Jamba

LMAO Torture ppl into buying it?

Just looked back a few pages and saw the Great Court, nice work Colin. I take it the roof is flat and textured with alpha to make it transparent?

I'm with you man. Cars are big and very dangerous. Don't think anyone really remembers that anymore. I think a lot of people here are just complaining cos they don't have any kind of retrospective.

You hard man. #cough# On my friends bday his mates bought him an £18 dirty pint. It had spirits, beer and no mixers in it but nothing apart from that. It smelt like a beef korma. It was wrong.

Yeah but lets face it you can only say that about Superman because there are few instances where he would get hurt. He goes in even when he knows hes going to get hurt anyway. Plus we all know that what hurts Superman really is an ongoing sense of isolation and loneliness.

I don't even listen to Matt anymore, he likes stirring too much and not to be harsh about Bozon but from what I've read of what he writes and the way I've seen him act in audio and video from IGN he doesn't seem like the smartest guy ever. We get more inteliigent speculation here tbh.

True. My only worry is that they run out of ideas and the advertising stops being of the smart original kind and just gets annoying and repetitive. Imagine Xmas when we could have the Metroid and SMG advertising as well. They will need to change to hook of the adverts completely.

So the real arguement here is whether the naming convention of "Superhero", "super-" and the like are used correctly. Itsn't it? I think the convention has become diluted and confused. To me (using the supernatural ability definition) Batman isn't a Superhero but is a Hero; Joker is just a villain; Venom is a SuperVillain and Spawn is a (wait for it) Super-Anti-Hero. And Iron Man? Well he's just a dick.

Hope they somehow don't publish Condemned 2 now. Hope the money goes to someone else.

Absolutely Zechs. The problem is that the industry has forced those 2 camps to form, creating a massive rift in between. The broader appeal consoles need to bridge that so we can get to a place where we have a spectrum between hardoce and casual. Maybe then we can get rid of these stupid terms.

This has cropped up a hot topic recently as a result of comments from Sega and Wedbush Morgan. So I thought we have a thread for debating what the new gaming audience is and how the industry is/should approach them. I had an exam last week, in which I wrote an essay replying to the comment "Are video games bad for your health?" So after listing a lot of the negative physical and mental symptoms of playing games I started to counter my own points. After writing about dance mats, GameTrak and the benfits of social gaming I wrote a LOT about the Wii. Much more than I thought I would. As a system alone it almost destroys all bad health symptoms (if the user wants it to be a healthy experience). The design of the controller, the more physical nature of the software and the fact that Nintendo (and hopefully 3rd parties soon) are actively pursuing fitness software are really important factors. This led me to realise that the Wii addresses almost all of the persistant and absolute reasons why people don't play games. People naturally enjoy playing games, we do it every day in our lives and it is part of how humans learn effectively and doing so gives us pleasure (I suggest reading Raph Koster's A Theory of Fun for Game Design). So there must be reasons why people don't play video games. Inaccessible control systems, being bad for your health, inaccessible game design or subject matter, a reclusive tendancy and "waste of time" have all been serious reasons why people don't play. But the Wii has addressed these individually. Gaming can be healthy, social, easy to enjoy. You can use it for helpful things as well, like surfing the net but with the right software it can be good for playing helpful games or more applicable mental exercise (I'm looking at you Brain Academy and Cooking Mama!) in terms of not being a waste of time. But people say that the Wii doesn't have good graphics or some of the online capabilities that the other systems have. This is true, however does it matter? To Nintendo and in terms of the Wii "winning" this generation then yes. But to the average person in the new gaming audience (which should be everyone alive and able) then I'm not so sure. Also these are comparitive statements between systems and show no evidence of changing people's habits from one generation to the next. Expanding the definition of what gaming can/could be has far more impact. For example, people don't (and remember we are talking generally here) disciminate against handhelds for their worse graphics. If you want a handheld, you get fun handheld gaming, regardless of the graphical capability in comparison with a console. Ever since the early days of games, the industry has driven deeper into what games are and only broadened their definition or appeal very slowly. I think this needs to change. We need to address why people aren't playing in equal measure to refining what we already have. Thankfully, I feel we are approaching a time when this is the case but the importance of this balance should be recognised and supported industry wide.

Thanks for bringing this up 'Deck cos I was gonna make a thread about this. I agree with you entirely about the fact that the industry still has it's brain in the hardcore headspace rather than trying to expand it's influence. I've said on other threads that the Wii is designed in such a way that it caters for normal everyday people, a group which actually doesn't include most people on this forum. Thing is that it does cater for us as well. So you have 2 categories. Companies like Sega (stupid comments really) are not seeing that the normal people who have bought the Wii wouldn't have bought ANY system if it was like the other 2. They have to stop thinking about designing games based around power and capacity and think about design. The fact that the guy from Wedbush Morgan says that we need to listen to Sega because they have big, pulling IPs like Sonic just made me laugh because it illustrates my point. Sonic is tired and new gamers would hate it. It's badly designed and still works best in 2D with only 1 button and a D-Pad. It's the perfect example of how Sega can't see past the end of their nose when it comes to designing something new and accessible. As far as I'm concerned it's been a long time since they designed anything of any worth creatively. They just don't understand and think graphical updates of broken games will sell to a wide audience. That's the area of hardcore stupidity buying. Oh yeah there is an awards ceremony for games. The BAFTAs. They made it "as important as the TV or Movies" last year but it still got no coverage or publicity. If award ceremonies don't get that, whats the point really?

Why did everyone like the second one so much? I thought it really lacked most of the qualities of the first game and took it away from its roots (Prince of Persia almost entirely in my eyes). As Aimless has already suggested there was far too much combat and due to the very simple nature of the combat it was tedious rather than interesting. Oh yeah and no tombs....

Couldn't agree more. Their thread of logic just doesn't make full sense: Playing computer game in which you shoot aliens (a part of which is set in a church) would make you associate the church with violence? And therefore undermine the church's efforts at gun crime? Uh weh? You can't make an internationally released game which may have some psychololgical effect on a relatively small community. And also it's not their responsibility really to help people who a re clearly psychotic who get hold of their game. Anyway. Now worries for Sony. The crux of the issue is that they have the rights to depict it and you are shooting aliens not people. Sony have the best gaming lawyers in the universe. Crush maul destroy and win for Sony.

Also mate on Goodge Street there's another shop, can't remember what it's called. And the road CEX is on is called Rathbone Place (can remember it from the receipts )

Thing that bothers me is the graphics. Why is everything so goddamn brown!!!!! I thought we'd done with that last gen. The actual movie looks really colourful.

People in the industry use it frequently to describe a section of the market (in terms of customers). These people have different attitudes towards games, so they have different gaming needs and will spend money in different ways. They will also be receptive to different types of media and advertising. I'm talking about a hardcore audience. I think you've got the wrong end of the stick about what I'm saying but hey. This is the last msg i'll write about it.

It's an industry accepted term, that's why I used it. I'm sure that there is a definition somewhere but I can't be arsed to find it.

K. Honestly, most of these complaints are really petty. "Channel every month please!" You go program a new channel every month and then translate it into a multitude of languages while testing it (online and offline). Sheeesh. As for people complaining about Miis. The console has been out for just about 6 months. Have a little patience. And here's one for all of you to bare in mind, especially the people who want the Wii to be more gaming orientated. The console is not aimed at you, fool. It is meant to be consumer friendly, not a hardcore system. If you don't like it then keep your Wii for playing you Nintendo games (and for nothing else) and go get a 360 with XBL. You want hardcore, then go get it. Just stop whining about the fact that Nintendo can't make miracles happen.

Yeah you are smug. Maybe that's because it's not about who wins. My point was that it was not Sony who dropped the deal due to the fact that the technology was out of date. The relationship went sour and the drive was produced by someone else (Philips according to the above). Sony still tried to make hardware after this for the SNES, so it couldn't be them leaving the relationship behind. (Which was my point).

Your Wiki quote is innacurate. Nintendo dropped their link with Sony for making the drive for the SNES, instead partnering with another company (Panasonic, I think...). Sony went on to try and create a drive that would play stuff for the SNES anyway (seemingly as a 3rd party) but due to technological setbacks failed. The research efforts and data (not to mention mallice) went into making the Playstation.

Errrr i don't. They need to sort out the light source on the remote, it doesnt fit the rest of the picture and makes it crappy. Boo-hiss etc.

Harribo, you're a legend just for that sig btw. Owls ftw

Erm.. hi? Rest of you: just cos shes a girl

All of them do apart from Bumblebee. Believe me from a storywriting point of view it definitely makes sense. 26th July ish in UK I think. Maybe 27th