Erkki

What I learned about Wanda to Kyozou from the news post and the IGN article linked to in the comments sounded really cool and reminded me of these thoughts I've had recently: So many games are all about combat, or at least have some combat in them that it is almost unthinkable to do a game without combat (I'm talking about "story games" as Chris put it in his "I kill you" article, not games like Tetris). And as we complain about lack of other gameplay elements that could be used instead of fighting, I think even figthing isn't really used in very varied ways -- FPS / 3rd person action games, fighting games, RTS, stealth action etc. -- these genres all have their specific traditions of how combat is used in gameplay. There are variations of course, but the principles are the same. Not many games deviate much from the traditional use of combat in their genre. I can't even think of one game that goes as far from the established combat gameplay as much as Wanda to Kyozou seems to. Why aren't there more games where you only fight just one, or very few enemies during the entire game? The combat would be very tactical and it would be difficult to do actual harm to your enemy. There would be running away and chasing, both by you and the opponents. A fight with one opponent could take as much time as a single mission in other games. And I mean that this would be supported by AI (or fake AI), not a series of scripted events. I think that would be really cool for a change, maybe done in a western setting or something like that. It would be kind of like a game that was only made of boss battles, except the "boss battles" would be less annoying and more based on the bosses' AI and various combat options given by the game world than finding the exact way a particular boss must be destroyed.

Damn, I'd like to play it again. Once I borrowed it from a friend, but didn't get very far.

I'd take you to SF, and after dinner, I would deliver a hit to your head with a club and you'd fall unconcious and I'd catch you by the hair and drag you into my cave on the beach.

There was a story? No, really, I can hardly remember... I don't remember that there was more to it. I guess they had done enough of the conspiracies in Deus Ex that it just didn't work any more. Hmm... JC? Jesus Christ? WTF?

Happy Birthday, Chris! (only two days late...)

Anyone played Tropico? I'm trying to find a strategy game to play until Evil Genius is released, but I find most of the RTS games uninteresting. So I tried Tropico, but things seem to happen too fast for me (or rather too slow) and there are so many things to take into account that it's hard to get started with the strategising Especially the building seems to go slow (although the speed is probably realistic). Should I build a lot of those Construction Offices at first to make building go faster?

Yeah, that seems right.

I'm sure there is. It probably isn't named though. I propose we name it "Ragnar's Law" and then assemble a team of British scientists to figure out what the law actually is.

You are so smart.

No it isn't. It is nearing 1. (don't know if "nearing" is right in english) 0.99999... -> 1. --- Your mistake was that you assumed 0.9999.... and 0.999999 times 10 have the same ammount of 9's after the period, while in fact 0.99999 times 10 should have one less (i'm not 100% sure though).

I have played only a fraction of all the football (soccer) games ever made, and none of the management games, but to my knowledge, there has never been one where you could control all of the player's of your team, not just the one with the ball. Wouldn't it be cool if there was a football game that was controlled like a role-playing or strategy game? Like Baldur's Gate for example -- you could pause the action at any time and give orders to players. Some player's could have special skills etc.

At least you can now type 'idlethumbs' or 'IDLETHUMBS' faster than anyone else.ASDFGHJK!

There actually is something close to what I had in mind - Chaos League. I downloaded the demo a long time ago, but the tutorial was really crappy and put me off playing it. Once I got through it got somewhat fun, actually. The game is a mix of real-time combat and american football, the players are all sorts of fantasy creatures and they have all kinds of spells and abilities. The object is to score the most touchdowns. I haven't played much yet, but it's surprisingly fun.

If you say so. I used a dictionary and really don't know the nuances of the words in English.

I don't think gaudy is what I meant. I think gaudy means something like 'many-colored and tasteless'? Aah... motley is what I meant, I think. Probably.

I think you should make him play the game under your supervision and if he can complete it, only then let him operate on you.

I don't speak foreign either. So, who does speak foreign here? Is there an Foreign to English translator out there? The screens look too many-coloured<insert better word here>, but I bet it doesn't seem so during gameplay (Chris?).

Happy Birthday, Trep!

Little has been said so far about the countryside that will be present in GTA: San Andreas, but GameSpot has posted a text & a video preview of it (no gameplay clips in the video though). Take a look at this screenshot and then this: You couldn't tell it's the same game if you didn't know. I find that fascinating.

That Q&A is actually written in code. By accident, I discovered that if you read it the way it is intended, the message becomes something entirely different:

Is that Dexter?

GameSpot's Greg Kasavin has also reviewed the game. Thankfully, he treated it just like any other game, so no 8 pages (just 3). I have only watched the video review, but I assume the text review is the same with just more detail. His opinion is pretty similar to the previous reviews (the score is 8.6), and mentions a couple of new details about the game that weren't in the two 8-page reviews. When I found out how much I have to pay for my education this semester, I've forced my excitement about Fable to fade (can't afford the Xbox), but it still seems like I'm going to love it when I eventually play it. My only concern is that as the interactions with NPC's are reportedly quite superficial, I may lose interest in the sandbox side of it and just play through the main story + sidequests.

Well said. I completely agree.

Nah, it's the Doom 3 engine.

Welcome to the club