. But now? Why is it so hard to come up with new jokes? The problem with rehashing everything that you already used is that when we see the jokes from the first time they were introduced we roll our eyes. It’s stale! And what the HELL is the deal with Conway Twiddy?? Using clips of his songs twice in the past was actually never funny. Playing an ENTIRE song of his on the show… can you make it more obvious your stalling for time? Same crap with the Christian Bale rant. Filling it in with Peter’s voice would’ve maybe been ok if you didn’t use the entire clip and then it wasn’t. Even. Funny.
Now you had two great opportunities to really do grand slams by having the Fox News segment and the Star Trek TNG segment. The Fox News rip was beyond lackluster and the subplot with Peter’s cartoon show was, again, a deliberate unfunny stall. But you had the whole TNG cast and you put the boring Meg and Brian plot line as the main focus? Really? Well at least when the cast was on it was pretty funny, and your sad re-hashed joke idea actually paid off with Whhhil Whheaton. I guess it’s good that you’re 1 for 20 now in rehashed joke being successful.
Adult Swim you are done. Two years ago you guys were supreme and unflappable. Even shows I didn’t care for were still enjoyable, and didn’t feel my soul draining away from watching them. Robot Chicken, Sealab 2021, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Boondocks, Venture Bros, Harvey Birdman, Morel Orel, Family Guy = solid. Your anime on the weekend ideas were more than welcome. Words could not describe how amazing your show line up was.
Then you took the anime off and proceeded to make fun of the people who complained about it. You didn’t make fun of the idiots, you made fun of ANYONE who disagreed. Then you stopped showing most of your regular line up. You added absolute shit shows that are Tim and Eric Boring Show, Squidbillies, King of the Hill, Assy McGee, Super Jail. None of these shows are entertaining, they fall into two categories of attempted humor. Humor through nonsense, and humor through offensiveness. Well King of the Hill… I never understood what they try to do besides be the longest running cartoon that refuses to have a plot or anything remotely entertaining. Tim and Eric tries to be funny through nonsense (like how Sealab, Harvey, and Aqua did) but the problem is they only have nonsense. Nonsense is not funny by default. They hired Michael Cera on their show to turn into a cat. That’s it. That was absolutely it - that was the joke. All of their shit is like this. And then Super Jail, Assy McGee and Squidbillies just try to be offensive and gross to be funny. Problem is again, they leave out the funny.
The cream of the crop? April Fools. For the night of April First, adult swim showed the absolute worst movie I have ever seen in my life called “The Room”. What was the joke? In between commercial breaks they put up a notice saying “What are you Fools watching?” Get it? Fools! April Fools! It’s funny! Wait, no it’s not… not at all. It’s just stupid. Adult Swim you just forgot what funny is.
On to other things. Jon Stewart amuses me. Especially when he talks to Fox.
So I mentioned before the chance of seeing Dollhouse for a second season looks grim, which is sad. The show grew on me pretty damn fast and I consider myself hooked. An interesting article a friend shared shows Joss himself is a bit pessimistic about the renewal as well. The article is a good read for Whedon fans (or fans of any of his shows) and it’s always interesting to see how much writers have control of their own shows. Such as:
When an audience member asked whether he saw it as troublesome that all the actives were unfailingly young and gorgeous, he acknowledged this to an extent, mentioning that early drafts of the show had involved actives of all shapes and sizes to reflect the fact that people’s fantasies don’t always adhere to Hollywood’s conception of attractiveness, and the beautifying of the Dollhouse was one of the realities of dealing with Fox. There had been an entire early subplot about an active named Tango who was an older woman, but sadly all of that had to go when the show’s direction changed.
Man I’m really hatin on Fox aren’t I? Eh, well, easy targets I guess.
Something I’m looking forward to? EA Sports Active. It’s EA’s new fitness game for the Wii. Now I bought into the Wii Fit last year and I don’t necessarily regret it. I think it was a great introduction into interactive fitness, but Wii Fit is not for everyone. First of all, Wii Fit is a game first and foremost. Having that scoreboard with all the activities is great in theory, but useless in practice. For one thing, it’s easy to find ways to “rig” the events to get a better score, not a better workout. Also the scoreboard idea in general causes more feelings of frustration than accomplishment several months in. Wii Fit focused also more on Yoga than cardio, and even when there was a solid cardio workout you could do, they were definitely the lacking parts of the game. The inability to set-up a workout regiment beforehand causes a hefty slow down in between events, which dramatically effects cardio. The dance segment was pretty slow (even at advanced), and fitness boxing was excellent but still had that annoying downtime between patterns. The running segment was horribly inaccurate, and I don’t know how they expected anything else when you have the option to hold the remote, put it in your front pocket, or put it in your back pocket - but had no way of indicating which you were doing in the game. There’s no way those movements between the three positions would accurately translate into the game.
So here’s where EA Sports Active can step up. The workouts they’ve selected are more intensive cardio work, they have preset 20/30 minute workouts, and the added resistance bands and leg strap are an excellent way to give a better workout and more accurate feedback.
Mostly, I’m glad they’re not trying to be a game. I think that’s where Wii Fit fell through by having it’s identity crisis. Hey I’m not faulting Wii Fit for failing, it’s just not for me. One workout does not work for everyone, I actually have a really hard time getting results from most exercise - it’s how my body type is. I did Pilates for a long time and became incredibly flexible and my posture was excellent, I just didn’t drop a single damn pound. Cardio has always given me the results I need and I think the line up they have is lookin right up my alley.
Oh and before I go, spend a quick second with this 1up article. It covers “Misleading Videogame Job Descriptions” and it’s a quick funny read. For instance, ninjas!
Have you ever played a videogame with a ninja in it? How did you know? Because if you saw ninjas, somebody wasn’t doing their job very well. I’ve yet to see a ninja game box cover that displays an empty room, so it’s safe to say that I’ve never actually played a real ninja game in my life.
Good stuff.
I think that’s all I have for now. I’m looking forward to an awesome DnD session this weekend, followed by a Bar 2.0 party as well hosted by Eugene. I have pictures from our last DnD session to post, and I’ll definitely have even more this weekend.
For some odd reason, my brain decides it wants to take a different route of thought on subjects I rather just not even think about, let alone strangely evaluate.
Disclaimer
If you have small children in the room, get the kids out of the room.
If you are a small child or if you are someone easily offended/grossed out, why the hell are you on this site anyway?
If you are a family member, well… sorry.
Anyway.
Someone said the phrase the other day, “choking the chicken”. My brain decided this was a subject worth evaluating. Choking the chicken, flogging the dolphin, spanking the monkey, punching the clown, etc are all terms to describe male masturbation. Why the hell are they so violent? Seriously isn’t this suppose to be an enjoyable activity, something that provides release and well, happiness? Why so angry when describing this event? It’d be like describing a back massage as “bitchslapping the slab”.
I don’t know why I said that.
Point being, I’m just confused on why violent verbs are associated with it. So, the only conclusion I could come up with is that “it’s a man thing”. Men don’t feel pleasure - they feel PAIN! The only thing they could possible enjoy would be getting a bullet yanked from their kidney while removing their own appendix at the same time. Grargh!!! Testosterone!!! Masturbation isn’t to feel good, it’s an activity to expel of any weak fluids from their body!! GRARGHARGHRARR!!
I’m done now.
So I’m very much enjoying the Macbook Pro, found it’s even easier to use a .pdf character sheet during our DnD 4.0 campaign considering every single one of your stats changes on a … hourly basis. But it’s more than a spiffy character sheet, it’s also an excellent mirror in the daylight. There’s nothing quite like enjoying a beautiful day outside while updating your website, only to get a constant reflection of yourself. Since I do very much enjoy looking at my awesome self, it wasn’t upsetting… but yes, it wasn’t a very effective “outdoor” machine. Meh.
Speaking of DnD, gotta say I’m really enjoying the 4.0 set up a bit more each time we play it. We ventured into the 7th Layer of Hell (some natives call it “Luke’s apartment”) this past weekend to continue our campaign, which was an awesome event. I’m excited for our next session since the Player’s Handbook 2 arrived at our doorstep today. I’ll be spending the latter part of today perusing the new classes and feats. I’m still anxious for the Complete Arcane to release.
Oh and Facebook. Please do us all a favor, if you’re going to keep updating the look of your site, could you please have it so it doesn’t look/work worse than before? Progress is forward moving, not constant downgrading with each update. I agree with my bro Mike, looks like Facebook is just a glorified Twitter now. Boo I say!
Miss me? I have to say my recent lack of posting hasn’t been a scheduled one. Sure it’s been slow in the gaming news industry but that’s not why I decided to disappear. It’s all Dan’s fault actually. You see, he started browsing thru Newegg to make a new computer. He did this on his current computer - and you know how jealous PCs get, know what I’m sayin? Sure enough, his video card died about a day after making his wishlist. Coincidence? I think not. Well that resulted in him using my video card until his new one arrives. This is why I haven’t had a PC for over a week now (I’m currently using Dan’s while he’s at work). But it should be here by tomorrow.
Why am I not upset by this? It’s not just because Dan is upgrading the video card in the computer that will be passed down to me when his new one comes in. It’s not even the fact that he’s getting a 64 bit copy of Vista so it will run better, and use all 4 gigs of RAM in that PC. It’s because, on top of those two things that will make it a simply amazing gaming machine, I’m getting this.
Yes ladies and gentlemen, I’m getting a 15inc Macbook Pro. And I have every intention not to try to set this one on fire.
What does this mean? It means I now have a laptop to work on my website with - more updates and news (just like when the site first re-launched back in November) and it also means I can bring back the webcam. I’m also incredibly happy to know I can actually boot this thing under windows, because I absolutely hate and despise working on a Mac OS. This also means we have a laptop able to run EQ2 on - but you guys probably don’t care about that as much as we do.
Most importantly? It’s a Mac, meaning Final Cut Pro is back and I’m able to start video editting again.
*insert high pitched squeal here*
So I should be back on a computer by tomorrow… but Thursday the Mac will be here. So by next week everything should be in it’s proper working order. Updates at least 5 times a week, webcam up and running whenever I’m doing something halfway, or at least a quarter, interesting. I cannot make promises on video releases… it’s been over a year since I’ve even touched Final Cut Pro and Adobe After Effects so I’ll need some time for my rust to shake off, but stay tuned. I’m very excited to get back into editting, and I’m absolutely ecstatic thinking about the future of this site.
Finally sat down for some quality time with my Xbox, playing through Fable 2’s story a bit more. I don’t think Fable 2 is the most amazing thing to grace the 360, or even deserves game of the year (despite a decent debate from X Play), but it is a good game. I don’t agree with those who call it Fable 1.5. Sure it has the same feel, but the game mechanics, combat system, and graphics are loads better than the first. The fact that it has the same “feel” as Fable 1 means they did the series well.
On a sadder note, I’m sorry to see the 1up.com change of ownership. Especially since it meant axing half the staff and it’s specials like “The 1up Show”. While it was noted from the editors that layoffs were going to hit hard even if they weren’t bought by Ugo, it still feels like they were taken advantage of in this recession. 1up had some style and character that it will undoubtedly be lacking now despite what they wish for.
Before I go back to Fable 2, err I mean - writing my review, I figure I leave you with a dated, but still enjoyable, clip. The recent line-up changes and new show choices to Adult Swim are pretty much steaming bowls of crap, but I still enjoy some of it’s classics. Like this one.
The Logiteh G13 gameboard arrived just a few hours ago, so I’ve been giving it a test run. The transition process has been far from easy, but otherwise I’m quite pleased with it’s performance and feel thusfar. I’m going to be working with it for a while still, and later I’ll be doing a full review.
For you gamers who haven’t found the joy that is Zero Punctuation, I suggest you do so. While I don’t normally agree with everything he says, Yahtzee is an extremely funny and brutally honest video game reviewer. Be warned - bad language is the bread and butter of this guy’s work.
Here’s a mash-up of 2008’s reviews for your enjoyment.
Resolutions are always a pain to make, but even harder to maintain. I may not be able to get my own life together, but I’ll help out the game developers by giving them some serious changes that need to be addressed to make 2009 a special year for gamers.
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Skippable Cutscenes
Having unskippable cutscenes is nothing short than unacceptable. Nothing. There is absolutely reason to make people watch cutscenes. Afraid viewers might skip something worthwhile and necessary? Do what Xenosaga does. Require a pause first and then display the required button to skip. Worried people will still accidentally skip it? They’re idiots. There is no helping them at this point.
It’s great you love your game so much you want people to listen to your story, but enhance the games replay value and deal with the fact people either don’t care, or are having a hell of a time with the boss fight and are sick of hearing the pre-battle taunting from reloading the save for the up-teenth time.
No Less Than 8 Hours of Gameplay
It should be illegal to release a game that is 5 hours long and charge 60 dollars for it. I don’t care you have download content planned, and don’t think I don’t see the price tag attached to the “download now!” button. Your idea might be so neat an innovative, but that is no excuse to short-change your consumers because of it. Creating that new and neat idea is what is called “Your Job!” And don’t you DARE fluff up the play by making gamers repeat re-hashed content. I’m looking at you Super Paper Mario who told me to run the 100 floor dungeon *again* to reap the rewards for running it the first time.
No More Single Player Unlocks for Party Games
I’m over my limit with Nintendo especially on this. Requiring single player playthrough’s to unlock new characters, vehicles, and even mini-games is reprehensible. While having unlocks is a sweet treat, to buy a game to have characters on the freakin box cover not obtainable until six hours of single player game time is inexcusable. To fix this, you becomes “that ass” who beats everyone at the game (since no one else knows what the hell is going on) but all you were just trying to unlock the content for the guests! Suddenly, people at parties aren’t interested in it anymore.
What’s the solution? Well for Nintendo, first and foremost, cut down the number of unlocks. They have gone from having unlocks be a bonus, to a necessity. Only a quarter of the characters available on the disc for Mario Kart, leaving me to unlock the remaining 40?! Thanks! Secondly, if you’re so adamant on making sure there’s something for the loners, leave those unlocks there, but give an alternative multiplayer way of obtaining the unlocks. Bring a small taste of unity to competitive party games. Worried about the dumbasses who turn on all 4 controllers and leave 3 idle to unlock games? Don’t. They’re special people who have enough problems on their own. Do not punish people who love party games because some loner idiot may use this system to his advantage.
Put “Co” back in Co-op
This year was suppose to be amazing for co-op play. But too much fell short. Too Human’s co-op campaign which by-passed every story cutscene was a poor choice. It’s a grinding game at it’s core, and to take out all story on top of it, really increased the heavy repetitive feel with no accomplishment at the end. It’s great idea for replay where you don’t want to see the story again, you just want to grind, but it should be an option at the multiplayer lobby to bypass cutscenes… not just omit them for everyone. I played through the whole campaign and haven’t a single clue what the hell is going on.
Mercanaries 2 made no sense when the co-op campaign was really one persons campaign with a side kick. I tagged along on Dan’s mission, but the story advancement, money, and unlocks where unavailable to me on my own game - even when I was the one who found the various things used in Dan’s campaign. And an engine as simple as Mercanaries 2 shouldn’t allow this. If Dan screws up his U.P. faction, and I’m pristine with them, let that conflict affect both of us. Don’t take away co-op because of this, embrace it!
Fable 2. While I understand your faction with towns can create issues in towns, this can be easily remedied with instanced towns/hubs in co-op campaign while the open world zones are shared. You can already see your friends gamertag bubble floating around while you’re connected to Xbox live, so the system is already there. Sure, it’s a bit more of a hassle but better than having someone insert a generic pre-rendered character in your game, instead of the character they worked hard on. At least their characters obtain the exp and gold from it tho right?
But shared screen. SHARED SCREEN!? REALLY?! Are we back in 1996? I’m not playing on the same TV and xbox as Dan, I’m running my own, so give me my own screen! Seriously. Terrible. Fail. Bad. Bad bad bad bad. BAD!
Put Your Game Testers Back to Work
Having your own harddrive for patches and bug fixes is a step forward in general, but this leads to incredibly lazy testing - leaving the testing to the consumers. I’m not talking about aesthetic minor issues, I’m talking game breaking issues that kill your save file. You pay people for this job, make them do it. You aren’t paying us for this, so don’t make us do this. Spend more time to fix your game to make it completely unbreakable at release, and not fix it a few months after release. Could you show anymore lack of appreciation for your consumers by sacrificing their enjoyment for a product you advertise as working?
Stop Separating Out Your Games to Multi-parters
I’m getting a bit tired of re-hashed sequels in general, but seems like you can’t do a halfway decent game by itself, it has to be part of a 2, 3, or 14 part series. Enough. And especially stop taking a game and dividing them up to make more money. $60 a pop for a 40 hour game, or 4 10 hour games. Stop it. Stop ripping me off. You are going to release the same engine, same graphics, and your going to space it out through several years to punish gamers for supporting you. Assholes.
Calm Down on the Quick Time Events
Ok, it was neat. Good job God of War. But you know what else was neat? Bullet time in movies. Remember when that got old? Sure, it’s a great way to do more than a regular cut-scene, but you don’t have to implement it in every single game released post 2006. Thank you for letting us know where the buttons on our controllers are - we got it now.
Give Us Collecting Trackers
DO NOT make me collect 100 tokens/coins/super secret spaghetti noodles without giving me something to track my progress on. Take a tip from Okami that had 100 beads, all pre-numbered. So us normal human beings who didn’t use a walkthrough and now have retrace their steps (when we already have 66) just to make sure they picked it up, we can at least cut 4 uselessly spent hours out of our time by looking up “Bead number 23″ on Okami.
Spending time looking for random collectibles, even with a game developer behind us telling us exactly where it is, is not fun. Requiring us to spend several hours checking to make sure we got them all, is horrible.
Give A Quest Log
Mostly applies to RPGs. I’m not going to remember if I finished my 30 open side quests in Tales of Vesperia without having a checklist. Yes I have a printed out checklist - it’s 7 pages long with single spacing and 8 point font. I’m not kidding. Those are the side quests. Quests logs are great because they work. As much as you developers want us to do nothing but play your game from morning to our passing out from exhaustion in our chair while playing your game for 36 hours straight, most of us don’t. Hell, I *have* the time and I don’t. When you don’t give me a quest log, I hesitate to pick up your game again because I can’t remember where exactly I was in the main quest - let alone all the side stuff.
Make Walkthrough’s Useful Again
I’m all for playing through a game once with no help or hints, but some of these games now-a-days expect you to read minds in order to complete their sub-events. How else do you know to go to one of the 20 towns in the game and talk to the third person on the left of sub section B on the east side of the city, before you fight the big Cthulu in Chapter 5, but after you kill the Tentacle demon in Chapter 4? You better, if you want to unlock the Super Omega Sword of Combustible Doom! Doing that stuff in 8 bit days where a giant town had a population of 10 wasn’t a big deal, but now there’s more NPCs than creatures to fight in these games.
What’s worse, is you pay for the walkthrough on this game and it tells you *nothing* of this. It will give you a 6 page strat on how to get through the first boss fight (which, by the way, they give you step by step instructions in the game during the fight - and the game has you automatically win regardless) but they don’t think that talking to a wandering inn keeper in a remote section of your map before you do a certain event, even though he does nothing for you before, to unlock a sheer myriad of side events - just isn’t that important enough to put in the walkthrough. I’m looking at you again Tales of Vesperia!
I will never forgive FFIX, who tricked me with their “special edition walkthrough”. It was the size of a coloring book and was more useless than one. Each section would say the general premise of what you were to do, and then have a bubble off to the side “Want to know more about this event? Go to playonline.com and register so we can spam you with our advertisements, then type in this code FFIESKFO$!18181 to learn more!” No thank you, I paid for you to not give me a web address for free information. Gamefaqs.com is for that. The kicker? The information on those webpages were even more unhelpful than the walkthrough’s general premise.
Retire the initials DRM
Do you know what DRM does for your game? It screws over the consumers, and makes the pirates laugh. You are not stopping software pirating, your only encouraging it. It should be evident now with Spore being the most pirated game of 2008 - by a landslide. And EA - screw you. Where the *hell* did you get the number of .3% of people install a game more than three times. Apparently everyone I know makes up your phony statistic - and then some. I don’t care if you increase the cap to 20, you are still making owners of the games renters. Do not make anyone who pays $60 for your game only entitled to it for a number of installs.
Just face it, as much as you cross your fingers and wish upon stars, games will be pirated. The least you can do is make sure you don’t piss off your consumers so much that they resort to pirating instead of purchasing. Doesn’t seem like asking much… but you’d be amazed, EA managed to do it with flying colors.
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So there it is, game developers, you have your guidelines - now use them. I expect great things from you all in 2009, so stop being ass-hats. Happy New Year!
I’ve been browsing the recently released Macbooks, since I could really use a laptop and I’d love to get back into video editing. If you didn’t know already, I’m not a fan of Macs. Unfortunately, Final Cut Pro is the best video editing software hands down, and I just can’t go back to Adobe Premiere *shudder*.
So I believe that if I stare at the price long enough at the Apple store, it will actually drop to 0. Until it does, enjoy a funny video spoofing the Macbook Air commercial
A little history. I have used a Nostromo and Saitek pretty heavily the past several years of gaming, and I really feel I can’t live without them, despite the unhappiness they provide.
I had prefered the Saitek, for 3 reasons. It’s analog stick, more buttons, and it’s easier on my girly hands. But it’s far from superior. It’s own software is unreliable to work with, forcing you to use a third party system. It’s buttons were more awkward in feel, for instance having larger/heavier keys where the pinky rests can cause some serious cramps after a while. I also had to tape a small piece of paper to give it some sort of “bump” for finger location memory (but that was personal). The wrist “rest” pretends it has a purpose by being curved, but honestly it’d be more comfortable if they just laid it flat. There’s nothing natural about the position they try to contour your hand in combination with the button layout.
I had to give up the Saitek, due to the analog stick finally breaking by constantly leaning to the right. That got really old, really fast. Try explaining to your group that you really didn’t fall into the lava because you’re an idiot.
I went back to my first gamepad, the Nostromo, and remembered why I switched in the first place. First the gigantic d-pad to be used with the side of your thumb makes for very un-smooth sailing. The smaller amount of keys made the transition quite difficult since I just got used to the additional keys the Saitek provided when it finally broke down. The Nostromo was also clearly made for a guy, the size of the pad is just huge. I had to take the plastic wrist rest off of the game pad just so I can reach all the keys. But since it started to kill my wrist by having it angled 90 degrees, I put the rest back on, and just ignore three of the five top keys - the ones I can’t reach.
So while I prefer the Saitek, it’s safe to say I’m miserable with both. They both lack a number of keys they can easily fit on, the overdone design style of both brands leaves girly hands hurting after a while, and they leave a lot to be desired in general. My problem with both companies is, throughout the years seem to have found a sweet spot that makes consumers say “your product is good enough I guess”, and from there, have only taken baby steps for improvements, and in Belkin’s (Nostromo) case charging more money for so little upgrade.
The new Nostromo Slightly better Dpad, same bulky design, and no additional keys. But OH! backlit keys… all for the extremely high price tag of $70 - $30 dollars more than the original and near identical twin of this version.
The new Saitek Same number of keys, same awkward pinky keys, and a more awkward feeling thumpad - let’s hope it’s more reliable this time. OH! But they relabeled the keys (really?!).
More keys, ergonomically spaced. Wrist contour that is not to overdone or non-existent. Analog stick, onboard memory, software I can actually use, and even has a freakin LCD screen. It’s just… so… beautiful. *sniffle*
It’s hefty on the price tag, and while I cringe a bit, if I had to price it myself, I would also put it at $80 for what it provided. I can’t wait to see the Nostromo pad next to the Logitech pad on the shelf - and get the visual of what $70 gets you versus $80.
Here’s one review here. It hasn’t released yet, but hopefully will soon. Trust me, I’ll let you know when it does.
I realize the older post I made about Sony’s arrogance was a year or so ago, and is now archived… somewhere. So I’ll stop referring to my grievances in small chunks every few weeks and just say the whole spiel, and then I’ll be done with it *scouts honor*
At this point it’s safe to say that Sony dropping price on the PS3 would mean they lose a chunk of money on all PS3 sales. That being said, they still need to cut them. Sony is a big company, they have plenty of other products to allow the PS3 to be cost inefficient until the hardware becomes cheaper to manufacture.
Relying on consumers to pay for their expensive choices in hardware, and yet produce little to no difference from their $200 cheaper competitor (with a larger video game library selection) is obviously not a smart business strategy in anyway. It is not a superior machine, it has the capability to sure, but right now it is not. Don’t expect consumers to pay for something that could be amazing. Have them want to pay for something that IS amazing. The price of the console needs to reflect it’s performance. I don’t want any company telling me that their console is superior and then don’t even take the time to prove it. I’m not spending $400 on “your word”.
Before they could scream “We’ve got Blu-Ray, we’re the cheapest Blu-Ray player you can buy!”, and boy did they scream it. Now they can’t. Blu-Ray players dropped drastically in price - including Sony brand. We got ours for free 2 months ago and it’s *still* in the box. It’ll be another few years before Blu-Ray becomes standard in most homes, but right now there isn’t a large consumer market for it.
The original Xbox cost Microsoft a good chunk of money in the end, but they still made a second one, and they made it cheap, then they dropped it in price when they had the biggest titles of the past several years releasing in the next few months. I believe, last I checked, MS is still not making money off the 360.
That being said, oh yes, the Xbox has it’s flaws aplenty. I’m still waiting on mine to return from the repair center for the second time this year. Not to mention the license transfer issues that result in a 12 month “required to be on Xbox Live” to use all the content we’ve paid for. But, go into this whole video game console deal a bit more. I’d enjoy the Wii a bit more with broader titles and a decent sized hard drive. Cost of playing games on the computer skyrockets when you have to buy new video cards, RAM, or even entirely new machines every year, which you need to do to play over half the games out there.
Each video game platform has it’s huge downfall. What bothers me about Sony is the fact their biggest flaw is the price. Not the performance, not the bugs, not the lackluster game library (it’s slowly getting better… slowly) - but the price. It wouldn’t bother me so much if they would just drop the arrogance. ‘The PS3 isn’t expensive, it’s a deal!’ I wonder if Phil Harrison’s paycheck increases with each ridiculous and unfounded claim he makes. Just every word out of Sony’s mouth about the PS3 is just over-hyped garbage. They act like the PS3 is the second coming of Christ - I wish I was exaggerating. The PS3 could burn down orphanages, give cancer to cats, and tell children across the world that there is no Santa Clause… and Sony would still tell you it can do no wrong - it’s the best thing money can buy.
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