Cyber Rat

I don't know what took me longer to decide from the two. I don't like Crecente, but there's nothing about his writing that makes me upset and I go to news sites because of the articles, not to see nice people. My problem is that it seems like the Kotaku folk don't actually play games... Kinda hard to explain, but I always get the impression that gaming is something they do every now and then, where I would expect a writer to be "more into it". I could be wrong, but that's just the impression I get. Ashcraft seems to be there only because he lives in Japan. Luke seems to know about gaming more than others, but he's way too opinionated and hypocritical. And his writing is awful (voted for him as my least favorite). The favorite vote went to Totilo, although it's a tie between him and Fahey. Totilo actually behaves like a journalist. Fahey I like reading. As for Tim Rogers... I think he has some smart things to say, but you have to read and dig through a bunch of crap to get to it. I'm guessing part of his "thing" is writing like that, but I think he'd contribute much more to the site if he were to get to the point faster. But he writes once a month, so it's easy to ignore his articles.

I finished Half Minute Hero. Even the Hero 3 campaign.

Droplitz Eversion Half-Life Half-Life: Blue Shift Half-Life: Opposing Force Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis Lumines MtG DLC P.B. Winterbottom Quantz Puzzle Dimension RUSH Serious Sam HD: 1st and 2nd Encounter Team Fortress Classic (lol)

Were you not paying attention, dammit?! It did all that while dancing...

There's a Kick Me sign you get stuck on you in God Hand somewhere near the beginning of the game. The sign comes off if you use the God Roulette or activate the God Hand. There's a challenge for beating the game without the sign falling off...

So practical!

Avoiding fights, yes, but avoiding danger altogether like in Shattered Memories? Please no... Also, with the exception of the bloke from Homecoming, isn't combat supposed to suck? You play as a writer, store clerk, tomboy chick and soulless husk in the first four games. None of them seemed that capable with anything other than a 2x4 or lead pipe. Also, they were undergoing severe psychological trauma by encountering denizens of the dark. I couldn't swing myself in the direction of a dark corner, let alone swing a melee weapon at something.

Counter-Strike whatever non-Source version. It is also de_dust2 I guess?

And when they are, he says stuff like "Could it be a Final Fantasy Reboot?"

I am waiting for the "No ancient mystical cult" announcement...

The Mega Drive always felt like the B Production console for me, in all it's trashy glory. The SNES was mainstream Hollywood dipped in happiness and PG-13 rainbows.

If only Bethesda bothered reading this.

Did he died?

I'm not sure, but I think someone in this thread mentioned something about "every pirate copy = 1 lost sale". But it really is unreasonable to expect that every single person who pirated the game would have bought it. As for basing PC releases on market/pirate research, I don't really trust the publishers in that regard. GTA4 was a poorly optimized port and barely worked and then all of a sudden RDR isn't released because of piracy? (I'm not sure they gave piracy as the official reason though? Or did they?) Same thing with Epic and their comment about moving Crysis 2 to consoles. The poor sales of UT3 and Crysis 1 have more to do with the former being boring compared to previous installments and the latter being an interactive unoptimized benchmark than piracy killing the PC gaming market. If that were the case, indie titles wouldn't have flourished as much as they did on the PC, but would have found their home only XBLA and PSN. Of course the publisher will blame piracy rather than their own poor perfomance. The only time publishers ever say "yo, we messed up" is MP only titles (like Square's statement over FFXIV).

Yes, it is, however, besides legality, is there anything wrong with that? I like to think of "morality" when it comes to issues like this in terms of "effect on owner." If it's not released, and someone just rips it from the game, then it's not doing anything to the owner as there was no opportunity to make money off of them. If anything, it's good and free publicity, and gives people a stronger connection to the game (and thus, its sequels.) That was way too many commas. Problem is I never brought the morality of any kind of copyright infringement into the discussion. If we're talking legal, then both "real" piracy and ripping resources from a given work counts as copyright infringement, and thus are both a crime. Justifying yourself with "Yea, it's not legal, but I'm not hurting anyone as much as people downloading the whole thing" is kinda hypocritical. I could just as easily justify myself "I'm not hurting anyone by downloading Fallout New Vegas because I never would have bought the game in the first place and my copy didn't stop anyone from enjoying their legally purchased copy, thus no money gained or lost." This isn't about you. I'm bringing morality into this because this is a multi-faced issue. I already agreed that it's copyright infringement. You can't argue that. It's law. If that's "okay" or not is thus what should be discussed. I don't see how it's hypocritical. Especially when your example includes full games when we're talking about a game's soundtrack. Keep it consistent. Are we talking about parts of the game (an argument closer to sampling in music than downloading albums) or the games as a whole? The subject at hand is a specific portion of a game that isn't available to be purchased (when other games do have this available to be purchased.) Should people just not download the soundtrack when it isn't available to purchase? Simply because it's illegal? I really don't think so. If anything, disregarding legality, that the studio would be happy to have people enjoy their work and I already mentioned the institutional benefits of this. This is why musicians are typically in support of piracy. They lose the CD sale, and get the concert and t-shirt sale. Developers and publishers will get the sequel sale. The brand loyalty sale. Etc. "This isn't about you?" What? I simply said that both are copyright infringement and thus both illegal. If we're looking it legally, then no, you SHOULDN'T be ripping soundtracks, because it is the law. Now, if we look at it practically, yes, it does serve to promote games. A friend of mine bought Nier because of listening to an illegally obtained OST, thus giving the developers money. And piracy can work the same way. I could pirate a game, see that I actually like it and then pay money for a legal copy. Did I break the law in both cases? Yes. Did the developers gain a sale? Yes they did. The hypocrisy of some people is that the former seems to be perfectly ok, while the latter is frowned upon and put in the same basket with people who pirated the Charity Bundle.

Yes, it is, however, besides legality, is there anything wrong with that? I like to think of "morality" when it comes to issues like this in terms of "effect on owner." If it's not released, and someone just rips it from the game, then it's not doing anything to the owner as there was no opportunity to make money off of them. If anything, it's good and free publicity, and gives people a stronger connection to the game (and thus, its sequels.) That was way too many commas. Problem is I never brought the morality of any kind of copyright infringement into the discussion. If we're talking legal, then both "real" piracy and ripping resources from a given work counts as copyright infringement, and thus are both a crime. Justifying yourself with "Yea, it's not legal, but I'm not hurting anyone as much as people downloading the whole thing" is kinda hypocritical. I could just as easily justify myself "I'm not hurting anyone by downloading Fallout New Vegas because I never would have bought the game in the first place and my copy didn't stop anyone from enjoying their legally purchased copy, thus no money gained or lost."

You are trying to justify your copyright infringement with "it's not available in retail". It is still copyright infringement regardless.

My brother watched "Hackers" and decided for a brief period of his life (about a week) that he wanted to be a hacker. His name was "Cyber Rat". When I couldn't think of a name for Counter-Strike, I went with Cyber Rat 101, then ditched the 101 some time ago. I don't even like rats.

McDonald's/KFC/Pizza Hut is stupidly expensive here, not to mention (gasp) it's for folk with money. (You "Westerners" wouldn't believe how Pizza Hut looks fancy here.) Chinese is also expensive and Japanese costs a bloody fortune. But we have cheap Serbian BBQ. You can get a giant hamburger with the meat filled with spices, cheese and ham (like, regular burger meat, but it has that in its core) for 2 euro. The BBQ here is awesome if you know where to look. There's also an insane amount of bakeries here.

The OP pretty much said what I think about this generation: awesome developers, godawful publishers.