SpiderMonkey

Twelve months? More like 6. I too was pretty excited for Super Paper Mario. Its US release window was a good time, among a relative scarcity of other interesting games. I don't have any interest in buying it ahead of the half dozen games I'm buying between a fortnight ago and Christmas however.

Is anyone playing Stalker here? I've read some good comments on it on Shacknews, but I'm still on the fence. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone here who's playing it, since I think you guys are a bit closer to my taste in games.

I dunno about destroyed, but its development rate will suddenly turn glacial. What's the point in entrepreneurship - discovering the best new ideas and making lots of money as reward - when the ISPs now have the power to extract all that money from you after watching you take all the risk.

The primary development platform was the 360 in Boston, and then they ported it in Australia. I find it hard to believe that the textures would be any higher in the PC version, for that reason. You also seem to have been misled by the Vista marketing: There's nothing DX10 can do that DX9 can't. The distinction between versions is simply what the developer feels like adding (or is paid to add by Microsoft to promote Vista, hence all the new DX10 versions of old games that have sprung up with a few new lighting effects). I can't imagine there are any shinier effects in the PC version, again primary dev platform, etc etc. It's very possible that I'm wrong on these points, because I've steered clear of promotional materials for the game, but I would be reasonably confident that the graphical benefits to be had from playing on PC are simply a higher resolution and a higher framerate.

The controls on the 360 are really tight, going by the demo, but I can't see a reason to go 360 when you have the PC you have. My only problem with the 360 controls was that I can't aim with thumb sticks, so it's PC all the way for me. Sub-question, that I can't resolve: Steam or on disc? I can't remember there being so many variables. Price difference. Activation method (which one is more likely to be still active in 5 years, given I'd still want to install System Shock 2 tomorrow). Does the disc version need a disc in the drive? Should I go for Steam in order to give my retailer money to Valve (who I like) instead of to a random internet distributor? Etc.

The title made me think this thread would be about Bioshock.

I think it's just a badge of honour we can put on our new Steam profiles? Also get in quick: I can't remember a time when I could sign up for something and get the name I want. Normally it's "Are you sure you don't want 'ThePimpest<Username>998121' instead of '<UserName>'?"

I think Carmack the designer is very much the same as Carmack the engineer. His design aesthetic seeks out and enjoys simplicity and elegance, because that is the same aesthetic required to become a great programmer. One thing that's always amused me is how id and Nintendo have never got on very well (as he acknowledged in a Quakecon interview or two). On one side, the pentagrams and the demons obviously doesn't jive with Nintendo. But on the other side, the focus on raw simplicity is like a perfect fit.

Quake Zero is a super idea. I also love how innovative it is from a business perspective. They failed to trump Quake 3's online popularity with Quake 4, and so to move their franchise forward, they're going for something truly radical.

I think those are all great game names. Scott Miller or someone wrote something a while ago pointing out the value of one and two syllable game names. I'd sooner have them than some eight word monstrosity with a couple of colons. I don't think it's just a matter of "greatly improves". These days, if you even want to finish making your game, good tools are pretty much mandatory.

My first thought was a generic "hey, cool". My second thought is that it's still technology-driven design - they wrote a terrain engine, and if you've got miles of terrain, you need vehicles, and then you've got what they've described so far - "racing and shooting in a wide-open environment!" I'm gonna need more details before I get excited about it, but I'm gonna put the cynic hat aside from here on out, and keep an open mind. I'm confident that the bloody nose that Quake 4's poor sales gave them will act as a catalyst towards them being a bit more interesting and a bit less derivative in the future.

Leon was not just Ashley's saviour, they also had a child together years later.

I was thinking today about all the fallout from the Xbox warranty clusterfuck. I think the Xbox runs a serious risk now of becoming "the console that'll break after a year" in terms of its general perception. Obviously the warranty is a move to head off that problem, but I don't think it's enough. When Microsoft change over to new hardware that fixes the problem (by which, I think that means 65nm chips that produce less heat than 90nm, rather than new heatsinks, which is just a bandaid solution), they should also change the case design to something distinctively different. I think it's the only way that they will be able to break that perception. Otherwise, how will you ever truly know (given that most people won't check manufacturing dates) that the one you've got isn't one of the broken ones?

Did anyone read the follow-up yet? I'm disgusted. It's been a long time since I've seen something so completely lacking in honesty and integrity, yet claiming to be so honorable and upstanding. A blog that claims to be campaigning against ill-informed prejudice and misrepresentation of the many by the actions of the few, is openly indulging in ill-informed prejudice and using actions of the few to tar an entire group of people. This is my un-favourite part: Why does that bracketed sentence belong in the main sentence (as indicated by the position of the full stop)? The guy is trying to imply that every one of those "over 50 links" - simply pieces discussing the original piece, taking all stances - is attempting to intimidate the author. Their response after that second clusterfuck (even more comments than the first) appears to be to bury the story by posting 4 different stories in as many hours, each with comments turned off. Why act so proud and defiant? If you are happy to admit your gross ignorance ("Like Kym, the only game I play is the occasional solitaire on my pc and have no interest in playing video games of any kind"), why can't you admit the possibility that you might have been wrong? I guess this is what happens when the world's leaders refuse to have any humility and decency. Why should anyone else?

Certainly by comment 89, the original blog-drooler was claiming the original post was meant "a bit tongue in cheek". Right.

I reckon for most people, their first time is their favourite time. I know mine was (Wind Waker).

Let's make no mistake, Top Trumps is awesome. When I was a sprog, I don't think they'd fully realised the power of franchise licensing, but there was certainly a huge variety! My Marvel Superheroes set is still around somewhere. Macabre happy memory of the day: I played Top Trumps with my grandma when she was in hospital dying of lung cancer. We played 3 identical games, with identical hands, which confused us a lot until I remembered you are supposed to shuffle the deck.

I'd like to think the BBC will approach it with some ambition, but I'm pretty sure it will be a collection of minigames or a platformer with appropriate narrative wrapping. I didn't even need to click the link to know this.

No, I think that sounds awesome. I think what it really needs right now is someone to clear out all the folksy bullshit surrounding it. Have you published anything yet?

Owned on my gaming history knowledge! I have never heard of that Tobal game.

Yeah I would definitely agree with you here. He didn't seem to have a particularly good grasp of what the concept actually says. It seemed more like he'd got a third-hand chinese whispers version that he was working from. He seemed to say some pretty strange stuff like "Gromit has crossed the uncanny valley but he doesn't even look realistic" at one point? And I also agree that it's really over-hyped and over-discussed at this point.

Mini-threadjack: The full trailer for RE5 is fucking stunning. http://www.gamersyde.com/news_4724_en.html These gameplay mechanics: sound excellent too. More than just the ideas themselves, they excite me because Capcom will really nail the execution of them. Also, I can't help but feel they will suffer some misdirected "omg racist!" outrage at some point around release.

It would've been innovative if Zone of Enders/MGS2 hadn't got there several years before, with almost identical shenanigans.

I've got two entries for the Watch ... The first was from "A New Common Game Design Methodology" at the end of the day. These two guys presented an incredibly academic notation system for game design, and it was a really poor presentation (seriously lacking in clarity and detail, and overhyped by the introduction they gave it). But that didn't excuse the first "questioner" in the Q&A afterwards. His hand shot straight up even before they finished saying "any questions". Then he gave a two minute long ramble that could basically be summed up as "your talk was shit and your idea is shit". It was delivered with a complete lack of grace or respect, which just made it so incredibly socially awkward. You can think that stuff, you can say it to your friends in the corridor outside, but it's really totally unnecessary to say it straight to the face of the speakers. My favourite part of it was when the guy, who looked barely 20 years old, started telling the speakers - with over 20 years of games industry experience between them - that they clearly had no comprehension of how the games industry works. My second was David Braben, who was kind of a meta-entry. He was parroting standard dross about the challenge of crossing the Uncanny Valley. Then he started talking about the need to widen the pool of developer backgrounds, saying that too many developers are "socially inept". Then he dropped a real zinger - "how can our games cross the uncanny valley when so many of our developers haven't managed to do that themselves". Ouch. If he was my boss, I'm not sure what I'd be thinking right now. (As an aside, I thought he was then going to provide some substance beyond this, but that seemed to be the core of his point - 'you guys are socially inept, the only hope for solving these problems is to hire someone else'. Pretty dumb for a conference where companies have paid hundreds of pounds for people to actually come and learn something.)

Lol, October? It was B on the GCN version. And you'll never guess what, pressing B and down on the stick spun you round quickly, providing an easy getaway! (Or constant frustration at your inability to run backwards.) The more I play the game, the more I appreciate how tightly interwoven the controls are with the camera, enemy and level design, to create that intense claustrophobia. But that still doesn't change the fact that I feel like I'm driving some kind of vehicle (as in all RE games) rather than controlling a human being.