toblix

I don't get why everyone's* making such a big deal out of this crying business. It's catchy and short and relatively unambiguous to say that a game should make you cry. A game that makes you laugh can be as simple as a game with a lot of one-liners, and the other emotions (envy, or whatever) are to complicated to use when you're trying to find an easy way of saying that a game should be able to evoke real emotions in the player, just like any good book or movie or painting or whatever. That being said, genuine sadness would be one of the harder emotions to make the player experience in a game, right? I mean, look at movies: a comedy is easy to make, laughs are cheap (it comes in barrels). A real tear-jerker, though, requires more skill from the artist (!!!) in order to not make it feel contrived, right? At least if you're a real man, like me. *Okay, not everyone.

In a movie, the main character(s) can die horribly in the end, and even fail at their mission, but the movie can still be satisfying and feel "complete". Doesn't the fact that the player is in control of the main character(s) preclude the possibility of making "failure" a success, without having to take control away from the character (e.g. make it an ending cut-scene)? If you play through a game and fight the big bad boss, but right at the end he kills you with some sneaky trick you didn't expect, and as your character goes up in flames the girl is dropped into the vat of acid, that'd be a failure no matter what, right? The player couldn't just see that, and go "Oh, so that's how the story ended." If there's a possibility of success, the player'd reload and try again until the boss was killed dead before he'd feel he got closure. The girl could still fall into the vat in the end, but in order for it to work, it'd have to be unavoidable for the player to accept it, but I guess that sort of limits the freedom of the game, doesn't it?

Looking at Jessica Alba makes me think of how horribly broken that poll is. Who wrote the script for this? Who?!

The first game I played that got me hooked was Rick Dangerous 2, on a display model of the Amiga 500 back in the day. The first game that I played that I can still play again to this day because it's so extremely good that I mourn that they don't make them like it anymore is Fate of Atlantis.

Fine, I'll visit your site! ... it doesn't load, though... edit: Oh, now it did. Agh! Flash menu and MySQL error messages!

Isn't defining stuff as "art" completely meaningless? These days, flinging shit at bystanders is put in the same category as Mona Lisa. Tell me of a term more watered out than art. I'm all for games being accepted as a form of entertainment that has the potential to be as intellectually stimulating as any book, movie or piece of music, but the "art" thing is so subjective and meaningless it's incrédible! I guess it'll take about three or four more generations before games aren't viewed as children's toys, though.

Yeah, I guess it's pretty sad. I'd love to make someone try these great games, though, but it's like when I try, I can't even sell it properly. "So, you play computer games, eh?" "Yeah, so much I should do it less, really." "Yeah, I love games too. Quake really rocks my socks, and GTA is better than this sweater." "Yeah, that sure is a sweet sweater. So, have you played Beyond Good & Evil?" "Uhh, no." "Oh, you should. It's maybe the best game of 2003!" "What? I've never even heard of it!" "No, it's great. You should try it. It's so perfectly good!" "What is it?" "Well, you control the young reporter/photographer Jade, with her companions Pey'j and Double H. After experiencing first-hand a DomZ attack, she is contacted by IRIS, who recruit her as an action reporter. Jade is now tasked with infiltrating the Alpha Section, exposing the government conspiracy, and ultimately finding the... hey, are you listening to me?" "Not really, I stopped listening when it took you like a fucking hour to explain the game, and even then you didn't even mention the gameplay!" "I'm sorry, I--" "Forget it." Usually the conversation doesn't even get that far. It's like the great games can't have their excellentness conveyed orally. There should be some kind of "test or demonstration versions" of games freely available on some sort of global computer network. That way people could try the games instead of having me try to explain them to them.

Maybe this is off-topic or something, but reading the stuff about BG&E made me think of something: For me, loving computer games is like loving some weird unknown band who're suddenly "discovered" and go all mainstream and lose all their "cred". Just like if I say I like Some Formerly Unknown Band Who's Now on MTV people think "oh, he's just "going with the flow"", if I say I play computer games, I feel like I'm saying "I love GTA and Gran Turismo or whatever". I feel childish saying I play games, because almost all the popular/known games are these action-fests. So, if I say I like games, I have to go into this whole tirade about how I prefer the games of yore, and I'm not one of the millions of Playstation kiddies. I long for the day when people will ask "played any good games recently?" in the same way people talk about books and movies today. It's like the industry has gotten its capitalist suit pant leg caught in the prongs and cogs of a money press, and have forgotten their past and their soul, like an old hippie working overtime at some accounting firm downtown or a wrinkled old jazz singer paying a crack whore to urinate on him in some dingy motel room. Also, I know I just overflowed the stack of useless posts complaining that the game industry sucks and that all gamers except me are shallow idiots who ruin it for the elite connoisseurs like myself by only buying the latest EA crap, but it's true!

It's super! I loved the three BS games, so I'm super thrilled! Also, I hope that the same super team that did the other games is also doing this, and not some other non-super team. What about that shady Ince fellow who lurks around at adventuregamers? Is he in?

Supaplex rocks. I still play it once in a while. I remember how I "hacked" the save game file once, to get access to all the levels. Ah, those were the times, when I did nothing but play computer games.

Has anybody seen this?

Funny, I even looked through that thread too see if somebody had mentioned it. Guess I overlooked it.

I was just about to pre-order this game when my brain suddenly thought of something. Does anyone know if this game will feature some bullshit intrusive copy protection like that rotten piece of shit Moment of Silence?

July 6th, 22:00 It seems the player is enjoying me, and the challenges that I present. It is good to be loved. July 7th, 16:50 Today I felt like suddenly making the game impossible without any warning. That's because crazy Russians made me and I am a monster of Communist Piece of Shit. July 7th, 17:00 Noo, I'm being uninstalled! Why, Mother Russia? WHY?! July 7th, 17:05 So... cold...

!!! Also, that smiley table is really fucked up.

That was pretty cool.

If you're looking to bash Myst, go to some other thread and do it. I read this interview with Rand Miller over at ***************.com, and it hit me how little he hyped the game, and future games. In fact he hypedn't it at all! Just look: Okay, maybe the quotes aren't as good, and maybe it's just me, but I still got the distinct feeling this guy ain't from marketing.

Yeah, no, I'm not saying I don't like it. I like honesty, but you're right: having adjusted my game promo filters to the marketing dpt. setting, the honesty almost sounds negative.

GTA San Andreas - Like GTA Vice City on drugs and alcohol, and bigger too. It never gets boring. Silent Storm - Suffers noticeably from the Polish retard mafia taking over the business halfway through the development. 7 Days a Skeptic Special Edition - Short, sweet, old school. More games should have director's commentaries.

Soo anyway, I gave this game another shot, to see if the sudden wall of impossibleness was just a mistake, and guess what: (spoiler) On (one of) the final level(s), you're supposed to kill a guy that's inside a base, and the moment you do, somebody says "OMFG we must fux0r teh base with explosion!" and after three turns you have to leave the level or it's game over, and there's no God damn information about this. It's like the designers want the player to have to die in a lot of different ways to find a way to get around the game mechanics, which is a terrible design philosophy.

Yes it is! Okay, maybe you're right, and maybe I'm wrong. Nothing matters anyway, now that this thread has been moved to the reviews board, which nobody ever visits and where good threads like this one goes to die.

The problem is that the panzerkleins kicked my ass. Without any warning. If the game'd said "In order to blahblahblah go here, BUT BEWARE OF THE RUMORED IRON BEASTS! TO ENSURE VICTORY MAYBE YOU SHOULD HEAD BY THE OLD LASAR CANON FAGTORY AND GET LASAR CANNONS!" it'd be okay, but it was just the next level in the normal progression of the game, and suddenly I don't stand a chance. I agree that the game rocks in a lot of ways, but in the way of suddenly getting impossible, it doesn't at all rock.

Well, I agree that it's pretty lame, and that it's just a way of balancing out the bad AI that can't hide properly and has to become invisible not to be seen, but if you measure badness in height, and put that next to the one where the game is suddenly impossible because you didn't visit Gamefags to read about the secret super lasar gunz hidden in some hard-to-see backwater pile of mud first, it would become invisible if the view adjusted to fit all the badness, and the view itself wasn't humongously big.

Well, that's just the concept of stealth/hiding, which I can accept as a balancing game mechanic. The fact that the game leads the player to a map with indestructable killing machines that you apparently have to get some weapons from some other place to kill, without telling me about it, is unacceptable.

Yeah, I *loved* Desperados. The levels were great (and plentiful), the characters had cool skills, and the quick action system, which let you queue up one action per character and have them perform them simultaneously was really great. The only sad thing is that the developers then decided to release the steaming, steaming pile of crusty feces that is Robin Hood and the Legend of Sherwood or something, which used the same engine, but in a hard-sucking actiony setting. The best game of the type is still Commandos 2, though, because of the excellently huge levels. Too bad those developers also felt they held a too high level of quality and released the from-ass-pulled Commandos 3, which also had a big action focus, which sucks for these kinds of games.