edlglide

Don't be so sure that anything has been seriously damaged with your laptop. This has happened to me before -- it overheated and shut down, and then would refuse to power back up for hours and hours. I finally got around to taking it somewhere the next day, and it powered up just fine and has worked excellently since then. It may just need a while to cool down before it will work again, as mine did. EDIT: And yeah, Trep, Ad-Aware or Spyware Blaster are good programs to clean up any background programs that are monitoring/tinkering with your Internet. I prefer Ad-Aware, but for some reason it won't work on my desktop and I had to resort to the Spyware program.

I didn't say it was always poor design -- there are certainly games in which it fits. But in a good deal of current games, it IS poor design. It can be used to create an artificial difficulty that doesn't otherwise exist instead of actually designing a challenging game.

I can understand the argument that certain games may be better with a limited save system. But in most circumstances it's poor game design to force people to go back and replay something over and over again because you won't let them save. It's not a design strategy, it's simply poor design. Furthermore, I read one of you arguing that having unlimited saves is like saying the player should be allowed to start with the best gun, or whatever -- and since the designers DO allow players to that in most games, then obviously they should let you save as often as you like. It should always be the choice of a player...........the point of designing a game is for the player to have fun. If saving repeatedly is fun for that player, then why should you stop them from doing it? It's not like it's something specific to your game, like a person shouldn't be allowed to run around and kill people in a football game or something. To me, arguing that game designers should not allow people to save when they want is just silly. It's not hurting anyone if you can save -- if you don't want to save, then don't. It's like saying there should be a law which prohibits you from wearing a hat.........it makes no real sense and if you don't like wearing a hat you shouldn't impose that on someone else. Games are designed for the players, and if they like to save repeatedly then there is no reason to stop them.

I think designing games with a specific save game policy is silly. Why shouldn't people be allowed to quicksave every 5 seconds if they want to? The game designers should worry about making a good game, not worry about if someone will make it easy for themselves by saving every 5 seconds. It's not their problem to worry about............abusive saving, as you put it, is just a way to cheat in the game. It's not any different than using a cheat code, and since most games have cheat codes there's really no reason to limit game saves. Otherwise you can just go and grab an invlunerability code or some such thing. Games should be designed to allow the players MORE freedom, not to limit it. How infuriating would it be to have to replay one section of a game over and over again because you couldn't save? I think most people would consider that poor game design.......but if you're allowed to save whenever you want, it's just not an issue. Anything that can be left to the player's choice is usually a good thing, and save games certainly falls in that category.

Good lord. Once again I have to resurrect an older thread to compliment your ranting abilities (especially in an earlier post from this thread). I am in awe -- it's almost like you're a female gamer version of Phil Hellmuth. I think I may be in love with you...........I don't think anyone can understand how much a good rant entertains me.

This is an old thread, but I just have to commend Yufster on that rant. It was brilliant -- a thing of beauty. There's little better than a good rant that hits the nail on the head.

I have no idea, although I -think- it's an actual English proverb........but even if it isn't it really wouldn't be a surprise. Pop culture has added stuff like that to our vernacular quite often in the past 40 or so years.

Man........I hated Mario 64. Or rather, I hated it after about two days. It was a huuuuuuuge game, but you just sort of went and did the exact same thing over and over again in different settings (which really isn't that different from a lot of games, but for some reason it didn't do anything for me in Mario 64). Got boring very quickly.

Rise of Nations isn't much more than a prettier/newer version of Age of Empires. The gameplay differences are fairly minor. Sure it's fun to play, but I think a game needs to do something more than just recreate an older game with new graphics to get that high of a rating.

Well..........I don't really know that much about them, but my friend's little sister's band won some battle of the bands contest that won them a trip to New York to record in one of the studios there. So maybe they're pretty good........I think the name is Looking Back. Don't know if they have a website or anything, although they probably do.

I came here from the Adventure Gamers forums.....been posting there a couple of months. I was going to do what this thread was originally intended to do, but I've come to the conclusion that you are all certifiably insane, and perhaps it'd be in my best interests to not reveal any personal information for reasons of safety. On the other hand, most of you live either in an entirely different country or somewhere pretty far away from me in the US. So what the hell.........I'm Edward, I'm 21, and I'm a junior at the University of North Carolina. History major.

*laugh* I absolutely hate the Xbox controller; I think it's one of the most horribly designed things I've ever used. I also think the Gamecube controller is very meh.......better than the Xbox controller, but I don't especially like it. And I absolutely love the PSX/PS2 controller. It's funny how much something like that can change based on the individual. EDIT: I completely missed the fact that you were talking about the S controller and not the Duke. While I still don't really like the S controller (I don't like the way the black and white buttons are set up), it's far better than the Duke.

I don't know this from personal experience, so I could be wrong -- but from what I understand, there's very little for you to go back and do anyways after you've beaten the storyline. There aren't very many side quests, and there aren't any new ones after you beat the storyline. Furthermore, some of the key areas of the game are locked away after the storyline is over and you can't go back to visit them. Again, this is only what I've read...........haven't done any of this yet.

Well, considering the original Pirates! was probably one of the 5 best computer games ever made (I spent many days of my youth capturing ships and hunting treasure) I can't see how this game won't be a huge success. They could easily have just updated the graphics and left everything else in the game exactly the same and it would be worth a purchase. In my mind, as long as they didn't go in and screw anything up from the original it will be phenomenal.