Posts by Thrik

Yeah, Double Dash was very similar to Mario Kart 64 but just did everything a lot more fancily. Most of the maps were even based on Mario Kart 64 maps, which made for some nice nostalgia.

In fact, nostalgia is another huge factor of Mario Kart for me. It's awesome playing a game absolutely packed with things that take me back to being about 8 years old, but refined; the fact that classic maps are included takes it even further. Some people might see that as boring and lacking inspiration, but I guess you have to enjoy Nintendo games in general to understand (seeing as most are series that've been running for well over 15 years).

It's kind of like how James Bond reused the same elements time after time, but you grew to enjoy that familiarity and convention and thus didn't mind. But of course you wouldn't want every film maker to do it.

Yeah, snaking really pissed me off in Mario Kart DS. It's just not proper racing IMO, regardless of whether or not it's simply using the tools given to you.

I look forward to this because:

[*]
[*:1n4z7q18]I loved Double Dash (GameCube Mario Kart)
[*:1n4z7q18]Online Mario Kart DS is superb apart from the annoying 'lobby' and snaking
[*:1n4z7q18]It has new maps and classics, like Mario Kart DS did
[*:1n4z7q18]It's Mario Kart[/list]

Adverts are one of the most creative outlets on television these days, at least in the UK. Some insane stuff in some of them, especially the CGI in car adverts. Although I always fast-forward through adverts, sometimes they catch my eye and I have to go back to watch it.

This is a good one. Dunno if it's shown outside the UK:

I'll get it because it has online play, which is something I've sorely missed since I got a new router that hates my DS. Mario Kart online is superb.

Good point Fuyro, although I wouldn't expect Linux or Mac users to be doing much gaming on those operating systems in general.

I guess if the idea does have legs though, Valve may retaliate by making Steam work (at least partially) on other platforms. With their market power it'd be a fairly crushing blow to Greenhouse (it seems to be its only appealing factor), and seeing as this is essentially Valve's market I can't see them letting a competitor outdo them.

http://thrik.deviantart.com/

Why wouldn't independent developers just use Steam, which has a far higher adoption rate amongst consumers and thus offers a much greater default audience? Has Steam become too expensive for independent developers or something?

I think a large part of it is that I just don't find the act of exploring a big world particularly interesting in itself, nor do I find the social/status side of it appealing. While I loved doing exploring in adventure games, that's because there was a storyline that tugged at various emotions while you did so, humour, and interesting characters to meet.

I've never been able to see what people actually find good about games like World of Warcraft. There's clearly something there, but I honestly felt no emotion while playing it other than "I want to stop doing this right now" — it truly failed to grab me on any level, ranging from gameplay to story to graphics to scale. Absolutely no aspect of it caught my imagination at all, which is terrible after even two hours (Which might seem like a drop in the ocean to a WoW addict, but is actually quite an intensive gaming session in my opinion!).

I'm fairly sure I saw enough in those two hours to make a decision about whether or not it was for me. If a game fails to please you in a single way after that long, it's not for you. The only entertainment I did divulge was the comical fighting, which consisted of me doing little more than repeatedly pressing a button or few.

I played it for about two hours after it came out and thought it was uninteresting on every level. While the world is very big, I didn't find a single part of it particularly exciting to visit. I also thought the gameplay was completely bland, consisting of little skill or taxing the senses in any apparent way.

Well, they did modify the model somewhat so it's Snake underneath and not Altair — and quite a bit of stuff shown in that trailer is new. Still, you're right: this was clearly for publicity (or rather, to net in non-MGS fans who've played Assassin's Creed), but combining two cross-company stealth games is an interesting April Fools 'joke' and any new MGS4 footage is good footage.

I'm guessing it's a lot cooler if you've somehow never really seen MGS and take it seriously.

Got myself a PlayStation 3 last week and have been playing:

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  [*:ol680ycz]Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Enjoying the thick storyline of this, and the overall tone of the game gives me some serious vibes of

Broken Sword, a classic adventure game. It even superficially looks reminiscent of some parts of Broken Sword 3 (yes, you have to climb those cliffs in Broken Sword 3 ).

[*:ol680ycz]Heavenly Sword. Not got very far into this, but the scale of the combat has been intriguing and it looks like another winning storyline. It makes such a change to see genuinely superb voice acting and whatnot in games after so many AAA titles shipping with absolutely shit voice acting over the past generation or so.

[*:ol680ycz]Gran Turismo 5: Prologue. Disappointed that there's no damage models, but for £17 I've been having a great time with this — in no small part because of the online play, which is a far cry from the offline play and has nutters running you off the road at every opportunity. It's definitely a much purer racing game than most though, so I'll need something like MotorStorm to satisfy my more destructive side.

[*:ol680ycz]Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction. The in-engine cutscenes are amazing, and the gameplay is fun and varied too. There's a lot of scripting going on, but it makes the experience of stuff like the opening city incredible to due to how much is going on around you.

[*:ol680ycz]Assassin's Creed. Much better than I expected after the initial flurry of disappointment following its release. The graphics are awesome, the storyline seems pretty reasonable, the environment interaction and controls are brilliant, and I've been having fun going around doing what I've been asked to do. I imagine it'll get repetitive if it doesn't go beyond listening to conversations, picking pockets, and killing, but it's fun while it lasts.

[*:ol680ycz]Ninja Gaiden Sigma. Think this is really shit to be honest, and not my type of game at all. The graphics are clearly of a last generation and given some superficial improvements due to the excessively clean environments and whatnot, the gameplay doesn't appeal to me at all, and the general atmosphere of the game just turns me off on every level.I also liked the Burnout Revenge demo, so the full version of that will arrive later this week. Got some other stuff on my LOVEFiLM list such as MotorStorm, GRAW 2, Colin McRae: DiRT, Resistance, and Turok. Should have played all of those within a month or so.

Well, it's not fake as such. The two studios did actually collaborate to create this, making it a first-party mod that'll probably never make it into the final release (although it'd be amazing if it were one of the bonus costumes you traditionally get at the end of MGS games).

But we all knew that, right?

You seem to be getting this forum mixed up with EoT, Insta. That or you're slowly becoming a real dick.

Pretty sad story, but at least he got a load of money from the police fundraiser afterwards. I like a happy ending.

Quote from zaphod

I wonder how much phillips pays for something like that? It doesn't seem like it would do a lot of good for phillips, like someone would be shopping for tv's and think hey, I remember having a shootout in that old bombed out 1940's phillips factory, I should see what they have for sale! It also seems like a lot of work for the developers to work that in so I would imagine the situation is much more like "we are going to put this in anyway, lets see if the company will pay us to put their signage up there instead of making up some fake company", Instead of an actual form of revenue where companies can push what they really want to advertise.

Product placement is really about penetrating minds with a given product brand, not the context. From what I've seen in film and television, advertisers aren't really too concerned about how the product is used as long as it fits into the film/programme well (eg: car being used by villain is blown up — BMW makes sure it's one of theirs).

Game advertisement is still extremely immature because it's seen in a very immature light: it must show the product in a positive light, it must be on a billboard or something really prominent, etc. Subtlety and context suitability hasn't really evolved much yet, but it will with time and product placement will become completely normal in games.

Quote from Bl1tz

I still don't know how it's ever going to work in fantasy games without being cheesy as hell.

Then maybe it'd have to just be like films — they arent.

The most potentially dangerous things often are historically the most safe, because everyone knows they can be dangerous as hell and a massive amount of resources are put into keeping them safe.

It's a shame in-game advertising is largely seen as billboards and posters. Movies have been using relatively subtle product placement for years upon years, and for the most part you hardly even notice it even though these brands are being waved into your face. The advertisers who pay for those ads understand that they don't need to be the equivalent of a banner at the side of a football/baseball/etc game. I'd say Battlefield 2142 is probably the most laughable example of this.

Gearbox's attempt is definitely better than any I've seen yet, and a huge step in the right direction.

Not for the future.

I've just summoned a

Quote

tag from my pot of magic.

I'm always disgusted when a game has a pathetic ending, clearly designed to leave it as open-ended as possible. Can you imagine the uproar if Hollywood started regularly doing that, never ending their stories properly until they're satisfied that they can't bleed the franchise dry any longer?

Games should always have a solid beginning, middle, and end — just like any story. It doesn't have to be completely sealed shut with the main characters killed and whatnot, but it should also never feel like a television episode where a glaring cliffhanger is left wide open.

There are few exceptions with films where endings have been left extremely open (Lord of the Rings, Kill Bill), but they still felt relatively non–cliffhanger-like and there was a short time between each film (in comparison to usual, anyway).

Of course this is a pretty moot point when most developers somehow manage to source out the worst writers imaginable, despite the ample number of good ones out there.