Frenetic Pony

This is my fear over Abrams new Star Wars. There were parts of the prequels that were cool taken in isolation. Pod Racing (another great N64 game!) was roman chariot racing taken to the ridiculous, and it was awesome. And yet Star Wars allows Roman Gladiator pits and chariot racing to exist alongside WW2 dogfighting, robots, wizards, Samurai sword fights, cyborgs, and anything else you can imagine. Anywhere else it might be dumb, should be dumb that guards will wield giant axes in a world where frikken laser pistols are common. But it just works in Star Wars. It's why Star Wars has the biggest expanded universe in the world, it's just easy to imagine and place whatever the hell you want in it. If it's cool then it works. I just hope Abrams isn't so obsessed with what the original trilogy was that he gets blinded to the fact that Star Wars is just whatever seems cool mashed together. It's what made all those games from like 94-2002 work so well, they didn't copy the movies at all, they just went off on their own and it worked.

Shadows of the Empire, Rogue Squadron, Jedi Knight 2... Star Wars had the absolute best licensed games ever for like, almost a decade. Now if they could just resurrect Star Wars 1313 with the actual creative director of Uncharted at the helm.... mmmmm yeah. Star Wars is the most flexible IP ever made. You just think of something, anything cool at all, and it'll just work in the setting. It's the only place where you can tell a good story and have a wizard swordfight a cyborg in space with laser swords! And if you don't think that's cool, then you're wrong and can shut up.

You are an inhuman monster that we must burn so as to cleanse the world of your foul presence.

Video games is NP hard computational complexity. Provable.

It's time for... who cares. Amazon is just an also ran. We'll be talking about them like we talk about the CD-i in ten years.

Watching the Giantbomb Quicklook, and this game is so bad during a quest to "save the town from the siege" by "burning the siege equipment" what they actually did is just dance in the hokey little fire particles of the totally unguarded "siege ladders" after they were on fire. Because... well the only thing to actually do on the "quest" at all was make fun of it by /dance http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/quick-look-the-elder-scrolls-online-part-02/2300-8701/ you can watch them do so within the first five minutes or so over here. Free to play within a year.

Would be a good idea for a game in general. Been sort of done with Bioshock Infinite and The Stanley Parable, but actually making a game mechanic out of it might be pretty interesting. Mostly thought of it because, somehow, it looks like Half Life 2 is being redone in Source 2 and Thrik got his hands on it Probably a fan project in one way or another. Looks great though.

For all we know, this is a Duke Nukem Forever and he's serious...

Crazy idea: What if Half Life 3 started out like Half Life 2, but then changed what it was you were doing as the game went on, and in the end you were chasing after a time machine the combine had created, getting too it just in time to start out like Half Life 2, but then changed what it was you were doing as the game went on...

How? HOOOOOOOOOOOOOW? TELLLLL MEEE!!!

April 22nd, 2011, from @freneticpony: Awesome show of lighting and materials: http://research.tri-ace.com/detail_1.html I wonder how they got those indirect reflections? Man, I haven't changed at all in the end. "Neeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrd!"

It's just a mask see. IT'S JUST A MASK!! IT'S A MAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSK!

That is the best thing in like... ever.

At least that's all. I still remember walking into a room where my brother and his friend were, both about 2. They'd somehow both gotten onto a kitchen island around four feet high and then proceeded to rip the newspaper there to absolute shreds. How they managed when not really even able to walk is still beyond me.

On the other hand, I fucking HAAAATED driving in GTA4. At least 5 is kinda meh, and so far as I know this is the general median of opinion concerning the two games. Regardlesss this: Has really made me want Next Gen and/or Expansion for V. I enjoyed the single player campaign a surprising amount, but trying the Multiplayer just felt like it was only the side activities I wasn't terribly interested in (street races and etc.) coupled with a world that felt depopulated. Since Pc/Next gen could hadle full on GTAV population (and quite a bit more) with multiplayer at the same time, then at the very least wandering around shooting each other would be more fun. And if there were major and difficult bank heists to pull off, like they make pretend in the above, that would actually be an interesting thing to do. P.S. The radio stations are most definitely terrible. The music director found mostly obscure bands, and then put their bad songs in instead of their good ones. EG if you're going to put in Black Flag, then you use Rise Above, not crap they put in.

@freneticpony so unexpected right? But then I mostly tweet about graphics programming and the occasional bizarre rant against Hollywood hipsters insisting that film is better than digital. Probably because I've ended up playing the Twitter game because no one I know IRL uses twitter besides me. So it behooves me to satisfy me handful of twitter followers rather than using it as a communications service.

Well thanks for clarifying anyway. It just seems some people insist, even literally insist, on history dictating all perception forever. At one point people with black skin color were treated horribly in one part of the country they live in today, therefore even though those specific during the worst of it are all dead, all black people in all times must now be put on a pedestal. Like, getting their own month in history, isn't that nice? It just bothers me because as a kid I only gave a fuck if you had cool toys or video games at your house. It wasn't until I was constantly exposed to the supposed positive messages supported by everyone arguing for Daisy's portrayal as racist that I even thought about skin color as mattering. I still don't consciously, but it's hard to dig out of the subconscious. It literally became, when walking down the street "Oh shit it's a black person, I'd better not act like I'm racist, try to smile!" And the only messages I ever heard were growing up were things like "It's terrible to portray black people badly!" And all that other stuff, but that literally dug into my subconscious by repetition until it's the only thing I could think about. I'd be willing to bet it's why there's still any prevalent racism against people with black skin color today, is because of this exact set up. We don't have Asian history month, or Native American history month, or etc. All of this is literally only centered around black skin color, and it doesn't seem a coincidence that it's the only widespread remaining problem. So I do have reason to think it's racist and a stupid, bullshit attitude to take. It seems to have affected me and other people negatively, no matter the intent.

So you'd not think it was racist if Daisy was a white female character? Oh good... Racism exists in places other than what most people are taught to believe. Yelling repeatedly that "the blacks aren't all thugs!" is just as racist. It's like saying don't think about an elephant, because that's all people think about. If you really want to be some sort of constructive message, then the reality is to not worry about it as much. Actually treat it equally, instead of saying some people are more equal than others. Saying a black character can't turn out to be evil but a white character can is... well it should be obvious what's being said. Treating people differently, even if it's fictional people, based on their skin color is racist whether it's positive or negative.

Meh, Honestly I've no problem with Daisy being a mass murdering cunt. Most revolutions turn bad one way or another, only some still racist brain lodge would make you think it was "because she's black". The White Terror, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, Hitler's near and for all intents and purposes actual revolution Germany. Revolutions like America are the exception to the rule that a bunch of people grown used to violence and newly drunk on power will just stop once the initial goal is accomplished. Sad to hear they tried to retcon it for no reason. Sometimes reality isn't all nice and packaged up for political correct bullshit to be applied, and I don't see how entertainment has to be conformed to that either.

You just said that to cause and argument and you know it.

I want to play BI again just to see how great it looks. I thought it was a solid enough shooter with absolute gorgeous visuals and a story that could've been more coherent.

Ok I'm gonna fix you up right. All arguments shall follow as such: Source: Dickless McGee Reason for ignoring: He has no dick Evidence: His name is Dickless I just solved all your problems right there. Don't worry, my obviously brilliant advice is gratis.

I'm pretty sure the point isn't the $19 a month, that's just to keep up support costs per person. No the point is to get it in the hands of as many people as possible and play the odds. Can you imagine something like Angry Birds or Temple Run being developed on this plan? Millions rolling in from one license, and it's not like all the non million making licensees are going to cost that much.

Heck I loved how accurate some of Black Flag was. The sea shanties, the banter, the correct terms for all the rigging and how that affects a ship's speed. It was neat to geek out about that some place other than Master and Commander. And I love The White Terror and the first French Revolution as a period of history. Ubisoft honestly does a heck of a lot better than most of Hollywood for history and accuracy. Sure the sci-fi bullshit has gone completely off the rails, but whatever, I can mostly ignore that to enjoy the other stuff.