Messages

10526

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Damn, at least 2010 should be great for gaming :(

« on: July 31, 2009, 11:23:25 PM »

Delays--one right after then other.  It's going a freaking drought this winter and an easy win for GOTY since all the big hits have been delayed until spring 2010.

Think all my 2009 picks have finally fallen into 2010 though I called EB and they still honoring my Red Steel 2 bundle with motion control plus (they made a mistake and listed it at $40 instead of $60 ).

RE and Deadspace is still coming and my cuz is going love TMNT but it's a going be slow year compared to last.

I made this video for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0YP4NtoZp4

  Lots of quality games coming out.

*ahem*

Unless EA decided to make it a 3rd Person Lightgun game instead of 1st person...that Dead Space footage looks like it comes from the original Dead Space, not Extraction.  Perhaps you might want to update that a bit.  I also notice Fragile in there, but the last I heard on that game they were going to "try" to get it out in 2009 but it was in no way certain.  I'd pretty much assumed that got delayed into 2010.

10527

TalkBack / Re: The Conduit Vulnerable to Online Hacking

« on: July 31, 2009, 09:01:09 PM »

So many apologists for High Voltage... there's no excuse for broken code or vulnerabilities. Standard practice is to test these things and find the problems before consumers do. It's hardly complimentary to say that Nintendo has the same issues. If Nintendo made more than one online game per year, maybe they would have accumulated enough experience by now to anticipate these problems and provide a better experience.

Network security is a very difficult task. QA testers only verify (run scenarios and see what breaks), security needs to be validated (predict all possible attack vectors and develop methods to prevent them). Security is completely out of their league. Yes, HVS didn't have skilled staff to write secure netcode but I don't think that kind of lacking skill is uncommon among B-grade devs.

I'm not forgiving it but I'm saying it's not unexpected.

Yep, as a once and future QA tester myself I can verify this, assuming that HVS runs their QA department similar to mine.  The QA tester's job is simply to break the game, and if we can find exploits great.  But those exploits lie completely within the boundaries of what a user can do just with the tools of the average player (controllers, ethernet cable, storage devices, in-game commands, etc.).  Hacking on this scale (actually rewriting code) is completely beyond anything that QA is equipped to deal with.  Even Online-oriented QA Testing is mainly concerned with things like crashes, disconnects, and stat-tracking.  No, this lies at the fault of the programmers at HVS who were in charge of the online code and servers, as it's there job to optimize and secure everything related to the online functionality.

10528

Podcast Discussion / Re: Radio Free Nintendo: Reunion Special

« on: July 31, 2009, 08:15:25 PM »

Nice, two RFNs this week!    *goes to download*  Now you guys just need to have an Episode 103 reunion somewhere down the line. 

10529

Nintendo Gaming / Re: The OFFICIAL Wii rumor thread *bring your own salt*

« on: July 31, 2009, 02:18:08 AM »

wierd choices or beware when animatronics attack

Hey, when Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down the pirates don't eat the tourists!  Or do they...

10530

Nintendo Gaming / Re: The OFFICIAL Wii rumor thread *bring your own salt*

« on: July 31, 2009, 01:45:26 AM »

It looks like Kingdom Hearts without the Nomura hair and zippers.

I thought the same thing, only there's no way in hell Disney would ever OK a Goofy that looked like the one in that concept art.  That thing's the stuff of kids' nightmares, or Michael Bay's wildest dreams. 

What's with the wierd choice of Disney Theme park landmarks sitting on the back on Monstro (?) in that concept art?  The Ear-ful Tower and Hollywood Tower Hotel from MGM (I refuse to call that thing "Hollywood Studios"), Spaceship Earth from Epcot, and Big Thunder Mountain from the Magic Kingdom?  Wierd choices.

10531

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Nintendo - "Wii are confused."

« on: July 31, 2009, 01:37:42 AM »

@broodwars: When Nintendo is in the mood? So it's kind of like when I'm in the mood to play video games; they decide whether we deserve a bone or not. Like that.

Yeah, pretty much.  If I didn't have faith that the good stuff would eventually be coming from Nintendo (particularly Zelda), I'd have sold off my Satisfaction-Deficient Wii long ago and gone completely Hardcore Dominated, Highly Developed, Heavily Destitute (  ) gaming on my PS3.  But every once in a while Nintendo still tosses us a Smash Bros. or Metroid or whatnot.

10532

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Wii need a back-up solution

« on: July 31, 2009, 01:20:01 AM »

All this talk about external hard drives and such... it's all nice - but we need to remember, Nintendo does things the Nintendo way.  If they wanted a hard drive, we likely would have had one by now.  We have an SD card slot.  There's really no need for an external hard drive for backing up your save data when a $10 memory card would work perfectly.

Like you said, Nintendo does things the Nintendo way.  That includes forcing you to replay all your old games to get your save data back, which distracts you from noticing the distinct lack of worthwhile software on their console.  It's like that old NBC catch-phrase: "if you don't have a save file, it's new to you!"

(yes, I was just kidding...mostly...kind of...a little bit.    )

Seriously, I can't wait for someone to ask Nintendo about a backup utility so they have an excuse to say "We don't see the need to develop an SD card backup channel, because we're working on something better!"  Or some such nonsense, anyway.  Like everyone else has said: probably the vast majority of the casual Wii owners play maybe a handful of games on the system, and I don't see they or Nintendo really caring about lost data...especially when it costs Nintendo money to produce and they get nothing out of it.  Maybe with the Wii HD and its massive 1 GB HDD we might see a solution, but I doubt we'll ever see such a thing on the Wii.

10533

Nintendo Gaming / Re: The Grinder: Hunter The Reckoning + Left4Dead

« on: July 30, 2009, 05:07:14 PM »

Valve would buy HVS to keep them from developing on Wii.  Valve doesn't care about Wii.

Gabe wants GAMERS to INVEST in dev projects so that that Valve doesn't have to spend their own money making it!  So that way the video games doesn't exist before there's a customer; it's backwards.  They can shove off.

I'll start caring when they start producing.

I agree with this.  While the Valve employee has a point that the Wii online service just isn't there to accomodate something like the Grinder, I don't think they have a right to comment on another company's Wii project when their own company is ignoring Wii altogether.  Put up or shut up.

And yes, if Valve were to purchase High Voltage they'd just turn around and put them to work making projects for the 360 and PC like every Valve game.

10534

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Wii need a back-up solution

« on: July 30, 2009, 03:03:33 PM »

What the Wii needs is a freaking HDD to save all your data too and to not lock down online game saves. Very good idea though, the PS3 has a similar utility, and when my 360 died 6 times I just took my HDD off and sent in the console and when they came back I plugged it in and everything was there.

PS3 backup utility doesn't backup protected save data, which is like protected save data on Wii.

No, it doesn't but so far I think only a handful of games use protected save data (like Ninja Gaiden Sigma and Street Fighter IV).  I'm getting my PS3 back tommorow, so I guess I'll see if any of my games used protected save data.  Honestly, how hard would it have been for Nintendo to put a USB input on the Wii for external backup use?  It's not like a backup utility is particularly complicated: when I sent my PS3 in for repairs, all it took was to run the backup utility; select the external HDD; and then off it goes.  There's no reason the Wii couldn't have something similar.

10535

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Nintendo - "Wii are confused."

« on: July 30, 2009, 02:58:46 PM »

To Everybody:

Buy Rune Factory Frontier. It's hardcore, it has infinate replay value because the game doesn't freakin' end. It keeps waggle as an optional minimum, for those of you who are picky about this sorta thing (Press A to use your tools/weapons..or waggle..or just use the classic controller and use A, still).

Sorry, but I got my fill of Rune factory with the first game.  I have to agree with what several others have said: the reason the "hardcore games" on Wii haven't been selling is that they're just not that good, certainly not up to par with what Nintendo can produce when they're in the mood.  They're experimental; interesting; and perhaps even moderately entertaining, but they just don't "bring the awesome" I can get on other platforms (and for the record, I'm not a fan of any of the "generic space marine" games).  I just went out today and put down my full pre-order on Metroid Prime trilogy (sorry, it took me a while to find enough games I could bear sacrificing to it), and that's probably the only "hardcore game" I'm buying this year on Wii outside maybe Dead Space: Extraction and/or Silent Hill.  I just have better options elsewhere.

If 3rd parties (and Nintendo as well, for that matter) want my money, they need to step it up and put the same effort into their Wii games that they put into their PS3 and Xbox 360 games.

10536

TalkBack / Re: Resident Evil Series Might See a Re-Imagining

« on: July 30, 2009, 12:16:36 PM »

I'm only caring about RE: On-Rails Sequal (DC) because it covers my favorite RE games (being 2, CV and maybe 4 but I don't know if it's confirmed or not) and my favorite characters. Since Shinji Mikami left, and RE5, Capcom will be burying the series like they did Viewtiful Joe.

We're all better off waiting to see what Mikami whips up at Platnium.

Maybe he'll get to make a game based on the supernatural RE4 version they had working.

I always thought that incarnation of RE4 was awesome, so it'd definitely be cool to see it pop up again.  It was like RE and Silent Hill did a crossover game (how awesome would that be, by the way).

10537

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Wii need a back-up solution

« on: July 30, 2009, 12:10:24 PM »

I'm personally curious why we can't just link our Wiis to a networked computer and transmit our console-locked backup data to them for safe storage, considering the Wii has built-in WiFi.  When I still lived with my folks, they did this all the time with their PCs (my father works for a backup software company).  Yeah, it's complicated; could take a long time to perform depending on your internet connection; and could be abused, but so long as it's console-locked I don't see the problem.  Of course, even my PS3 can't do this for whatever reason (but at least on that system I can backup to an external HDD).

The Wii really does need a competent backup solution, though.  There's no reason that what happened to you should ever happen to anyone with the Wii.

10538

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Telltale says iPhone is more powerful than the Wii.

« on: July 30, 2009, 01:21:21 AM »

I've been reading through the original thread on Telltalegame's site that spawned this thread, and apparently the sticking point with Telltale is the Wii's memory capacity: "88 MB RAM w/ a 3 MB texture memory and frame-buffer" compared to 128 MB RAM on the iPhone.  The Wii trumps it in every other technical regard, but apparently of those 88 MB RAM on the Wii a large portion of that is used by the OS and so the developers can't use it.  They were also complaining about WiiWare's pitiful 40 MB storage cap.  Alright, fair enough but I find it funny that Mario Galaxy (a much more technically impressive game than anything Telltale's ever put out...and probably ever will put out) can run at a flawless or nearly-flawless framerate, and yet Monkey Island apparently can't?

10539

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Telltale says iPhone is more powerful than the Wii.

« on: July 30, 2009, 12:29:57 AM »

Who was it who said that we should take the word of a developer over what other people say in regards to the power of the Wii? it may have been a staff member.

I'm sorry but I just can't take what Telltalegames says seriously on this.  The engine they're using for Monkey Island is the same engine they've been using since Sam & Max: Season 1 back in 2006, and that wasn't even considered a particularly taxing graphical engine back then (and it had framerate problems back then, too).  Are we really supposed to believe that the Wii just can't handle a mediocre 3-year old Adventure game engine?  If a more ambitious and established developer like Square-Enix or whatnot had said this, then I could accept that at some level it could be true.  But with Telltalegames I think it had more to do with them probably trying to directly port their engine over without optimizing it to work on Wii.

10540

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Telltale says iPhone is more powerful than the Wii.

« on: July 29, 2009, 11:08:30 PM »

You know, I like Telltale and respect what they've done bringing back the Adventure genre from the abyss...but honestly, they aren't an incredibly competent development studio from a programming standpoint (even on PC).  I don't see how anyone can take this seriously.  The Wii is dramatically and tragically underpowered, but it's at least better than the frickin' iPhone.

10541

General Gaming / Re: I bought a Super nes today! (also here is zombie Snes)

« on: July 29, 2009, 06:26:43 PM »

On a second look at those pictures, there's really only one response to seeing someone do that to an SNES:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAzACHbW0tI

1:20 mark

Eerrr... I think http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLvXI7Z2Zw4 would be better.

These kids today just don't appreciate the classics.

10542

General Gaming / Re: I bought a Super nes today! (also here is zombie Snes)

« on: July 29, 2009, 05:08:52 PM »

Anyways, you are probably wondering what I mean by "Zombie SNes", well ironically today when I got the abused SNES, I saw this on the internet...





The best stories are the weird stories.

I guess my SNES is luckyer then I thought...

On a second look at those pictures, there's really only one response to seeing someone do that to an SNES:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAzACHbW0tI

1:20 mark

10543

TalkBack / Re: Dragon Quest IX Sells Over Three Million Copies

« on: July 29, 2009, 05:03:27 PM »

I would have expected more, but these are still solid numbers, that i am sure the developers are pleased to see.

They'd just be ready for "disappointing" numbers when the series bombs in North America like it usually does.

10544

TalkBack / Re: Dragon Quest IX Sells Over Three Million Copies

« on: July 29, 2009, 03:21:12 PM »

*insert sarcastic comment about how completely unexpected this is here.*

10545

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Wow, Nintendo this is ridiculous....

« on: July 29, 2009, 03:39:01 AM »

Same up until recently, I don't buy games in store any more I buy them on Steam.

Recently? They stopped using the huge cardboard boxes a long time ago. Well, outside of the Pyramid, that one gives games huge boxes that never had any in first place. It's how I got a huge Bioshock box.

Obviously you've never seen the original Bioshock PC box, which like a lot of PC boxes is probably at least 1.5 x bigger than it needs to be.

It was just a DVD case here IIRC, the collector's edition was larger of course but it also included that figure.

The "DVD case" version came later (which coincidentally was the same version used for the actual disc case in the Collector's Edition, but the original PC release was one of those big clunky PC boxes with just the game in a paper sleeve and some instructions.  I should know...over the course of my time with Bioshock I've actually bought the game 3 times (original PC, CE PC, PS3).

10546

TalkBack / Re: Red Steel 2 Delayed Until Next Year

« on: July 29, 2009, 02:37:56 AM »

Uncharted 2! I can't wait for that game! October 13th!

Due to a screw-up by a Gamestop employee when I picked up my reservation for Infamous (he gave me the pre-order code for both the Uncharted 2 Beta...AND the Uncharted 2 pre-order bonus), I can if I need to but that game does look very good.

10547

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Wow, Nintendo this is ridiculous....

« on: July 29, 2009, 02:24:26 AM »

Same up until recently, I don't buy games in store any more I buy them on Steam.

Recently? They stopped using the huge cardboard boxes a long time ago. Well, outside of the Pyramid, that one gives games huge boxes that never had any in first place. It's how I got a huge Bioshock box.

Obviously you've never seen the original Bioshock PC box, which like a lot of PC boxes is probably at least 1.5 x bigger than it needs to be.

10548

TalkBack / Re: Japan Gets New Club Nintendo Rewards

« on: July 29, 2009, 02:20:48 AM »

I wonder who we're going to have to bribe or extort to finally start getting those awesome exclusive soundtrack CDs over here in Club Nintendo.  Yeah, I like owning legal, official CD soundtracks for my games rather than stuff I don't want like posters and game covers.

10549

TalkBack / Re: Red Steel 2 Delayed Until Next Year

« on: July 29, 2009, 02:17:30 AM »

I'm not getting either title. screw dual analog. I'll probably get Bioshock 2 when it's cheap on the PC.

I'm bitter and angry. The 2009 "year of the gaming suck" started with no Disaster: Day of Crisis and continues with a Red Steel 2 delay.

Don't forget no Fatal Frame 4 as well (which coincidentally led to me just picking up Fatal Frame 2 last week), which was announced not too long after that.  Yeah, I'm more than just a little bit bitter myself, though there are at least a handful of promising Wii and PS3 games left on the horizon for me to enjoy before this year is complete.  And hey...we are getting Fragile over here, and I didn't see that happening when this year began.

10550

TalkBack / Re: Red Steel 2 Delayed Until Next Year

« on: July 29, 2009, 02:02:30 AM »

So Red Steel 2 is going to bomb no matter what?

I don't know.  There's no predicting what on the Wii is going to sell these days when the developer puts actual effort into a game.  I can tell you this, though: I own a PS3 and I don't give a damn about Modern Warfare 2 but probably would have given Red Steel 2 a chance just to see Wii Motion + in action.  That probably puts me in a severe minority but whatever.  But if this game releases next year against Bioshock 2, there's no way Bioshock 2 doesn't get my gaming dollars.

It's a question of competition.  Modern Warfare 2 is an incredibly-strong franchise game that's destined to sell spectacularly, but it is only one game.  You look into next year, though, and you're talking about Red Steel 2 having to compete with 2 or more strong franchise games within its own genre.  You're also looking at over 6 months since the Motion + came out without a single non-sports game to promote itself.  I just don't think that a delay helps this game more than it hurts it.