Happy New Year
Well, 2006 is upon us. I was watching the BBC Scotland stuff at home, and at the same time participating in the Guild Wars celebrations via my laptop. Catch was the bloody thing stalled just as Dwayna appeared to give out the Santa hats. Grr.
EDIT: When I logged into Guild Wars later on I had the Santa hat after all. Fantastic 
January 2nd, 2006 at 2:34 pm
WoW is so much better than Guild Wars! Anyway what is with almost all of the posts being about whatever new plugin your using or whatever, you not interested in games anymore or something?
January 2nd, 2006 at 3:10 pm
How many decent games have been released recently? Er… none. So there probably won’t be a huge number of game posts until March or so (Final Fantasy XII and Guild Wars Campaign 2). And Guild Wars can beat WoW any day of the week - just because WoW has more suckers (sorry, customers) than GW has players, doesn’t make it better (if you think ‘most popular’ means ‘best’ take a look at Windows or the iPod :P)
January 4th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
Ehm Call of Duty 2 and Quake 4 are great games, Lib City stories is pretty good, and i would have expected you to make some cooment on the release of the xbox 360 (ROCKS waited outside virgin for 8 hours for one) Perfect Dark Zero is great fun and PGR3 is a good blast.
And as for me thinking that most popular means best you should know that i dont believe in all that from my fervent hatred of iPods. I have played both GW and WoW for equal amounts of time and stand by my earlier comment that WoW is so much better than GW. And not because there are more people playing it but because i am having more fun in WoW than i did in GW (oh and as for EVE its just so awful BAD is ashamed of it.
January 4th, 2006 at 6:07 pm
I DID make a comment on the release of the Xbox 360 - see the post entitled Good luck (the rest of us don’t need it). Quake 4 is little more than a re-hash of Doom 3’s singleplayer, and Quake 3’s multiplayer, as evidenced by the fact that it’s included in just about every January sale going (£13.97 Amazon,£19.98 Game) less than two months after its release whereas the likes of Football Manager 2006 are still selling at full price.
Liberty City Stories is a decent game, but (much like just about every other PSP game) it is little more than a conversion of a PS2 game (GTA3 in this case) and I already have a PS2, without needing another smaller one (the PSP amounts to little more than a smaller, less powerful PS2, since one-and-a-half hours of battery life hardly qualifies as portable in my book)
January 4th, 2006 at 6:56 pm
Right you still going on about the battery, i got seven hours out of a full charge playing continuosly on GTA and about two days of hour bursts every three hours or so. It is in no way other than the time period and location GTA3, and is in fact closer to an improved Vice City technology wise.
So what if Quake4 uses the same mechanics as DooM3 its what traditionally happens, Carmack makes something shit hot and they milk it for all its worth while improving other aspects to make new games. As for its poor sales and subsequent position in the new year sales that is not down to it being a poor game but because it did not appeal to the casual gamer who controls the market at this point. Couple this with being released close to another highly anticipated and similar game (F.E.A.R) and the number of stealth releases which occured at that time, and also that it was released slightly too soon for christmas and you have the reason for its poor sales on PC.
Oh and sorry about the comment about no coverage about the xbox360 i must have missed that one.
January 4th, 2006 at 7:28 pm
Er… Football Manager 2006 is hardly what you could call ‘casual gamer’ material, yet it is at the top of the charts. The reason that Quake 4 hasn’t sold well is that there hasn’t been a decent stealth game since Metal Gear Solid (circa late 90s). I wasn’t talking about the game engine (since the Quake 3 and UT engines were reused to death, but they were both kickass games), I was meaning the GAMEPLAY - it is little more than Doom 3 with Stroggs instead of zombies (even in your comment you describe it as a stealth game, which is what Doom 3 was) and the Quake 3 multiplayer (in fact it was described as such in the PC Gamer review, which absolutely slated it) - typical reviews around 80% - 85% , because as with Doom 3 the flashiness of the game engine just serves to illuminate the crappiness of the gameplay (in contrast to Battlefield 2 which proved that it is possible to have flashy graphics AND top-tier gameplay in the same package, something not done in the genre since Quake 3 and UT99.
As for the PSP battery, I’ll concede defeat on that one. The tests actually showed a battery life of 2 hours 46 minutes.
January 4th, 2006 at 8:55 pm
Right sorry you have misinterpreted my terms, when i was referring to stealth releases i wasnt meaning a stealth game i was rather meaning a game being released stealthily, i.e completely off the radar and then all of a sudden there it is. Also when i was referring to casual gamers i didnt mean it like that, a casual game isnt something that you just pick up to play for a few minutes like tetris or mario, no a casual gamer is the vast majority of the game buying public who go with the flow buyong the big name, well known brands, the movie tie ins, the ones that are heavily publicised, mainly PS2 games. These are the vast majority of people that are in shops like game just before christmas, they arent like us, they dont follow games and look out for the new releases (unless its something like GTA, Pro Evo, FIFA or the Sims)
Thats why I can say this Football Manager 2006 is perfect casual gamer material, everyones talking about it, its heavily advertised, its part of a series. Come on there were articles about it in Nuts, Zoo, FHM etc. when has anyone but casual gamers gotten news about games from magazines like those?
Quake 4 is definitely not a stealth game in any sense of the word, and since when has 80% been a slating, i cant talk for what its like on a PC but on the 360 its great (and you wont believe me on this but for once there is no real problem with the console sticks in stead of the mouse and keyboard combo) its fun to play, fast paced, great story that you want to see completed and it manages to make you angry at the strogg for what theyve done to you (mutilating you and ostricising you from all of your friends, colleagues and making you kill some of the people that you looked up to - when they are strogged as well but dont have control of themselves like you do). Thats why i stick up for it, and i will give up trying to convince you on the batery for the PSP cause you will never believe that it will last as long as it does.
January 4th, 2006 at 10:01 pm
Misread you on the stealth games bit - sorry bout that.
The Q4 score isn’t a slating (because id give PC Gamer lots of advertising money, the same reason why every FIFA game gets a good score) but the actual text of the review is - they basically said it was a clone of Doom 3 and the multiplayer is just ripped from Quake 3.
Casual gamers are people who don’t want to spend large amounts of time playing games, and will chose games designed for that purpose [Wikipedia]. Football Manager is not casual gamer material because you need to spend significant amounts of time playing it in order to get anything out of it - in other words more time than a casual gamer would be willing to spend playing. Just because something is popular, and heavily advertised, does not make it ‘casual gamer’ material - and anyway Quake 4 was hyped to hell and back, and is part of one of the best-known game series in PC gaming history.
As for the PSP, yes I will never believe the battery life you claim - I prefer to stick with the independent, objective, controlled test conducted by IGN rather than a subjective test (with a game that puts very little strain on the console due to low UMD loads, and you weren’t playing via wifi) by a PSP fan.
January 4th, 2006 at 10:35 pm
Just because i have one doesnt mean im a PSP fan in the way that i know you mean. I have thought of getting rid of it and getting a DS instead but will probably just get a DS as well anyway. As for the WiFi i used to play Burnout against three other class mates for two hours after and between classes and still have enough battery left to play Pro Evo for an hour later on in the day before recharging the battery overnight as i always do.
And as for the meaning of casual gamer you were going from the gamer point of view for the meaning where as i was using the business meaning e.g the one with more weight and has a meaning which is not a case of wysiswyg.
Anyway your claim that the scores from PC gamer are money led is just wrong, EA and activision wouldnt give a magazine money to get a high score, becasue they dont need to hardly anyone buys a game based upon the reviews and the people that read those mags (myslef included) make up a minute portion of the people that buy games, which is the reason that dross such as Pilot Down and the CSI games sold, while stuff like Darwinia doesnt. Its bad business for them to do that as they would be throwing away unnesesary money which is why there are less adverts for games in games magazines than there are for things like phone tunes, soft porn, and computer accesories.
January 4th, 2006 at 10:40 pm
The ‘business meaning’? I prefer to go with the accepted definition. Wikipedia is hardly ‘the gamer point of view’ (in fact wikipedia specifically excludes ALL bias/points of view in its rules).
I would recommend the DS though - I got the Mario Kart pack for Christmas and it kicks ass - and I’ve had to recharge it once since then (10 days ago).
January 4th, 2006 at 10:48 pm
sorry when i mean the business meaning i suppose what i really mean is what we refer to those sorts of people in my course looking from the perspective of businesses such as EA and activision and such and thats how i can and do include FM2006 in it, and it is more than easy to sit down and play it for just 5 to 10 minutes and get some fun and some stuff done
January 5th, 2006 at 6:31 am
Yeah, but (with the possible exception of games that use save points), just about any game can give you some enjoyment through playing for five minutes, but unlike (for example) The Sims, you get a lot more out of FM2006 if you invest significant amounts of time in it.