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"Propitiate?" Reef, is all this verbiage some sort of sublimation? You could just follow the MB38 way and ressure yourself furiously.

Deadguy wrote:

Here's an honest question: Has there ever been a system that devs talked crap about prior to launch? Even the Jaguar got raves from developers prior to launch. I'd rather hear what they have to say six months to a year into actually working with the console to hear opinions, otherwise it's just speculation as far as I care.

I think everybody hated the PS2 in the beggining.

Most criticisms about the Revolution thus far have come from spiteful gamers on message boards, and not from within the development community.

Nintendo seems to have hit a home run with the Revolution thus far, if the feedback from those who have actually seen, handled, and/or worked with the machine is any indication, and they haven't even played their entire hand.  I think once their whole game plan is publicly revealed - including full online details, machine specs, and most importantly, what experiences actual games that are in development will offer - anyone with even a passing interest in video games will have good cause to be quite excited about it.

Twisted Guy wrote:

Most criticisms about the Revolution thus far have come from spiteful gamers on message boards, and not from within the development community.

Why must any less-than-glowing commentary be necessarily be motivated by spite? And isn't it in the interest of Revo devs to say nice things at this point?

Nintendo seems to have hit a home run with the Revolution thus far, if the feedback from those who have actually seen, handled, and/or worked with the machine is any indication, and they haven't even played their entire hand.

I sure hope not. We still know less about Revo than about the other two; in fact not much. A home run? I'd be interested to know if, this far from launch, anyone who's handled it has handled much more than a shell. Seems they're still at the early SDK stage, with likely no working hardware and mostly simulations of its assumed capabilities or approximate paper target specs to work with. Controller, drive, backwards compatibility... anything more known for sure?

I think once their whole game plan is publicly revealed - including full online details, machine specs, and most importantly, what experiences actual games that are in development will offer - anyone with even a passing interest in video games will have good cause to be quite excited about it.

Sounds more like an article of faith than a cold appraisal. "What experiences actual games that are in development will offer" will only be judgeable after it all ships.

reefdog wrote:

The Rev will just propitiate that, but providing soothing balms in the form of incredibly innovative exclusives

Reminds me consemoglaciacally of your initial "Ode to Psychonauts"...

The game will be very good. I know this because, while worshipping at the altar of Tim, a warm golden light lifted my chin to the sight of a snowy dove lilting about the soft wind, while a silky windchime sang "Psychonauuuuuts will be greeaaaaaaat" in my panting ears.

Any warm golden lights, snowy doves, silky windchimes or panting ears about Revo?

Twisted Guy wrote:

Most criticisms about the Revolution thus far have come from spiteful gamers on message boards, and not from within the development community.

Until today.

Eh, screw Epic anyway. After watching the video, he's quite tunnel vision'ed.

Okay, does he honestly think games are "all about graphics" or is that pulling out of context? I mean, I can understand how graphics have enabled improvements in games in the past (like the move to more colors so that our hero wasn't a red blob or the move to 3D for obvious reasons). But these days I'm not seeing much of a difference. The features like playing video on monitors in the game that you can see without "activating" it are nice but it isn't something that will make me buy a game. (Example: Doom3 is nice but I wasn't excited after playing the demo so I didn't get it.)

Weird. While I wouldn't put new and interesting controllers at the top of the list (things like plot and AI should go ahead of that) I'm concerned that there is so much drive to make things even more pretty.

And watching that video, I had a little flicker of excitement when they said that the physics system/processor will be in PS3.  Beyond that, I still don't get nearly excited over that console as I do over 360 or Rev.

And here I'd promised myself never to get caught up in a debate with you again. Oh well.

Bat wrote:

And U2 was not Epic. The developer was Legend, whose XMP (eXtended MultiPlayer) addon originated many of the ideas later incorporated into UT2004.

I did not know this. But regardless, my "screw Epic" was an offhanded joke comment, Bat, related to the comments made on that video. The Unreal 2 association was inspired by your Unreal 1 reference, not as part of my predetermined Epic-screwing philosophy.

You only played the demo, reef. A little knowledge is dangerous.

No, I didn't play the demo, I rented the game and played it as far as I could before being absolutely bored by its awful dialogue, boring story, sluggish controls, and stupid design.

And please don't be condescending. I could very easily dredge up the Halo/Metroid debates as to the danger of "a little knowledge," even if they are "hand-picked."

'Recent missteps'... U2 came out in Feb '03. I just replayed it, matter of fact; it holds up better than many more recent games.

Recent being more recent than the Unreal 1, which you brought up.

Icks enjoys Project: Snowblind, which bears much the same relation to Deus Ex as U2 to U1.

Not sure how this relates at all. Some spin-offs are good, some bad; U2 was bad.

So a BG&E 2 that wasn't what you wanted would ruin the original? You enjoyed the Unreal screens I sent; how so if U2 forever 'derailed' U1?

What? I said screw Epic, not screw Unreal. Yeah, if Ubisoft ever pissed me off, I'd say screw them too. That doesn't make BG&E a bad game. "Derail past accomplishments" doesn't mean the classic games become "bad," it means that I don't currently lionize the parties responsible if they undermine their former work. Sorta how most of the world makes fun of Romero for Daikatana, rather than consider him a current demigod for Doom and Quake. He gets credit, but not current respect.

Guilt by association is not a good concept to try to apply to games.

Yet I'm free to have a distaste for companies that put out games I don't like, aren't I?

And as long as that's done better than the old VR Star Wars arcade (where you hold a "saber" and stand on a pad to control movement).  That was... atrocious.

I know its old.  LIke I said, as long as saber combat is better now than it was (as far as letting the gamer have "control" over the movements), then I'm sold on it.

That video is a bunch of fat, middle-aged nerds fighting.  That Sweeny guy is the worst.  Thank goodness not everyone involved in video game development is like him.  He talks about small percentage of the market, but he can seem to realise that his market is almost all nerdy boys like himself.  And it's sure to remain that way if he can't get beyond the idea that the best games are all about making the same things over and over just with better graphics.  I hope he doesn't honestly believe that.