Duncan

Okay, well from what you guys have said I think I'm going to give it a miss. Mostly because I actually can't find it for less than $20. (US, that is.) Thanks, everyone.

On a similar note (and to hijack the thread, ha ha) I got a form-letter note in the mail today from my high school principal. It congratulated me for winning an award for 'Best Review of 2004' in the 'New Zealand Secondary Schools Newspaper of the Year Awards'. Now, some interesting things about that. Beyond the name, I have no idea about these awards at all. I also didn't know that I was even nominated for this. I didn't even know I was entered into this. And the person who would have entered me, my Journalism teacher, is the VERY SAME person who FAILED to tell me that I had won it. I smell scam - ESPECIALLY since, as I recall, you get MONEY for winning this. HMMM. I think a conversation might be in order.

Crimson Skies and The Last Express both rock, but I think/hope that people are at least vaguely familiar with both of them.

I am frustrated both by the continual success of Warrior Within and the fact that apparently I will never be able to get over it. It's like a kidney stone that I just cannot pass. I try and try and then something like 'Best Gamecube Game: Warrior Within!' comes along to cause further aggravation and inflammation.

Nothing much to say except I agree with Jake. I think Majesco/DoubleFine would be much better off with 'from the creator of Full Throttle and Day of the Tentacle' or something similar on the box. Except we've already seen the box, and they're not doing that, so... whatever.

So last week I moved into my dorm. Whoo. I know pretty much everyone says this, but it sucks. Ass. It sucks ass. It really does. They haven't even finished building it. On the top floors the windows are broken and patched up with tape. There is barbed wire one on side. When I went there on the first day they didn't know where my room was. The place looks like half asylum and half crack den. The phone lines don't work. My room has a plug for the TV aerial except it doesn't work. Because there is no TV aerial on the building. But for NO REASON my room has the plug anyway. It's the only room to have one. And while some degree of effort has been taken to make the walls soundproof, looks like they forgot about the ceiling. I can hear the conversations the guy above me has. Like, perfectly. I got really nervous the other day because there was a girl in his room making The Move but thankfully he didn't pick up on it. Oh, and I started college today. Or tomorrow, depending on your timezones. I've pretty much settled in, which means already I feel discontented and irritated by the whole school and faculty. Usually I feel anxious or excited at first before disillusionment sets in. This certainly saved some time. My first lecture today was English 113. Which was pretty dull because it was just an introductory-type thing, but something far more interesting happened. Turns out that in the hundred or so people in my class I know one and only one of them. It's Tina. Fucking hell. This is the girl that in my last year of high school English I was more or less in direct competition with. In that class how it worked was I didn't take it very seriously but produced really good work somehow. Tina - IN EVERY FUCKING CLASS. GOD. - worked very hard but what she came up with wasn't usually that great. But EVERY FUCKING TEACHER gave her top marks. There was no explanation. It made no sense. And she was unbearably arrogant about the whole thing. But that last year I beat her in English, which was awesome. But now she's back. WHAT. Clearly this whole thing is not going to do wonders for my blood pressure.

I always thought Invisible War was much better than it was given credit for. I mean, not better than the first one, but still really good.

I've been trying to get some pictures of this place up but I haven't been able to for reasons way too boring to go into. I noticed a few days ago that on the crack den-side (I'm seriously not exaggerating with this) there appears to be bullet holes in the windows, I assume from when they pinned down that drug lord last year. Spaff: yeah, actually my place is a hall of residence. I just say dorm because it's not quite as lame. I don't know if there's any substantive difference. Also, what do you mean what's with the number? All the lectures have numbers, man. Also today was kind of weird because when I was coming home at about 7:30 I saw this group of maybe twenty people gathered facing each other on opposite sides of the street. And I thought maybe they were in gangs and were going to start singing and dancing like in West Side Story or something. Which would have made me happy because, for no real reason, I love it when people spontaneously break into song. So I walked through one of the crowds and there was no singing. There was, however, an old guy lying behind a parked car, completely still, with another car parked just in front of him in the middle of the road. There wasn't any blood or any apparent way that he could have been hit by a car, but regardless there he was just lying there, face down. And there was another guy, who I think was homeless, standing next to him screaming at people and using the word fuck a lot. And everyone - I mean, apart from that guy, was just standing there quietly. Anyway, that doesn't have anything to do with college, but it was pretty disturbing nonetheless.

I know on my copy of TLE they had a making-of thing which covered the film shoot, so maybe you have it too? Mechner I think is working on the POP movie.

This is a very strange person.

For what it's worth, I'm considering getting an Xbox just for Crimson Skies.

I really hope some of these comics will be in the manual or something. If there was ever a game that necessitated a bunch of posters and superfluous crap in the box, Psychonauts is it.

Aw, fuck, he shot himself? God.

Warning: the following is basically thinking out loud and possibly redundant. I was at a friend's house today, (a male friend - PLOT POINT) and noticed he had a copy of The Sims 2 lying around. I asked whose it was, and, no surprise really, it was his sister's. I remembered this post Yufster made a while ago about - I think I'm remembering this right - about basically only girls are interested in The Sims. And yeah, in my experience that's almost completely true. I actually had a copy of the Sims at one point, which I had for about a week before I lent it to a friend. (Who, as it happens, was a guy. And actually that is the only guy I know who has any variant of the Sims.) He never actually gave it back, but I didn't really care because, well, it was the freaking Sims. So I started thinking - not instantly, it's not like I start thinking about this crap on cue - how did it work out that the Sims is something girls like and guys, well, not so much? Does it come down to that 'casual gamer' marketing phrase (I typed Marekting there for a second. Discuss.), and that the Sims, as an arguably 'casual' game, will appeal to those who aren't necessarily gamers and are just looking for something fun to play? And that that group of people are predominantly women? Are women supposed to go for a game which is more open-ended, with simple gameplay and that is easily replayable, rather than something which is more focused and intense, like Half-Life 2? (I bring that up because I have arbitrarily decided it is the hot game to reference.) I know this is generalising badly, by the way. Of course, from certain people at the Adventure Gamers forums (and I guess this is moving into adventure games a bit and holy shit am I using a lot of parentheses in this) you would get that the female audience is mostly made up of older women for whom keyboard controls are anathema. So of course they wouldn't go for Half-Life or whatever. I really doubt that's it, though. It feels like - and this is a feeling I get pretty much exclusively from gaming websites - that there's this apparent need to legitimize the industry by getting women interested in games. I mean, men and women can and will (obviously with exceptions) like different things, and just because vast hordes of women may not be interested in Halo 2 or whatever other mainstream games there are doesn't mean they don't have an interest in the industry. But the Sims is mainstream so these women may have an idea of what's out there. I think the mainstream is divided into games men might like and games women might like, and there isn't much crossover between those two groups. Maybe it isn't a case of casual girl gamers playing the Sims and those gamers basically are the female mainstream audience. But even given that I don't think anyone would argue that the games industry and the mainstream in particular isn't dominated by testosterone. Maybe there's a minority in the mainstream audience of female gamers who are casual gamers, I don't know. None of this is based on factual evidence, and how's that for a weak closing statement. Man, I looked over this. You should all respond as if I wrote something totally coherent and capable of provoking great debate.

http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/action/thegodfather/factsheet_6117736.html I smell failure.

And also there are about sixty guests reading this thread. Why? Are we the only forum with a Hapland thread?

I'm not making any assumptions; it could well be excellent. I suspect it won't be, but I don't have anything to back that up other than a general feeling. I think it's a bad idea in concept, because based on the press release it sounds like a generic game concept shoehorned into the Godfather franchise for no other reason than EA knows it will sell.

Well for one thing, I think it's doomed to fail because it's going to suffer from the inevitable comparisons to the movies. And it might be good, but I wish the developers were doing something original* (from the previews, the ties to the Godfather don't actually look that strong anyway), because this just reeks of EA's incessant franchising. *

I would like you to write a critical analysis of Syberia

Uh, yeah, I posted in both of them. At any rate this is turning into an AdventureGamers-IdleThumbs Crossover Event, so I'll just say this: yes, I think adventure games need a shot in the arm, as you put it. So in my last post I was a little bit wrong. But that shot in the arm is going to be worthless unless it's a genuine attempt to make the games better rather than a superficial, temporary distraction from the fact it's still much the same as before. A lot of people in that first AG thread are talking about high levels of interactivity and high quality writing that's missing from today's adventure games and getting that back is hardly "beyond the scope of the adventure genre." And as far as innovation goes, the boundaries of the 'adventure game' are so nebulous and ill-defined that discussions on this (especially at AG) usually end in semantics about what the intention was of the guy who made the text game 'Adventure' and any sort of change is out of the question. For the most part, I've given up on the adventure game because there's so much concern now about making adventure games rather than making good games. And something like Dreamfall has to spend hours being discussed by some arbitrary fan committee to decide whether or not it's an adventure game or not and therefore whether or not it's worth playing. I'm sick of the semantics, sick of the conservatism and sick of acceptance and praise of bad adventure games just because they're adventure games. Uh, that whole thing ended up quite disjointed and rambling, sorry.

I don't think that's the reason at all. With the death of LucasArts and possibly Sierra, adventure games that appeal(ed) to 14-24 year old males aren't being made anymore. I doubt they gave up on the genre (if they did) because they were frustrated at a lack of progression and innovation, as you keep saying. The most frustrating thing - to me, at least - is a lack of basic quality.

Okay, I haven't seen it (it won't air here for months) but this is the description of the latest Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode. Yay.

Probably not made by the TV show guys, though. It is :ponycrap: though, you're right.

Wait, who's Doug? Do you mean me? What?

I'd take offense at that if I weren't, well, a jaded kid. So good call. What? I don't see Syberia as being particularly innovative, to be honest. The criteria you list seems to suggest it's being innovative by not being bad. It looked good, the story wasn't cliched, and it wasn't difficult. I don't disagree with that at all, but it isn't innovation. And it wasn't because it didn't innovate that I didn't like it, and I don't think anyone here considers innovation the ultimate measure of quality. I think Syberia is a very traditional and conservative adventure. I don't fault Sokal for his intentions, as Marek said, he clearly had an artistic vision and he followed through with it. I think that he wasn't so impressive when it came to the game part. You're right about the past - it's hardly the manifest destiny of the adventure game to appeal to 35+ females. Honestly, it's great that the adventure game has found a new audience, but I don't think it should be ignored that they lost another one.