Wrestlevania

A colleague at work is very much into this style of music; I'll try to remember to ask her tomorrow if she's in the office.

That sort of crap usually targets the stuff that gets rid of it in my (mercifully limited) experience. Always worth updating that stuff too though.

...just make sure you untick the stupid Install the Yahoo! toolbar option if you choose to install the latest version. Otherwise, it's a great utility for getting Windows into good order--including the deletion of all the meta crap from the recycle bin, for files you think you've deleted.

THIS IS NOT ABOUT DANCE MUSIC. You're taking the thread title too literally! Oh quit making excuses and post, you pansy. I've never met another person in meatspace who loves the particular genre of music I favour most (i.e. Progressive House). And Marek's the only not-real person I've met who likes it, whom I've gotten to know beyond simple blog comments about same. So come one, come all. What music are you listening to a lot at the moment? And don't fart out some nondescript allusion to a particular genre--we need artist names and albums, damnit! Another example: I'm listening to Editors a lot at the moment too, both their The Backroom and An End Has a Start albums in fairly equal measure.

From the original thread: I think this is nothing more than blanket ignorance/laziness on the part of certain media people, because it's a more technical sounding term than "shooter" (or "run and gun" as Dan mentioned in the original thread). And because it's a convenient, recognised term to aid pigeon-holing by lazy journalists. As a mainstream example, several of the 1UP Yours podcast staff are particularly guilty of this, insisting on refering to Gears of War as being an "FPS genre" game. Which is a double misnomer: It's not played in the first-person perspective "FPS" is not a genre - it's a format!

Absolutely! I was very impressed with Bungie.net's services. Here are a few shots I snapped last night, taken from a co-op game I played mid-week: Really pleased with the sort of results you can get using the Theatre. Certainly will. I've only played a handful of multiplayer, non-co-op games so far, but they're great fun. It's good to have someone else I know to play with though--I daren't venture out onto the pub servers on my own...

It's looking that way to me; you'll need to explore each scene, getting used to the events that happen and the timing required. Once you've gotten a general feel for it early on, you should be able to move through other scenes with relatively little trial and error, depending on the complexity of the environment of course; things like those sliding crates in the main demo video looked like they could be tricky.

Remember: your Steam login is not your Steam Community ID. You need to need to manually create your Steam Community profile as a separate process.

Sent, but there's evidently still some interface funk with Steam Communities. So let me know if your invitation does/n't turn up.

Eurogamer also split their single review into two parts, effectively creating a double feature--4 pages instead of the usual 2 (for premium games anyway). Sure, they ended with one score as always, but I think they justified it well by reviewing it as a complete package of two very different games effectively. Anyway, I'll watch this latest installment of Zero Punctuation sometime tomorrow and post thoughts then. This apparent steady decline in quality bothers me though; I'm wondering if the weekly schedule is making things rather forced...

It's definitely an interesting blend, but I'd say the actual act of just holding your arm out in front of you isn't the game -- it's the imagery you're watching that's the game and that's in the third-person.

I'm not entirely sure I grasped your "1 pixel wide" example enough to give you an informed answer. But on a somewhat related note: the early id Software and 3D Realms shooters were rather unfortunately described as "2.5D", because of how their reasonably sophisticated 2D image manipulation / offset rendering technologies simulated pseudo-3D spaces.

In terms of implementing what we're trying to portray to the user, in this particular example I would say: yes, it does.

What?! Two words: Another World.

Ack, again with the Limbo! It is a very beautiful-looking game though, so I'm not really cross that people are still keen to know more about it. Last rumour I heard was that it was bound for consoles, as a downloadable title, sometime in early 2008.

...which implies perception of depth as a necessity, meaning it's technically impossible to have a 2D FPS it seems.

OK, this does definitely screw with semantics - but in a more meaningful and interesting way. Thinking about it, I was coming at this particular circumstance based on the technology used to implement the experience, not strictly the perspective being illustrated. So, given the necessity to infer perspective and depth of field - however crudely - is there really such a thing as a true two-dimensional first-person shooter?

There are more than a couple of them out there...

Yeah, definitely. The definition offered earlier, regarding the different "person" perspectives, holds up here perfectly. It's just that there were so few first-person games before 3D became so prolific that it wasn't necessary to make the distinction. And don't forget the video gaming popularity increase too. So, as the audience continues to widen and diversify, the associated language needs to become richer and allow for greater specificity.

As childish as it may be, I was inspired by Ben...

No, sorry: bullshit. Max Payne is far more twitch-based throughout than Gears of War is at its most frenetic. And nobody refers to that series as being FPS. You've not only shot your argument in the foot with this, you've taken both of its legs off as well. Ergo, your argument has no legs.

What of the possibility that it might detract from the overall experience?

I've no idea. Just a general observation of good game design.

Oh for sure! I wasn't meaning to imply it's a unique console-only experience, just something that's accessible and fun, and built into the retail package for everyone to play right from the start. Many people just aren't apparently aware of this particular game type or how much fun it is. -~-~-~-~- In other news: eljay, my friend Scotty (registered on Thumbs but yet to decloak) and myself played Campaign on 'Legendary' last night and it was great fun. Hard as nails, but not frustratingly so; it's apparent why you've failed and how you could perhaps tackle a particular situation in a different way next time. Also, the co-op respawn in Campaign mode is really smart. You only have to restart from the last checkpoint if you all die within a very short period of time. Otherwise you warp back in as soon as there's a moment's lull in the combat. Really keeps things flowing nicely and is a credit to Bungie's design team.

You're on! "On rails" traditionally means you have no meaningful control over your character in the game, just what they shoot at and when. Time Crisis and House of the Dead are the epitome of this. I think it's unfair - and somewhat hobbling - to call games like Half-Life etc. "on rails" because that doesn't account for either the exploration or 'fuck about' factors well designed games like that typically offer the player. And, playing devil's advocate, while more straight forward shooters such as Halo 3 are much more tightly directed, channelling the player down a very specific, obvious path, the game still gives you enough freedom to deviate and break the rules somewhat.