Posts by Thrik

  • Metal Gear Solid 4

    Quote from dux

    So you buy a game to watch cinematics... and not like, play the game? Get a movie instead? :s

    It's the combination of the cinematics and gameplay that makes MGS so enjoyable for fans; it delivers a story experience much more involving than most games, but is still fantastic fun. Also, the thick storytelling gives some real meaning to what you're doing. They are two mutually integral pieces of the overall experience.

    MGS has always been innovative and done new things gameplay-wise with each instalment, so there's no weight to any argument attacking its gameplay quality. Indeed, it's ideas from Metal Gear that've been the basis for countless other games, including the obvious Splinter Cell.

    MGS has always been an unforgivingly hard game and the cutscenes are a really nice incentive to actually get through the puzzles, long stealth sections, etc. And with the difficulty of some parts, you need a break to just sit back. If you can't understand this and haven't actually played the games, why criticise people for liking it?

  • Metal Gear Solid 4

    Hell yes.

    That may seem ridiculous to a non-MGS fan, but to be honest that's exactly the kind of thing I expect and look forward to in an MGS game. They don't feel so long when you're playing though; I didn't notice that one was nearly 45 minutes long in MGS2, and just remember it as one big masterpiece of game storytelling.

    The best news is clearly the pause ability though. That's the only thing that annoyed me about the previous games.

  • Mirror's Edge

    Yeah, I have to agree that it seems like you're making connections that aren't there.

    The only significant similarity between the two is that she has chin-length hair, which is a huge stretch to even call 'inspiration'. I mean, they're a different race, not dressed remotely the same, and have no significant facial similarities beyond 'female' (although the cartoon woman actually looks a bit manly).

  • Crap artist can't get job, whines about it

    I agree. You clearly implied that any kind of Flash gallery is bad with your post Psycho. IMO they're no different to regular websites in that if they're intuitive, accessible, and load quickly, they're fine. I see no reason to draw a distinction between HTML and Flash when it comes to stuff like portfolios.

    If you'd just said "lol. annoying site to use." then that'd be fine — I'd agree with that.

  • Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction

    Weird, but kind of understandable. The media and articles I saw about Conviction did look remarkably un-Splinter Cell, seeming better suited to some new license.

    I think they tried so hard to do something new that they did in fact end up making an entirely new game, free of essentially everything that drew people to its predecessors. Didn't even look like Sam Fisher.

  • Crap artist can't get job, whines about it

    I suspect he's like many university graduates and expects to have his hand held for him into a job, and for the degree to stand for everything by itself. That may work for some professions (get degree, automatic £££ and job), but the creative ones generally aren't one of them. I've watched a number of people I know go down a similar route of frustration, coming out of long courses but not being that much better than when they went in.

    His point is fair about how work should be done to train those who aren't traditionally obsessed with games to make them, but I think it's also wrong. How many people working in Hollywood and whatnot do you think aren't familiar with films? And how many web designers do you think there are who haven't always enjoyed using exciting/innovative sites? What about musicians who don't love music? Not many, I wager.

    Whether he likes it or not, a critical component of creative jobs is that you put a lot of your own time and passion into making sure you're pushing the envelope of quality forward — your portfolio does have to be powerful. Mapcorians have often made stuff that looks better than industry stuff before they even got a job, rather than desperately trying to hit the bare minimum of quality required to get the job like this guy seems to want.

    I think he's more tragically naive than contemptible, though. He just doesn't understand the way creativity works: it's not taught — it's cultured.

  • To Vista or not to Vista, thats the question!

    I've been using Vista x64 since early 2007 and haven't really had any significant issues at all. All my software and hardware has consistently worked, and my game performance has been butter smooth at all times (partially due to my hardware of course).

    It's certainly not a huge evolution from XP, but it does have some niceties that I've grown very accustomed to. Specifically, the quick-search Start menu, and various Explorer tidbits (especially the breadcrumb folder navigation). The new backup feature is very nice too, which pretty much does what OS X's Time Machine does: lets you go back day-by-day to older versions of every file on your hard drive (or just browse the whole HD as it appeared on a certain date as if it were a folder).

    I couldn't possibly sit here and argue why you should get Vista, but there's no real disadvantage to it. The XP/Vista performance gap was closed with at least NVIDIA drivers quite a while ago, and all your stuff will probably work. The question is: do you fancy something new?

    Whichever you get though, make sure it's the 64-bit version. You cannot use over 3.2GB of RAM (or something in that area) on 32-bit Windows, which is obviously going to inhibit your future plans significantly. Even worse, there's no way to upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit — you'd need to start over once you want more than 3.2GB of RAM

  • Grand Theft Auto IV

    While problems do exist in GTA4, they're nowhere nearly as conspicuous as some sources are saying. I've been playing for ages and I've hardly encountered any issues at all, and the ones I did see were minor dips in the frame rate, a very rare bit of ragdoll weirdness, etc.

    By and large, the animations in GTA4 are absolutely amazing. This is because they've mixed ragdolls with actual animations using Euphoria (procedural animation I guess), resulting in some startlingly life-like movement from pedestrians and Niko alike.

    To be honest, considering the epic level of detail in GTA4 it's incredible it's as bug-free as it is. There's so much potential for you to screw things up just because of how much freedom you get.

    For the most part GTA4 is deserving of its ratings because it's an unbelievable accomplishment from a world depth perspective, and also delivers an extremely entertaining experience. Just don't expect anything completely detached from its predecessors — this is still GTA.

  • They Wonder Why People Don't Make PC Games Any More

    As I see it, if you don't have a console you're really missing out on a lot of what gaming has to offer. I know some people don't mind playing a game months or over a year after it originally came out, and they don't mind coping with a keyboard/mouse in games like GTA even though a pad is infinitely better, but I do.

    I want to be playing new games when everyone is excited about them, and enjoying the latest innovations. And when it comes to innovations and new games, if you lack a console then you're missing a massive chunk of... well, gaming culture. It's like first watching films a couple of years after they came out and they're old news for everyone else — I just don't like it.

    Neither platform is dead though, and IMO if you don't have a PC you're also missing out a huge chunk of gaming culture. Without a PC you don't get to properly experience practically everything Valve's made and a few other key titles too (admittedly not many outside of Valve interest me).

    It's weird that games are split up like this, but it's how it is. It's similar to if the movies were split up into two distinct groups, where you had to pay a membership for watching films at two different cinemas which each have exclusive films. While you can get along happily with just subscribing to one of these cinemas, you're going to be missing out on a lot of exciting films by not subscribing to both. Gets even more complicated if you factor in the 360/PS3/Wii divide too, which is why I'm a proponent of owning everything.

  • Metal Gear Solid 4

    On the bright side, you can pick up a PS2 slim for the money that you save from getting the version without backwards compatibility (the lack of PS2 hardware inside is largely behind the price drop). I was surprised how small the PS2 slim is — possibly even smaller than a Wii?

    Guarantees perfect compatibility with PS2 games anyway, so worth considering.

  • Need a side project, what to do??

    Yes, clauses like that in contracts are pretty much standard fare in creative positions — at least in the UK. The idea is that if you start doing something in your own time that might be competitive with your company, they can either contractually stop you doing it or make you leave. If that clause weren't there, they'd have no legal right to terminate your job.

    In practice it's never really enforced due to a lack of actual conflict between hobby projects and company projects, and if it did come to blows you'd probably choose to leave anyway due to them being such dicks. Companies realise this, which is also why it's rarely enforced. A good company values its employees and their happiness.