Taylor

You really should play games before regarding them as giant development fuck ups. Neverwinter Nights does not have any gleaming graphical flaws, has a strong atmosphere and, unlike Dungeon Siege, is not a constant, linear, storyless trek through repetitive forest sections against 5 monster types with an assortment of scaling factors and colour tints with the occasional underground or cave venture. Neverwinter Nights did exactly what it set out to be, and that’s not Baldur’s Gate, it’s an adaptation of AD&D that doesn’t blow goats. It even makes levelling up easy despite the staggering amount of options and skills available to your characters. Neverwinter nights had an immense amount of lore, there were limitless amounts of interesting quests, alternative ways of completing them and NPC’s worth talking to who weren’t blacksmiths; whereas Dungeon Siege was basically a hike from A to B through a world with no forked roads. Dungeon Sieges only real saving grace was multiplayer and the multiplayer world (whose highlight was crossroads, fucking innovative or what) as hitting things with sticks alongside a buddy is always fun. But then Neverwinter Nights has a massive Dungeon Master system where one bodiless player can control and create all entities in the map real-time for the other players contain therein. And you ridicule Morrowinds class system when Dungeon Siege’s class system is this: You pick one of two character models. Three in multiplayer.

Well, it's an 'animé' style, I don't think anybody has managed to produce that in 3D without it looking retarded, bland or retarded and bland. With the exception of Oni, of course, which was only so-so. Edit: OMGTHESPRITES.

The absence of a "warning: addictive" label on Disgaea. But more to the point, why the developers of that game did not decide to improve the graphics engine, it is so blatantly a game first intended for the PS1 that did not undergo changes when they changed systems. Even increasing the resolution would’ve helped enormously. The sprite characters (despite their animations being very low on frames), were appealing in their own way, though, changing those to 3d models probably would’ve made it fugly. If they had made it contain more graphical prowess that game would've got a lot more players, and it's gameplay is extremely addictive. It could've been a SUPER MEGA HAPPY FUN HIT rather than a "sleeper hit"

Yeah right, where I work I use a 233mhz machine that groans like it's going to explode when I turn it on, I have to restart it like 5 times and it's very unnerving since the last computer I had that did that died, but not before sending sparks flying out of the fan vent and setting my friends stack of paper on fire. And don't get me started on the work.

Where's the fairytale elements? It just seems surreal (not that there's anything wrong with that, it's cool). There's a gingerbread house, and?

It should be either counter-terrorism or WW2.

I wish I was you.

Single player games rock ass, you fascist.

Well redoing the sphere grid meant mapping out a entirely new one with +4 spheres, clearing away the shrapnel with the aptly named Clear Spheres; which even I think was tedious and I really liked FFX. And although I stand behind my point that Penance > Weapons, this is most definitely getting pointless. Nothing beats FF fans arguing about which is best, it's one of those things that plagues every board and nobody, even those discussing it, really gives a shit. Back on topic: Devil May Cry had a bad ending, briefly summed up in the acronym “wtf?” In fact the entire story was pretty pathetic, especially the second one, but that’s beside the point, really, when Devil May Cry is all about shooting and slashing the smeg out of everything. And it does it well. I guess it's like Dead or Alive in a way, no character in the entire game has a story that's interesting and certainly no character has one that makes sense or ends with a conclusion you care about, but it doesn't matter because Dead or Alive is all about gravity-defying breasticles.

Odin didn't work on bosses no, but if you remember the dark aeons had no purpose but to test your mettle, using instant-kill summons on them to say "that was no challenge" kind of defeats the point. You might as well just not fight them at all. And given you mentioned equipment but not the more obvious and harder task of redoing the entire sphere grid I would venture a guess that the amount you insta-killed was more or less all of them (Yojimbo goes by a % of the gil you have, not a set amount).

So you're looking for difficulty and so you use the one-hit kill Aeon and cross your fingers to win your battles? Makes sense. And by the way: Odin. And Yojimbo doesn't work on Penace (not that you'd want to instantly kill Penace, you have to spend the battle plundering his assistants items). There's a degree of skill need to beat the games ultimate bosses (who are there only to test your mettle so why you cheated past them is beyond me). Your arguement that do beat them you just need to wear decent stuff is extremely flawed, decent stuff is needed to stand toe-to-toe and the best stuff (+ribbon) nobody is going to get without beating them.

I get the feeling you haven't fought the Dark Aeons. Even with 255 accuracy I have trouble hitting Anima without Aim, Luck and Jinx all about the place (even then I cross my fingers). And even if it was just a matter of getting the best equipment (and it most certainly is not, redoing the entire sphere grid is nearer the mark), getting the best equipment in FFX is a colossal task; 3 lots of 99 Dark Matter for Ribbon? Tar, but no Tar. You easily could've constructed a kill-all materia setup in the time it takes.

The Dark Aeons in FFX > Weapons. And I am prepared to hold down shift and . to stress that point. FF9 isn't a bad game really, but it's very... flamboyant (gay) and starts off very tediously. I hated it the first time through, gave up without defeating the final boss on account that I just couldn't be arsed anymore. However, going back to FF9 I found it a lot more enjoyable. I guess it was mainly because I had put up with 40+ hours of stupid characters already and was immune on the second play. Uber FF9 Spoilers: You'd think they couldn've at least hinted at the final bosses existence once in the entire game, no? I would say they panicked and didn't know what to put in the 3rd slot of the obligatory 3-stage final battle sequence, but then the 1st stage was pulled out of there arse too! So I’ve chased after this protagonist for half the motherfucking game and when I catch up I suddenly find two omniscient beings with the exact same nihilistic goal. Well that certainly was lucky, folks, because if we hadn’t chased that fruitily dressed Sephiroth clone all the way up here we never would’ve known of their existence, let alone their devious plot to wipe out the entire motherfucking universe. And you know the characters are fucked up when the central characters tail is a plot element signifying he’s from another goddamn planet but you don’t take the blind bit of notice because every single person who joins up is a deranged misfit.

Just so you know: Return of the Jedi was originally going to be called Revenge of the Jedi, but Lucas decided that Jedi are good and thusly don’t take revenge so he changed it to "return." But the Sith, of course, are bad and can take revenge; it's a little homage for all the Star Wars geeks out there.

All the demos of FF I've played sucked great big donkey dick. One had the intro for FF7, that is an intro that was nothing like the actual game because it got changed for sucking; the other was just the Battle Arena mini-game that crippled your character after each fight to increase the difficulty. The Battle Arena required a lot of preplanning and knowledge about the game so throwing someone new to the game with random equipment into the fray was most certainly not a good idea. Although after FF7 they certainly did become more lenient and you didn't have to flinch to get into one, if you hate random battles then you're not going to like FF because it is, after all, either battles, talking to people or watching amazing FMV. With a proper plot and everything! I would recommend Chrono Trigger via emulator if you find Final Fantasys random battle system tedious, might ease you into things. Just don't, whatever you do, start with FF9 or FFX-2. Edit: The upcoming FF12 has a different battle system, enemies to randomly appear but there is no change to the 'battle engine' fights are also a lot more strategic and operate more like FFT. Of course there's also a woman with Bunny Ears, which was cute on the gamebody but looks really fucking strange on a 3d model and a cool looking guy with a rifle who spoils everything by wearing tacky plastic coloured rings and thousands of braclets. Ho-hum.

Silent Hill 2 had a great set of endings, although all of them were ultimately very depressing (but it is Silent Hill).

Peon -> Op -> Master -> Left -> Hi, I'm back -> Peon. Woo-woo.

Don't you mean "Ghosts and Goblins" ? :! Yes I do. I've been playing too much Warcraft 3 methinks. And if you KNOW Aeris is going to die you obviously don't get the full effect. It was a really well done sequence; there aren't many games that can match that. Especially ones with such shoddy graphics and quassi-midi music. Edit: Holy shit, Darkplace signature. Edit 2: More faggotry FF8 was great, I thought it was better than FF7 in a lot of places. But it just got stupidly easy if you spent the tiniest amount of time building up your characters or used Squalls limit break. I remember my Zell took out every single monster in the final area (except omega, of course) and whenever he got low health he PUNCHED HIMSELF IN THE FACE for a full 9999 again. Unlike FF9 where they went back to their roots where levelling up sessions were mandatory, and all the levelling in the world couldn’t prepare you for that hilarious section where you head to the northern continent, plough through endless snow, into a city carved of ice at the foot of a looming snowy mountain wherein you equip all your characters with anti-ice gear and fire spells and head inside to find A FIRE-THEMED DUNGEON LOADED WITH CREATURES THAT USE FIRE SPELLS AND MAKE YOUR CHARACTERS DIE IF THEY MOVE.

It's basically just GTA3 with new bells and whistles, I imagine they're running out of bells and whistles to add now.

Look! We're doing stuff too! Ignore Doom 3!

The worst ending is, and always will be, the original Ghouls and Ghosts. You've just toiled through one of the most frustrating games there is and what do you get? "Congraturation" (note the spelling) and then the game loops.

You can buy the animatrix for £5 you cheap git.

It's Slapshot, you should make it on principle alone.

You can sketch down a decent map layout in about 10 minutes in any editor once you know the fundimental concepts of it, then it can take a while to do the entity work depending on what you're working on, it's only graphical prowess you are refering to, so you can hold yourself as better than other mappers when you've creating a nice looking tree by hand, while missing the point these are the bells and whistles that go on top of the design you've created. What? Look at the screenshot. That's one trigger (although the frontend for it) and there are several more down the side; I have an array of 10 spawn points, it checks if the spawn point is alive, if so it takes out 2 units from an array of units (depending on level) and spawns them (3 melee, 2 ranged), then it has a 1 in 5 chance of spawning a 'rare' unit and a 1 in 5 chance of making a random unit have 4 new abilties, higher scale and colour tint. I also have a heap of other triggers for the introduction cinematic, the undead spawning (more complex) custom abilities (player casts a spell, it stops it and the effect is done by trigger work). Each unit is given a path to follow, there is 5 'corridors' each with 4 checkpoints to make the units run down in a straight pth without crossing over or stopping. Explain exactly how someone is going to put all this into a command button? The frontend IS as simple as Blizzard could've made it.

Mapping is going to involve more model detail opposed to brush detail, but because of the physics, shaders, materials and other new technology (lighting in doom3 is going to be a lot harder because it's dynamic, for an example) the actual brushwork you do create requires much more attention. Ultimately mappers are going to HAVE to learn to model, yes. But it doesn't stop there; the entity system most of us are use to is on the way out too, scripting is going to be something most new engines have. I personally love script but it is something pretty hard for some people to understand, HL2 doesn't include script though, given that it probably doesn't want to alienate HL1 mappers. I mean I used to map for HL1 as most of you know, nothing released I'm remotely proud of (it's popular in it's own little blocky niche) but I'm sure most would agree I knew what I was doing. When mentioning warcraft 3 I got lol'ed at because people assume it's just terrain generation, it's not until you scratch the surface and see things like the 10,000 lines of script, completely new unit and entity sets that you realise that it's a pretty advanced versitle editor - but on the surface people just assume "height map -> convert = map" (it doesn't even support height maps, but that's beside the point). I got the terrain done in 2 days, spending 2 weeks in the trigger editor IS 2 weeks of level design, in fact I much prefer injecting maps with new diverse gameplay via. triggers than spendings 2 hours arranging { brushes into a tree. The newer engines operate much in the same way, the main visual aspect is achieved much easier; but to create something unique/advanced you're going to have to dabble in materials, shaders, modelling and scripting. And you know what? This is a good thing as it allows newer mappers to create what they want easier, while giving the advanced mappers more stuff to play with. (screenshot is actually the front end to the script, much easier for looking at that 100 lines of text, mind)