dvader said:

I think its the little noise and icon that makes all the difference. I will admit it with the trophies on PS3, when that little icon pops I am like WOOOOO!! no matter how crappy the achievement was. So dumb when you think of it but it works.

Not stupid, but clever. It is clearly a brain washing mechanism used for taking away all individual thoughts, making you a rabid consumer that buys things your master tell you to.

gamingeek said:

edgecrusher said:

So I started playing 2 games this week: Ninja Gaiden 2, and.....wait for it...........BOOM BLOX! (Yes, I finally got to it)

Really liking both of them. I'm baffled as to why people said NG2 isn't as good as the original so far, as I'm loving it myself. Its not some huge difference or anything, and its not as impressive production-wise as NG1 was for its time, but it plays smoother and the combat feels more satisfying IMO, and its also a great looking and sounding game. Also quite a bit more brutal than the original. Great stuff, definitely liking it more than DMC4 so far.

Boom Blox is simple fun. Pretty humorous and funny, and quite clever in its design. It kind of seems like something that would have been a downloadable game on the other machines, as its basically a simple puzzle game. Also seems kind of short, as I'm blowing through the game and I've only put a few hours in. Its definitely fun and addicting trying to figure out the best way to knock down the blocks.

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Did you update a NG2 patch or something? I heard the camera was awful.

How far are you in Boom Blox? I think maybe you're underestimating how much content is there. It has over 300 levels and challenges and it's not till you are about 60% in that you realise how much variety there is in the game. Also are you just passing the levels or going for the gold medals? Unless I have a gold I am not satisfied. Don't forget about the level creator (plug the nunchuk in for that) and all the challenge modes which open up as you earn gold medals in the game. For instance the adventure mode in this game is only about 20% of the game as a whole, another adventure mode opens up after you complete it and you have to try the multiplayer with a group of friends, it can be brilliant fun. It's the kind of game anyone can get into but it has depth because of the physics and yet is simple as hell to understand and get into.

For people who haven't played it, let me explain. Each level has a medal system for instance you have 5 balls to knock down some towers. If you use 3 throws you get a bronze medal, 2 throws for a silver. And if you find that magical single killer shot and topple it all in 1 then you get a gold medal. It is supremely easy to retry a level so you always go for that gold medal as it becomes compelling.

The camera seems the same as the original game to me. Maybe it was the update that fixed it, I don't know.

Um, I think I passed all the levels up to the poison stuff, forget the name. I'm trying to get at least silver on all levels. I'll finish it then maybe go back and try to get all gold.

iga_bobovic said:

dvader said:

I think its the little noise and icon that makes all the difference. I will admit it with the trophies on PS3, when that little icon pops I am like WOOOOO!! no matter how crappy the achievement was. So dumb when you think of it but it works.

Not stupid, but clever. It is clearly a brain washing mechanism used for taking away all individual thoughts, making you a rabid consumer that buys things your master tell you to.

Well it WAS a Micro$oft idea.

Hearing that little achievement chime is like a nice shot of satisfaction. I also like them because they act as a tangible verification that your friends can see. I like the gamerscore as well. I fall in the middle ground since I don't whore on games I'm not interested in just to boost it but I do love getting the most points out of games I do like. Trophies will be the same way for me as it'll be just a collection I'll enjoy building.

gamingeek said:

edgecrusher said:

The camera seems the same as the original game to me. Maybe it was the update that fixed it, I don't know.

Um, I think I passed all the levels up to the poison stuff, forget the name. I'm trying to get at least silver on all levels. I'll finish it then maybe go back and try to get all gold.

Poisen? Eh?

Let's see what they have. They have Explore mode with grabbing, throwing, shooting, bomb placement, mine exploding. Then explore challenge which is a harder form and a similar number of levels. Then adventure mode which has 4 sections, medievil jungle, western, zombie kittens. Then adventure challenge mode which is around the same number of levels but harder.

Then you have the level creator which is great, I need to send you a couple of things. The mutliplayer has around 30 or so levels to try out too.

Okay, I'm not even close to done. The game makes you think you're making more progress than you are. Those levels where you have to pull blocks out trying not to tip the top over is a pain in my ass.

dvader said:

I want Boom Blox...   I have a free rental at BB should I rent that or hold off and own it down the line. In fact why don't you guys choose what game I rent, remember no 360. Give me suggestions (I was thinking Mercs 2).

I played the mercs 2 demo, it is fun but definitely a step below the first game. Very unpolished. You can tell they got caught in between making a last-gen and next-gen game, and ended up fucking both up.

gamingeek said:

Yeah I could make something quite decent looking if I was bothered. I would have to spend some time in photoshop though, which I don't have at home. I see table layouts all the time now that I know what I'm looking for. To be honest I hate it. I'm still at odds that something which should be so much easier and intuitive to make is all coded by essentially writing things down in a notepad form. It's still insane to me.

Unfortunately my tutor was not properly trained in CSS and is self taught. I thought we were doing it in this class, but so far we've done text formatting, lists and now we've done tables and then we're going to start doing some sites to begin with and work on them till the end. We are starting javascript soon too.

I can make a website and pages and all that. But what I want to do is have like articles and then when I do new articles I want the pages to shift into a sort of index and be stored automatically without having to hand code individual webpages for them. And I'd like to make pages like the news updating page here, where I can specift limitations like character limits etc and do updates without having to go back and pick through code.

GIMP is a free, fully featured image editing tool, and Paint.NET is a free Photoshop clone.

Everything in your last paragraph is only done via server-side programming.  This is due naturally to the fact that the data has to be stored, and to do that you need an interface with the server from which people are accessing your site.  The big guns in server-side are PHP, ASP.NET and JSP.

I'm a big PHP proponent due to being a very code-oriented programming (I'd rather just edit the text).  It suffers from unfortunately bad error reporting though.  ASP.NET has shifted toward development using Visual Studio and C# as the programming language.  It lets you do some complex things in a really short timespan, but I find doing much in the way of details a huge pain.  JSP I need more time with, but it's not exactly inviting.

Covering JavaScript but not CSS seems entirely weird to me, but JavaScript works as a good introduction to programming languages.  It's very loosely typed (not strict in syntax), Firefox has clear JavaScript error reporting, it is a fully fledged programming language (includes variables, conditional statements, loops, functions and to some degree, objects) and doesn't require anything additional to run.

edgecrusher said:

So is Nintendo going to let Rare put an N64 in BK3?

"Though Banjo 3 strays from the tradition of its predecessors, you can expect to see some Rare staples. There'll be humor aplenty, some videogame in-jokes, cutesy characters, and lots of things to collect. So stop crying over the fact that this isn't your daddy's platformer. That's the point. It's better than that." -IGN

Ign claims BK3 is the best one yet, despite how different it is? I'm hoping its great obviously, but I'd be shocked AND awed if its better than the olde games.

Do the have a new preview over at IGN? If yes post it in the news section! Banjo Kazooie was my second favorite platformer after Mario 64. I do not expect the new game to be better judging from the videos, but Xbox has almost no platfomers on it. So I hope the game scores and sells well.

archangel3371 said:

Hearing that little achievement chime is like a nice shot of satisfaction. I also like them because they act as a tangible verification that your friends can see. I like the gamerscore as well. I fall in the middle ground since I don't whore on games I'm not interested in just to boost it but I do love getting the most points out of games I do like. Trophies will be the same way for me as it'll be just a collection I'll enjoy building.

I dont like achievements. They just pop up on my screen and break me away from the immersion in the game. They also reward pointless crap. I prefer something like the Goldeneye cheat system, which you earned through trials.

dvader said:

I want Boom Blox...   I have a free rental at BB should I rent that or hold off and own it down the line. In fact why don't you guys choose what game I rent, remember no 360. Give me suggestions (I was thinking Mercs 2).

Rent Oldboy.

edgecrusher said:

Okay, I'm not even close to done. The game makes you think you're making more progress than you are. Those levels where you have to pull blocks out trying not to tip the top over is a pain in my ass.

.

It's Jenga man But you don't have to clean up or re-assemble. And there are baby gorillas who depend on you! Let me see, you start off just throwing balls to knock down towers in boom blox. Then you start pulling out blocks in jenga style. Then you have the bomb balls to protect your gems or destroy rival castles. Then you get to blast inside a mine and bounce balls off the walls to collect gold. Then there are the missions where you act as a demolitions expert and plant explosives to collapse structures. Then there are shooting missions either in zombie land or wild west. Then there are placement levels where you have to arrange blocks to defend the path of a kitten. Then there are levels where you use a hose to knock blocks into point zones.

There is a lot of variety overall. I still haven't finished it, the challenge modes are tough.

yodariquo said:

GIMP is a free, fully featured image editing tool, and Paint.NET is a free Photoshop clone.

.

I heard about the gimp, someone said to search for it on google and I was a bit wary as a gimp is like some guy in a leather mask. I should get it. The rest of what you said, I have no idea. Right over my head, but thanks.

edgecrusher said:

So is Nintendo going to let Rare put an N64 in BK3?

"Though Banjo 3 strays from the tradition of its predecessors, you can expect to see some Rare staples. There'll be humor aplenty, some videogame in-jokes, cutesy characters, and lots of things to collect. So stop crying over the fact that this isn't your daddy's platformer. That's the point. It's better than that." -IGN

Ign claims BK3 is the best one yet, despite how different it is? I'm hoping its great obviously, but I'd be shocked AND awed if its better than the olde games.

That's weird, the previous IGN preview via Matt Wales said it was dubious as to whether this was any good or not.

yodariquo said:

iga_bobovic said:

Do the have a new preview over at IGN? If yes post it in the news section! Banjo Kazooie was my second favorite platformer after Mario 64. I do not expect the new game to be better judging from the videos, but Xbox has almost no platfomers on it. So I hope the game scores and sells well.

There's just a couple of paragraphs in the "Xbox 360 Games of Fall 2008" article.

Well they were more critical in the preview calling it kinda tedious. So I think they are overhyping it here to make their list better!

I just realized, I posted that list. Man I should read my own updates more often!

I understand the second part of Rockstar's thinking on having a project for their handheld team, but not the reasoning for the first part: you can literally replace the words DS with Wii and you have the same reasoning:

A: It didn't feel natural to us, I guess. It really was that the Wii felt like it had a lot of interesting challenges that would be totally different from what we'd done in the past. The Wii remote and the chance to use minigames in that way was really interesting and exciting to us, and we thought we could integrate seamlessly between those two modes.

They should do some major thinking about a Wii GTA, despite being the biggest selling game this year, I saw reports that said GTAIV was underperforming on gamesindustry.biz and given how popular the Wii is, they should at least do some "major thinking" whether they final result is a big fat NO or not.