LOPcagney

I agree! It looks to me as though Rock Band may be biting off more than it can chew, and being the skeptic I am, I'm looking forward to another addition to a tried-and-true formula. I just don't think I'd be satisfied owning Rock Band and only the guitar and knowing that for all the money I spent, I was only playing half a game.

Were you tipped off, or was this just like Spiderman and his crime sensing abilities... ...except with porn.

Man, Doom RPG was great. The only game I ever bought for a cell phone, and definitely worth the $8 I spent on it. I think I got a good few hours out of it, if not more. I know what you mean about Carmack creating the skeleton of a game and the artists creating the content. The reason I think this will be especially true with Rage is because of the demo, in which it was explained that the new engine would essentially alienate the physical and artistic game worlds (in my own understanding). The people who know what makes a game fun to play could create the levels and then send them off to be edited by the artists, with no effect on the gameplay intended by the first party. It sounds like this may allow Rage to be one of the most innovative (artistically) id games yet.

Isn't it a bit early to comment on gameplay, since, to the best of my knowledge, there isn't any yet? But I thought the rest of what you said was spot-on. John Carmack simply has a different way of thinking about games. He's a programmer at heart, and his formulas for a good game are just that: formulaic. But they work. Just like his rawly simplistic and yet undeniably successful ideas are innovative in their own right, he would never be able to create a more artistically innovative game like Myst or even Half Life 2.

They? I just don't know what's being advertised here. Is this a racing game? Is it a shooter? Like you're comment states, the trailer apparently shows both shooting and driving. I'm confused about what the game will turn out to be, even though it looks like it's pretty far into development already. I kind of feel like I could be excited about it if I knew if it was a racer or a shooter, or even both, but I don't even know what I'm looking at here. I liked Quake 4 alot! It was fun because it was so derivative. Quake for was a good old-fashioned arcade experience, with a predictable boss at the end of each level and that didn't stop it from being any less exciting. Plus the level and enemy design was a HUGE (HUGE) step up from Doom 3. Though the pacing was nothing new, the enemies were varied and the levels were well designed.

"Were you aware? The term 'Did you know?' is copyrighted by a rival publisher." -John Stewart America (The Book)

I've never played any of the other RE games. I agree completely, that this scenario can be handled tastefully and we can't assume the game's creators are racist just because the zombies happen to be in Africa, but what it the context you are referring to? I'm curious, as I'm sure it would strengthen your (and my) position on this issue.

Heh. I guess that was a kind of closeminded statement by me earlier. What I meant (being a PC person myself) was that all the 360 games were coming to PC specifically, and therefore people like me who primarily use their PC for gaming would be smart to turn either to Nintendo or Sony.

What surprised me more was Viva Pinata for Windows. Gears of War too is coming to PC (with exclusive levels and modes), and of course Lost Planet and the Halos. As much as I disagree with their practices, I can't help feeling that at this point, the PS3 has a huge advantage over the 360: that they aren't losing any of their exclusive titles to other systems.

Garry's Mod 10 for Game of the Year The ultimate sandbox experience.

Keys to the City mode looks like a blast.

What sort of DLC did they offer? I don't own the game, I've just played it. I don't even have a 360 but by far that seems to be their advantage over the other two systems: the online.

that was incredible.

oh, that explains it

i actually think it's unbelievable that it won anything for "innovation", though. in all seriousness, the only fun to be had was jumping up buildings and kicking people off them (and I mean specifically those two activities) and the fun's over in maybe a half-hour most. it's just not as well put together as GTA, and gameplay aside, there was nothing really innovative about any of it, except of course, the tie-in with Halo 3 (DanJW is spot-on there)

Best game ever? It has to be Putt Putt Saves the Zoo. As fun as that game was, for me it's a three way tie between: Deus Ex Grim Fandango Riven (undoubtedly the least popular of my three choices, but I loved it just the same)

This is really depressing!: J: Do you think you’re alive? A: Yes, I am sure I am alive. It’s great to be alive, isn’t it? J: No. Haha, but I've heard of this, I just hadn't read it. It's better than I imagined. They raise some interesting points...

I tried Warhammer 40K for a year or so, and all I can say is... YES. Gah. The building and painting of the models was fun an all, and they actually turned out fairly well, but in retrospect, couldn't the gameplay have been effectively duplicated without all the miniatures.

And yet it still manages to look a whole lot prettier than BF 2142. Ahhh, you can't beat good old-fashioned artistic direction.

I remember I was hugely skeptical the first time I heard of a Super Mario RPG. That game was incredible. I don't see this as being too different.

There was a time when I was anxiously awaiting Spore. I couldn't sit still because I just wanted to play Spore all the time. And then it was delayed until 2007, and then 2008, and now late 2008, and I just feel like, if they've completed as much of the game as we've seen so far in the many game play demos that have been released and there's still that much work to be done, there's some essential element of the game that just doesn't work, and we're all going to be disappointed or disinterested when it's finally released. I hope I'm wrong really, but I can't help feeling like something's gone wrong and they're just not telling us.

This week, classes ended and I dragged out American McGee's Alice for the first time in ages to kill time, and I was reminded of how utterly great the game was/is. The graphics haven't aged very badly, and even if they had, the game it paced so brilliantly and the world is so interesting that I'm willing to forget the terrible AI and the bad collision detection in parts. Bottom line is that this is an incredibly creative, surreal and innovative game, even today. Now, since Alice, American's other major "productions" have been Scrapland ("presented by", he may not actually have been involved in the game at all) and Bad Day LA. The former recieved lukewarm reception (and I enjoyed the demo), and Bad Day LA was just utter crap and a downright waste of money. Supposedly the next project he's working on is an episodic series of warped fairy-tales in the same vein as Alice. He's a man that people either love or hate. Is he... A creative and talented game designer, who is most comfortable working with twisted fairy tales; who has the occasional lapse of judgement, but is otherwise an innovative person. Or is he... A self-obsessed hack who is trying to fly all of his future projects off the success of Alice, and whose failures overshadow his one success.

Whoa! I didn't know anyone had heard of F.A.K.K.2! I missed it so I don't know how big it was (or wasn't), but man, I just recently discovered the Heavy Metal animated movie and I love it. It's so weird. It's drawn in that incredible surreal pulp-sci-fi style that's very evocative of cheesy spray-painted murals at shabby amusement parks, if that makes much sense.

I agree 100%. While for it's time Alice was pretty innovative, if a little clumsy, most of what stood out to me as being exceptional was the level design, which is of course what McGee was always famous for. It felt as though (and I don't particularly mind that the game is set up this way) that the story and enemies were tacked onto the world to serve as a motivation to explore the entire game. I found the game world more involved and intriguing than the combat or the storyline.

I mean the action appears realtime but actually consists of turns or phases and attacks and actions all of which happen in turn and with a certain degree of probability.