Mr W Phallus

Please explain how this is nonsensical. When presented with a sample of players, some for whom the game controls worked fine and some for whom the controls didn't, why would we blame the variable that stays constant (the controls) instead of the variable that changes (the player)? Both you (Johnny) and Slagathorian seem to be taking this as some sort of personal slight, or accusation of incompetency; its not. It could be something as simple as the size or shape of your hands made the DS uncomfortable to hold, or when you were playing you just couldn't find the right grip, or any other factor which doesn't make you incompetent but nevertheless impedes your use of the PH controls.

I can't believe they used the tagline 'Heroes are made in America'. That's unbelievably corny. Edit: Not to mention it alienates non-American viewers.

I think the closest I get to that is I sometimes sound a bit more northern when I'm drunk. XD It sounds like a more advanced version of how people tend to adapt their vocabulary, using some different slang words, phrases etc when they hang out with different friend groups (or at least I do that anyway).

Next year can't come soon enough. Interesting that there's no attempt at comedy in the trailer, but if anything that just makes me all the more excited.

A fact I've always found deliciously ironic considering that, as an amendment, it's mere existence confirms the fallibility of the law in the first place.

Bah, that was my most impressive day anyway.

From pissing it down on Friday, to cloudless skies on Saturday and Sunday, typically unpredictable festival weather and I'm now burnt to a crisp on my arms and legs.

Saturday right? Saw Nicolas Jaar, Warpaint, The Horrors, Pentangle, James Blake and Wild Beasts play. Sunburnt my ears and neck. Stayed up til 3am having a stoned conversation about vaginas and Biff and Chip.

Hmm well to be honest a part of me thinks, is it really the characters that are attracting a female gamer to a game like Gears of War? Someone playing GoW is most likely in one of two categories: 1) a (male) teenager attracted to the game because blood and gore is 'cool' or 2) a 'hardcore' (as opposed to a 'casual') gamer. Now what attracts a 'hardcore' gamer to a game like GoW? In my experience the campaigns of GoW 1&2 are pretty good, the story is passable for stringing the campaign levels together but what I'm mostly purchasing the game for is the multiplayer. In short, I'm not buying the game for the story or the characters at all but for the gameplay mechanics. So in terms of attracting female gamers, as opposed to a female who owns or has access to a console and occasionally plays on it but is most likely never going to pick up a 'hardcore' title like GoW, I'm not sure the former will particularly care who the character they play as is, as long as the gameplay mechanics are solid. That is not to say, however, that the introduction of female characters (especially if their characterisation is good) will go unnoticed, just that in terms of the type of person playing GoW (and while I'm using GoW as an example here, this applies to any game really which is aimed at 'hardcore' gamers) the issue will only ever be the cherry on top of good gameplay mechanics. As for games which appeal to a more traditional 'sugar and spice and all things nice' stereotype of femininity, the growth of the casual market has given us plenty of games which are, if not directly marketed towards a female demographic, are definitely gender neutral (plenty of examples to be found in Nintendo's catalogue, I won't bother naming any since I don't play a lot of them and might inadvertently pick a bad example).

I'd love to see them bring Damien into the Arkham games, I doubt they'd go quite that up to date with the comics though (Red Robin skin notwithstanding). To be honest it's just nice to see characters as far into Batman's chronology as Tim Drake (even if they are just for challenge maps (oh right, pre-order only as well )) seeing as Hollywood seems unlikely to ever make it past the Dick as Robin stage of Batman's career. Harley's costume is nice, but the contrast between her white face and the rest of her exposed flesh throws me off a little when I look at her.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BatmanGambit And as for the Joker, he's partly a mad genius and partly just a guy with the balls to take massive risks. Eventually something doesn't go his way, and Batman captures him, but he doesn't really give a fuck either way - he just hangs there laughing. But at the end of the day, you could say what you said about most films. Change a single detail early on and any film could be completely different, obviously the writers are always going to choose the most dramatic course of events. It's not like there are any moments where the characters in TDK do anything massively counter-intuitive, forgoing the easiest and most obvious course of action under a flimsy excuse for the sake of dramatic effect (not that I recall anyway), and that happens in countless other movies.

Argh, I can't believe he's a pre-order bonus, especially since 'unique gadgets and special moves' implies he's not just a reskin of a different character. As for how the character looks, I'm not a huge fan of the sort of armour plating stuff on his chest and arms, although it is in line with the art style of the game. Is it just me or does the shaven head make him look kinda thuggish? I'm guessing the mostly cropped it because videogame hair doesn't tend to look all that great. And with his eyes all in shadow like that, seems a bit too moody for Robin.

Man that series (season) seemed to go so quickly. Mind you that's probably something to do with the fact I watched the first seven episodes in a day. On the plus side, I should finish reading The Big Sleep today at which point I can make a start on the books. Probably the best Father's Day gift I've ever given. XD

Ahah yeh my friends dad is an orthopaedic surgeon, I always liked how he wore a bow tie to work. Also fits in with Moffat's theory that the word doctor comes from The Doctor, they even dress like him.

I realise I should see some of the film in 3D (and 2D I guess) before I judge, but considering it was converted to 3D in post-production I'm having an incredibly hard time believing this.

The problem here is that if Nintendo's job is to create controls that everyone (or at least the majority) likes, then following that up with the statement that the success of the controls ultimately depends on the player's reaction to it is setting them an impossible task. If on the other hand, Nintendo's job is to create controls that some people like, then the fact that people in this thread did like the controls means that Nintendo were successful, and any argument that the controls didn't work is undermined. Well you could argue that a sequel is half appealing to the fan base, half trying to bring in new players to the franchise. The use of Wind Waker's cartoon graphics and the DS' casual friendly touch controls point to Nintendo's 'get everyone gaming' attitude of this generation. Having said that, I completely agree with everything else you're saying about designer's sticking to traditional controls and button layouts because that's what veteran gamers are comfortable with. It harks back to the original point of this thread, in that what gamers (think they) want, and are used to is not necessarily what is best for the game. We assume that the typical controller set up (which varies little within a single genre) is the optimal set up because we are conditioned to and used to using that layout. In reality, sticking rigidly to what we know simply stifles creativity and prevents us from seeing how improvements might be made. I'd much rather step outside my comfort zone and have to relearn how to use a controller than miss out on a potentially great game.

1) This is counter-intuitive. 2) This assumes you see the check point in time. 3) This assumes you don't run into any jeeps on the roads. 4) This assumes the terrain allows you to do so. ie. you're fucked when you're in the middle of the jungle

I was thinking about this when I was writing my earlier post, and it's been a while since I've played it so my memory is a bit rusty, but I can't think of any way that they would have been able to incorporate the touch controls that I thought went beyond functional and improved the game - the combat and the boomerang for example - and a traditional d-pad movement scheme, because to do so would require awkward switching between touch control and button control. Additionally, mapping movement to the D-pad would tend to bias right-handed players, because you would have to use your right hand for the stylus, immediately this makes the game much harder for left-handed players, unlike the existing controls which work exactly the same whichever hand you use to hold the stylus (IIRC). So yeh, some aspects of the touch controls were just functional, and may have worked 'better' had they been button control, but if they were button controlled they would have ruined the touch controls that really added to the game and my enjoyment of it. To quote a single post just click reply on the post you want to quote, to quote lots of posts click multiquote on all the posts you want to quote from then click the 'Post' button at the bottom of the screen, should take you to the full editor with all the posts you chose quoted. Alternatively just copy & paste the text you want to quote then surround it with

White Batman looks weird, personally I think they went a bit overboard with the contrast (if that's what it is that makes it looks like that). It would have been much cooler if they had one of the Batman artists do an actual illustrated cover as if it were a comic.

A control scheme is supposed to work as well as possible for as many people as possible. If people (and Slagathorian isn't the only one having issues with it) are having problems, then that's up to the developers to create a better control scheme. In my opinion, the job of the control scheme is to best suit the requirements of the game it is made for. Your description of the what a control scheme is meant to do sounds a lot like the streamlining/dumbing-down of video-games (especially RPGs) to appeal to a wider audience. I don't want video-games to appeal to everyone, what's wrong with having a learning curve? Going back to the fighting game example, the controls are not at all designed to accommodate newcomers - so much so that the introduced a easy mode with a different control scheme in MvC3. The problem is that simplifying controls limits the amount of control you have over a character (and makes the game a lot easier). Another example: if Mario had the same Hold Button + Directional Stick free-running controls as Assassin's Creed it would be a completely different (probably quite boring) game; since the dawn of video-games controls have played a part in controlling their difficulty. Designing a control scheme is not just about making the controls easy for anyone to master (in fact I wish game designers would get over the idea that everyone should be able to (or want to) play there games, we have genres for a reason) it's about giving the player the right amount of options, at the right level of accessibility so that the level of difficulty in mastering the controls is appropriate to the context of the game you are playing. Nor am I the only one not having problems with it. Why are the people who did have problems 'right' and the ones who didn't 'wrong'. Well I never had this experience myself, but inaccurate touch controls is certainly a problem. Surely this is more a problem of the DS hardware, though, or possibly the programming I guess, not so much a problem of the control scheme itself (by which I mean if accuracy was the only issue you had, then if they were accurate then the controls wouldn't have been a problem). Either way it is not a problem Slagathorian, or anyone else in the thread, reported having, so it hardly invalidates my point that the player could have been the problem, not the controls. I didn't say you were terrible, I just suggested an alternate reason that the controls didn't work for you other than the reason that they are 'broken'. All I'm saying is that some people say the controls worked for them, other people say they didn't, is this the fault of the controls or of the people playing? As I said before I'm not saying either one is definitely the case, I'm just countering the argument that because the controls don't work for some people this means they are intrinsically flawed. The problems you had with the controls could possibly have been solved by you doing something differently. I much prefer the Phantom Hourglass tap to attack control scheme to the original Zelda combat. Whilst being able to move with the D-Pad would have been a useful feature in some circumstances, I wouldn't say the PH controls were any more flawed than the controls of older Zelda games. Oh and yes the original games had limited buttons, but they didn't for a console game at the time they came out, so who was going to complain about that?

Well that explains it then. I wasn't meaning to pry (well only a little XD), I was just curious. You've certainly had a colourful life so far, makes me wish I had more experience of other cultures. I've travelled quite a bit to some interesting places (China, Russia, Peru), but mostly on school trips (one of the benefits of going to a private school) and it's just not the same as actually living and integrating into a different culture. What was the thread topic again? Quick, someone get us back on track.

Woops, blame the wikipedia article I was reading to check I was using the word preserve correctly for mentioning it. I'll amend the original post to appease your wrath. PS. Are you not yourself English, WTF? I always thought you were but the way that post is worded sounds to me more like you're not of English descent at least.

I'd prefer if they kept the wandering in but just made it so you could ask absolutely anyone if they had seen a certain citizen. Obviously not everyone citizen will know every other citizen in the game, people who live nearby should recognise the citizen you are looking by name, further away they'd only recognise him by description. Some quests you may have a description but not a name and so on.