Thursday Next

Oh my good god... what world do Anon live in? Was the "epic" soundtrack needed? Kind of took the edge off that I could see some sort of wicker basket in the corner of the screen, but I guess when you run an international organisation dedicated to the destruction of "Greedy Companies" (taking corporate personality a little far there) from your mum's house it's to be expected.

Could be. Akira is kinda hard to get hold of the first time you see it. But the whole living a lie thing that the protaganist was doing was a cool twist that I didn't see coming. Killing the potential love interest at the end of disc one too. It did a lot of good story telling of varying levels of complexity.

Loving the logic behind this. "How dare you be mean to the general public and limit their access to products they bought. We'll teach you a lesson by cutting off the public's access to products they bought!" Thanks Anonymous. Next time you feel like helping me out... just don't.

Having bought a couple of these on PSOne and again on PSN (and got some via PS Plus) it really would be super if I could not have to pay for them... again... again. Ho hum.

You don't get the story =/= Story was bad.

Final Fantasy VII has a great story. Are we basing this on how good the underlying story is or how good the delivery or certain characters are?

I'll comment on this properly later...

No need to be rude. There are more decent ways of talking to other members regardless of whether you like them or not, so let's keep this thread civil. Seriously? That's what counts for rude these days? Aga stated a concern that "free" MMO's often, but not always, have an element of "pay to play". I was merely pointing to BSGO as one of the exceptions (that Aga did not preclude) to that rule of thumb and indicating that he need not be concerned about having to pay to get the best equipment since the only "paid for" element (the aforementioned "Cubit" currency) can be earned over time through gameplay. I think it is clear that Aga does not in fact coil his undergarments at being asked for money. The comment was meant in a light hearted, facetious tone, sometimes referred to as "banter". However, in case anyone took me literally, let me state for the record that I have never seen Aga's underwear and as such am unable to comment as to the twistyness thereof. I don't believe I have ever expressed a dislike for Aga, I honestly don't know him anything like well enough to pass judgement. Aga's writing is competent, though in his blog posts he tends to fluff turns of phrase and old sayings. I find this to be an amusing quirk to his character, much like Dean's steadfast refusal to write "should have", and, should I find Aga to be personable, I may well rib him about this from time to time.

People who make sweeping statements about what is and isn't, then, when called on it say "I was just posting my opinion blah blah... freedom of speech blah blah...". If something is an opinion, be sure to label it as such, or accept that it may be mistaken as you reporting an erroneous fact and clarify your position without all the defensive stuff. Also... not just an innernet peeve, but a general one. The Krishna like chanting of the Bill of Rights really winds me up. A lot of internetians act like it is some immutable document that cannot ever evolve beyond its original purpose, and then will go on to quote this amendment or that amendment. Do you even know what "Amendment" means? It means something was changed ya know what that means? That it can (and in some places (in my opinion) should) be changed again. In fact, I'm gonna expand that to general misquoting of laws, political doctrine, and philosophy.

BSG Online is turning out to be a fun Free to Play MMO. It's a Unity based browser game. You don't need to buy anything as the purchasable currency (Cubits) is grindable as well so Aga doesn't need to get his knickers in a twist about being "required to purchase" anything. P.S. You should probably join as a Cylon, they're pretty out numbered.

*Glances Up* We're still talking about Co-op games right?

Why do all your blogs take this so personally Aga? It's just business. Developers aren't moving to consoles because they don't care about "loyal" PC gamers and like those fickle console gamers more. They do it because they think they can make more money that way. One of the reasons they believe this is because PC piracy is endemic, though the motives behind it are unknown. But there are other reasons, such as a known install base, no divergence in specification, perceived better security of consoles, potential for first party to split marketing costs, the list goes on.

You probably don't know about scalable maps in bf2. The maps themselves are pretty big, but the actual size of a battle zone depends on number of players. I think it will be the same in bf3. Take a look at this picture. Just to clarify, it doesn't do this on the fly. If you join a 64 player map with 8 people (iirc that was the minimum for a ranked game) then you will be in a 64 player map, it won't shrink to fit. Similarly, if you join a full 16 player map and want to get one more guy in tough. It won't expand to a 32 player map. I think that's pretty obvious, but just wanted to make sure we weren't getting too crazy.

So what about the usual "Games = Art" suspects? Like Flower. How is that not art? Games may thrive on interaction, but not necessarily with other people. You have to interact with the medium. When you look at a book you have to read it. The words don't leap into your mind. You have to translate the words into images, sounds, smells, feelings. Books are hugely interactive in that respect. You compare them with sports, specifically with competitive sports and for a lot of games this is true. Sports games (obviously), FPS, RTS, basically any game with competitive online elements could be classed as not art, but just because a piece of art requires interaction does not make it "not art". Maurice Benayoun's The Tunnel under the Atlantic required that one person be at each end to "work" as the artist intended. Did the requirement for interaction render it not art somehow? Also, you seem to neglect art-sport duality. Dancing is I believe considered art, but what of competitive dance? Ballroom dancing where rules are strictly applied and followed? The art becomes a sport does it not? Suggesting that games are not art because they are niche is hardly fair either. Games are the biggest selling entertainment medium going, they are the opposite of niche. "Arty" games on the other hand are very much a "niche", but how does this differ from written media or cinema or music, where the massively popular content, Dan Brown, Wyan brothers, Hannah Montana is snubbed by those who consider the medium to be an artistic one and see no artistic value in what they are shown? I do agree with this bit though (with a minor amend):

Feels like it.

Is everything supposed to be spinning?

Flashing back to the Wolverine dude... I hate how you get two extremes of commenter on those it's either "No life", "Virgin" and "Too much time" comments or it's "This person should work for NASA", "This person will get a masters from MIT" or 2this person will be a billionaire someday". These things, where people build crazy stuff, they're "kinda cool" and "nice to have a hobby" they don't have to preclude or guarantee a successful, socially active life. Anyways... here is a mental McDonald's Advert.

I thought about it when I was writing my comment but decided to exclude it because the voice acting really wasn't that great. Some of it was but it was vey inconsistent. Jason. JASON! Jason. JASON! Jason. JASON! JASON! Jason. Granted, but that's an editorial / user decision. The actual delivery of the actual voice actors was (imo) very good. The fact that you can Press X To Jason umpteen billion times is not the VA's fault. If you repeated anything anyone says over and over it starts to sound odd.

Heavy Rain. You may not have liked the accents, and sometimes the limited choices in a conversation meant that you'd flip from neutral to hella pissed off in an instant. But the actual delivery of the voice actors was spot on.

From a publisher perspective, there's not a huge amount of difference between the two.

“You could allow a game to be torrented so long as you have some way of doing micro-transactions or in-game ads on the back of it. “In order to be able to properly leverage or harness piracy, you have to make sure that your business model caters to that. This is a day one decision.” I agree with this sentiment. It's why I approve of day 1 DLC (especially where it is included in the box as with Bioware titles), and Online Pass. Saying "Oh well, if the game is good all the pirates who were going to buy it will buy it and those that weren't are not lost sales." may well be a great philosophical position, but it won't pay the bills. On the other hand if the people who pirate have to pay for access to content that legitimate purchasers get for free, then that's all good in my book.

One, don't refer to "Kotaku" like it's a singular entity. It's a blog site consisting of individual opinions from writers, editors and guest authors. One article doesn't represent the views of everyone on the site. Hell, they can't even agree on their game of the year pick. Second, if you go back and look at their articles about Kinect you'll see that they never neglect to criticize the "Mii too!" nature of Kinect's games. On a side note, I did like that Lisa Foiles had the humility to make fun of herself in that article. Firstly, "one doesn't" or (preferably) "one does not" it's quite a strange juxtaposition to use the very formal address of "one" followed by a (grammatically incorrect) contraction like "don't". Especially when educating another on correct forms of address. Secondly, if you're going to write a list you might as well number all of them, not just the second one. Thirdly, while it has many authors the Editorial Direction of Kotaku is clearly applied from the top down, so I feel quite comfortable in tarring them all with the same brush. Fourthly, I'm not going back there. Ever. Fifthly, and finally, I did like how Lisa Foiles took the unusual step of mentioning her child "Stardom". Again. How unlike her. P.S. I'm only kidding, you can take offence if you want, but it's all in jest.

Nah, I wasn't overly clear. You'll have to ask Nihil why a pad is better, unless of course he doesn't believe that pads are better and was just being contrary (hard to believe I know).

You're probably right but I'd still rather have someone that has the precision (if it's needed) than someone who's trying to aim with an analog stick *pictures someone with their tongue out gently nudging the analog stick to get it in the right position*. Oh no, you didn't! You best be trolling, boy! Think you read me out of context. I was surprised that Nihil would suggest that someone might prefer to use a pad where M&K were available. Hence "Choosing a pad over M&K?" Then stated that my not thinking of the Pad as a viable option was due to an abundance of common sense as opposed to a lack of imagination. EDIT: Some puzzles require precision and timing. While they are all possible with pads, to achieve the mindbendingly awesome speed runs seen in Portal, you're almost certainly gonna need M&K.

Pssst... You didn't hear it from me, but I've heard they're implementing USB gamepads that work with PCs. Just don't tip Kotaku or else everyone might find out. Didn't occur to me to do that, I can't imagine playing something FPS-ish with a controller when there's a Mouse and Keyboard option. Still don't think it's on the cards. You don't have much of an imagination. Choosing a pad over M&K? It's not a lack of imagination, it's just common sense.