Strike911

It's as easy as this: DLC is good. New content is good. It's when companies start intentionally gimping their games only to nickel and dime consumers for "new DLC" that I get pissed. Like look at the new(ish) Burnout. I'm fine buying DLC from Criterion because they released a solid game, and they released A LOT of free downloadable content... only in the last few months have they started charging for new things, and I'm totally cool with that because their initial product was rock solid, and they really supported the hell out of the game from the get go. Now if they release games that are missing things that are usually supposed to be there that aren't, that's when it bothers me. Game modes especially! I know a few companies are going that route lately. I'm cool when extra costumes or guns, or whatever little bonuses they want to add in, but there should be a good chunk of those little bonuses in the game already before you start adding them in as buyable content. It's like back in the day in older generations, we got a ton of free, extra stuff in the form of cheat codes and unlockable goodies, but now it's like DLC that you have to buy are replacing that old model. A lot of interesting bonuses that would have been mere extra content in the older generation are showing up as premium DLC, and that bugs me. Make me pay for interesting things that weren't necessarily possible when the game was made, not things that the game devs decided to leave out just to sell later. Games should be robust and filled with things at release. I have no problem buying DLC from companies that do that. Or like most of the Valve games. They've released SOOO much free content. If they charged for something new I wouldn't mind paying because they supported their games so well already. So yeah, there's my overly long answer. YEA As long as the game was supported well at release.

So where is the SDK? Didn't they say it would be released alongside Survival mode? Any news?

effin dolphin. Even the sea turtle and the fish look smug. It's like an underwater douche fest.

So me and my buddy finally got a gold medal. Just one! but we're very proud of ourselves. lol. Man, I'm loving Survival mode!

lol @ Kirby Squeak Squad!! Seriously, they added two diagonal lines on top of his eyes and its suddenly "Americanized." I love that. lol. Yeah, apparently the American audience just won't buy Kirby games unless he's angry on the cover.

no, no, no. The earliest iterations of Yoshi has quite possible the most smug look I've ever seen. Look at him. It's like he knows Mario owes him protection money or something. Bitch.

Hypothetical replication scenarios? Who cares?! That matter is simply this: if something has value then people should pay for it. Simple as that. People can argue that "information" or "digital copies" aren't physical, and don't have value because its a copy, blah blah blah. It's plain and simple: pirates are taking something they haven't paid for. It's not helping the industry, and legislation or enforcement won't fix it. It's a sticky issue, but killing websites that merely facilitate the transaction (or download in this case) isn't going to solve anything. This is a systemic issue revolving around how the internet works... you can't legislate that away. It's already illegal and people are doing it. Enforcement is difficult, and taking away torrents will piss people off because there are lots of legal ways to use the innovation. You can't legislate copying and pasting away. The only way I can see this getting fixed is by changing the way the content is delivered to customers. For instance, having some kind of required streaming content from a main server that is only delivered to the player when they're logged in and validated. You'd essentially have a piece of a game installed on your system, and would request key assets from the server. If you don't have all the assets when you load up a level, game won't play. If you manage to crack that and get it running somehow, your level is missing a whole crapload of stuff making play no fun. I don't know. That's the only thing I can think of, and it has a whole slew of issues... I'm not paid to fix it... hell. Stopping piracy is difficult enough already. Trying to take on pirates and webmasters that facilitate piracy 1 on 1 though? Give me a break. It won't work. There's just too many. It's a systemic problem. If a bridge is broken you don't retrofit millions of vehicles with hover engines to cross the gap, you fix the damn bridge. The fundamental issue here is how content is delivered on the internet and how the internet works. You can't stop the flow of digital information by force. Games must be developed in a way such that the user's installed content is seamlessly integrated into an online system where the games themselves rely on a constant feed of information supplied by a secure authorization server. Yeah, it'd require a constant internet connection, registration, and whatever, but as long as all the content is in people's hands they'll figure some way to copy it... because people just don't want to pay.

Dear Nintendo, I don't have any professional experience, but my friend told me he knew a someone at Nintendo and that you guys would hire me to be a Fire Emblem instrumentalist. I can play WiiMusic really REALLY good. My mom told me so. edit: That kid's a tool.

Interesting survey. I hope I'm not clinically addicted to gaming... I'm really interested in seeing the results.

I like this idea.

Long Response Never used TPB or whatever,big pr but this will just piracy to spread and become even harder to target. When the RIAA got to Napster, people just jumped ship to smaller communities to share things. You've got one big collection of pirates all in one website. Crushing it only makes everyone scatter to other smaller sites that are almost impossible, logistically, to stay on top of. The same thing will happen. Honestly, if piracy is going to occur wouldn't it be better to have it localized in a central area you can watch it from. This is bad move, in my opinion, because it does nothing to stop piracy, and only shakes the hornets' nest. Piracy as it stands cannot be stopped with our current methods of distribution. Especially by going after people merely facilitating the transaction. Where does it stop at that point? You can keep blaming people up to the game developers themselves if you want to start grasping straws like that. *rolls eyes* This is nothing but a "public lynching" to scare people into thinking something is being done and inevitably, just like with Napster, it cannot work. Companies need to come up with a good way of distributing their content in the future to stop piracy. If someone is breaking the law, yeah, they should be accountable for it, but acting like this is going to stop piracy... don't make me laugh. I don't know of any clever distribution methods (personally I like Steam but it too isn't immune to piracy either), but what I do know is that this three ring circus will do nothing to stop pirates. At all. I know there are a lot of arguments about whether or not these TPB guys broke Swedish laws and whatever, but... it honestly means nothing in the long run. It's all just a show at this point. Short Response Nothing will happen to the internet. This will change nothing at all. This whole thing will piss a lot of people off, but it will never effectively do anything beyond giving you an interesting news headline.

So a day ago my throat felt a little dry. I was like "Meh, must be allergies." Another day passes, and I sound a little hoarse, but I'm okay. So Now it's about 1 AM, 3 hours ago my voice transitioned into, I kid you not, the movie preview guy's voice. The octave dropped dramatically. I'm not sick, I feel fit as a fiddle, I'm pretty healthy, I watch what I eat, I exercise an hour a day, but out of nowhere, this thing hits me. The exact same thing happened to me four months ago. I haven't strained my voice recently, I've not been sick recently, and I don't have a sore throat. My throat does feel dry and yesterday I felt like drainage might have been causing it... but I'm not sure now. My biggest problem is that I have to present a huge final project at my university Tuesday afternoon, and with some possible vocalists here at OCR (hopefully), maybe I can find some remedies for a jacked voice. It's just really really dry and low. The pitch is low and airy. It's ridiculous, and once the novelty wears off from saying "In a world" over and over again, it's really very annoying. I know there is no magic pill that will fix everything instantly, and that resting (and not speaking) is probably the best option, but is there anything else that I can do to perhaps assist the healing process, assuming nothing is seriously wrong with my throat? I know this might sound ridiculous, but I'd appreciate any advice you can give me. *sips hot tea*

He just wants to be doper than everyone else. Hasn't it been like 15 years since someone used the word dope to describe something cool? I enjoyed the Kanye episode. I laughed heartily when Kanye sang his Gay Fish song.

So uh... ... isn't survival mode supposed to be out in a week or something?

Most charming thing I've seen in a long time.

ninja please?

Bad? You want bad? How is this for a screen cap? Colossus played by Michael Clarke Duncan. And yes, that's Kojak starring as Wander. EDIT: honestly... in retrospect, I would totally watch that.

Yeah, the enemy "ai" (if I even want to call it that, lol) is ridiculously basic right now. Again, this was only a little concept demo and it only demonstrated how the player can move, shoot, use bullet time, upgrade guns, and kill things. And maybe demonstrate the aesthetics of the style. I just wanted some kind of placeholder enemy in there just to shoot at. At first it was just a few static enemy vehicles that would sit there and do nothing... so... at least at this point they're a little aggressive, albeit not very effective. lol. Yeah, if I ever finish this the enemies need to be able to do more and fire in more of a way that is a challenge. I don't really want to go for too much bullet dodging though, where the screen is completely covered though. Maybe in low doses. I had a cool armor system in place, actually, where you cold shoot off pieces of an enemy's craft until you started hitting their vulnerable core, but it was a little buggy so it's not finished yet. You could take out specific parts and the enemies would die differently (cockpit everything blows up, engine and the car just stops flying, etc. etc.) It was a very Einhander-ish system, which I like. If I ever finished this game, I would want almost all aircraft to have this armor system... maybe even the player too. It's a fun little system, and makes shooting things more rewarding imo. Relatively easy to implement too. In fact, I had one where if you took out the enemy they'd eject... and then you could shoot their ejection pod/parachute... if you were completely evil. lol. Aesthetically, I also wanted to add more things going on in the foreground... like advancing enemies that you couldn't attack. There is a little "airborne highway" in the background too (I don't know if anyone could notice it... all the cars and trucks are behind the 3D buildings), but I wanted civilian cars flying around too which the player would have to avoid or shoot down. They were a little tricky to implement effectively in the style I wanted, but it's on the to-do list. The idea for this level was to originally have an airborne battle in the middle of heavy traffic... clearly the traffic that would cause the player problems is absent at this point, lol, but it's something I'd like to do in the future. I wanted the levels to have hazards and things that the player could interact with, even experiment with. Like shoot civilian vehicles and get them to crash into enemies, etc. ... in fact, the bullet time thing was originally added because I wanted a way to react and avoid fast moving civilian vehicles. Anyway, if I continue this project there's a lot of little things I want to add. I don't think it's quite to the point of feature burn because the features I want to add naturally lend themselves to the gameplay, so I think they're all feasible, and relatively easy to implement. It's all basically just a design blueprint... a prototype if you will. Ideally I'd like to have 3D graphics... so we'll see where it goes from here. and thanks, especially when this would be considered pre pre pre alpha. lol. I'd love to use this as a prototype for a full game for PC, Xbox Live or PSN. In fact, I've been doing a lot of research and contacting developer relations to get more info from Sony and Microsoft. So... yeah, right now it's just a little pet portfolio project but we'll see where it goes.

^ THIS... he must be involved. Absolutely. Not bringing him in is a slap in the face to game's overall style. Dead Serious. See this. that's a serious face. Dead. Serious.

Thanks for the kind words guys. Yeah, game design is kind of what I'm focusing on at college. I've actually posted a few other shoot em up demos I made over the last few years here on OCR. I think I actually had a working demo online once. Wonder what happened to that. It's been years. It was pretty crappy though. lol.

Just a video right now. Sorry about no real executable. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbNlz0WhOQ4 It's just a little thing I'm working on for my gamedev/gamedesign portfolio. I need to redo the graphics for the ships, because I know they're crappy, but they work. And the texture on the buildings could be better. The movement of the player (mecha) is buggy too, I realize, but it works. Basically you're a mecha blowing up police, in a city, and you can change into a faster, jet with less firepower. There are multiple types of weapons. - Basic Gun (average) - Shotgun (weak but scatters multiple shots) - Vulcan (weak but fires quickly) - Rifle (strong, but slow) It's not final by any means, and is more of a concept. The video demonstrates weapon changes, bullet time, a brief transformation into the jet at the end, and very basic enemy ai (if you even want to call it that, lol). Upon uploading this, I realize I forgot to show how the jet can use missiles and lock on to things. Ah, well. A little spinning green cross hair fades in and a missile flies into it. Not missing much. lol. Again, it's just a little concept to further fill out my game design portfolio. It was a fun little distraction to build and I just thought I'd share it.

Definitely. Wall-E is a great example. It could be done ...

I bought Assassin's Creed 1 at launch. I will not do that for Assassin's Creed 2. If people tell me it has more going for it than AC1, then sure, I'll pick it up later. AC1 was fun, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. Assassinations were few and far between, missions were the same one after the other, and there was no replay value. Sure I had fun playing through it, but... I'm done with that. The best thing out of Assassin's Creed was the fact that I can make Solid Snake wear Atair's clothes in MGS4. There I said it.

... okay I have a couple things to say.. I can get behind some Hollywood adaptations... Cowboy Bebop? Sure. Okay. Might be a fun watch. Akira? ... okay, I can deal. Robotech? Sure, I love me some giant robots. Metal Gear Solid? Okay, I can easily see that one, too. ... but Shadow of the Colossus?!?! I can't get behind that because the experience, the world, and the solitude are all like characters in their own right, and very rarely have I ever seen Hollywood achieve that correctly. Combine that with the people we know are involved in creating the thing, and you have one big giant rape of an excellent concept. I'm sure they'll get the Colossus fights down right, but everything else that made SOTC what it is, they'll completely forget. If a good director was in on it, there were only two characters (excluding the horse), and there was virtually no dialogue, then I would completely be in, but ... otherwise, sorry... ... this is a rape of one of my favorite games. *sigh* I swear, if it's not in that weird Latin/Japanese/English whatever the hell hybrid, made up language that was in the game... I will be pissed. WRITING? What writing? I kid. Shadow of the Colossus should be an animated Studio Ghibli film, not some Hollywood epic.

^ That. I love that theme.