syntheticgerbil

But we must remember the day in 2007 when violent porn was banned from existence.

I'm holding out for the Wii version to play this, but I really would like to finish it one day.

When I hear the Mario theme...

I suspected Lucidity was probably bad because it was done by the Special Edition team, but that's about it. I don't have much interest in playing it. But... I guess I wanted to say I'm looking forward to you playing A Boy and His Blob, Miffy, because I want to read what you think about it, since I'm on the fence about the game and I think your tastes are somewhat or vaguely similar to mine. I also really wanted to badly enjoy the original A Boy and His Blob as a kid but the game was insanely difficult and seemed to love to punish you. AND I HAVE NO BLACK FRIDAY DEALS. I did buy Wii Sports Resort at Target for $40 new last Friday on their sale, but didn't see much else in terms of video games.

That sounds true enough. I'm more inclined to like the movies they were involved in (although I do like the original Toy Story) and they tend to feel more focused overall in terms of structure. Up just felt like it went way off the rails and I seriously was confused why I could not be let into more of the old man's marriage. That's not true, I just think for a studio as praised as they are, they output hasn't really lived up to the hype. It just kind of sucks when they've made a few good movies, and the rest tend to repeat the same story conventions, tone, character designs, plot structure, and humor. It's only because they seem to only have so few tools in their toolbox, it's gets boring and frustrating after a while. I suppose the same could be said about just about Californian animation studio though.

"Warm box?" Now you are sending your own thread off the rails. I feel like a loser buying compressed air cans but after toblix's intense description and myself having similar problems with dust getting in my case (but not leading to overheating yet), maybe I should. I have used a vacuum on my computer before, but it was cumbersome. I think if you are still seeing graphics and no serious difference between how certain games or programs played before the incident, I think you may be fine gdf. Hope so, at least.

No, absolutely no animation is up to my high standards. (Seriously though, I think a few pages back in this very thread I recommended quite a lot, unless it was just some good anime. I don't really want to list all of the animation, animators, and artists I like, because it'll turn into me boasting and rambling. There's still a lot of stuff I do like, sometimes the usual suspects and sometimes not. Maybe it's better for PM? I just thought Up was pretty mediocre and that Pixar isn't always the biggest studio to rave about.)

Haha, I'm sort of curious about what else you did now.

Those are high stakes!

You'd better believe it. I expect a lot from animation.

So I finally rented Up and I'm just curious why the fuck everyone loves it so much? I usually find Pixar movies pretty good, even if they all tend to be uncreative, unchallenging, and intensely predictable, but here I just feel sort of isolated from humanity now for hardly seeing any merit in a movie that got rave reviews all across the board.

You made two errors here: 1. You are trying to justify derivations in art or media with the lame excuse that, "More of the same can never be bad no matter how it's delivered, right?" If you applied the same logic to some form of art that was considered higher than a video game (or a comic), many would disagree with that sentiment. Not to say that all forms of art also don't suffer from the same. But since it's a video game, as said, I also don't really care to argue back and forth much about the merits and joys of plainly derivative work. 2. That I give a fuck about Dragon Age.

Well to be clear, I did see the Japanese trailer first which seemed to go much less in the parody direction compared to what's at the top of the thread: hoFYEtj2tDw& The enemies are ridiculously similar to what was in the first three Zelda games. Why is the jumping spider pretty much exactly a Tektite? Do I see the character using a boomerang to hit a switch in a dungeon? Is someone running much like they are equipped with the Pegasus boots? Why is the main character being attacked by a bunch of chickens? I see caves in hillsides, I'm wondering if you have to acquire bombs to open them. There's trees blocking paths that I suspect you may have to burn with a candle or lantern. I know all of these things are in no way only allowed in the Zelda universe, but when they are all put together in one similar game in a way that doesn't seem to be adding a twist to create parody or expanding on the original Zelda action RPG type ideas outside of making the pixels cubes in 3D world, again, I just get confused.

Oh oops, I should clarify. I just meant aesthetically and storywise with all of the usual fantasy elements. The gameplay and the manner in which you collect tools has always the most enjoyable and unique aspect of most Zelda installments to me. So I would guess even with gameplay similarities, Nintendo couldn't really call plagiarism on 3D Dot Game Heroes even though everything up to the soundtrack is Zelda like. I said "almost plagiarism." Which is a lame way for me to say that although I don't think Nintendo could really do anything, I would not be surprised if they made a case against it. Someone already mentioned Limbo of the Lost, but it's not quite in the same vein. But then again, why would you? Zelda is already made. Again I'm having a problem understanding what the intentions were for making this based on all of the promotional material I've seen so far. Homage? Tribute? 3D Zelda game for Zelda fans that hate 3D Zelda games? Parody? I'm not clearly seeing any of those things. More like I'm seeing something that maybe wanted to be all of those things or just generally had a hard time committing a clear idea. Just seems like a game that you would see on a freeware website of fanboy type games rather than a full blown release you pay for.

I don't understand this game. The "almost plagarism" aspect of it makes me uneasy. Not that Zelda was incredibly original, but I really don't understand if this is supposed to be a homage, parody, or a game for those who hate regular 3D Zeldas. Maybe all three?

Man is that a shame. I really hope all these firings and closings don't become regular throughout the rest of the industry.

God I hate the term "wifey."

Well if there's anything good I can say about Sanitarium, is that it's finishable and makes sense. Dreamforge's previous adventure game to Sanitarium was an absolute trainwreck. It's called Chronomaster, and for some reason there is a small audience who thinks it's brilliant. The only adventure game I've played even close to that bad in design, graphics, and logic is Down in the Dumps. There's probably worse than those two, but I can think of any right now.

IT WAS THE BRATWURST!

Ah okay, well, that really sucks for all of the jobless people on the development side. I guess bring back my earlier sadness.

Hmm... I was actually sort of pussy-footing around what I said because I was thinking of EA as a developer and a publisher, but it seems I may have been somewhat wrong about my sentiment. I always seemed to have thought EA made many games, but maybe I was just confused and they were publishers only more often than not. Maybe I'm not understanding this right, but looking at Mobygames, it seems the company called Electronic Arts hasn't really developed anything substantial since the mid 90s and earlier. Maybe they've been only involved in the wheeling and dealing of the publishing world since then (or more)? If these 1,500 people are 17 percent of EA's workforce and not actively developing anything, only publishing, keeping track of money, and marketing, then I think they'll be alright. There's always many things to publish. Also if this is a worldwide number, it changes things even more, as EA's tentacles reach very far across the globe. And does this count the developers that they publishe for at all? If it's just publishing people fired, then I guess it wouldn't mean the games industry is not really in that much trouble, since maybe factors like direct buy, self publishing, and digital distribution could really be making way for undercutting publishers for developers now. I have no idea, I have no facts, numbers or inside info. Maybe the thumbs here who all seem to unanimously want weirder games and original IP really do need to get better at word of mouth though and selling games they want to do well with their friends. I should probably make an effort to try harder myself.

At this point I also agree with lobotomy42, SignorSuperdouche and Thrik. Maybe it's the fault of the big publishers (and developers) for shaping the current gaming audience and their expectations by churning out big vapid games and sequel after sequel of the same, but when they make an effort to do something different for a change and put their marketing dollars and expertise behind it, I would guess there's not much else you can expect of them. Still sucks they had to lay off so many people.

I'm glad it eventually ended up in letting us peer into some of the original deleted scenes and dialogue, even if they aren't much and are just a page of text. I sort of wish he would update his blog post put in Ron's reasons for cutting that stuff as well, if just for a sort of running commentary. The release of this extra dialogue makes me hope for more rumored "deleted scenes," lost artwork or animation, and ideas from other LucasArts games to appear in public. It's nice to know that at least one person at LucasArts knows that fans are clamoring for it (The Rogue Book was just not enough!). I guess I'm getting really ahead of myself, but I already find it fascinating to browse through ATM Machine's site. The more content for him to update with, the better.

Either way, the "time and money" excuse is a cop out. Anything creative always has time and money problems holding them back. It's the job of the team to make quality work within the constraints of time and money. The game has two paid art directors credited. What possible time and money constraints could prevent them from having an artist doing something so simple as resaving their backgrounds without the orginal layers they were drawing over intact? How does this error and many other amateur mistakes like it go under two guys who are supposed to be constantly QCing all of the final art according to their job title? I'd love to hear how money and time prevented them from doing that exactly. Until someone wants to interview or speak honestly about the sub-par art in the game along with the simple mistakes, I'm going to assume the laziness that I see reflected within the finished product. Sorry if that's harsh. Some people would rather not be presumptuous on why someone stinks at their job, but I myself have no qualms doing so (at least on an internet forum). That was just a dig making fun of their concept of respect for Monkey Island.

YOU MUST LOSE ONE!