Thrik

I am beginning to suspect that this is in fact not a gaming community. ¬¬

Tee. :~

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYvZnTFpip0 Possibly the cheapest form of humour ever, but for those who don't understand German like me it's quite amusing. Also anyone who hasn't seen the film this is sourced from, Downfall, you need to ASAP. :tup:

I enjoy my job, but I'd sure prefer to just sit around, have a social life, and play games all day instead. Travel included that's 11 hours a day. I could play so many games in that time!

Well I suppose if you have no job then you haven't got a stream of money to regularly spend on games, so that makes sense. Unless you're like 14 and have game-buying parents, anyway. Back in college I used to hardly play new games as I didn't have the money to buy new consoles, buy console games, upgrade my PC, or basically buy anything beyond the basics. Now just picking a game up on the way home or ordering some new hardware isn't given a second thought, which makes it very easy to keep up with gamez assuming you can go with the "free time" and "quick gratification" thing. Work is shit but money is good.

I fucked off Metroid as it was taking absolutely ages to get anywhere and I wasn't really getting any real enjoyment out of anything. The whole exploration thing was largely lost on me, and the bosses were absolutely insane. I know it's fairly respected but I realised my crusade to finish the game was a waste of time as I was having no fun. </toblix moment>

It's great that they're supporting all four, although I'm not exactly sure why them not only developing for the GC controller is a surprise. It would be absolute insanity to only develop for the controller of a predecessor, especially with Nintendo bringing in a new audience that probably doesn't even own one. Unless everyone was thinking it'd just be cheaply remapped in a rush.

I had this problem when I started working full time, but seven months later down the line I realise that it's not quite as bad as I thought. I basically went through a spell of playing no games whatsoever for months and months. A new PC has really reinvigorated me though and suddenly I find spending time on games like and is a really nice way to fill up an hour or so here and there. C&C 3 is really good for this as the missions all range from 30 minutes to an hour, and you get a good sense of accomplishment.I think that's the direction games should generally go in, and I know at least a few developers embrace this: making sure the game is lengthy, but delivers very satisfying half-hours. If I don't get gratification in short bursts I'm likely to just fuck the game off (eg: collecting endless shit to progress). I think what also crippled me is that I tried to hang onto my old mentality of, "Right, time for some gaming; better prepare to be doing this for about five hours". Now it's more like, "Okay, let's have an hour of gaming and let's do it right now!!!". What's also helped is realising that it's actually kind of nice only playing a game bit by bit over a longer period of time, rather than the bullshit I used to do where I'd burn through the whole thing in a weekend. It makes the games seem much longer, and like you've gotten better value. Story-heavy games that feature plots meant to span over relatively long periods of time also seem more realistic when played like this. Overall though, if a game can't give me some great fun in an hour of playing it's going to go right to the bottom of my "play this game" list, and may never get played. Multiplayer has become my best friend again as you're basically guaranteed fast action in a game like Battlefield or Team Fortress (2!!), and since the enemies are actual people it's a lot more dynamic -- you couldn't even dream of better AI, with the sneaky shit some people do. ¬¬

Well, the concept is ancient -- it could entirely just have been a coincidence. I mean, remember Fanta Shokata? This one wins for being the funniest I've seen. Clearly there is an art to matching text to actions.

Yeah, but going back to them =

I bet loads of the Atari/Amiga games I loved are actually pretty shit. When you're a kid you tend to enjoy anything, and develop really good memories about them regardless of whether or not the games were crap. I don't think a lot of people realise this as they don't go back to them. It's like I absolutely loved the Dizzy games, but I tried emulating one a few years ago and it actually started to corrode my good memories immediately. I wiped out the entire emulator so my memories could stay intact, which they wouldn't have done if I'd kept on playing and erased my hazy and nostalgic mind's memory of the game. Some weirdly survive like Monkey Island, but the majority of 80s and early-90s games I've had a look at have aged badly in every conceivable way. At least we had original games, though. Loads of kids today will grow up fondly remembering a billion cheap kid film games.

Don't take my statement too literally Thunderpeel; I wasn't literally suggesting that subjectivity in reviews is a bad thing. What I meant to put across is that said subjectivity shouldn't be incorporated into a numerical scoring system that's often used alongside hundreds of other games and largely assigned by multiple reviewers who all have different ideas of what makes X deserve X. The current percentage system in the industry almost seems like a satire of just how bad a scoring system can be; even boiling it down to ten points would be too much, nevermind the ridiculousness we have now. Perhaps if every single game was reviewed by one guy a numerical system would be fine. Or at the very least, all scores were handed out by one guy who reviews each review and uses his judgement. Kind of like how Metacritic looks at the content of a review if the site doesn't happen to give out scores and then guesses the appropriate percentage. Having reflected on it slightly while being sat in my chair drinking some coffee, I also concede that a slightly grey scoring system would be okay but I absolutely believe it shouldn't go beyond four levels. The more points you give people, the more ammo you give them to just automatically reject games of the lower points; it's human nature to organise things like this, and nothing makes it easier than assigning two separate levels of scoring to "not worthwhile" which nobody except someone who hasn't read the review will actually bother buying. In fact, they probably won't even read the review. Why bother differentiating them? By making the system that bit more ambiguous without sacrificing the ability to, as said earlier, differentiate between Grim Fandangos and fun racing games, it encourages people to use their minds a bit more and make the decision properly. Classic game, great game, worth a rental, not worth anything. Works for me.

I think having grey tends to veer dangerously into subjective territory. What one reviewer might think is a ridiculously good game, another might think is not so good but just OK. By working with thumbs up/down it encourages the person to make the decision with their own experience and judgement ("Do I like this genre? Does it look good? Do I like the games it's compared to?"). You never know, they might even read the review. Might be a bit ambitious there, though. I'd personally approach it with a thumbs up/down approach, and then have a little "Get this game if..." title below it with three bullet points. They could be anything: "If you liked Command & Conquer: Generals", "If you loved the classic adventure games", "If you enjoy driving nails through your face", etc. I personally like slightly offbeat scoring things like that, which you frequently see in magazines and stuff (pros/cons, etc). I find them much more useful and interesting than sterile numbers; unfortunately they're too non-standard/random to ever really be ubiquitous. Bleh, I don't really care that much anyway. My decisions tend to come from past experience and what other gamers are saying on their blogs, in forums, and on IRC. It's just a shame you end up with great games ignored because the reviewer couldn't think of anything to justify an extra 10%, elevating it to the level of milestone classics.

Aww, I forgot about that little guy. Happy birthday Dan. ;

Anyone who seriously thinks the 100% rating system is a good idea needs their head checking. I mean, does any industry other than the one we love still use it? I'm fairly sure essentially every other medium one can imagine uses a star system or a basic thumbs up/down system, realising that anything more specific than that is superfluous bullshit. The film industry clearly recognises how subjective a review of such a medium is and are almost always graded with stars unless it's a statistic created by a lot of people voting on it (thus being an average). Games shouldn't be much different in this respect. I personally think anything that helps sum up the reviewer's opinion quickly is a good idea, but the way the games industry goes about it is lunacy. The thumbs up/down system is my personal favourite as it answers the question of "Does the reviewer like this game?" explicitly. The star system is okay, but as Wrestlevania says the grey lines are shit. At the end of a day, a reviewer should recommend a game or they shouldn't. Yes, this should be elaborated upon greatly in the text of the review, but ultimately it should come down to a "yes" or a "no". That's how any actual gamer works; I don't think I've come across anyone who can't specifically say whether or not they like a game after completing it. I don't hold much hope for things changing any time soon though so I'll continue separating it into a thumbs up/down system myself; if it's below 75% (or the 10.x system equivalent) I'll take that as a "don't bother", and if it's above 75% I'll be prepared to give it a go. I'm willing to bet this is how the majority of people respond to review scores.

Man. Where the hell did 'biog' come from in my above post?

Just to follow up on this, new MacBook Pros have been unveiled and they do indeed have LED-based screens, amongst a load of other shit. http://www.apple.com/uk/macbookpro/ As you've probably noticed Apple tends to love doing this every year, so expect your hardware to become obsolete just as quickly as a PC and don't upgrade until shortly after they unveil an update or new product if you want to cling onto that feeling of owning the best a bit longer.

I love how the usual biog gaming blog suspects jumped on this in their usual infuriating way. These sites can have some interesting stuff, but my lord does the way they excitedly present any article where there's the slightest opportunity for a bit of mockery fuck me off.

I've never really done much with the Tomb Raider series other than fuck around with the butler, so I might have to pick this up considering the positive opinions across the board. Is it a total remake with modern standards, like Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes? Or is it more of a reboot with the same style of gameplay that made it so loved? (I know the gameplay in later Tomb Raider games was meant to be spiralling around a vortex of shit.)

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MGS3 and Wind Waker both split the end bosses into bits, so you're not thrown too far back if you do die but you go far enough back for there to be an incentive to not take it too easy. MGS3 probably hits the balance best, since the four (I think) parts that make up the total encounter can be saved as an area and you just go to the beginning of that area if you reload/die. I think technology does have a role, though. I mean with Minish Cap there really can't be that much they can do to make it interesting, so difficulty is ramped up to make it seem worthy of being called "end-of-game boss". Newer games tend to have much more interesting boss fights that you don't mind being hard so much as they're so beautiful/exciting. I really can't see how Minish Cap could even begin to make a boss battle truly exciting, and I not many games from the SNES (and before) era managed it to too well either, despite it being the prime of mid-level/end-of-world/end-of-game boss fights. Clearly what we need is a return to the days of games never ending and just becoming impossibly hard so neither party can be happy!

Yes. That first multiple ending is the only one they actually distributed AFAIK, and was the first one I saw as it's the one they chose to show on the Sky Movies channel. I then saw the last bit of the film on the same channel some months later while channel hopping and it had a different ending. No wonder I thought it ended on a much darker note than most people!!

Which one? Fuckin' multiple endings.

Well that's understandable, but I think veering away from the point of giving a game up with contempt because a boss couldn't be beaten in a couple of attempts. I mean, no shit? It's meant to be the climax of the game; it's designed to be hard and to be challenging. Hitting the balance can be difficult and some games have shit endings because of it, but Zelda gets it right most of the time. Bosses have traditionally always murdered you a few times before you work out their attack pattern anyway, at which point it suddenly becomes quite easy. Not being able to kill them without wasting a few lives is intentional. This is doubly true in Zelda games where usually all the bosses are exceedingly easy if you spot the trick or technique for killing them (Pulling on the dragon's tail in Wind Waker's first boss, anyone?!). What you said doesn't ring home with me though, miffy. I always feel compelled to blast my way through that final chapter, and usually can't get back to it quickly enough. Guess everyone has their own tastes, though. Toblix evidently likes to not have any challenge there whatsoever and to just waltz through the game at the same difficulty level throughout. I might sound a bit venty here, but it saddens me that you give up so many high-quality games for such pissy reasons toblix. It seems that nothing is capable of pleasing you, no matter how legendary and/or great it is.

I disagree. Obviously 'hours' would be an exaggeration, but I think at least half an hour to an hour is reasonable for an exciting battle. It'd be shit and lame if it were the same thing of course, and there must be a certain degree of variety throughout the fight, but a lengthy and epic fight is a great way to end a game. There are really good and really bad examples, though. Metal Gear Solid 3 for example has a 'boss fight' that lasts absolutely ages and has like four stages. Each stage is incredibly different though, and in fact thanks to an inspired chase scene in the middle takes place over like a mile radius in the game world. Another good example is the Wind Waker boss, which takes a whole bunch of different forms and occurs all over the castle it's set in, finalising on the roof. Again, beautifully done and it just seems right (Like most of the game!!!!!). A bad example would be any game that just gives you same old shit endlessly, like bosses in Final Fantasy 8. That isn't fun. I'd still get through it though just because I've come so far, and it would be very satisfying to finally crack it.