I've been playing Metroid Prime, greatest GameCube game, this weekend.  I'm at the Meta Ridley battle.

gamingeek said:

travo said:

gamingeek said:

No one watching any anime anymore?

Never have. Sorry.

You need to start, my sig is a good idea.

Does watching Robotech in 1989 count?

Those of us with a 3/2DSXL:

Are you getting Smash in the next month?

aspro said:

gamingeek said:

travo said:

gamingeek said:

No one watching any anime anymore?

Never have. Sorry.

You need to start, my sig is a good idea.

Does watching Robotech in 1989 count?

Kinda.

aspro said:

I am still fucking sick.  can hardly talk, still working everyday.  I should have taken the first two days off and recovered and I'd have been over it by now, but I have a hang up about not using sick days.

Perfect time to take sick days and start anime watching.

Phones 4u enters administration, closes all 550 stores

High street mobile phone retailer Phones 4u has entered administration and made the surprise decision to immediately close all of its stores.

The chain employs 5,596 people and operates 500 stores in the UK, all of which have ceased trading this morning while administrators PwC assess the business’s ongoing viability.

The decision comes after EE followed Vodafone in announcing that it would not renew its contract with the retailer, effectively leaving it without any operator partners and unable to offer products.

“The unexpected decisions by both Vodafone and EE have come as a complete shock to the business,” a Phones 4u statement said. “The company is in a healthy state and both EE and Vodafone had, until very recently, consistently indicated that they saw Phones 4u as a long-term strategic partner.

“Phones 4u is a profitable, well-managed business [and] has a turnover of over £1 billion, EBITDA of £105 million for 2013 and significant cash in the bank. However, following the decisions of Vodafone and EE, Phones 4u has no option but to seek the appointment of administrators from PwC.”

Chief executive David Kassler added: “Today is a very sad day for our customers and our staff.

“If the mobile network operators decline to supply us, we do not have a business.  A good company making profits of over £100 million, employing thousands of decent people has been forced into administration. The great service we have provided should have guaranteed a strong future, but unfortunately our network partners have decided otherwise.”

Stefano Quadrio Curzio of Phones 4u owners BC Partners was even more damning, saying: “Vodafone has acted in exactly the opposite way to what they had consistently indicated to the management of Phones 4u over more than six months.

“Their behaviour appears to have been designed to inflict the maximum damage to their partner of 15 years, giving Phones 4u no time to develop commercial alternatives.”

Yeah, that sucks, shitty behaviour.

Destiny reviews

• CVG: 8/10 - Big, beautiful and generous, Destiny will keep FPS fans happy for months to come. Yet its feeble story and safety-first approach means it can't help but feel slightly underwhelming.
• OXM: 8/10 - Not quite the epic journey into the unknown we were hoping for, mostly thanks to poor writing and a reliance on XP farming, but a treasure trove of single and multiplayer adventures nonetheless.
• GameSpot: 6/10 - A lavishly produced but troubled game that excels in the basics but lacks creativity and heart. It is role-playing grind in shooter form--an empty house built on a firm foundation.
• Polygon: 6/10 - For all the wonder of its presentation, the swelling potential suggested by its (excellent) score and the basic foundational strength of its controls, Destiny often feels like a collection of its influences' biggest problems.
• Giant Bomb: 3/5 - Destiny is a beautiful but hollow experience with most of the pieces you'd expect from a great multiplayer shooter. It just can't find a way to fit them all together.
• GameTrailers: 8/10 - Next to Halo 3, Destiny's story is thin, vehicles are average, and arsenal is uninspired. Up against World of Warcraft, Destiny's quest system is repetitive, open world is sectioned off, and list of dungeons can't possibly compete. But World of Warcraft never looked this good, and Halo 3 didn't reach this level of synergy between PVP and PVE.
• Guardian: 4/5 - People say World of Warcraft only gets good after 50 hours, but this isn't World of Warcraft, this is supposed to be the future - and many gamers won't make it that far through this dryly earnest narrative universe; a universe that amazes us at times, but regards us with clinical abstraction.
• Metro: 7/10 - It's not short of spectacle but in terms of innovation and variety this is nowhere near as forward-thinking as Bungie would like to pretend.
• EGM: 6.5/10 - With a lifeless world, a hazily plotted, repetitive campaign, and an endgame that quickly resorts to a slow grind for marginally better loot, Destiny fails to deliver on the promise of its concept and the enormous potential of its gameplay systems.
• Wired: 7/10 - Destiny doesn't quite live up to the hype, but that it's as enjoyable as it is in spite of those impossible expectations speaks to its overall quality.

aspro said:

Those of us with a 3/2DSXL:

Are you getting Smash in the next month?

Yes I plan to get it on the 3DS. I also plan to get the Wii U version because Club Nintendo is giving out the soundtrack if you register both versions.

That VG247 review of destiny is interesting. Basically holding up a mirror to everyone. It also has nothing to do with Destiny cause you can say that about most games. Destiny does have real problems, but the gameplay covers for most of it.

edgecrusher said:

If Microsoft will let them keep making Minecraft for competing platforms, why didn't they let Rare continue to make games on Nintendo consoles? What's the difference? You KNOW they would have been more successful on the Gamecube and Wii...

And why not just go back to being a publisher if you're going to allow games on competing platforms?

There is zero chance of minecraft 2 coming to PS.

Kamiya article is so good, what a legend. I love what he says about game design:

Part of my personal theory of game design is something that I learned from Mikami-san. You don’t create a game by trying to find the faults in it and eliminating those, but by finding the places that are great and making them even better. I think that that’s the really important thing in game design and something I’ve made a commitment to in my work. Not going around and trying to eliminate everything bad about what you’re making but trying to make it even more incredible.

Well said, to me positive aspects are far far far far more important to a game than something that might be negative. I can overlook a ton if the gameplay is a blast, that is what is most important and the best game designers understand this.

“You put Link to the Past in a Super Famicom and the jump it makes is just incredible from a hardware standpoint -- and you’re just like ‘wow.’ Then you start playing it, and the puzzle solving, the way they built the map, the item placement, and the progression as far as difficulty curve…. For somebody who wanted to be a game designer, it was amazing to think that you could have a game with such consistently high bar for game design, and then to think that there’s a team of people who can make a game that’s this good was something that shocked me and really made the game stand out.”

Years later, “Now I am a game designer and I’ve made plenty of games,” Kamiya says, “but every time time I look back at that game I think, ‘could I even today be good enough to make this game?’”

Totally agree about Zelda. Not surprising to me that he got some inspiration from Miyamoto, as all game designers should.

Mikami taught him well

After several scrapped attempts, Kamiya learned to avoid these traps under Mikami’s watchful eye, and propelled the Resident Evil sequel to blockbuster heights. Kamiya credits Mikami with much of his early success and speaks highly of his mentor.

“When I joined Capcom, I learned from Shinji Mikami, and one of the things that he taught me was this theory of game design, this overarching craftsmanship in game design -- understanding the points that you can’t compromise -- understanding what’s most important to you and doing it.”

By learning where not to compromise, Kamiya freed himself to look at modern game design as a reflection of the gameplay tropes explored by the games that he loved growing up. For example, Resident Evil 2 wasn’t a horror game, but an action game that hinged on limitation -- should I use my ammo now or save it for later? This gradation continued with the Resident Evil 4 prototype that eventually became Devil May Cry.

“When I think back to it though, I think it was something Mikami-san really wanted and something that he wanted me to do,” explains Kamiya. “One of the things he used to always say was, ‘the more horror we make, the more people are going to get used to it, and the less it’s going to resonate, the less everyone can feel it.’ I think he wanted me to take it from the form of a horror movie to an action movie.”

When Kamiya and Mikami started the Resident Evil 4 prototype, Mikami approached Kamiya and said, “Throw away everything you want. Make the game that you want. You don’t have to worry about it being a horror game. You can do it however you like.”

WHY CANT MORE DEVELOPERS THINK LIKE THIS. Instead everything needs to fit a mold, be easily relatable. Sadly Capcom became that exact uncompromising company, I am glad they both left.

On Okami:

When development on Okami finally began, Kamiya still had no solid plans for the core gameplay, only that it was about exploring the beauty of nature. The team iterated on countless ideas, but nothing stuck. At one point, the game was built on a hex map, with different terrain represented by different hexes, but this constrained the natural feel. It took a while to arrive at the conclusion that the best way to present a game about exploring nature was to borrow heavily from the free structure and open fields of the Zelda games. Suddenly everything clicked.

“No one said ‘Hey, we’re going to make a Zelda game’,” Kamiya explains. But, “if there were no Zelda, there would be no Okami.”

The influence of Zelda on Kamiya’s games actually goes much deeper than just providing the framework for Okami. He traces the inspiration for several gameplay ideas throughout his games back to Nintendo’s seminal series. The combat in Devil May Cry, for example, was largely inspired by the Z-targeting introduced by Ocarina of Time. The way Dante locks onto an enemy and circle-strafes while waiting for an opening to attack was first perfected by Link.

Its a great look into the man, the myth, the legend. What he says about Scalebound is very interesting too.