DanJW

Nick, Spaff, B0b and I finished playing through the campaigns last night. We played on advanced (we reckon Normal is too easy) and the finalés were all really tough, but incredibly fun. So many times were all got brought down right in front of the escape vehicle. One time a tank even followed Nick into the escape vehicle, which was a hilariously unfair Game Over. In any case, I'm now ready to give Vs a shot. I had one go at it and was terrible, so go easy on me.

OR, they could accept that it is impossible to judge games quantifiably, and use the qualitative judgments of good critiques instead. But business people are even worse than scientists when it comes to demanding a number for everything

I agree with what's been said here; terrible acting, lazy soundwork, but excellent CGI and compositing (I'm a big fan of good compositing). Good costumes too.

Hmm, well they officially adopted both the Half Life and Portal 2D adaptations. It is kinda cool

Maybe it is somewhat linked to their publishing policies aping the old EA? Not that executives ever see fault in their own policies. They're like Politicians in that.

Check out the networking subforum, AkuMifune; some of the guys have got a weekly game going. I'm sure you'll be welcome if there's room.

Yeah I also found the layout way too confusing. Also all the load screens are a pain.

Well... that answers pretty much most things. It all seems so straightforward now. Only mysteries remaining that I can think of: what is 'god' how is the future predictable? Who what is head Six/Head Baltar/ other head people.? (I'm still betting on residual connective programming in all living things to answer all of them) Oh, and: what happened to Starbuck?

They have been since the Dual Shock 2. Same goes for all the Xbox controllers.

Is that lamkin and his cylon cat in a previous incarnation?

It's lost its bucket, poor thing.

...oh my... I was not aware of this... thing. For a lot of people out there, this might well be the apotheosis of the entire internet. Even for the rest of us, this is clearly and comfortably in the realm of 'so bad it's good'.

The racetrack music from Beyond Good and Evil, which I have been playing all this week. Goddamn I'm going to break those lap records if it's the last thing I... Ok actually I'll probably give up. Catchy tune though!

What?! Don't be silly; it should easily be in front of both those games

Fantastic return of the song segment

Yeah that actually looks useful. Pow!

Did it fail? When I was playng it the online 'movies-charts' seemed fairly vibrant. But yes you're right about the presets, which is the reason I stopped playing it. Apparently the expansion pack unlocked the camera position, which was my biggest grief, but by then I had given up and I never got round to getting it. The only way to make your movie looks even slightly different to all the others was with incredibly intense editing - and even then I got tired of watching the same animations over and over. Another problem is that I think they made it too diffiuclt to mod. Their plan was to release new sets, props, costumes etc online. The problem: firstly you had to earn enough of their virtual money to buy them; secondly it was down to Lionhead to actually release these extras for use - very time intensive for post-release. If they had just released creation and import tools and not banned custom stuff from the official charts, I think it would have been more creatively exciting. By trying to make it easy to use and accessible to everyone equally, they dumbed it down and restricted what people could actually achieve. edit: as for the management game - well you're slightly foolish if you try to make movies at the same time as playing the main game. The way I saw it was to unlock stuff in the game and then use sandbox mode to make the actual movies you wanted to publish. Also, in-game time went so fast and 'filming' take so long that your actors would visibly age by the end of a long (>2 minute) movie. As Norfolk Scrobbs said, it got a bit annoying it places - it seemed a bit too random at times. Even so, there were some things that really impressed my, especially the way so much of the UI was built into the world (e.g. the way each building is a set of buttons when you mouse-over it).

There's a number of reasons I guess. Most people react to good design on a completely unconcious level. It goes straight to their hindbrain without any thought inbetween. When they find themself in the position of having to create something, they start to overthink. Without training and/or years of effort, design and artistic skill stops developing at round 12 years (not rhetoric - studies have shown this to be the case). Think back - I bet at 12 years old you thought lens-flairs and enormous drop-shadows were cool. Your average dumb client never progressed beyond that. Good design looks simple and effortless (despite being difficult), so these kind of people feel they have to prove their own knowledge and competence by demanding things, anything, that makes it look less effortless, so they can say "I did something, I am in control!" It might be out of habit, since management is 80% bullshitting to make it look like you know about something when you don't. Yeah, I lot requests I guess are people wanting to feel in control of the designer, rather than the other way round. If only these people took the same attitude to the pilots on their air-travel, there might be fewer of them around...

Pfft, I don't even know how I come across in person, let alone on the internet. I guess online I feel a bit more impatient and less forgiving, more likely to speak my mind and argue back, not to mention telling people to fuck off (I'm way too polite face-to-face). There have been occasional times when I've lost my temper online and really laid into someone. In person I have only done that once I think - I'm much more likely to just walk away if I get that annoyed.

On most forums it would be a bit dodgy Kroms, but as you probably know there are a number of folks who have been on Idle Forums for years now and gotten to know each other, and have met each other in real life before. Anyway, I'd be more worried about letting internet people sleep on your sofa... Especially Yufster people. You're likely to find your household has suddenly acquired a pet wild seagull or some other random wildlife.

You're right, but they got the IP back recently and so promptly slapped the name back on. The first F.E.A.R had possibly the best AI for its time when it came out. I wasn't able to tell if that's still the case from the new demo, but we can hope.

What comes next? The stories in the KotOR games were all wrapped up. In fact even the second game's plot felt very shoe-horned in. So really, don't look at it as if you're losing something. Look at it as a chance to gain something (even if that something is only the awesome stories those of that play it will tell you).

Looking pretty isn't the same as artistic achievement. Seems to me the selection committee have once again confused 'art' with 'shiny graphics'. Although Assassins Creed does have better visual design than some of the other nominees. I've not heard good things about the story though... The engine... now the engine does show promise.

Hmm, I think Chris's one-liner did cut to the problem for those of us that disagree with you. Bioware have pointed out that they are giving story equal footing with their four-pillar metaphor, and to be fair Bioware as a developer are all about story. It's only you who seem to be assuming that they will invariably do a disservice to the other pillars. I'm sure they will talk about gameplay/social systems etc more as the engine develops. Really, a lot of sceptics are making assumptions when it is way too early in creation to tell. We've barely seen anything, yet, so there's no point in inventing hypothetical problems. As I said, I really don't get people's problems with this game. It's an awesome announcement and people have been chanting its name for years prior to the official thumbs up. Now suddenly they announce it and there's a huge backlash. WTF people?