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Comment Re:Flash plays Strong Bad just fine (Score 1) 657

I don't understand why everyone points at homestarrunner as the be-all end-all of flash content that everyone's missing from their iphones. I don't even wanna get into how much of a difference it makes that purely in entertainment possibilities, the ios app store has much more choice than android does. I'm simply bewildered why the android market is taking so long to get solid entertainment apps in the market, and I check every now and again on my captivate and am continually disappointed. Am i missing something? Is it quite as barren as it seems or are there any, ANY diamonds in the rough that I've missed?

I do really appreciate there being daily show and colbert report full episodes accessible on android devices for example, but I'd say it's more than a fair trade-off to instead have access to the tens of games that I REALLY like and many, many more that aren't as fun all the time but entertaining every once in awhile. Besides, frash for iphone 4 and ipad already supports such flash content as homestarrunner and I'm assuming it will get flash video support at some indeterminate point in the future.

Comment Captivate/EVO (Score 1) 657

I don't follow. I watched some daily show and colbert report episodes using a captivate and an evo and it played more than acceptably. Honestly entices me, seeing as how the only flash on my iphone 4 that will seem to work in the near future will be the frash port that who knows when it will get flv support. Maybe the nexus one doesn't have a great flash implementation compared to evo and captivate?

Comment Re:What is this game? maybe I am too young? (Score 2, Insightful) 356

Likewise, DNF would not be hurt directly by being a sequel in the Duke Nukem series. It will do just fine if it's ever released and is a good game. Although if it really is released within the next year, I wouldn't expect the game to be much good - the development history seems too screwed up to produce a good end result.

Disagree. They could probably make a pretty decent game using whatever assets the game already has, engine and textures, models etc, but spend the remaining time left doing voices story and level design. Throw in a pretty good multiplayer mode and you have a solid game. I know it may not be feasible if the assets are too "last-gen", but I assume they at least wont follow what I keep hearing was the cause of the long dev time to begin with: the over-arching ridiculous desire to be as bleeding edge as possible. If I recall, the teaser trailer that came out within the last year or so didn't look so bad (can't remember if it had gameplay or only cgi), certainly not bad enough to require new tech.

Comment Re:Too Late (Score 1) 356

The only problem I ever had with borderlands was that the multiplayer was quite frustrating to get working at first. As soon as you applied port forwarding knowledge known from mucking around with routers for a large chunk of your life, however, you could get some solid games running (I'm mainly talking about launch).

As an aside, I could never get into it quite as well as I'd hoped because it didn't feel like there was enough solid, constant progression aside from gear upgrades. Diablo 2 for example had a much stronger focus on skills and such which is more my style rather than an endgame WoW-like gear-lust focus.

Comment Re:Count me in (Score 1) 703

Even if Beck has precious few things to say that have some merit, the absurdity and idiocy of the majority of what he says completely destroys any credibility he could possibly have. It's beyond jaw-dropping some of his talking points, and it scares the living daylights out of me when I consider that there are people who actually agree with some of the more insane thoughts he pushes on national television.

Comment Re:Mod parent up (Score 1) 470

The statistics of accidents influenced by drinking don't compare well to years lost by not drinking. On the one side you have a horrible choice (to drive while drunk) that you would never choose if you have a bit of sense (yes, even after a few drinks many good people CAN still control whether or not to drive), and you compare that to a simple "not right or wrong" choice of whether or not to ever drink.

Suffice it to say, while it might be interesting just to see the statistics involved it would be a blight for anyone to take the comparison remotely seriously. A criminal and despicable action versus a personal choice.

Comment Re:EverQuest. (Score 1) 362

I definitely misspoke. I apologize, I was talking about internet multiplayer. Although below, gontech mentions warcraft 2 having dialup play, was that after the edition came after starcraft or did Warcraft 2 only have LAN and direct connection play?

Also, good point about EverQuest. Although I have to mention the caveat that it was one of the first MMOs which is an entirely different beast IMHO.

Comment What an Idiotic Blunder (Score 5, Insightful) 246

Not only did I not trust Yankee Group's numbers before, but now I realize they asked an ignorant question about "google branded" phones? What the hell sense does that have in a comparison between iPhones and Android phones? I'll be sure to consider immediately discarding any statistics released by "Yankee Group" in the future, because they could have just "accidentally" forgot to mention some important detail. Ridiculous.

Comment Single Player is key (Score 4, Interesting) 362

Devs need to have multiplayer be an afterthought after designing a core, solid single player experience. Either that or have an established user base or famous IP behind the multiplayer.

Take Halo for example, it started as a great single player story with a great combat system (and a second buddy allowed to bum around with you but not shown on cutscenes), and local multiplayer that became extremely popular.

Halo 2 followed the story (but was considered a story flop compared to the first) but turned the multiplayer into quite possibly one of the most thriving multiplayer systems in at least console history. Halo 3 comes around and incorporates even more multiplayer into the campaign, and again continues the multiplayer. It all started with a core single player experience.

COD4, that started the whole FPS as RPG experience, had a comparatively short story mode, but, what a surprise, they started the franchise with COD that was primarily a top notch single player experience. So again, they built upon a successful single player franchise to create a very popular multiplayer experience.

Starcraft, just to point out this isn't limited to FPS, built upon a solid single player experience and was also the first of the craft games to have multiplayer, unsurprisingly it became a crazy hit. Everyone who is interested in Dragon Age has probably mused about how fun multiplayer could be if it was done right. GTA followed this to the T as well, and unsurprisingly most fans liked the multiplayer. Portal was a primarily single player experience that was lauded like crazy. If they come out with a great multiplayer mode in part deux it will possibly be the next big thing. Plan multiplayer for the sequel seems to be the most direct way to make cash moneys. Or at least focus on the single player first.

The only thing is, there do seem to be some exceptions. Counter Strike, Team Fortress 1+2 for example, but those could be attributed as the "real" multiplayer modes of half life and HL2. Shadowrun was completely multiplayer and was a hilarious flop (even though the gameplay wasn't bad).

Are there any extremely successful multiplayer games that either didn't have a extremely successful single player experience that preceded it, a strong pedigree or were popular PC mods?

Comment I predict (Score 2, Insightful) 315

As HDDs continue to fail before their expected lifetimes due to sensitivity to movement and the general worse state of moving parts vs unmoving parts, people may start to flock towards SSDs as replacements, especially as people start to notice the many benefits of SSDs over HDDs. They'd have to realize though that extraordinary wear could shorten the length of an average MLC and that SSDs even on normal usage are not meant to last forever, but with the improvement to wear leveling this may be less of a problem in the future.

Comment I'm just sick... (Score 1) 83

...and tired of having to deal with what the average consumer has voted with their wallets about. Micro-transactions in general aren't what the problem is, it's the fact that the average consumer will gladly shell out for all the micro-transacted extras in a game.

I DON'T WANT the extra costumes in a console fighting game for 99c, I DON'T WANT any of the 20 extra levels that each cost 1/5 the full price of the base iphone game. It is currently fine that I don't want those things and can choose not to get them.

What I hate is that I have to deal with them even existing. There's no "opt out" of the extra costumes in SF4 for example. I can't click an option that says "no extra costumes shown to me" if I play it online. So I have to look straight in the face of the people who inherently cause these micro-transactions to be commercially viable. I have to see the leaderboard entries for the levels I haven't bought, all to entice me to buy them. You pay full price $60 for a standard game, and if you're one of the people who don't really like being advertised to, your game advertises all the micro transacted additional content that's available on day one.

I don't mind a dev team continuing to work on a game I enjoy, and later coming out with something they've spent extra resources to produce. I can choose whether or not to get that, like I could always have chosen not to get Brood War and continue to play Starcraft without repercussion back in the day. What I disapprove of is stuff that's available for a price on the first day just because there are people who will buy it.

What needs to stop is the stuff that actually affects what you do if you just want the base game. Extra map DLC that's not free, that now affects your ability to matchmake successfully for example. And that's only a problem because there's ONLY MATCHMAKING and no dedicated servers. I'm looking at you, CODMW2.

Just keep all the dlc and micro transacted things off the disc, and maybe a blurb of advertisement text saying new stuff is available, a button to see all DLC for example. But keep it separate and invisible if you choose not to partake in it. By all means opt me in to seeing other player's stupid costumes that they paid for, but let me opt out if I wish. Keep my matchmaking from saying "play the DLC playlists!" when I don't want to get those maps. Let me find out on my own that the vanilla matchmaking is dead and choose to go get the DLC. Have a notification that pops up after searching for a game for two minutes that says "matchmaking slow? everyone may be playing DLC", but no hints before then. This way, at least it's a compromise if micro-transactions are here to stay.

I'd also like it if there was an option to buy a game for $65 instead of $60 at the store on/near release day that guarantees all future DLC is included. That'd be awesome, because I think it would actually work because a lot of people would probably cheap out anyway.

Comment First rule (Score 2, Insightful) 144

Wipe your sweaty hands off both before the handshake AND without the person seeing you. It's still unpleasant IMHO if you see a guy wipe his sweaty hands off right before shaking hands with you. (unless he/she was just eating lunch or something and thus is expected not to have the most clean hands in the world)
