Artlover

Sorry, new & different doesn't equal "good" games. Dark Space is just a tedious repetitive ripoff of ideas already done to death in other games. Mirror's Edge, while somewhat unique, has no real story or plot (package delivery is illegal in the future or something?). It doesn't even retain it's uniqueness as it still resorts to the typical hand to hand combat and gunplay in places. Seriously, just play the demo a few times and you'll get all there is to get to get out of it. Sure, we should give them an A+ for attempt and effort. It was nice seeing something else other then Madden & Nascar ooze out of their factories. But one shouldn't squander their money and support stuff just and only because it's different. That doesn't teach them anything either other then they can become a shovelware company. Sigh... I really despise these types of global statements. First off, Madden is not the same game year-over-year, and it really seems the people whom make these statements have never played the game. Let's see. I've played Madden 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 on the Xbox, and Madden 2009 on the 360. Is that enough hands-on experience to be allowed to make a statement? Yes, they ARE the same damned game every year. I'll elaborate on this a little further down. No, it's easy to bash EA for all the bash worthy crap they do. From how they treat and screw over their employees to their monopolistic tactics that have ruined many game franchises for gamers. Know why EA pulled that crap with the NFL. Because the NFL 2Kxx series was good & popular. And rather then change/improve their product so it appealed to a larger base, they just made it so their product was the only one you can get, alienaiting everyone who doesn't like the Madden series style of presentation & play. I guess they were under the impression everyone who used to buy the NFL 2K games were going to start buying Madden instead - luckily, it didn't really happen in the large numbers EA probably expected. So everyone is worse off in the end. Players don't have choice, and EA not only isn't making that much more money, but had to spend a lot to get this counter-productive monopoly. EA: "Madden, it's no NFL 2K, but it's better then nothing, so buy it!" It's like with the takeovers. They aren't doing that to improve themselves. They are doing it to eliminate competition because in a fair & free open market, their products are having a hard time competing. {Side rant about corperate tactics. I used to work for The Box Music Network. MTV never gave a crap about us because for decades we didn't have a substantial number of viewers and no profit margin. While I was there, there was a major push to change that. We pumped out new stations across the country, increased our viewer count substantialy, even got big name advertising spots, turned the books around from being in the red to being in the black, and with a year or so Viacom bought us out and phased us off the air with MTV absorbing our viewer base count, our broadcast transmitters and some of our technology. We went from being our own successfull music video channel with over 150 people to only like 6 people under Viacom employment providing nothing more then chyron generation for their programming and isolated non-music local block programming for Class-A certification for the broadcast sites they aquired from us. - Only because we became successfull. Had we not become so successfull, we'de still be on the air. Ironicly, MTV is still tanking bad. But then MTV doesn't play music videos anymore, so what do they expect. Which serves as an example point. They failed to do what they were supposed to do, provide programming that the viewers wanted, which is why other companies that did, like us, gained viewers. They spent a lot of money, put a lot of people out of work, took away viewer choice, took componetes away that served them and everyone was worse off for it.} - This is the same model EA seems to be following. And this comment is really off the mark. Once apon a time, other companies besides EA made NFL games. Such as 2K Sports. And here is the big rub in what you're trying to suggest. NFL 2Kxx looks/feels/playing NOTHING LIKE any equivelent Madden xx game. They are completely different. Even if one was deaf, dumb & blind, they could tell the difference between a 2K Sports NFL and EA Sports NFL title. Same can be said about other games. PES vs Fifa. PES & FIFA are nothing like, despite both being soccer games, but every PES game is pretty much the same when compared to itself. Or Fight Night. Sorry, Fight Night Round 2 is pretty much exactly the same as Fight Night 2004 except it added that stupid ringside medical gargabe and ever so slightly better gfx. It's not a different game tho. Neither is Fight Night Round 3 on the 360 for that matter. Sure it adds some more stupid crap, but at the end of the day, it still looks/feels/plays like Fight Night 2004. A "different" game would be something like Mike Tyson Heavyweight Boxing, which is nothing like Fight Night, despite both being boxing games. Sorry, ultra minor BS that would be better suited as a patch then a new release does not a new game make. Madden is Madden. Every Madden game looks/feels/plays like a Madden game. The core fundamentals of game design are the same year after year. The fact that this year I have a different playbook, or have to press a different butten to throw doesn't change that. It is what it is. See above. Radically different games of the same theme can and DO exist when made by different companies. EA "doesn't want" to make something different. EA wants to make Madden. Ergo, there is not a whole hell of alot of difference between Madden games besides minor topical changes because that all they can change. If they changed anything else to make it different, it woudn't be Madden anymore, now would it? It's not that Madden is a bad game persay, but that it's not really for the casual gamer. It's a hardcore sport game for people who eat/breath/shit football. This is one of the reasons I, like many others, liked the 2K sports games better. Not quite so pretentious. Ah well, atleast we still have the Backyard Football series. In your face EA {does a little victory dance}. Humongous Entertainment: "Backyard Football, it's no Madden but it's easy & FUN! Buy it!" Agreed. I find it appauling that people are poking fun at EA for losing money. This isn't a game, it's people's lives. I'm sorry, but even the most hated of companies out there I woudln't "wish" for them to do badly. You can't just go and find a new job these days, especially in the video game market. A couple bone heads might head EA.. as do most companies, but it's the hundreds if not thousands of people who work for them that define who the company really is. I know, goverment bail outs for the VG industry too! Sorry, but just because people will loose jobs is no excuse to defend/justify poor businesses and poor business tactics. I mean really. What if there was a a company trying to sell a new dessert, frozen human turds on a stick, that employed 100's of people. Sorry, there is no market for such a disgusting, unhealthy, biologicly hazardous and FDA banned product. The company wouldn't deserve to stay in business just for the sake of the 100's of people employed there that are pooping on sticks, putting them in a freezer then packaging them up. Bad businesses staying in business in the end long term only hurts more people then it helps. If a company is failing, it's failing for a reason, and if they are unable/unwilling to do what is neccessary to change that, then they deserve to fail. Economy? Sorry, there are other software companies that aren't doing so bad if not doing good. So the VG market is there. The fact that EA is incapable of understanding that market and is more concerned with gushing money to become a massive monopoly is their own fault. I say that as someone who is, after over 6 months, still unemployed myself. They need to clean house and go back to their roots. Back in the 80's, they were nothing but a showcase of great quality games of a diverse nature that offered something for everyone on all the platforms that mattered. What they need to do is get Trip Hawkins back. EA has never been the same since Larry Probst & John Riccitiello. But in the end, those are their options: Stop being a producer of only niche hardcore sports titles & mediocrity or fail. Either way, we the gamers will be better off. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. And we have a winner. This is probably the most signifigant problem facing them, followed by their product line. I have no tears to shead for EA. They brought this on themselves.

That's debatable. Ok, I can't speak for the PS3, but lets look at the Xbox360 for a minute. http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microso...ives/161658.asp And these are Microsoft's own numbers mind you.... 28 million units sold, 17 million xbox live accounts, and "just over half of Xbox Live subscribers pay to play". When you crunch the numbers it works out to around only 40% of 360 owners are playing online. Again, I can't speak for the PS3. Maybe it has a higher online gaming presence because their on-line network is still free. All I can say is, that while yes it's true on-line gaming is more popular then it ever has been before, on a whole, it still does not seem to represent a "majority" of gamers yet.

Yeah, I was just getting ready to post that too. Looks fine under Opera. Opera:

Bet you are all using Mozilla/FireFox? The page looks fine under IE. IE: FireFox:

You think $10.00 is fair for a single classic game? Really, look at all those anthology & collection discs released by the likes ot Atari, Activision, Capcom, Midway, Sega. Take the cost and divide by the number of games they contain. Further remember, they also come with physcial media, case, fancy graphics covers and extras. Shit, even look at Plug & Play hardware from the likes of Jakks. Cost divided by game count - still comes out cheaper then typical XBLA prices, and again, you're actually getting something. Physcial hardware and electronics. Personally, I don't think anything on XLBA should cost more then 200 points - $2.50. Well, ok, maybe some of the newer stuff like Duke Nuken 3D; I'd be willing to go as high as 400 points - $5.00). That's about what you'd probably find it at a store for if they had any to sell, $4.99 in the discount bin. But as it stands now, all their prices for games are a "exploiting the retro gaming market" rip-off. Only prices on XBL that are fair are for media like TV and movies.

Gee, that's funny. I've done it a lot myself with no problems at all. Never blown one up from it. I've recharged many of them too without any problems. I've only ever blown up a coin-cell once and that was my own fault. When I was really impatient while recharging one, and decided to do a cheap & dirty quick charge pumping higher voltage @ high amp into the thing without monitoring heat or loaded voltage across the cell for too long. They do, but you have to order it. http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.js...oductId=3307341 Could always do a little creative modification and install a battery holder instead too. http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.js...oductId=3060977

It's just a .zip file that holds a bunch of jpg's. You can just as easily use an archive program like ZIP, RAR, whatever to extract it and just look at each page with a regular pic viewer.

Oh, the allure of boobs got to me so I gave it a try on the 360. Graphics approach almost Dreamcast quality (I can't imagine the Wii being any better). Play is somewhat stiff. Level design is meh. Story is meh. Difficulty curve is inconsistant. Boob jiggle effects gives me the sense that no one who made the game has ever seen a real girl. In the end, it's just a zombie slasher that is about 10 years too late. It's ok for about the first 30 minutes, then it gets old. I'd rather play DOA as Kasumi on the DC with my age set at 99 myself. Now that's some sexy bouncy boobies.

BTW, don't upgrade to the newer BitComet. I first tried 1.07 (the newest) and it's buggy and slow. Wants to install a new web browser. Couldn't even get it to download any torrent at all. Where as the .70 version you use worked right off the bat with no BS. See?! That's why I always hesitate to upgrade when things are working great. Glad I stuck with my MO on that one! Let me suggest this: http://www.utorrent.com/ Best torrent program I've ever seen. Small, fast, easy, feature packed. This client has almost made me give up my complete and utter hatred of torrents.

All in all, I liked it a lot. Had fun playing it. I'll probably play it again soon just for the fun of it. Probably has the best implementation of a dog I've ever scene in a game. Very well done. Combat isn't bad. Difficulty is on a good even keel. Lots of relevant side missions. A decent level of puzzle solving mechanics (tho I wish there were more). Graphics and sound are pretty good. You can keep playing after you finish the game (which is nice, but after awhile, you still end up with nothing left to do/buy/own. That said..... It seems rather small in the bigger scheme of things. It's also rather linear and guided. A lot of the time you are limited to fixed pathways and can't freely explore beyond the boundries they set. Certainly not equivelent to an open world adventure like Fallout 3 or SaintsRow 2 or anything. Not at all, can only walk where allowed, can only jump off places where you're allowed, can only climb up in a very very select few places where you're allowed. They also kind of seemed to drop the ball on that whole "real life simulator w/rpg elements" in many little ways. No sex scene. Black screen with some of the dummest diologue ever. Come on, it's a mature rated game. You know, 17+. The sex is about the only thing I can see in the game that would make it M rated, and what is there is hardly M rated in nature. You have more sex, nudity, language and violence in a PG-13 rated movie. Can't kill kids. So much for real life sim. Sorry, killing some kids in a game isn't going to make me want to really kill children any more then playing games like GTA4 or whatnot make me want to drive like an idiot and run over people, have a shootout with the police, blow up buildings, or anything else. It's a damned game. Not real. Fantasy. Existing to let people do things they can't really do. (The Video Game and Ratings industries really need to get their shit together one of these days and realize that Video Game does not equal toys for children. Mature adults play games too and represent one of the largest bases of players. It's not my fault or problem some bad parent somewhere lets their kid play a game they shouldn't be playing, or a store breaks the law and sells a minor something they legally aren't allowed to buy. We deserve to be treated like the adults we are. Seems pregnancy can ONLY happen between a married couple. Oh, I've been playing as a female character the last two play throughs. I can have all the unprotected sex I want with every guy in Albion (I'm the biggest slut in the land) and all I get are STD's. Never get pregnant. I wasn't able to get pregnant till I married a guy. Not very real life if you ask me. Then I was saddened by the fact that the entire pregnancy is a cutscene. I was kinda hoping to get pregnant and develop over time, being able to go into battle or work as a blacksmith in that condition. Would have been pretty sexy, especially since I run around with no clothes. Well, rather, as little clothes as I'm allowed to wear. (Again, it's rated M for mature players. Treat me as such!) Seems like so long as you don't have a baby, you will get pregnant from your spouse every time you have unprotected sex. So long as a baby is already present, you can't get pregnant again, not until they grow up and start wondering around the streets on their own. Again, not very real life. What are the functions of STD's anyways. It doesn't seem like they hurt you in anyway, just a number in the logbook? On the good side, I do appericate the openness of some aspects. Like you can have sex with and marry the same gender and have sex with multipul patners at the same time. I had a nice big ole gangbang where I seduced and hired a total of 8 assorted men and women. If only we had graphics! Back to the bad. Crowds. Everyone loves me, and a crowd always forms. It gets to the point where I have dozens of people around me, following me, making it hard to move around and go places. I was trying for a bigger gangbang above, but it got to the point I couldn't move, had a hard time getting into the room and some of partners I had collected were threatning to leave because I was taking too long. Well yeah, because there are like 2 dozen people blocking the f'in doorway. If you get engaged, there doesn't seem to be a way to break it off. I accidently engaged myself to a guy and did everything I could to get out of it. Slap him, scare him, be rude to him, just wouldn't leave. I ended up telling him to follow me into the forrest then killed him. There has got to be a better way. ?? Can't seem to loot bodies of people you kill. "Sometimes", in a few isolated cases, yes, but not as a general rule. Can't really customize your character. Beyond changing clothes, makeup, hair, etc.. with doesn't have much impact in the end. Character development in-game seems off. Fat? I'm running all over the place, fighting constantly. Doing odd jobs. I don't even eat food most of the time, I use potions instead. But I eat one piece of cheese and I suddenly get fat? Bullshit! Not that I mind being fat, if I could customize my character I'd make her fat anyways, it's just an issue that the in-game dymanics for handling it seem off. Ending. Rather the entire system of auto save and only one game save exists that you are not in control of. IE: You can never undo any bad choice you make. Yeah, yeah, real life sim. Only it's not very real life as it stands, so why force it on me here. It's a GAME, one of the features of which is loading up an older save and redoing something if you don't like how it goes. I made the mistake of being selfless when I finished the first time and was absolutly furious that I lost my dog. Hence why I played a second time and went with love. Ain't playing without my dog, it's the best part of the entire game. For that matter, I don't even understand why I have to choose. The all powerful spire can't grant a more encompasing wish? Seriously why only eitther everyone who died building it, or my loved ones (or wealth, but that's useless really). Why not revive everyone who died as a result of the spire? Why not some evil options, like be supreme ruler of the world and take Lucien's place. When did MS abandond some of their own rules regarding achievements and start allowing some achievements to only be obtainable via on-line play. This isn't the only game that breaks these policies, and seems to be getting worse all the time. Anywho. All in all, it's not bad. I'll be playing it again, that's for sure. But it's still far short of perfection.

Ditto. The RE5 demo totally killed the series for me. Shame Capcom is (in my opinion) ruining a great franchise turning the series into something it's not. Aw well, atleast I got all the "propper" RE games on the GameCube. Speaking of which, I think I'm going to go fire up RE Zero right now. I can't recall ever having so much fun playing a game before as I did with that.

http://www.replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.4628

There is some truth to this. The DVD drive generates heat, and the DVD drive sits right above the graphics chips and it's heatsink. I can see it compounding the existing thermal issues.

And people wonder why I refuse to let my console get upgraded. Shame some of the new games comming out now have the NXE upgrade on them and will only play on consoles with NXE installed. Guess this brings an end to me getting any new games. I'll just have to pretend it's the future where the 360 is no longer supported and enjoy what I have.

Never understood why people would want to have their console vertical. "Lets take our very expensive and delicate video gaming electronics and place them in such a way where it has the smallest surface contact area and worst center of gravity possible." It wouldn't be so bad if they used common sense and put the weight of the console towards the side that would be the bottom. 360 is already top-heavy because of the DVD drive, throw on the HDD and it skews the center of gravity even more. PS2 had the same problem with it's DVD & HDD also being on the "top" side.

Heh, useful advice, you don't absolutely have to be a dick to get the ladies. I was about as much of a Paragon as possible during my first play-through, and I still got the "sex scene" (w/Liara). I use that term very loosely... Yeah, being a dick has nothing to do with it. It's all a matter of knowing how to have a mature "get in your pants" conversation with someone. I've been good all the times I've played it and still got both sex scenes. Well, if you can call them that. Typical TV commercial shows more. But atleast it's more then Fable 2 gives you (black screen with stupid diologue). (Fable2 - another rant by me about to start once I find the most recent Fable 2 thread!)

Bah. Not impressed at all. It's just an RTS with a Halo theme applied. IE: Cash grab to make money off the franchise from a different genre of players. Not even what I would call a good RTS. It's been dumbed down so much, it's almost pointless. It's an RTS made for people who don't like RTS's. Which raises the question, if you don't like RTS's, why do you want to play this to begin with. I'm not a big fan of RTS's myself, but even I will acknowledge they are supposed to be more then this. This doesn't make me like the RTS genre, it insults my intelligence. Now, throw in all the bugs..... I'm going to focus on level 3 - map room for my examples here since it shows off these bugs the worst. 1: Forces don't really follow directions. Your commands are more of a suggestion that they may or may not follow. They will act on their own regarding movement and combat. You end up having to spend a lot of time baby sitting your forces, making sure they are doing what you instruct them to do rather then just running around doing whatever the hell they want. 2: "Select all" force commands do not select all forces, despite that it tells you that it was it is supposed to do. Here is an example: There is one of those floating covenant platforms next to the bridge. One of my main characters decided to go inside the thing, despite the fact that is NOT what I instructed my forces to do. Selecting all forces selected everything/everyone on the screen EXCEPT him in/on the platform. Had to manually click on him and bring him down to the ground before he would respond to select all commands. 3: GFX engine sucks. It's got a bad problem of causing characters to vanish. Wait near the landing zone a while and watch. You'll see covenant forces like hunters running up the ramp in droves, and as soon as they step across the door threshold, they vanish. They aren't cloaking either, they just aren't being rendered. Move the camera around a bit, and POP!, a whole bunch of enemies right there in front of you, killing you. I've seen this effect in pretty much every level. 4: Mapping engine sucks. It lets characters and things go places they aren't supposed to go. Again, there at the map room, one of my tanks, ignoring my orders of where I told it to go, decided to drive through one of the doorways the covenant forces come out of, despite it being too small for a tank. Somehow, my tank got in there, and through to the otherside behind the walls, off the playable map area. Adjusting the camera angle I could see it through the doorway. Try to get it to come back, and only then does the engine decide to enfore the "tank does not fit through door" logic. Tobad it didn't think to do that BEFORE my tank got stuck in never-never land in the first place. This ended up being a level ending problem since my two main characters were waiting to be revived at the landing zone, and this tank was the only remaining live forces I had left. I can say this tho, it makes Halo 3 seem a lot better now.

RE4 is not my favorite RE game either. It's really not even an RE game as far as I'm concerned. It's became more of a traditional FPS then what the previous RE games were. More about shooting and less about exploration, puzzle solving, strategy. RE5 is more of the same. After trying the RE5 demo on a friends console, I've decided I'm done with the RE series. If I wanted to play "that" kind of game, I'd play a different and better one. I want to play RE for the RE expeirence, and that's just not there anymore.

That explains a lot. Anywho.....I don't get the feeling this is bad in a good away. Bad GFX, tearing, choppyness, stiff robotic movement. Not sexy, boobs don't bounce right. Bad controlls, bad AI that takes cheap shots. User scores are on a curve. Looking at Gamestop, it's been ranked everything from 1 to 10. With such stunning comments as "more boobs then brain--but is that a bad thing?" and "boobs boobs boobs" (user gave a 10). Yeah, spoken like true 12 years old who's never seen a girl and didn't spend their own money. You want boobs, go play DOA - it's a hell of alot more titillating. For that matter, instead of posting "boobs boobs boobs" on a review site, google 'boob movies' and go look at real ones for free. Oh to be 12 again, when looking at a pixelated boob sprite on the C64 was wank worthy. Now it just makes my junk shrink and retract so much, you'de think I was a girl.

Can we please just lock this thread now. It's obviously most people participating are unable/unwilling to follow the OP's wishes of what this thread is for, and we all know how it's going to end up.

If only they would have decided that from the get go before they released the thing. At the very least we'd all have 8gigs more HDD space to use for more important things (like 500+ Fallout 3 saves).

Silent Hill: Homecomming. Uggh!!!!!! For the love of god I hope this is the end of the series and they let it die (like they should have 2 games ago). Slow, tedious, illogical inventory, huge graphics glitches (1/4 of the cemetary just disapeared on a return visit and I had to navigate an empty gfx engine by my map every couple of steps). About the only good thing I can say about it is atleast the occasional puzzles are coherent and fun.

Me, as I own computers in both camps. Vic20, C16, C64's, C128's (w/stereo sid & 64k VDC), C128D, Amiga500's. 1541's, 1571's, 1581 drives. 1750REU (upgraded 2 megs), 1351 mouse. 1902A, 1084, 1084S, 2002 monitors. A800, A800XL (w/Pokey-Gumby, 320k memory, ultra speed OS). 810, 1040 drives. 830 modem, 850 rs232, CX85 keypad, CX80 trackball (modded w/dual buttons for 7800 compatability).

.

For the most part, you don't have to do anything here except wait. 99% of the time, the BOS guys will take care of it. Not always tho, and sometimes, the thing gets stuck in a loop of not comming out into the open but staying either behind the building or in that side alley way area. It's easy to kill when this happens even with regular firearms. Or just keep using the morters and kill him. It's unlimited, tho the transmitter does break after a few goes and you have to repair it if your repair skill is high enough. This is a good place to kill yourself a lot if not carefull. If you use the fatman, you gotta be out of any of the hallways and inside the room, otherwise the mini nukes hit the roof of the hallways and kill you. Even if you're in the room itself, the damned raiders get in your way and seem to jump right in front of you as you fire the fatman so it goes off right in front of you, killing you. Why let him out? Just kill him in the cage. No, there is no safe cover for this one. He also killed Fawkes on me too once. You could try the bottlecap mines, but you'll probably need a lot. I just armed myself with the fatman waited for him to show up, started running backwards and fired 3 rounds at him then finished up with a bit of plasma rifle. I'd imagine the Experimental MIRV would make quick work of it tho.