Topics

1

General Gaming / Meet the Pyro

« on: June 27, 2012, 09:18:29 PM »

Valve just released to the Meet the Pyro Team Fortress 2 video.  These videos are usually pretty great so check out the others if you haven't.

It also comes with some new weapons and the Pyroland update.

If you haven't played in a while or haven't played before (download it now, it's free!) this is great time to get into it.  If you play sometime between tonight's update and July 5th you get a free pair of pyrovision goggles.

If anyone is looking for a new hat they are also giving codes away for free at Adult Swim.

Almost forgot.  They also are giving out beta codes for the Source Filmmaker that they apparently used to make the "Meet the" videos and are releasing it for everyone to make movies.

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General Gaming / Star Wars Kinect

« on: April 02, 2012, 01:24:52 AM »

I'm flabbergasted after watching the dancing sections of Star Wars Kinect.  I'm not much of a Star Wars fan but its like watching a trainwreck that's shaking its ass in your face.  They are hilarious in their awfulness.  I picture a lot new Star Wars Kids appearing after big fat kids get caught dancing with emperor Palpatine.

Just watch these videos and be amazed.

I'm Han Solo

Hologram Girl

3

General Gaming / Future of third parties and what it means

« on: December 19, 2011, 12:32:48 PM »

As we have seen this generation third party game makers now put their games on everything that can possibly run them.  In the past third party exclusives were hugely important but this generation we have seen them die off when most of those that were planned to be exclusive at first stopped being so when the ps3 didn't light the world on fire.

We are now entering a new generation of consoles where every game most likely will be able to be ported to the other consoles.  From all accounts they most likely will be ported to everything under the sun too.  If a console only gets one or two big 3rd party exclusives they may very well have them all.

We have features like the Upad and Kinect that most likely won't be able to be completely replicated on other consoles.  Do you think these will attract support and get meaningful 3rd parties to sign on for exclusivity?

What do you think this is going to mean to the next round of consoles?

Without the draw of third parties to any particular one what will  they use to draw in the fans?  Will it be first parties, controls, exclusive content or some other feature?
We are going to be entering new territory with all the biggest third parties' guns most likely going multiplat from the very beginning.
What do you think this will mean to the future of game consoles?

4

General Chat / Projectors

« on: September 01, 2011, 03:33:23 AM »

Since I pretty much watch all my movies and tv shows on the computer I've been considering getting a projector to connect to it.

I don't particularly care if it has a high resolution or if it allows high framerates but I do care that the picture is clear and smooth and I've seen quite a few that looked pretty terrible.

Now I don't know much about projectors so I wondered if anyone here has some advice.  I've heard stories of people buying ones that seemed good but when they acutally projected it onto a larger surface it looked terrible.  Uncle Bob has both and good and bad projector stories posted. I don't want to spend too much money since I don't care all that much for the high end features but I would prefer one that wouldn't break or need a bulb replaced every month.
Any suggestions or advice when buying a projector?

5

General Gaming / Old pc games/nostalgia

« on: August 15, 2011, 02:21:46 AM »

I was looking through some old stuff I had when I stumbled upon a couple of old pc games.  A few were more recent like Homeworld and XIII but I noticed I still had a few games on floppy disks.  Now I have no way to actually play these games right now but I can't bring myself to toss them. I'd like to play them again if I could.

The games are Waxworks.


I loved this game.  It came with a little wheel you needed to spin to get the right password to start.  It was brutal though.  At its heart it is an adventure game where you need to find the right items to get past different problems although there is quite a bit of fighting.  The only level I could beat was the graveyard one and that unfortunately is the one you need to beat last because somebody would instakill you if you hadn't beaten the others.  There was one in Egypt, Jack the Ripper's London, a Graveyard, and some mine populated with people/plant mutants.
This is probably one of the goriest games I have ever played.  Getting killed would result in something like a plant monster tearing off your arm and head in gruesome detail.

The other was The Horde


Yes that is Kirk Cameron on the cover.  He did the voice but I can't remember if they had the popular-at-the-time live action stuff.
This game was great.  You had to build and fortify your town before a horde of red monsters would come and eat everything while you fought them by spinning wildly with your sword.  It had some great humor and cool special items that you could find that did things like shoot meteors from the sky.

Go look around your house.  Do you have any old games just hanging around that you remember?

Do you have some old pc game that you really liked and would like to find again?

Do you want to talk about an old game game you really liked but don't feel it deserves a new thread?
Post it here.

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General Gaming / Team Fortess 2 now FREE

« on: June 26, 2011, 07:09:03 AM »

Valve is now giving away Team Fortess 2 minus a few hat related things.

I loved Team Fortess so I'm in the process of installing Steam now despite the fact that I don't think my computer will be able to run TF2.  It has taken me about an hour to download, update steam, create an account and then update steam again.  You think they could make their store a bit easier to freaking download, I haven't even started on the game yet

edit:  After preparing my download for another 15 minutes it gives me an "all download servers are busy" notice.  I thought Steam was supposed to be some hot **** pc gaming service and yet I can't even download a game from it?

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General Gaming / Sleep is Death

« on: April 25, 2010, 11:29:18 AM »

Sleep is Death is a two player game where one person creates a story and the other person plays it.  Everything he does has a reaction and new parts of the game are introduced on the fly.    Check out the main website to learn how it is all done.

I picked up this game soon after release and I think its great.  I'm currently finished making one story involving the mafia and about 95% finished with a different story.  The creation tools are excellent and easy even in a tight spot.  I'm finishing my music now.

If anybody here wants to play either of stories tell me and we'll give it a try.  Its a very unique game.

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Nintendo Gaming / Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes

« on: January 08, 2010, 02:43:23 AM »

My favorite puzzle battling game.  Better than Puzzle Quest.

The basics of the game involve lining up units vertically to attack and horizontally to form walls.  The units all have different special abilities and it really keeps it interesting.  So far each race has a very different play style.  The fights also feel more like actual fights since the units you line up actually attack the opponent, it doesn't just say "damage 13."  Extremely addicting.

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General Gaming / Guitar game console

« on: June 21, 2008, 05:43:47 AM »

A company should come out with a console that only plays guitar music games. 

The console does not need to be powerful in the slightest and could probably fit almost entirely in the body of the guitar.  The console itself would be incredibly cheap.  It doesn't need hi-def graphics and barely having any 3d probably wouldn't even effect it.  The storage could be a simple SD card.  Have it come with a cheap one and let the bigger (also pretty cheap ones) be usable.  All current consoles (even the Wii) overshoot what is needed for a guitar game by incredible lengths.

They just need to make some agreements with the music companies and they can get all the songs they want by giving them a cut of every song sold, much like i-tunes.  They could both sell songs online and sell them very cheaply in the game stores or even music stores.  Even partnering with a music company to put the game songs on the actual album could work.

With this system the game company could release new game songs right when a new song comes out and is big.  They could release classic songs whenever they feel like it or whenever they get the rights.  The potential library could be limitless.

The current guitar games like Guitar Hero and Rock band would go out of business almost overnight with only their drum part keeping them on life support.
These games have so many negatives compared to the Guitar game console.

-Smaller potential audience.  The current games can only be sold to those who have already bought a videogame console or are willing to spend over $250 dollars to buy one for your product.

-Each game release is incredibly expensive.  The games cost $50 each at the least.  They also have yet another startup fee because the first game needs to come with a $20 controller if not more.

-Each game only has certain songs that a person will like.  The i-tunes style would allow people to only pay for songs that they like as well as buy more songs.

-The games songs are all dated because they need to wait for a whole $50 game with new graphics and other songs to be released.  New songs could potentially be released a year before the competition.

-The current games can only be sold with videogames.  The guitar console has the potential to sell it in more then just videogame places.  Music stores could sell your console and songs.

-Much smaller potential library.  It will take years and years and years for Guitar Hero to have a large library and by then a new console will be out that doesn't play the old games.

-Switching dvds or dealing with disks while everything can be right there in the Guitars memory/SD card.

-Songs can't be used for future consoles.  If a newer guitar console needs to come out with better technology all of the current songs can still be sold and used on the new version.  The company does not have to spend money to make them compatible to sell them to new customers.  The console would have the graphics and game engine while the songs would be just that, the songs.  They would have at most the song in mp3 form, the frets, and maybe maybe a texture to put somewhere that can let you tell songs apart on the screen when you play.

This seems like an absolute sure thing to me.  The current guitar games have overshot their audience by so much and they have an absolutely terrible method to deliver the only thing people want, new songs.  If I had any programming ability or was in the music industry I would be pushing this.

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General Chat / Other industries that need the Wii treatment.

« on: July 18, 2007, 09:07:29 PM »

Can anyone think of other industries that need to be changed to actually appeal to a broad audience instead of a select few?

I can think of American comics.  The dominating companies focus almost all of their energy on a niche genre called superheroes, they cater to collectors, they have a horrible distribution method with specialty shops, and have a terrible format(one story in 15 pages for way too much).  Foreign comics are coming in and doing extremely well because the market for the other genres, formats, and distribution methods is there just waiting to be taken.  Time to stop catering to only the current hardcore and move on, there are more casual readers as well as new hardcore readers to gain in all genres and formats.

Any other industry you can think of?

11

Nintendo Gaming / Nintendo: Marketing genius

« on: April 25, 2007, 05:11:47 PM »

In the past Nintendo has gotten a lot of flack for their marketing.  A search for older marketing threads brings one made a year ago saying they are terrible at pr and marketing.   Recently they seem to be spot on with what they are doing.  The whole "non-games" vocab seems to be entirely made up by them and it is exploding.  In the past the "non-games" would have been put into a genre such as a music game or puzzle but the new vocabulary really does make it more inviting.  "Non-game" has now become a standard term people use and they created it simply for marketing purposes.  You even have hardcore gamers talking about whether something is a "nongame" as well and may actually be changing perception of games to people.  Strangely enough I think having the so called "kid" image may have hurt them past generations but keeping an overall friendly image like this has helped them become more mass market today.  A hardcore image in something like videogames would hurt the effort to expand their customers.

Wii Sports being packed into North American systems is pure marketing.  They knew the game would sell in Japan regardless but have helped Wii to explode in North America with basically viral marketing by including Wii Sports.  Their constant talk about making games inviting has given them the attention of the mass media as well.  They continue to pound home the message that games are for everyone in every event/press release.  I think the Wii is great but lets be honest even something great needs that marketing push to gain the attention of all the customers.    

12

General Gaming / More co-op!

« on: March 01, 2007, 09:38:21 PM »

Recently I have seen a lot of people bring up old co-op games as some of their favorites that they want on the vc and I realized that they don't make nearly enough of these types of games.

In the past 2d systems it seems like co-op was the main form of multiplayer in games.  Whenever I played games with a friend rarely would we play a competitive multiplayer game.  In the switch to 3d and especially the growing popularity of fps the multiplayer focus switched a lot to competitive games.  At first I think power was a big problem when the system dealt with two 3d main characters but now it seems to be gone.

Recently co-op seems to be on the rise with the popularity of Halo and the more recent xbox games that support it.  My problem with this is that while I really enjoyed co-op Halo they seem to stuck in the same fps genre.  What happened to good old two people on one screen?  I don't want to be forced to split up the already small screen or be forced to only play it online.  This is probably the reason why I loved the games Cannon Spike and Hunter the Reckoning.  Hunter, especially, was nothing fantastic but when its the only game on the block I'll take it.  

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General Gaming / Windows Vista: Why?

« on: January 14, 2007, 03:31:25 PM »

I'm not sure where to put this but since Microsoft is pushing games for windows I think other systems should work pretty well.

Why would anyone get this besides the fact that they are forced to?  I don't see it offering anything I want that xp isn't currently giving me.  Microsoft making direct x10 only work on Vista seems to be there way to force it even more then making computer makers use it.  If I had an up to date computer I would rather play new games with xp because you know they will support it for quite a long time.

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General Gaming / Dragon Quest VIII

« on: December 17, 2006, 04:51:25 PM »

With Dragon Quest IX coming to DS I figured a lot of people would be interested in the previous one.

I have had this game for about a month now and it is awesome.  The gameplay is tried and true old school rpg.  You have a cast of 4 characters max and you know the rest.  The graphics are amazing, everything looks just like the drawings of Akira Toriyama.  This is some of the best cel shading I have ever seen.  It took me a minute to get used to his art style in a non-dragonball world but I am loving it now. (Jessica )   The voice acting so far has been excellent, most of the voices having an English accent.  The character you play suffers from the rather common disease of SHS.  Tragically I think he may have caught silent hero syndrome from Link but I can't be sure, it could have come from any number of the Nintendo franchises DQ used to slut it up with in its youth on the nes and snes.

The game also has found the perfect balance between not taking itself seriously and being serious.  It has the hilarious Octopus boss who names his tentacles and has them talk to each other and later it can have someone die with an entire funeral scene.  You have to see the giant squid have Tenta and Tickles tell him what to do, priceless.

If you have a ps2 and like rpgs get this game now, no excuses.  It is probably only about 15 dollars if you look. It is a real shame that square seems to have advertised this game as having the ff12 demo to be the selling point.  I think they should have stuffed the demo in some other piece of crap game like they usually do.  They should have advertised this game as the originator and phenomenon that it is, not as some second rate wannabe.  With the right push this game could have been huge in the US because it is very well done.  Squarenix needs to find a way to advertise and bring up new non-FF products in the US.  Dragon Quest has so many spinoffs as well that Squarenix was stupid not to put as much advertising as possible behind this game inorder to turn it into a huge money making machine over here as well.  The games will keep coming so they might as well promote them early.

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Nintendo Gaming / Updates never completing

« on: December 01, 2006, 01:30:39 PM »

The new update will not complete for me.  I already installed the first update that supposedly upgrades firmware, this is the new one it makes you go to the update section when you try to go to the shop channel.  I have tried a few times now to upgrade and each time the progress bar eventually stopped moving.  I left my Wii on for hours the first time but was forced to turn it off after I came back from the movies and it had still not moved.  I hope turning it off during upgrade hasn't screwed up the shop channel.
Has this happened to anyone else and did you do anything to fix it?

Tried updating the next day and everything ran smoothly.  It looks like interrupting most updates won't destroy your Wii.

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Nintendo Gaming / Nintendo DS lite Fall 2006 Catalog

« on: October 08, 2006, 06:24:51 PM »

I just found this at an FYE the other day.  Is this something Nintendo has always done and I just never noticed?  It has the cool DS logo on the front and shows mostly DS games inside as well as a snippet about the Wii, GC, and GBA.  I didn't realize there were so many games for the DS I still want to pick up until I got my hands on the catalog.

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Nintendo Gaming / Mii

« on: September 14, 2006, 06:50:44 PM »

I want to discuss Nintendos avatar creating system.  I love this idea and I think it will give the Wii a feel all its own.  When you want to send a friend a message you just pick his avatar out of a group, you don't have to sort through tons of names just look for him.  There also appears to be TONS of options for modification so noone will truly be the same.

Will everyone here make their avatar look like themselves or will you all be living out your e3 fantasies by making your Mii look like Reggie?  Playing friends would be a lot cooler when I can see their virtual face get the smackdown.

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General Gaming / Uncanny Valley

« on: June 21, 2006, 02:23:13 PM »

I am hearing from a lot of places that the new systems have reached this uncanny valley.  I know what the valley is and I was kinda creeped out by some of the characters in the final fantasy spirits within movie.  

I do not think the new systems have reached this point though.  Not too long ago everyone was saying that the new systems weren't that much of leap from the old systems and now I keep hearing this uncanny valley talk.  High definition doesn't add to this effect because watching the aforementioned final fantasy movie on a regular tv still brings about the oddness.  I think that this is propaganda from the companies trying to make their systems seem better but worst of all I think it is being used to cover up sloppy game making.  Making lifeless characters is being excused by people saying it is the uncanny valley's fault.  Put some effort into character design and what the the character will do and these problems should be cut down.  I especially think this is true because while I don't look up computer game information much I haven't heard this talk from computer game maniacs who reach the higher end graphics faster.
What are other people's opinions on this and do you think that this is just more propaganda?

19

General Gaming / Independent Games Festival

« on: March 16, 2006, 02:10:17 PM »

I haven't seen a thread about this and it should be good to have a non PS thread sometimes.

Anyway, I've been playing a bunch of these games that will be there.  Has anyone else been?

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=7795
Most of the games I've played so far have been student developed ones like there.

Cloud stands out to me as my favorite game.  The art itself is great and the idea behind it fantastic.

Narbacular Drop was another game I really liked.  You can create a door on one part and its exit on another part of any earth covered surface and walk back and forth between the two.  That might not be the best explanation but it is an awesome concept.

Anyone else play these games?
What did you think and do you have any favorites?