fuchikoma

PixelJunk Shooter 2 was another 2011 game! (I'm hoping the images are right and I'm not just posting PJS1 tracks... I loved 1, but physically can't play 2.)

I actually found a somewhat infamous Gamasutra interview about Rage pretty refreshing. Some people attacked it as being jaded or antagonistic, but I think it was one of the few that asked the kind of questions I'd want to ask. It's not just an assisted press release. To the topic of this thread though... I see Bash posted "Who Is to Blame for Slave Labor-Made Game Consoles: Gamers or Game Companies?" on Kotaku today... really, guys? Because it's one or the other, and only game systems are made with Foxconn parts, while every other piece of electronics is from somewhere else? Or because getting a paid job is slave labour? From what I have heard from Foxconn workers in interviews, they knew it was a tough job, but it pays pretty well, so they took it. From everything I've heard, this is not your proverbial sweatshop with no bathroom breaks, that keeps the workers locked inside so they can't escape when there's a fire (forget whose that was, but it actually did happen somewhere.) But surely, either game companies or gamers are enslaving workers. Way to troll for hits.

I agree with P4 and Ethan if I get what they're saying. I think the Internet should be considered a "human right" not in that anyone is obligated to connect people to it, or subsidize it, but rather if a government like Syria starts turning on its people and they try to communicate, but their Internet or other communications are cut off to stifle them, it should be considered a violation of their human rights. Personally, I'd like to go one farther and say that SOPA, or other national censorship schemes are also in violation of people's rights. That said, I believe "rights" are actually "oughts." People seem to assume nothing can violate their rights, but in fact anything and anyone can. They ought not to though, and in a perfect world, they wouldn't. They're a wonderful idea, but I think people give them too much credit these days, at least the "first world." If a nuclear-armed power violates its people's rights, you know who comes to save them? Probably no one, sadly.

If you can play Ikaruga, I don't think you will have any trouble with Touhou... I got it on XBLA and it destroys me on lv2. I hate restriction/obstacle-based levels...

I checked the Vita before posting, and without qualification, Shihei Yoshida said "it is" region free.. Personally, I play foreign games very often. My favourite PSP games are imports. In fact, I probably wouldn't be kicking myself for buying a 3DS so much if it were region free - though I haven't seen much to entice on it regardless. I've also enjoyed some DS imports like the classic Ouendan games, though apart from those it's not such a huge deal to me there. I'd import for 360 if I could too, but I haven't hacked any TV-connected current-gen consoles.

Yeah, I was talking about it on Kotaku years ago and someone was saying the placement of the sticks makes them impossible to use for shooters, and I figured out they were doing that. I tried it and it was pretty brutal after any length of time. Since then I've mentioned it once in a while and it seems to be a revelation to some people who didn't grow up with older systems without "handlebars" on the controllers.

Never heard "arse first" either, though arse is understood, while rarely used. I wouldn't be surprised if it was more common in Canada than the US - it strikes me as something you'd hear near the East coast (Maritimes, settled largely by Scottish, Irish, English and Acadians.) One that may just be a weird Canadian term is "ass over teakettle." I don't know what sort of mental image it's supposed to convey, but basically it's like tumbling "head over heels" out of control. ("Head over heels" is weird too. Your head should always be over your heels...) We also use "ass backward," or at least among those I know, "bass ackward."

The tension feels the same to me, but the 360 doesn't have enough deadzone in the middle. I actually had to retire the controller that came with mine because the miniscule play in the stick would cause the menus of games to go berserk frequently. As for DS3 discomfort, I usually suggest not touching it with palms, but resting it on the fingers of open hands - like NES/SMS/SNES/Gen controllers. Won't fix it for everyone, but I'm amazed how many murder their thumbs trying to full-grip it like an XBox controller.

With no special replay bonuses? Wipeout XL (2097 for Brits/Europeans. Retired. Mostly 1997-2005. Easily an all time favourite.) The beatmania series. The DJ Max Portable series. The Touhou Project series. Fighting games. Namely DoA2, but lately more Blazblue CS and SFIV. Forza 3. The Impossible Game. Really, I'm the kind of guy who'll play a fun game, usually a very short game, practically forever, but a long game just won't get finished no matter how good it is.

Locked systems in bold: PSX, PS2, PS3, PSP, Vita N64(?), GC, Wii, GBA, DS, 3DS XBox, 360 It seems MS is always locked down, Sony's moving away from it, and Nintendo's locking down even more. That seems to fit their third party hardware policies too though.

Ditto. I've heard the short version of the tale, but had to go look it up just now to make sure it was the one I had in mind. No matter how big a part of the title of the game it is, all you need to play it is reflexes and a sense of humour.

I've been thinking about reading Brave New World lately... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU6B95u2gN4

I can NOT see this on a Nintendo platform as it is... For instance,

Wow... If I ever work on coding an FPS, I'll have to make an "object" that kicks the player out, on fire, when touched. Whenever we catch someone pulling that crap, just stuff an instance of it into the exploitable spot and out they go! I mostly stopped playing FPS after 10-15 years of it, but it's sad to see crap from Counter-Strike and before is still exploitable in new games. Anyway, here's the infamous Mass Effect Benezia rubberbody glitch. The music is inappropriate, but that's a rule of Youtube... this is still the best one I could find because the others are kids pointing a camera at the screen while mocking it.

Loved these guys ever since they started to catch in the mid 90s. It was a big part of my soundtrack in high school.

Games can be pretty entertaining when they don't work as intended... so let's post some glitches or oddities found in games! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2UXDn_bB20 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n6kc1wyaDY

I liked Crecente too. I rarely agreed with his opinions, but it was like he was hardcore into casual-focused games and that made it interesting to read his POV. Not just another cookie cutter gamer site by gamers for gamers. He was a bit childish early on, but really mellowed after a few years running the site. Joel on the other hand... is the reason I left the site in more ways than one. I have nothing to say about him that isn't scathing through and through. Before that, I never had any serious issues with the staff there, though I remember Kirk has written an article or two that just made me shake my head.

@ Hot Heart: AH! Now I also get ! Thanks. I searched for an answer, and I kept finding people who thought it must mean the York patties, but I had to wonder if they were even sold there and why you'd have a bag full... (but then... they're very silly, so...) @MasterDex: That's funny... even though we don't exactly have "chavs" here, that was still the term I was thinking of after watching them for a bit.

I forgot about that since it hasn't been an issue for me. A friend recently reinstalled HL2 though, and he used to play with a mod called "smod redux." He tells me it's totally broken in the newer version, but he didn't get the choice to opt out of updating.

So, while the Irish here have managed to keep them under wraps, Tenshi posted a Rubberbandits video the other day, and now I'm left wondering something... What is a "bag of Yorks?" or am I mishearing it? I tried Wiktionary and Urban Dictionary and neither can suggest a meaning for "yorks." Could this be the American candy? Or maybe something related to Yorkshire?

Wow. It sounds like multi-decade operating system maker Microsoft forgot the first rule of moving files. Copy first, then delete. I'd probably have done it so that the first 360 copied all the files and then wiped out a file for licensing them or something... Then copy them all to the new system and authorize it, making a new license file. The first 360 would be useless for running the files after "moving" them, but if all else failed, you could log in and reactivate it. That way MS could at least make sure you didn't have 2 concurrent systems running the same file set...

FDS, You can pause updates, and the last time I tried, you could not launch a game that was paused while updating. They assume you will run Steam 24/7 and it will just update in the background, but since I only used it while playing games, launching a game would start the update and it would be unusable until finished. Thanks, Johnny, I have had a lot of practice explaining it, since on most gaming forums if you don't love everything about Steam, you get absolutely browbeat until you get tired/banned/downvoted into oblivion, etc.

@Faiblesse - That is true, but I figured given the context, it would not be taken ambiguously since the counterpart is buying the game. It's shorthand. @Ethan: It's not a current grudge, but I remember when Steam came out, it basically locked me out of any Valve games because it would load, start downloading an update, fill up ALL of my RAM, then the fonts in all of my applications would default back to "system" before the whole PC would lock up. It could never update because it leaked memory like a sieve. Once they got it working, it became more like Windows Media Player going from version 6 (for those who don't remember, MP 6.4 looked like Media Player Classic) to 7 to 8, bloating up more and more to offer me more things I didn't want in the first place. I just wanted the games I bought, but to run the game I had to run the IM client, and the online store, and the updater, which would usually start downloading an update right when I'd decided to play a game, and offer no way to defer or cancel it while leaving the game playable - so I'd have to wait until it's finished downloading and patching to play the game I just double-clicked the icon of. Sometimes this meant sitting for a half hour playing a handheld while waiting for my already-installed game to launch, then closing it when it was ready because I was out of time. There was offline mode - but of course then you'd never get updates if you ran it all the time. Also, for a long time, switching to offline mode required signing in online first, then restarting offline, so if I had it on a laptop, I was simply locked out if I hadn't done the dance before leaving the house. These days there is at least a timeout to allow switching offline. The next problem is partly my fault, partly bad service - this is a very common issue, I've found by searching, and one that no one has ever had resolved. I made an account for Half-Life when CS 1.6 came out on Steam. I used this for a while, then stopped using it and uninstalled since it had no use for over a year. Eventually, the Orange Box came out and I bought it - but I didn't know which email address and password combination I'd originally used. Everything I tried failed, so it seemed that I'd lost my account. I wanted to play the game I had in my hand that day, so I made a new account for Orange Box and used that. Eventually I found the login info and got into my first account. I asked if I could merge the accounts since I could provide hard proof in every thinkable form that I owned both of them. No. Accounts and content on accounts can never be transferred. My content is split between two accounts until the end of time. A bunch of games on one, and a bunch on the other. Shitty, and enough of a hassle switching back and forth all the time that I generally abandoned them shortly after to play games I didn't need a babysitter for. So basically, there is a lot of bad blood in the past regarding it... I never asked for it, but never had a choice, and it has only made my experience as a customer worse. Regardless of what proportion of system resources it consumes, it does not need to consume ANY of them, as the games are fully capable of functioning without it. It is there simply to supervise me and make sure I'm not pirating their games. Lock up your goods, sure, but don't make me carry the lock around after I've bought them. This just makes every "feature" they add to it add insult to injury; I don't use them, so they're dead weight. Now, it's a matter of DRM. If you are unable to login to Steam for any reason, you lose EVERYTHING you have ever bought on the service forever, or until you manage to crack it. I don't like that from anyone, and in most other cases, I would not even give them my money under such a restrictive system. It's amazing what owning Counter-Strike and Portal could do to persuade me though. Not long ago, I received an email from Steam (they neither confirm nor deny this), linking only to official Steam servers, asking me to confirm a password reset request. I didn't make that request, so I ignored it - then they were hacked, so I figured I'd better go in and change my passwords. I also figured that since it'd been months since I even had Steam installed, I'd reinstall Portal 2 and try the new content they'd talked about. So I put in the backup disc, told it to install, and had to log in to authorize me to install from the disc... I entered my username (from the email) and the password... and it didn't work. So I asked for a password reset... and the message never came. My other account worked fine, but the one they asked me to reset didn't. So I opened a support ticket and asked for a reset. I spent over a week with the first rep, since they only replied once daily, if that. "Send me a photo of the ticket number written on your CD key." "Ok." "Tell me your name, account name, and home address and I'll reset the password." "Ok." "Did I say I'll reset it? I meant also send me the name and expiry date on your credit card and the last 4 digits." "OK..." "Something mismatched - I can't reset it for you." "What? That doesn't make sense - this is the only credit card I've ever had. Here is the previous expiry date and CVN number, though you shouldn't expect people to have that handy..." "Something mismatched. I can't help you." "Well then my account has been hijacked. Can't you roll back the info on it and see that it was mine?" "Nope. You're locked out unless you can give me the right info." "Look. Here is the message you guys sent me. It has the date and time of the reset request, and even the IP address of the guy who asked for it. It came from Steam. It links to Steam. It uses my real first and last names, which I really don't give out unless I have to. Is this reset request legit?" "Can't help you." "Wow. Everything I bought on that account just got jacked. I'm done with you guys." "Have a nice day." So I opened a new ticket a day later and got a different rep who pointed out... The account Valve asked me to reset wasn't either of the ones I owned - which he then showed me, instead of vaguely insisting something didn't add up and leaving me guessing. That raises a very interesting question though: I only believed that was my account because it was a Latin compound word that I made up expressly for the purpose of logging into online gaming services, never as a nickname, never published. It should only be known to a handful of MMORPG companies - and yet, I got an email from Valve asking me by my real name, at the address I'd first registered with Steam, to reset the account with this name. Assuming it was a phishing email, clicking the reset confirmation link would have, at best, finalized a password reset for this account and sent me a new password(?)(That is, it wasn't steampowered.com.omghax.cn or something) so... Where did it come from, and why? The answer from Valve was: We will look into this and take appropriate action. You will not be notified of the result. The lesson I took from that was a.) If something happens with Steam, I could easily be locked out of my games for at least a week while sorting it out. b.) Actually, like I'd talked about in theory before, but now proven: If something happens with Steam, I could be locked out of ALL my Steam games FOREVER. Someone could hijack my account and change my info, and it's possible (not addressed by Steam reps either way) that it would all be lost, me not knowing what it was changed to. Not only is it putting all of your eggs in one basket - it's handing the basket back to the guy who sold you the eggs and asking permission to borrow them. If he decides he doesn't like me some day... then all my eggs are gone. If he leaves town... all my eggs are gone. If I don't have the exact set of documents handy that he wants to see... all my eggs are gone, and so on. So I am so sick of Steam now, I am completely and thoroughly finished with them. Every time I give them money for something, I wind up kicking myself for it because it comes around to bite me in the end. Now, if the only way for me to get something is through Steam, I leave it or pirate it. For years, I've advocated donation forms on game developer websites because I do feel bad not paying for well made games, but sometimes DRM is just too cumbersome or evil to deal with. I'd love to give honest pay for honest work, but with barriers like these, it's not worth it. (edit: Item b does not mean I'm smiling while wearing shades, haha)

I dl'ed Portal 2 because it was on Steam... but I wanted to play multiplayer and bought it. Then regretted it, not for anything in the game itself. Then dl'ed Skyrim, but I will buy it the day they sell it in standalone form, if that happens. They could charge $90 - if there's no DRM, the cash is theirs.