SiN

hey, right, so i'm sure that, like me, all of you read double fine action news. i always feel like collectively laughing at 'em or just plain talking about em, but there was never a place to do so ... UNTIL NOW! is it just me, or does anyone get a sneaking suspicion that Schafer dropped a subtle hint with that "Touch!" line. I dunno about everyone else, but it stuck out for me ... its prolly cos i'm hopelessly hooked onto Meteos, but still ... could double fine be making a DS game? SiN

i think there was a huge noise made over hell ... i think that once they decided to side-step that issue, the rest of the story worked out better. SiN

just watched the video ... looks great! the only thing is it looked like it was pretty tough to line your character up with the enemies ... i assume adding shadows would help a lot! SiN

i'm gonna have to go out on a limb here and say that psychonauts isn't all that difficult to sell. bare with me here ... the last two Schaefer games have been rather ingenious ... they both place you in odd worlds (Land of the Dead, peoples minds) which is kinda overwhelming & difficult to understand, yet, have some sort of familiarity to them. In Grim, you were a salesman. EVERYONE knows what a salesman is! Same with psychonauts ... yeah, you're in this odd world and stuff, but shit, you're a kid at camp! EVERYONE was a kid at one point, so everyone knows how it is. when i heard those kids talking, i identified with it immediately. ("We're going out ... but don't ask her, its a secret" "Whys it a secret?" "Uhhh, the reason its a secret is a secret, THATS how secret it is!" ) I havent seen any of the tv ads, but i just re-watched the trailer and it seems like it would make the PERFECT ad ... except of course its 2:45 as opposed to 30 seconds. it just needed a bit of trimming. I mean, what needs to be established is 1) the basic story line 2) its a platformer 3) pschonaut = person psychic powers 4) funny as hell 5) diverse levels 6) you can burn stuff !!!!!!!! 1,3,4 were done by showing bits of cutscenes ... using the intro as well as other bits ("the good news is that you're insurance will cover the whole thing!" & "oh my god, lets make out!"). 2, 5, 6 are done by showing ingame stuff. i really do hope it sells well ... its a great game, and dammit, we need more double fine!!! TBH though, im just really glad (and a bit surprized) the game was released ... with Sam&Max2 canned along with Unity i really wasnt holding out too much hope. but doublefine got thru this once, and i'm confident they'll go to any measure to get us more quality games! SiN

that was actually a great interview. im not really a myst fan, but from the sounds of it, the guy is being very honest. thats a good thing. its just that you're too used to hearing people say, "this game is going to revolutionize gaming forever!!!!!!!" in every interview for a generic fps. everyone wants to hype their games. this guy is just being honest. SiN

I've played 2 MMO games so far ... Everquest and WoW ... I'm soon gonna play City of Heroes too. I haven't payed a dime to play any of em ... either coverdisks (EQ, CoH) or trial editions (WoW). I think both games (EQ & WoW) were reasonably fun. The thing with EQ was that the first day I played it, I thought it was crap ... dated, unintuitive, buggy. Once I started playing it with a friend though, things changed. He gave me high-level weapons, so the leveling up bit was simple enough. But it was fun because we were playing together ... and when we weren't playing together, there were people to talk to. Most EQ players were older and mature ... was a pleasure playing with them. Lots of chatter going on. Lots of helping other people. WoW was quite the opposite. It could have honestly been a single player game where all the other characters were bots, and I wouldn't have been able to tell! In all the 10 days that I played, only ONCE, did I group up with someone and just have some fun. Normally, people wouldnt reply to me when I asked them something! But WoW was a great game for another reason ... by simply ignoring everyone else, and not really caring about leveling up, you got to experience this great alternate-world ... this huge, seamless world, full of atmosphere. THAT was the amazing bit about WoW. If only it wasnt full of stupid kids who just wanted to cheat and level-up ... ... which really, Really bothers me. Whats the urge to be a level 60 character? My friend who I got the trial from (he bought the full game) was telling me about how he chose the best character to level up with, has gone to websites to carefully see how to level himself up most efficiently ... hell, he even has a table detailing "monsters experience" vs "my experience" vs "time spent" vs "how much gain"! In other words, a "what should I kill to get the most experience the fastest" table!!!!! I mean, holy shit! At this point, haven't we forgotten about the point of games? I almost feel sorry for these people who are determined to be the best at [insert MMORPG here]. I get the feeling these people are the types of losers who have nothing in life but a fucking video-game. They MUST be good at this video-game, because thats all they have in life. In the real world, they aren't payed any respect, but if they get to level 60, they can wank around and gloat like fuckers all they want. Sorry, that was brutal, but that's what I believe. Please, SOMEONE, tell me differently ... I want to believe that video games haven't come down to this! *sigh* SiN

what the hell is the use of buying gold ... doesnt it take all the fun/challenge out of actually earning it??? i cant believe how SO many people take MMORPGs to be a type of "I'm better than you ... look at my level!" game as opposed to the social game it should be! ARGH! (sorry, had to get that in before the eventual lock) SiN

looks pretty cool ... I'm downloading it now! SiN

*bump* Just beat the game. amazing stuff, right down to the end ... granted, the Meat Circus was a bit frustrating, but I didn't mind it all that much. I enjoy a challenge every so often. The ending cutscene was class ... the third game to get me very close to getting all teary (Grim and BG&E being the other two). anyway, faviourite level is quite a tough one. I've actually got three levels that stood out for me alot. Black Velvetopia was the best level all round. Great balance of platforming and adventuring. Great artwork, music, and general atmosphere. Most importantly though, the story was amazing. I love the way it built up through the level, and all came together at the boss section. Milla's Dance Party was simply fun. Lots of fun. From the second I entered the level, I absolutely loved the disco look & feel ... absolutely beatiful and quite trippy. Once I started using Levitation (which I didn't even know existed ... I kept away from the hype) all I was thinking was, "holy shit, this is fucking awesome!" ... it was a fun bouncy laid-back level. I can't quite pinpoint what stood out ... I guess it was everything! Gloria's Theater was a very well done Adventure/Action game level, in its literal sense. It blended adventure elements and action elements seamlessly and it worked! A completely enjoyable level ... humourous, good platforming, great story, and the puzzles were great ... not super-easy, but not super-frustrating either. The puzzles seemed quite logical, and very satisfying to solve. A special mention goes to the utterly hilarious Milkman Conspiracy level ... I thought the "conspiracy" behind it all was utterly ingenious! The dialogue was very, very funny ... definitly felt Shaefer-eque. Also, the animation for the G-Men were hilarious. The thing I didn't like was that the gameplay was quite terrible ... it really wasn't adventure gaming at all ... it was tidious item-hunting. But I really liked it anyway! SiN

check out the games by Binary Zoo... some truly innovative, trippy and fun shooters. SiN

That's a big factor ... and I've seen that from my personal experiences too. I've been coding for the PC for quite a while (8 years), last year I decided to do some coding on the GBA. And what a great change that was! Being able to say, "okay, its running at 60fps on this GBA ... it'll do that on all GBAs" was actually unbelievable to me. I couldn't get over the fact that I could do any mad optimizations and know there wouldn't be any incompatibility problems. The other thing is that hacks are possible on consoles, but not really on PCs. I've seen an incredible amount of "poke this value to this address and something-or-the-other will happen" for the GBA. Hardware-level stuff like that just isn't possible for the PC. SiN

p4 2.8ghz, 512 megs ddr ram, geforce fx 5200 go note that it is a laptop though. so if uve got a slightly lower spec'd desktop, it'll prolly work fine. what are your specs? ... i should be able to make a judgement based on that. as for Rez on the DS, from a technical standpoint it's VERY possible because of the way the game is designed. uhh, not really bothered to explain why unless anyone is really interested (if you are lemme kno, i'll explain my reasoning), but yeah, its quite do-able, or at least a slightly stripped down version. SiN

i played rez on chankast. make sure you make an image of the rez cd onto ... running it straight of the cd makes a bit of lag between sub-levels. the backgrounds are a bit screwed up, and the sound is sometimes stuttery, but other than that, its a pretty good emulation of rez. also, you'll want some sort of analogue gamepad for maximum enjoyment. SiN

seems like a fun game, but since i'm incredibly lame at shooters, i prolly end up either getting it when it makes it to the bargain bin, or just skipping it all together. meteos, on the other hand, is coming out in 2 days, which im friggin extatic about!! SiN

woah, neat stuff! those pics really put a smile on my face! SiN

I've read your first post over a couple of times now. It's three paragraphs of you justifying why you feel fine stealing games. I just don't see the sarcasm in it. Admittingly, perhaps hearing you say your post would have led me to believe differently, but in text, it looks like a serious justification. I just dont see it. Yes. Let's stick with stealing in particular. In my opinion, you can never quite say, "I stole this and that isn't a bad thing". Stealing, regardless of what it is, is always morally wrong. However, sometimes it is done. I've stolen stuff, you've stolen stuff, everyone has stolen stuff! The difference between you and I then, is that I never claimed it to be morally okay. I know what I did was wrong, but I did it anyway. I'm not trying to convince anyone otherwise. That's my opinion, nothing more, nothing less. I don't quite see how this is a bad thing or unfair. Surely the company deserves profits? Surely the fact that the company employes people, builds factories, purchases the machines used to make these sweaters, gives the employees benifits, etc, etc deserves some money? If the employee really wanted all $25 of the profit, he could simply quit his job, make sweaters at home, package them and sell them himself. But that's just not feasible. Maybe I've missed out on something here (I dont claim to know anything about economics, just Computer Science), but your justification isn't making any sense. SiN

You realize buying games also funds the artists behind the game, right? I mean, game developers DO get cuts out of the overall sales of a game if it makes enough money. By not buying games, you're telling the developers, "Gee, I really like your games, but fuck off anyway!". You're also full of shit. Don't try to justify stealing, because at the end of the day, it's still stealing. SiN

this is definitly one of the DS games i'm looking forward to playing ... when i first bought my DS, i was a bit worried about the lack of games, but now its looking great! so yeah, mario is definitly one to watch ... in the short term, there's meteos coming out on the 29th of this month! SiN

does any1 know whether the pc version is compatible with a ps2 gamepad ... i got the whole converter thingie and all (for Psychonauts, which STILL isnt available in Canada!) ??? SiN

dont have an xbox either, but know a friend who would absolutely love getting doom3 on the xbox ... dunno if i'm up to it though ... if i think of something inspired enuff, i'll enter. SiN

i STILL can't get psychonauts unfortunately ... ive been ready with my cash for a while, but my local ebgames keeps on having delays on their stock. last week they told me it'd be available on the 30th ... if they dont have it then, i'm gonna have a good argument with the store owner. SiN

i just remembered that the katamari damacy video would be up. watched it tonight ... it was very interesting. although the voice-overs were annoying (done by women, of which one had a very annoying voice and one was okay) the presentation was unlike anything u'd hear out of the games industry. i dont quite know what to say about it, but just watch it ... it'll make you laugh and think alot .... facinating stuff. SiN

im not a fan of the MGS series (and have only played a bit of MGS1) but i found that hilarious! SiN

OMG ... i cant frigging believe this! look, honest to god, when i saw the first xbox360 mock-ups (u kno, the ones that ended up being real), i was like "holy shit that looks horrible, its SUCH a fake its not even funny!" ... but it ended up being real! the ps3 looks just like the xbox360, pretty uncreative ... the only think i like is the fact that the drive is slot-loading. i get the feeling ninty will be doing the same. but right now, i HONESTLY dont believe that controller is real. i'll believe it ONLY when i see it on a more official site, because that quite frankly looks like shit ... the shit beginner 3d modellers make as their very first model, post it on message boards, and have people laugh at it ... HONESTLY dont believe it! SiN

Q. E. D. SiN