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Weekend Discussion: This Is Halloween
by Chris Faylor, Oct 31, 2009 8:45am PDTTender lovelings everywhere, life's no fun without a good scare. That's our job, but we're not mean, in our town of Halloween. In this town, don't we love it now, everyone's waiting for the next surprise. Skeleton Jack might catch you in the back and scream like a banshee make you jump out of your skin. This is Halloween! Everybody scream!Would you please make way for a very special guy? Halloween Jack is king of the pumpkin patch. Everyone hail to the Pumpkin King. Now, this is Halloween! This is Halloween! Halloween! Halloween!
And with that annual dose of The Nightmare Before Christmas, have a safe one folks.
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That sucks.
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the toyota scion xD looks cool, but i want to see what shackers think.
Wanted to share some recent shots: http://ragnarokone.smugmug.com/AnnArbor/A2-Fall-2009/
PS- Been a long-time semi-lurker under a different name. 'Hi, again'
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However, I recently decided to play it after purchasing it on Steam many many months ago and I've been listening to the lecture Warren Spector gave at the NYU Game Center, which also sparked interest in his games and theories on game design lately.
Deus Ex is pure interactive entertainment. THIS is what video games should be, it's virtually perfect in every way. I said last week that if a complete non-gamer asked me to show him/her one game that best represented video games as a medium, I said I would show/let them play Uncharted 2. I was completely wrong in every way.
Uncharted 2 and games alike are probably the worst example of what video games as a medium are capable of doing. They are more like movies, completely lacking the ability of giving the player total interactivity with the environment and any type of choice of deciding how they want to play out each scenario. These games are screaming self attention "Hey guys! Look what we, the developer, can do!".
I think the level of interactivity and play decisions that Deus Ex offers has become more of a genre or small niche of video games and not a standard, or level of quality that video games should be expected to be developed at, which is sad. In recent memory, Fallout 3 is probably the only other game that offers anything close to this level with other titles falling way to short to virtually non-existent (I'm probably very wrong about this as I simply can't play every game released, so please tell me titles so I can check them out!).
Don't get me wrong, I love an occasional roller coaster ride, but I think developers could offer the same type of experience without the rails.
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Well damn. This show is nothing short of amazing. Great acting from all casts, who each play their roles perfectly.
One thing that this show has that not many can pull off, is a strong female cast. Gemma's character is so evil and dark with so many bad intentions, it's hard to find out whether she's more worried about the club or her own son. Jax's junked out (wife?) looks exactly like I'd expect some trashy drugged out girl to be. And the ATF chick is such a bitch I cannot wait to see what's coming to her.
And Sam Clay. That dude is awesome. He couldn't be more perfect for head of the MC.
I'm just finishing up season one so please don't spoil anything for me. This show has been one hell of a ride and I hope it doesn't end soon.
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What's the last time you were honestly scared, horrrified, by a movie?
Audition messed me up pretty badly. teh crazy + women = autowin
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I was playing Torchlight last night. I was getting ready to bring my car off the street and into the driveway but I decided to do one more floor. Two minutes later...
http://www.shackpics.com/files/IMG00020200910302125_ifd9xoq79oi0rbal6an1.jpg
http://www.shackpics.com/files/IMG00022200910302127_xs8qkwlxryr9p9gxujfm.jpg
http://www.shackpics.com/files/IMG00019200910302124_708runhv5jfap72dzb1g.jpg
A tow truck was towing a PSE&G truck up my street (it's on a hill). The chains snapped and the truck flew down the street smashing into my car, and sending my car into a SUV parked behind it. No one was hurt.
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Here's why it sucks. As game development is pushed towards consolizing everything, we all suffer because of the target audience. That target audience is a bunch of fucktards playing their games at 480i resolution and 29.97 frames per second. To wit: "Over half the users who played Gears of War 2 so far do not have HDTVs. [...] Of the systems that are out there now, the majority of them aren't plugged into HDTVs." Source: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/epics-mark-rein-interview?page=3
When was the last time any PC gamer played a game at 640x480 resolution (which, using progressive scan, is actually better than 480i)? Ten years ago? Twelve? This is where huge parts of the problems with otherwise epic games like Borderlands come from--appealing to the lowest common denominator (assholes using SDTVs). This is why fonts are huge. This is why menus are squares centered on the screen. This is why you can't see all the bonuses for a weapon/shield/class mod on the screen. This is why AA is given short shrift. This is why FOV is not designed for widescreen, high resolution gaming. This is why 30 frames per second is the target rate.
Consolization sucks because it forces the games of today to be designed to fit the needs of people playing at 4:3, 640x480 interlaced resolution, at 30 frames per second. The same video quality that the original episodes of Perry Mason were broadcast in. The same video quality people enjoyed in 1953. And here we are fifty-six years later, with computers and consoles 87 bazillion times more powerful than what existed then, relegated to the same display technology.
Market forces or not, designing games for assholes who play on SDTVs is like Porsche designing sports cars for grandmothers who can't see over the wheel. They're just going to sit in the left lane, driving thirty miles an hour under the speed limit with their right turn signal on, while the rest of us get buttfucked by Gayzilla.
That is why consolization sucks. That is all.
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Oh well, I've put the money towards Boderlands instead. Did they fix the co-op bugs on the PC yet?
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Loving this game! Here are my current weapons:
http://www.shackpics.com/viewer.x?file=current_weapons_f1ek12uyx6svm0kgqp7y.jpg
Playing on "Hard", but it still seems very easy. Goign to have go "Very Hard" after this playthrough.
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