Messages

151

Nintendo Gaming / RE: I want!

« on: September 13, 2007, 11:37:43 AM »

I wish I knew enough about electronics to do something cool like that.

152

TalkBack / RE: Wii Overtakes Xbox360 In WorldWide Sales

« on: September 13, 2007, 11:28:54 AM »

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third party support

I would argue that third-party support is deficient right now because of the fact that very few developers were anticipating that the Wii would do any better than third, or at best tied for second, this generation. If you want verification, you can go to any mainstream gaming website (or even many business websites) and look through their archives for analyst predictions. The general consensus seemed to be Sony keeping the lead, MS possibly tying them for second, and the Wii a distant third again. People said that the controller was nothing more than a gimmick, the console was significantly underpowered, the unimpressive online service would play a role in keeping them last, etc.

Now, if you were the person working for a studio in charge of deciding what platforms you were going to develop for next generation, and what games you were going to develop, and you were making these decisions months before the Wii launched, what would you logically think? Probably something like this: "PS3 is probably going to have a huge audience, and the 360's lead is rock solid, so let's develop our cinematic, big-budget FPSes, RPGs, and traditional franchises for those two consoles. Wii sounds interesting, but Nintendo is going to have to work real hard to gain back marketshare, and the hardware is weak, and the controller is unproven, so let's do some cheap-to-develop casual games for the system or some second-tier franchises so that we can call ourselves platform-agnostic." Why would you do otherwise? How would you justify developing big-budget games for the Wii to the person in charge of greenlighting projects?

It doesn't end there, though. Even after the Wii was released, developers had no reason to believe that initial Wii sales would sustain themselves through the holiday season and beyond. They weren't going to make a snap decision to start devoting serious resources to the Wii when millions of dollars worth of development money was at stake. So that's another couple of months after the release of the Wii where developers still didn't have a good reason to start spending large amounts of money to support the Wii.

It's been what, ten months? How long does it take to make a really good game? Not eight months, not necessarily a year, but quite a bit longer. So I think people have a good reason to be skeptical of claims that the Wii is 'not living up to its third-party potential'. In another couple of months, we'll be in a better position to judge- there will be new product announcements, commitments, etc. Maybe events will prove or disprove this argument. Maybe third-parties will stay away from the console for good, at which point this argument becomes null and void. But saying that 'Nintendo has dropped the ball on third-party' at this point in time is shooting blindly into the dark.  

153

General Gaming / RE: Bioshock

« on: September 13, 2007, 11:10:33 AM »

Because dual-analog console n00bs make more noise than PC gamers.

154

TalkBack / RE: Wii Overtakes Xbox360 In WorldWide Sales

« on: September 12, 2007, 05:03:48 PM »

Does this mean we finally get some unless you're Kairon real honest-to-goodness JRPGs?

155

Nintendo Gaming / RE: Predict the Daily Update Thread.

« on: September 12, 2007, 02:29:56 AM »

 I predict: a stage update tomorrow. (9/13)  

156

Nintendo Gaming / RE: Metroid Prime 3 Revolutionized

« on: September 12, 2007, 02:28:27 AM »

I absolutely love the soundtrack...is there anywhere I can get a CD version?

And does anyone want to trade green vouchers?

157

TalkBack / RE: REVIEWS: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

« on: September 11, 2007, 03:36:26 PM »

Really? I got to try that sometime.

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They need to save those space battles for Factor 5 to do when they start whoring out the Metroid franchise again.

I'm holding out for a good, original IP arcade space shooter. Just not anytime soon.

158

TalkBack / RE: REVIEWS: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

« on: September 11, 2007, 03:31:38 PM »

I thought you were supposed to be able to kill bad guys with it, or something.

On the topic of space battles, do the combat HUD/manual thruster controls in the ship get utilized at any point? I kind of remember using the thruster at the very beginning, but that was all.

159

TalkBack / RE: REVIEWS: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

« on: September 11, 2007, 03:14:21 PM »

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Lots of missed potential in controlling Samus’s ship

Definitely. As of now, the only thing the ship has been good for, besides saving, plot advancement, and going from world to world, was getting beaten to death by that giant robot bounty hunter thing.  

160

Nintendo Gaming / RE: Predict the Daily Update Thread.

« on: September 11, 2007, 03:08:59 PM »

I predict: a stage update tomorrow. (9/12)  

161

TalkBack / RE:Wii Zapper Details

« on: September 11, 2007, 03:07:42 PM »

What would you guys say to something like this? Apparently the two pieces come apart, which means that it might be easier to use. And it is third-party, but it's pretty hard to mess up a piece of molded plastic with no electronics whatsoever.

162

General Chat / RE: Roomba = Man's Best Friend

« on: September 11, 2007, 02:14:33 PM »

Not to make any judgments, but on what basis are you comparing an automated vacuum cleaner and a cell phone?

163

Nintendo Gaming / RE: Sakurai's List

« on: September 11, 2007, 12:01:08 PM »

Make Giygas an Assist Trophy. He makes the screen dissolve into static, ruins your game DVD, and formats your Wii's internal memory.  

164

General Gaming / RE: Lair is this gen's Mario 64

« on: September 11, 2007, 11:44:08 AM »

Money quotes from all three of their reviews so far:

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Lair could very well be this generation’s “Mario 64?. With greater use of motion control than any Wii game and better graphics than any 360 game I think it’s safe to say we have a candidate for game of the year right here.

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Sony have also come up trumps with providing dedicated servers for your Warhawk gaming pleasure with more servers coming up every day to meet the huge demand for the game...Warhawk is set to become the multiplayer game of this generation and has set a very high standard for future titles such as Halo3 and COD4 which may find themselves lacking in the diversity and sheer enjoyment that can be had with Warhawk.

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I also wonder how much better the graphics would’ve been had they not been compressed to fit on a DVD...To conclude, let this game [Bioshock] cook in the oven just a little bit longer and wait for the superior PS3 version.

 

165

General Gaming / RE: Lair is this gen's Mario 64

« on: September 11, 2007, 11:35:04 AM »

This is the same bullsh!t website that savaged BioShock and said 'wait for the [non-existent] PS3 version'.

Also, I like how Penny Arcade threw in a random MP3 reference in the middle of their Lair comic series. I was just playing that part of the game today.

166

General Gaming / RE: Bioshock

« on: September 11, 2007, 12:13:22 AM »

From: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6178502.html

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While opining on the GTA development cycle, Zelnick said, "I would say probably roughly an every three year [release] schedule would be optimal. ... I expect we would apply roughly the same strategy to BioShock, because BioShock is shaping up to be a very important franchise. I don't was to say more than that about BioShock because I certainly don't want to jinx it, but I feel awfully good about where that is going."

"We made BioShock with lots of time, effort, and care....NOW LET'S MILK IT FOR ALL IT'S WORTH!!!!! LOLOLOLOL!!!11!!!111!oneoneeleven"

167

Nintendo Gaming / RE: Factor 5 dissapointed in developers effort in the Wii's graphics

« on: September 10, 2007, 05:40:15 PM »

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...and especially UNDER a giant fairies legs.

So we've gone from 'k!ddy' to 'Japanese casual game'. I can live with that.

168

Nintendo Gaming / RE: Factor 5 dissapointed in developers effort in the Wii's graphics

« on: September 10, 2007, 05:25:13 PM »

But it's k!ddy.

169

General Gaming / RE: Factor 5's "Lair". Holy crap.

« on: September 10, 2007, 05:24:17 PM »

Analog sticks make sense for a flight game, where you are pretty much thrusting forwards at all times and only need to worry about two axes of motion. Motion/pointers make the most sense for FPSes, where they are a literal simulation of the action of aiming and firing a gun. Mouse + keyboard makes the most sense for strategy games, where you need lots of hotkeys, precision pointing, and the different mouse paradigms. So, yes, the key limitation is really what the console supports in terms of different inputs, not whether the input was implemented correctly for a certain type of game.

I have the feeling that Sony 'encouraged' Factor 5 to make the controls motion-only, if only so they could say 'hey look, the Sixaxis isn't an enormous gimmick!'.

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I don't know how people can play most typically console FPSs.

It makes them feel 1337 h4rdc0re. Also boosts their ego, especially when they can't figure out how to configure their network connection or router DMZ .

170

Nintendo Gaming / RE: This is a Wii game? WTF? o_0

« on: September 10, 2007, 04:17:23 PM »

I don't get it. It looks like 'Borat and Asian Friends Break Out Of Jail And Overdose on LSD'.

171

Nintendo Gaming / RE: Factor 5 dissapointed in developers effort in the Wii's graphics

« on: September 10, 2007, 03:55:39 PM »

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Whatever happened to the good ol' days when people simply equated power with bittage and everyone was okay with the Super NES being 16-bit, only twice as powerful as the 8-bit NES? Oh, and the Genesis supposedly "doubled up" with the 32X, and then there was the 32-bit PSX. Oh, but Nintendo strikes back with the N64, with 64 bits of power!

You'd think it would be normal for being "only twice as powerful" as the previous generation.

In any case, I don't ever find games twice as fun the next generation around.

I once had the pleasure of reading someone on another forum try to persuade people that 128-bit was better than 64-bit because the former was 10^64 times more powerful, or something stupid like that.

Anyways, I would agree with the 'fun' statement. There are diminishing returns as consoles become more powerful; there is a bigger apparent difference between a 100-polygon and 1000-polygon model than between one with a million polygons and ten million. And I will be the first to argue that MP3 is and will be superior to every other FPS on every other console this generation if only by the virtue of its controls.  

172

Nintendo Gaming / RE: Factor 5 dissapointed in developers effort in the Wii's graphics

« on: September 10, 2007, 03:15:40 PM »

Factor 5 has a good point. All you have to do is play Prime 3 to realize that the Wii's graphics hardware is not the fifty year old piece of junk its detractors claim it to be. I think people have the false perception that GC was the weakest console last generation, and that Wii is simply a souped-up GC, which means it falls miles behind the other two consoles in terms of performance. In fact, people say Wii's hardware is 2 or 3 times more powerful than GC. How much better could the 360 or PS3 possibly be over their last-gen counterparts? And more importantly, how much of that power are devvers exploiting right now? There is a performance gap, but it's not exactly a yawning performance chasm that's dooming the Wii to craptacular graphics even with the best artists and programmers.

Ultimately, I would probably have paid $450 for a powerful-hardware Wii with the exact same upcoming games lineup, only with prettier graphics. But that would mean giving up the current Wii's level of market penetration, third-party support, and a strategic foothold going into the next generation. And to be honest, if the 8th-generation Nintendo console really is coming out in 5 years, there won't be nearly enough time for Wii's graphical shortcomings to become glaringly apparent- it generally takes developers at least a year or two to start really utilizing the hardware to maximum capability. A lot of Wii developers don't have that problem (as the general architecture is the same as GC), which means Nintendo has bought them even more breathing room. Sony, if anyone, is screwed. They poured a heck of a lot of money into R&D making the 'same old' even better than before, hoping they'd be able to squeeze 10 years of console lifetime out of their investment- a pipe dream even in the best of circumstances. They have little to show this generation, and when Nintendo (and MS) demonstrate their newest innovations, they'll have even less to show.

So, ultimately, the $250-in-hardware Wii was a good business decision- not a graphical deal-breaker. Can't wait to see what comes next.  

173

Nintendo Gaming / RE: Metroid Prime 3 Revolutionized

« on: September 10, 2007, 11:58:25 AM »

Is there a separate thread somewhere for exchanging friend vouchers? I got stuck at one part in one of those morph ball puzzles, where the little things latch on to you and make you levitate, and got at least one or two out of that alone...apparently they do count for kills.

174

Nintendo Gaming / RE: Shooting Things (From a First Person Point of View)

« on: September 10, 2007, 06:13:24 AM »

So, what are the odds that PS4 or XBox 720 will include some sort of light-gun waggle? pwning n00bs in Halo 4 while being verbally abused by a squad of hack-happy 12-year-olds on an online service you have to pay for...SWEET!

 

175

Nintendo Gaming / RE: Predict the Daily Update Thread.

« on: September 10, 2007, 02:30:17 AM »

 I predict: a stage update tomorrow. (9/11)