Wrestlevania

...fuck. :\

Have you read I Am Legend by Robert Matheson? It's an absolutely brilliant book. It follows a few weeks in the life of a very average man, as he survives day-to-day, in a world where the majority of people have succumbed to a disease which turns them into latent vampire-zombie hybrids--including his wife. I was so engrossed I read the book cover to cover the afternoon I bought it. Can't recommend it enough.

Well, you would say that, wouldn't you? Seeing as you're married to one...

In all seriousness, that's a pretty smart directional choice to make. Having John Connor live rough on the streets, leading a secretive, nomadic lifestyle engulfed by paranoia, should give the screenwriters a lot of potential choices, episode to episode. The Littlest Hobo Freedom Fighter Who Could, Did, Then Couldn't/Didn't

Nick Stahl also manages to make John Conner more spineless and wormlike than even Edward Furlong did; I wanted to slap the whiney little bitch by about 30mins through. Much teeth grinding on my part, but it's still very watchable. The gaffs and in-jokes are fun, too. And Arnie's self-deprecation is delivered with almost genius-like subtlety.

...aaand it's arse. Great fight scenes and CG work, truly. But fuck me are the cast universally "shit" or worse!?

I sincerely hope you end up loving that game as much as I did. ...which reminds me: I still haven't completed the sequel.

Very clever piece of editing, just a shame about the visual continuity errors; damage on RoboCop, a wall mysteriously appearing behind RoboCop when he's just walked down the middle of a corridor. Very minor quibbles though--it's a great piece of work. I might watch the second later part. However, I did have two major gripes with it: Why is the Predator made out to be some turn-tail, smart-bombing pussy? Why is he/it even involved at all? The setting was superb without him/it, therefore his/its inclusion was completely unnecessary and done just to score extra "cool points". Why did we end up with loads of RoboCops at the end!? That doesn't make any sense at all; RC already kicked the shit out of one Terminator, so why couldn't he handle a few more and have all out armageddon between humans and machines? It's not like humans haven't ever defeated a Terminator in any of the films... Moreover, it just ends up being man-made machines fighting more man-made machines--where's the human aspect? Why would I empathise with a bunch of tin cans being banged together? All said it still realises some great potential for a cross-over like this coming to film. In the meantime, I think I'll stick to playing the classic MegaDrive interpretation.

I'm off to a free local screening of 300 tomorrow night - can't wait, plus it should be the perfect "Monday" antidote.

Get a magazine rack in your bog - you'll suffer crippling dead legs, but you'll get plenty of reading done too.

I agree also. Your morality is being scored according to a game designer's interpretation of "right" and "wrong". Having metrics like this is flawed in two ways. Either the criteria needs to be: very specific to the particular game and its setting, or; so widely interpretted, with regards to "right and "wrong", that it becomes largely academic and therefore irrelevant and devoid of precise meaning in the current setting. Why people can't just leave it up to you (Syndicate being indeed a superb example) and let your peers judge your behaviour I don't know. I shudder to think just how long it took Lionhead to create, test and temper their morality engine in Black & White et al, but I think it will remain deeply flawed as it is. How it might become interesting, however, is if you could somehow record your actions and then have your friends score your morality--which would in turn manually adjust the "right" and "wrong" settings in your particular game. That might actually be quite fun, ultimately, for the player, but I can't imagine it being very interesting for their peers after more than a half-dozen "reviews".

In that case, I take it back; sorry, Dan.

It's something John Carmack has alluded to in the past; id Software concentrates on engine development, then works with someone like Splash Damage in the latter stages of development to produce a game with which to launch it... like Enemy Territory: Quake Wars for example, which will be id's first MegaTexture-powered game (and no doubt something they hope will revive the industry's interest in the Doom 3 engine). What's perhaps interesting is certain pundits have cited Japanese developer interest in Western game technology, such as Mistwalker's licencing of the Unreal 3 engine for Lost Odyssey. It's all a question of industry maturity and service-orientated business models; look at something like the Engineering industry for example. This is happening more rapidly now (just how many friggin' physics middlewares do we need?!), especially now that premium Xbox360 and PS3 titles are so expensive to develop. Just a matter of time really...

Um, I thought this thread was locked? Bad Dan!

As I understand it, this is exactly how some Far Eastern (and Acclaim's) MMOs operate; you get the software for nothing and you can play for free, but you must buy anything beyond the basic equipment you start out with. As a business model I think (tentatively) this makes sense. Whether or not it's sustainable in the long term I haven't a clue, but I would summise that it's entirely dependent on player retention--and having a pivotal minimum number of regular players to validate continuing operations, obviously. In this instance, it's an effecient barrier to entry if nothing else. Many people would just give up if they had to carry out anything too contrived. I think people are managing to get around Steam though all the same; Counter-Strike: Source was cracked and distributed within hours of it being officially "unlocked"/decrypted via the Steam client for example.

It's the whole faddiness of this industry I think. And because it's so young. Investors choke down hype and sales figures and then throw cash at a brand new "Genre of The Moment" endeavour thinking it's going to make them (more) rich. FPSs have clung on in the wake of Doom because they're typically straight-forward to design and implement (progressive enhancements over time notwithstanding). Later on, RTS games were all the rage, but that genre has been dorment (in the Hype-o-sphere) for a while now because there were so many failures from big companies which, in turn, is because a worthwhile RTS is significantly more challenging to design and implement well than an FPS. And because people finally got sick of playing cheap, reskinned C&C knock-offs. Coming back to MMOs: Let's not forget established franchises either. Look at Star Wars Galaxies for instance, ruined by a grossly ill-informed business decision which was intended to attract new players, but instead succeeded only in alienating the majority of the existing 2-year-strong subscriber base. I don't need to mention the concerted 6 months of embarassing press coverage before, during and after the event either.

Good point.

Honestly, I don't think the brand is strong enough, nor the fanbase broad enough for StarGate Worlds to be sustainable. It's not entirely clear how the game mechanics will work right now either: Guild Wars. In Egypt. With guns. Mmmmeeeeehhhh.

No feud - this is me eating a big piece of Fuckwit Pie. Oh, and welcome to Thumbs.

What that says is the dog now has a rudimentary self-preservation instinct when it comes to natural hazards. (And I hope someone bought those testers a drink!) But what it still doesn't explicitly say is that you won't be able to ventilate its head with a musket round should you so wish. What if you and the dog both engage the same enemy simultaneous? Will the dog miraculously dodge every swing of your sword or blast from you gun? On the flip side however, Molyneux stating that he "didn't want to waste the dog's death scene" would imply that privelage is being reserved exclusively for a significant in-game event. Which means he's already - consiously or subconsiously - giving away too much of the meat of the experience in my opinion. And just by-the-by: I've picked up a copy of Fable - The Lost Chapters on PC because of this discussion. I'm going to begin playing it tonight hopefully.

Good work - and a good demonstration of your and Yuf's collective point. But you didn't create an actual Sean Cooper* page! Bad you. * If you happen to visit Sean's website, make sure you check out Boxhead: More Rooms--it's fucking awesome! ~~~~ Back on topic: Have we established yet whether or not you can kill your dog?

Well, T is number three for the Vania family, so, what with middlenames* as well, we're pretty much named out. * Actually, T has my first name as his middlename (cute!) so we kinda cheated there. And his eldest sister's first name is a variation of Mrs V's middlename.

I'm aware Wikipedia isn't bomb-proof, but it's usually not wide of the mark either. From reading about what Molyneux's done, since he first really started to appear, in magazines mostly. I was under the distinct impression Peter had a firm creative hand in all of Bullfrog's output--and Lionhead's for that matter. Maybe I've fallen for his spin, though.

Because Mega Lo Mania was more fun. Also: Wikipedia says you're a liar... and at this point can I just say that I'm sick - to the very back teeth - of people insisting Peter Molyneux had so little to do with early Bullfrog titles. It's yet another stupid Internet myth that's easily dispelled if people bother to spend all of 3 seconds research it.

...but now I have a flashy new camera phone! So here's a shot of T in his baby bath last week: