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You forgot the official World of Warcraft forums. <shudders>

I checked out this thread, and the banner ad at the top of the page was the attached image. Wiki / Google her if you don't know. But the irony is deafening. The US is fucked. Western "Democracy" is fucked. It's all about oil, money and power, with a sprinkling of religion. Those at the top hang on, those lower down keep getting kicked in the face as they try to climb up. Meanwhile everyone else is more interested in Lindsay Lohan's tits. Solution: Either move to Venezuela and help Chavez hang onto his little Socialist niche revolution thing, or maybe go and live in Iceland and work for CCP. I hear those guys treat you nice, and there are long periods of extreme darkness, which gives one a good excuse to stay indoors, play MMOs and drink... whatever it is they drink in Iceland... Coke probably... Skál!

(oh - and Alex is clad in naught but a wifebeater because.. urrrmrmrm.. I think someone spilt something on his bespoke Gieves & Hawkes Egyptian cotton shirt. And obviously it had to be washed IMMEDIATELY) I think it's also possible that serving wineglass-sized dry martinis and telling people to drink them quickly "before they get warm" is partly to blame for the madness that ensued.

Irony! games used to cost nothing to develop, because they could be done by one dude in his bedroom in a month or two. now they cost a fortune because they're so much more complex. hence no-one will go out on a limb with a new idea, hence no new ideas, hence there's nothing for people to buy that's new and innovative. Give things time - and we'll have open-source build-your-own game toolkits with plugin everything - physics, art etc.. think Stunt Island, but with the power to create epic things. Second Life is already showing the way, although it doesn't work marvellously well. Then it'll come full circle, and things will be about ideas again, instead of the rafts of same-as-last-year-but-shinier shoddiness we get these days. The era of the bedroom-coded epic will return. Fingers crossed...

aaaah! that explains everything! Sorry.. I feel bad for yelling at you. Apologies. Yes: Zork and the (better imho) more recent Infocom stuff like Hitchikers Guide, Stationfall, Lurking Horror etc.. Most of the old infocom stuff is great and merely a google or two away - if you'd really never heard of the entire genre (and jesus - that makes me feel older than my 25 years) then check them out. It was just the blase "there were no games with storytelling in them before 1990" that made me insane. Almost exactly like a recent "review" I read which started with "before 1980, computer games did not exist" or somesuch other nonsense. Sweeping statements and generalisations are usually a bad idea, unless you're very sure. But anyway - IF rules, games rule, I love games, w00

<takes deep breath> I am fucking never posting on this forum again*. Two pages of bickering and you lot all let shit like that slide? Interactive Fiction? Or "text adventure" if you will? You know, the genre that gave BIRTH to your precious adventure games? I'm sure there were none of those before 1990. Yeah. Or any other games that had a story. Christ almighty. Or maybe I misread everything and I've just made myself look like an ass? Anyone? Also Tomb Raider (while I can hear Spaff howling with pain as I say this) was really bloody good. True, the Ngage/iPaq versions were horrible, but the PSX original was challenging, immersive and generally great; I thoroughly enjoyed it. Soap Operas? 24 is effectively a soap opera, so is Red Dwarf, or Star Trek. I don't think anyone's saying they want Neighbours: The Game - but perhaps more intricate plotting, more detailed interactions between characters, more mature subject material (no, not necessarily tits, blood and metal music) stuff like that? Generally something more involved than thumb-on-the-fire-button-drool-on-the-carpet action, which (before I get lynched) is FINE, it's just that some people would (occasionally) like a bit more from their games. Also: games are ace. *statement not actually true.

Just finished running through this., and yes sir! It's damn fine: nice level design, interesting writing, suspense, tension, bloody carnage and promises of even cooler things to come One to watch I think - I heartily recommend it.

Good thread First game /ever/ (excuse the fuzziness here, I'm pretty sure I was about 3 at the time...) would either have been on an old Atari 2600-type thing at my Gran's house (see Thumb photos!), closely followed by my cousin's C64. The C64 had Ghostbusters, and a text adventure called "Zim Zala Bim" which we never got anywhere in, and the 2600 (or 2600-analogue) had, urr, variations on a theme of Pong. And twiddly controllers. After that (1985) I got bought an Amstrad CPC6128, and I seem to remember that somehow arriving complete with Moon Buggy, Knight Lore, Pyjamarama, a "Defender" knockoff called "Guardian" and an asteroids clone. And that was all she wrote

oo! good point there! "Sex" being determined by biology, and "gender" being determined by, well, upbringing I guess. And other stuff. Probably.

mm. I think perhaps instead of creating an ubermassive gameworld and then realising they didn't have enough content to make it as "busy" as the previous ones, they should have worked on upping the graphical fidelity a little. Even on PC, on my new 6800GT with the graphic detail maxed out, I'm still occasionally /horrified/ at how utterly shitty some of the textures look. i guess that's the penalty of shoehorning a huge environment onto the PS2, and then porting to other platforms, but jesus christ... Hopefully the GTA MMO (which I am sure they're working on) will be next-gen console and PC based, will look stunning, and will let me execute anyone who laughs at my characters inferior muscle tone, and penchant for Cluckin Bell.

Turbo Boost man! Turbo Boost!

my left thumb has some minor cuticle damage (self inflicted, stress induced) and is slightly bent. my right thumb has a wraparound callus across the ball of the thumb and onto the side, partly from smacking the space bar on my circa-1994 packard bell keyboard with too much energy and partly from being crushed against the side of a mouse. Both thumbs can produce epic crunching noises from the midst of the knuckle area when manipulated incorrectly, and have considerable power when used in Thumb War. :tup:

Jessica "Only reason to bother watching that godawful Dark Angel crap" Alba. = ub3rh4wtn355.. As also seen in Sin City (o_0), and "Honey" which I haven't been able to bring myself to download because it looks so goddamn terrible. This from the guy that has Coyote Ugly /and/ Bring It On. Did I say that out loud? ¬¬

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