Roderick

Well, I'm still pretty much the same. I've picked up Guild Wars recently and it's pretty nice for now. I don't think it comes quite near World of Warcraft, but it differentiates itself well by offering more of a singleplayer instance-world with NPC henchmen you can hire. And of course, since it's free I can play far more relaxedly whilst at the same time don't expect too much of it. And currently I'm making more comics than ever. And I'm working on my kick-ass adventure game script. So, things are going well for me!

I think it's a funny and (for now) novel idea. I'd like to read the results on it.

Not that compulsive, but I will occassionally get a fit of righteousness induced by that ugly Fifa2006 cover (you know, with the extremely ugly dude opening his wiiiiiiide mouth at me for no reason at all?) and totally bury it beneath all the good things I can find. For example, Meteos, only recently.

YES! We're BACK! Let me start this off with a big ol'

http://www.captainaugust.com/ The next generation of consoles will be the most irrelevant yet. Discuss.

My roommate loves the PSP more than his DS. He plays Ridge Racer and loves it. He has bought more than a few games online already. The funny thing is, three days ago he bought Desperados for 5 Euros and has been glued to the PC ever since, despite having just acquired Stranger's Wrath, Broken Sword 3 and Warrior Within, all for XBox.

Haha, that's like Ron Burgundy calling his arms his "guns". Anchorman is so funny.

Hurrah! Congratulations all!

You can't beat Donkey Kong? I never new that. Regardless, the other examples are all abstract games. If you put the player in a scenario that would appeal to realism (even though there are zombies), there's something in the brain saying that we shouldn't have to put up with 'losing'. Then again, it could be a nice twist. What do I know. I just think a lot of people will get frustrated because they expect that there should be a way of winning. Unless you'd make it clear from the go that you could not win, period. But is than an alluring catch phrase? "You can't win this game!", hehe =)

Naww, of course you should be able to win. But I am interesting in having some sort of interactive environment like the shopping mall from Dawn of the Dead, and zombies would just lumber around it and you'd have to survive using all the tricks from the movie (like luring the zombies to a shopping window by attracting them from behind it, and then using an alternative escape route when they're all distracted). The terror would be awesome.

Even though I WILL be playing Splinter Cell 1 on the Gamecube in a while, I doubt there'll be a multitude of homo-erotic thoughts accompanying the process. Yufster: I have Resident Evil 1 Remake as well, have had it for over a year and sill haven't played it due to shortage of time. I fear for its clunky controls. I also fear that it'll send me to another deucedly uninteresting "high tech laboratory" setting in the end, while -again- the beginning parts are oh so atmospheric and interesting.

Cripes, Vimes, that was scary! I've seen some other examples. I believe there's an Alias licence game that has a facial texture of the heroine that is absolutely repellent. Trep: I don't see this happening too soon, as the market still dominates what happens, and in this case, boobs and broad chests still sell. But I have good hopes that in an increasingly auteur-based developing environment, we'll see less stereotypical pap.

I don't know about that crash. Miffy, you should try it. It's not really survival horror as there's plenty of ammo to survive with. That makes it far more of a blazing-guns-galore thing. Really exhilirating. It's definitely an experience which I recommend, even IF the first part in the rural area is the best.

Okay, so I went passed that little puzzle in chapter 3 of Another Code, and suddenly everything goes swimmingly and the game ends after some 8 hours of play (approximately 2 of those spent being stuck). There weren't really other hard puzzles like the one with the reflection on the empty frame. But although it was somewhat short, it was a sweet experience. Very charming and non-epic. It didn't feel rushed, it told everything it wanted to tell and it was a quaint, nice short game. And its puzzles were really nice, didn't feel too gimmicky. A nice adventure. More please!

Kamikaze zombies that crash on you with little planes? I can't really share that opinion because I love zombies and think I'll never tire of them. RE4 did have some cool twists on the zombie theme by making them peasants. That was nouveau. The biggest shame of the game is that they left that unique area and returned to the overused, extremely uninteresting "laboratory"/techno setting. It could've been an almost perfect game for me, but I despised that stupid commando setting. Heyy, shouldn't you be working?

Marek: I doubt it was anywhere near the end. It was some crazy reflectionpuzzle in the third chapter. I looked up just that little puzzle in a walkthrough, and I don't think I'd have figured it out on my own anytime soon. I am pleased with all the outside-the-box puzzles of Another Code though! I loved the (SPOILER!) stamp-puzzle which required me to physically close the DS two times. I loved it even more because I had thought of that solution myself, and then it worked. Awesome. Kingz: That's a great idea! People should link more to the Cap'n!

Yeah, I thought the general consensus here was that gaming has never better these days. There ARE more crap games (in our opinion... wait, no, they're really just crap), but the quality games of this day are among the best. We -Idle Thumbs- may be a little grumpy and hinge too much on the bad games, but we balance that by religiously devoting praise to BG&E and Psychonauts. And Damacy. But strangely not Resident Evil 4, which was awesome. But that may be because APPARANTLY, Marek HATES zombies!!

Are you implying that Fate is a DS game? Or were the two statements not quite as closely linked?

I'd like to talk about Age of Empires II a little bit, because I've been searching it in over fifteen shops today all over the land and it's NOWHERE to be found. At this point I'm considering just going with an illegal version. I really had thought there'd be a budget version somewhere, but apparantly trying to actually buy games is a futile thing these days (Sanitarium anyone? I believe I'm in my fourth or fifth desperate year of trying to get it legally!). The good news is that Age of Empires III looks like it's going to be a blast. I can't wait. And it's even coming out this year! (Here's a wild guess: Christmas anyone?). There're good odds there'll be a rerelease of the second one at that time too for promotional purposes. But I don't want to wait that long! Also, I'm still stuck in Another Code. Have been for a week and a half. Considering a walkthrough, even though I'd hate that. Sorry, no happy gaming experiences today, but I keep hope!

I think Spaff may not have been serious with his Mario Kart analogy. Just as not all movies are profound and thought-provoking (in fact, most of them are not), so not all games are. I wonder if you may have missed a lot of the games of recent make that are considerably meaningful. I get the impression from your posts that you're fairly young still, and maybe you've only been exposed to the most commercial of games and extrapolated the whole of the landscape from there. While there really are a nice few games that go beyond 'mere' entertainment. Most of these you'll find reviewed on the Thumb, as we seem to have no business with games that don't touch us in one way or the other. The grammar of movies would be semiotics and the way movies are directed and choreographed in a way that would not be feasible in other media. Movies have certain unique properties such as the ability to use different camera-angles and cuts, editing and visual control. Over the decades everyone learned through trial and error what 'worked' and what didn't. This is that grammar, see it as a guidebook to what could work in certain situations and what couldn't. Games don't really have this yet, but it's slowly coming together I think. Now I'm not condoning a rigid set of rules or anything, but in this conversation we're using the word grammar as a hypothetical book of semiotics that tells you what would work in a game and what wouldn't. For instance, if you make a first person horror shooter, how to effectively scare the player, or how to make a solid layout for a multiplayer level. That sort of thing.

I never mind waiting some more. There's always something else readily available I haven't yet played.

Don't worry, this will happen as soon as we actually reach photorealism and there's no way to top it anymore. Innovation will have to be sought in other ways. Painting didn't stop trying to achieve realism until the photocamera came and made the whole quest pointless. Of course, these next years will become horrible for us, as we're right in the middle of reaching the lowest point in the uncanny valley. Creepy deathmasks of realism ahoy!

That's exactly the paradoxical conundrum of games. The pressure of theoretically limitless interactivity brings with it these crippling boundaries. That's why I said there can be no 'perfect' game and that the best of these will choose one of the sides and stick to it, rather than trying to incorporate everything and become wishywashy. Vimes: even movies were a remediation from theatre. From the still theatre-angles of early American movies and the pioneering works of Meliés to the German expressionistic movement that clearly used cardboard setpieces and theatrical performances. I myself have on DVD The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which is from 1919. I think these movies, even or especially those of Meliés, can absolutely be considered artful, even though they didn't specifically use a grammar strictly unique to movies. Making the shift to games; of course they still have to find their own grammar as movies did over the years, but that doesn't mean there can't be art or meaning to them yet when all they do is remediate movies. An artist can make something meaningful regardless of the tools he gets. And I think there are plenty of examples of games backing that up.

This mimicking isn't necessarily bad. In fact, when you look at games as a 'remediation' of other media it's perfectly logical and acceptible that they would take over the characteristics of its forebears. Okay they're not really forebears but nevertheless. However, now that they've managed to incorporate the key things from movies and such, the next step should definitely be to further explore its unique abilities and expand from there on. But it shouldn't be considered lowly or wrong to keep developing the aspects it took over from other media. Nothing can exist in a vacuum, and crossbreeding brings diversity and flavour. It's just the balance that's a bit distorted still. [EDIT]: Come to think of it, I don't think the balance is off at all. If we look at all the "game" games out right now it should be obvious there is plenty discovery on this turf. Couldn't it be true then that the 'cinematic' games, with which I mean the games mimicking movies, are simply the preferred games of the masses? Isn't what is mainly made right now just a reflection of the tastes of its audience? In the end, the market will predominantly decide what is made, and no two ways about it.

Your point on there not being a proper 'grammar' of games is interesting. I think it would be both a blessing and a vice to have such a thing. On the one hand a proper grammar, or idiom if you will, will help in games becoming more reliable. (Now it would be idiocy to imply there is no such thing in its entirety, because genres themselves act as a set of rules designers use. But I think what you mean is that there isn't a 'grammar' yet that is strictly for games, that makes use of the interactivity and the unique properties of games instead of the stolen idiom of movies and other media.) On the other hand, whenever there's a set of rules many find it difficult or don't even think of deviating from that set path. Games are such intricate things that it is hugely difficult to find a way to do all the things that everyone demands. A great story, yet also great interactivity, a character to relate to but also one to become ourselves. I think the medium in the end is so complex that it will always fail in any one of these. Games being inherently flawed then is something that should be accepted. And it can be overcome by becoming brilliant in some of the respects while trying to cover up or soothe as best they can the areas that they (purposely) ignore.