Thrik

Started my new job today, and now that I'm doing three hours less commuting my evening literally feels endless. I have no idea how I'm even going to fill up these god damn things, I guess I'm going to have to become a lot more fit and sociable and shit. I've done all the things I want to do and still hours remain! It's such a good feeling knowing that I don't have to do all that shitty travelling, though.

Oh, I think it changed from when I last saw it. The image just kept coming up broken, now it's some hotlinking thing. The potential for weirdness with this is almost as entertaining as the real joke.

Haha. I like the concept, although it appears to be having technical issues.

Ownership of intellectual property becomes an issue for almost everyone in creative jobs. It's fairly standard in the UK for employers to just go ahead and claim anything you create while under their employment. It's a very difficult thing to discuss because the way they see it, if they're training you and giving you company secrets, who's to say how much of that directly benefits your personal projects? In the trenches of development we tend to not be so petty, but bosses are an entirely different story. With my first employer we had an exceptions sheet in my contract, where if I had personal projects I wanted the company to release to me it would be signed upon by both parties. They never contested, and it was primarily to prevent me developing something that could directly compete with them — the reason for this is obvious when you think about it. With my last employer, there was no such sheet and the contract was slightly ambiguous about what was and wasn't mine. Apparently if it didn't compete it was mine, but when it comes to web apps that definition can be distorted significantly. However, I was very open with my manager about personal projects and he had some too, so it never became an issue. With my new employer the contract is like the previous one, but slightly less ambiguous so that it really only covers things that could be considered commercially infringing upon the company. I can't envision anything I'd do that would conflict. I haven't really come up with a good way of dealing with this kind of thing because it obviously puts you in a slightly precarious position if you're really counting on a job. Perhaps negotiating an amendment after you start is a good route. This is entirely anecdotal, but my observation so far is that the bigger the company, the less intrusive they are about things like this.

I was only able to tolerate an hour or two of Far Cry 2 before throwing in the towers. I too have enjoyed hearing the stories about it on here, but I just didn't find anything to like about the game. Maybe playing it in a stealthy and considered way was part of my problem, because I was just constantly thinking about how other games have done the same thing better. I was also playing Crysis at the time, which I guess was a different game but it had many similar concepts and executed them really well. I have no doubt that those who've experienced hilarious situations caused by the game's systems like I have in Metal Gear Solid, Skyrim, Battlefield, and Grand Theft Auto have a justifiably good opinion of the game. Sadly, I was not privy to such things and unlike other games I wasn't having enough of a good time to hang around long enough to encounter them.

Pretty sure you're all arguing about a moot point. Not to be dismissive, but that guy in the suit looks East Asian to me. Yes he has blonde hair, so do many actual East Asians — it's called dye. In fact, I saw a Chinese dude walking through Nottingham the other day with almost exactly the same cut. If you put your hand over his hair, the face looks unequivocally East Asian to my eyes. I have no expectation whatsoever that the villain is white.

We live in a strange but wonderful world where veteran game designers are paying to develop a map for an indie game.

It's pretty patronising how you're asserting that you're clearly right and everyone else is just a silly deluded fanboy Frenetic Pony, especially when you have little to no credentials that back up your apparent deep insight. What's bizarre is that you're fighting points and throwing the fanboy label around towards a forum comprised of people who have been consistently critical of Nintendo's actions regarding the Wii U, 3DS, Wii, DS, and GameCube going right back to 2004. We've done this dance before. You seem to confusing us not buying into your overdramatic speculation that's based upon no historical precedent or keen insight with us being fanboys. In fact, most of us are very much the opposite and are candidly realistic about all console manufacturers; this forum is great for such objective discussions, so it's shame that you're lowering the tone. But there's a difference between discussing failings and announcing the doom of one of the world's most successful companies. It's clear that your ego and evident inability to see beyond a year or so — not to mention you completely ignoring points people have made in favour of inventing easier ones to argue against — will prevent any further worthwhile discussion here, so I think I'm out of this thread now.

I'm afraid that I agree. The fact that you're completely ignoring valid arguments made in this thread in favour of dismissal is also a little grating, FreneticPony. Again, if two-screen gaming is so silly then why is the SECOND-BEST SWLLING GAMES CONSOLE OF ALL TIME a two-screen console that frequently actively uses both screens? The problem is blatantly implementation/adoption. I'm not saying that two screens are vital for great games, but they can certainly be an asset. As for the two-screen demographic comment, in my experience the creative segment such as designers, musicians, audio engineers, and video editors uses multiple screens easily as much as programmers. But what has that got to do with anything? PC games don't use two screens because most PC gamers don't have a laptop or rig at home with two screens. Also, two monitors is not the same as a TV and a touch screen.

Double post. Keep going!

Of course it depends on the hobby, but of all mine gaming is definitely the priciest.

Also, people who bought the second best-selling games console of all time.

Excellent:

what the hell

That game is graphically pleasing, but it sure makes you realise how good the physics and pedestrian animations are in GTA5 — aside from in stills, that looks positively archaic in comparison. Still, looks fun!

whyyyyyyyyyy

I think WildCat still wins the 'terrifying fast robot' award, mostly because of that fucking noise it makes.

We have no idea what exactly Nintendo is planning with regards to its overall strategy, and any moves into developing markets won't necessarily have any impact on us in the west whatsoever. I mean, do you really think that Nintendo is just going to write off what has historically been one of its biggest markets? It's still pumping out industry-leading games in terms of quality, and it's doing its best to redeem what was a fairly ill-planned console launch — much like it eventually managed to do with the GameCube, primarily with great games that made it worth the price of entry for those alone. Nintendo has more than enough capacity to expand its hardware range beyond one handheld and one home console, especially considering that it built a huge new R&D facility during the past few years. Thinking along the lines of 'because they're doing X they won't do Y' is rampant speculation, and most likely erroneous because it just doesn't make sense. Nintendo might not get everything right, but it tends to be very responsive to shifts in the market and to date has always come back stronger. Indeed, from what I've seen Nintendo is due to return to profitability this next financial year due to changes made since the Wii U's future started looking dim. It's also worth bearing in mind that this is far from the first time that Nintendo has made a bit of a blunder. What Nintendo tends to do in such situations is not let its momentum suffer, and instead carry on with business as usual while making moves towards new hardware that will do better. I would imagine that in addition to its ongoing development on Wii U games, Nintendo is also deep into R&D on its successor. But the Wii U only launched two years ago, so it's clearly too early for any announcements regarding that. Even if Nintendo is currently in 'write off the Wii U and do better next time' mode, I would imagine that a successor will appear after no less than four years — but probably not as long as six years or more. That would most likely satisfy Wii U owners because by that point they'll have gotten a wonderful selection of first-gen HD Nintendo games (which is really what many of us wanted from the Wii), and it'll put Nintendo in an excellent position to disrupt Microsoft and Sony because they'll only be halfway into their hardware cycle at most.

Nice lotion.

Wow, looks like a lot of progress has been made with successfully emulating Twin Snakes. When I looked into it a few years ago the game was a complete mess when emulated, but it seems like a number of people can get it running pretty well now. There are still some issues, but I'm now very pleased because it seems there are enough people determined to get it 100% working that it'll happen sooner or later. That means I'll be able to enjoy a HD version of every home console game thus far, which is really awesome — I'd kind of become convinced that Nintendo would never release the game from its GameCube tomb and the emulation would never work. The emulated version looks pretty comparable to the HD versions of MGS2 and MGS3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z004Dp8Pe8 As much as I loved MGS1, I just can't get into the following when I have the above as an option:

MGS2's gameplay was really stellar, essentially the epitome of the corridor-style stealth that was pretty much abandoned as of MGS3 (until the late game). It took virtually everything that worked about MGS1's gameplay and improved it, while alleviating annoyances — although this is something you could say about every MGS game to date. Indeed, it was such a great evolution that when MGS1 was remade as Twin Snakes using MGS2's gameplay mechanics it was an almost perfect slot-in, although you do need to raise the difficulty so that it's as hard as MGS2. And yes syntheticgerbil, I'm definitely a fan of Twin Snakes. Pretty much all criticism seems to focus on the addition of some slightly silly cutscene acrobatics, which has always bewildered me because this is Metal Gear fucking Solid. Virtually everything else in it is superior, and the game was tremendously faithful to the original. The only thing I really miss is the removal of the sad music and the REX's lair music, which were of course in MGS4. Weirdly, MGS4 treats both MGS1 and Twin Snakes as canonical because it uses non-shared elements of both.

I will be replaying the main home console series before TPP, I might join you once you hit MGS1. I decided to swap MGS1 replays for its GameCube remake many years ago because for any of its ills I prefer it, so I won't technically be playing MGS1 I guess. I bought the HD versions of MGS2 and MGS3 but haven't played them so that should be fun. I'll need to think of how to make it challenging enough though, as I've now beaten every single one multiple times including on the hardest 'extreme' difficulty (holy shit that makes MGS3 hard). Perhaps I'll go for the dreaded 'no alerts' combined with 'neutralise all enemies'.

It's actually kind of nuts that this seems reasonable. I mean, Disneyland is just the same thing but based on movie IP. And of all gaming companies that exist, Nintendo is the only one where this would make sense.