alanschu

Is there any top player or top prospect that isn't rumoured to be on their way to Toronto at some point in any off season? So far they've "just missed" Joe Thornton, Vincent Lecavalier, Pavel Datsyuk, Roberto Luongo, Scott Niedermeyer, Martin St. Louis, Brad Richards, Nikolai Khabibulin, Paul Kariya, Teemu Selanne, Adam Foote, AND Peter Forsberg, in addition to Zetterburg... Seriously, JFJ should have been able to get all of them for "I want to play in Toronto so bad cuz it's teh r0xx0rs!!" discounts. For shame JFJ :D

That's nice. Since you put it so eloquently though: "Exceptions prove the rule."

If you were representative of the entire gaming industry, then we wouldn't have voice overs since no one would bother reading them. If great games are trully loved by all and graphics didn't matter, then why do so many great games fail?

Maybe it's just me and my "socialist" Canadian ways, but I think when we start determining who does and does not live based on their health insurance is pretty weak.

Might as well have secondary characters in movies not talk either. They might deliver poor acting for their parts!

It's possible, if you have some really large stores that sell computer games, to find some of the old Classics series of System Shock 2. If I can still find them (albeit I have to look) in Canada, surely you could find one in Northern California.

Given that I don't directly understand wookie speak, I'm not going to let it play in its entirety. The only dialogues I "skipped" in KOTOR were the alien ones, because I knew they were repetitive and wouldn't have expected otherwise. Having said that, if they were mute and the rest of the world vocal, I would have disliked it. But I love full voice over. It's cool sneaking around in a game like Deus Ex and having the NPCs do random barks to each other. It doesn't work as well in a game without full voice over, because you have to move your eyes off of something that could be important otherwise. I would miss most "banter" in a game like Baldur's Gate, because the barks would be displayed on the same chat channel as every other message in the game. Worse yet, they could pause it, which takes me out of the experience even more. But if you can't accept that some people feel it makes the world more immersive, then there's no real point creating a discussion asking why people like it. In a world where everyone talks, I'm never taken out of the game universe. If people talk sporadically, or only certain people talk, then it tend to take things away from the overall experience, especially nowadays. Sure, it was neat seeing the Talking Heads in Fallout, but I disagree that they make the character more memorable. If you remember a character or think that that character stood out more simply because they actually spoke their lines, then I would say the developers failed with that character. I prefer to remember the characters for their interesting personalities. I also think that talking becomes more important as the experience shifts more towards first person or third person views. KOTOR for example shows the faces of people close up when talking with them. Having them stare blankly at me while I read a line of dialogue would seem silly. I find partial voice overs or the outright lack of voice overs more appropriate in a game with a more distant, isometric view. I don't remember missing voice overs in NWN, but I do remember thinking Anachronox seemed silly to not have them.

As yo your first point, it is impossible to say with hindsight. But let's analyze each component, logically. I have recently played System Shock 2 for the first time, and the graphics are incredibly dated, yet I enjoyed the game for it's story. Additionally, there is no way I will go back and play a crappy game that had revolutionary graphics for 1993. So graphics are not an impediment to a great game reagardless of age, and they do not impel future players to revisit an ordinary game with advanced graphics for the time. Secondly, I disagree that reading is becoming pass

I would have voted caffiene personally. As for marijuana, I wonder if, as someone else mentioned, it's a gateway drug simply because it's illegal. I doubt if it was legal that it would have as much of an impact on trying other drugs. If it does, then I'd say that nicotine and alcohol are much bigger gateway drugs then. Don't know too many people that have tried marijuana that haven't either drank or smoked a cigarette. As for that study Ender, I would like a link (or at least a reference). Should be a good read.

If you own a computer that is at least from the year 2000, you should be able to play the game just fine.

Game runs fine on my Radeon 9800 Pro, Athlon64 3500+ with 1 GB of memory. It's not max details, but it is still probably the best looking FPS I have on my computer (including the likes of Half-Life 2 and Doom 3). Too bad you can't get it to run very well

The pusher. Consumers should quit pushing for better graphics :D As for the "old" games with poorer graphics that we still like, how much of that is because we've already played them? I tried going back and playing some of the original NES games that I missed out on, but I just couldn't get past the bad graphics. But I'm totally into playing 8 hour marathons of Mega Man 2. I think nostalgia affects a lot of our preferences. I don't know many people that have been able to pick up Fallout, today, having never played it, that has played it long enough to see the game that it is. They usually get hung up on the interface and the graphics. Furthermore, reading is becoming passe. We're getting spoiled with spoken lines of dialogue, and when you see Morte's miniature essay for a response after every dialogue option, it can be a bit burdensome. As for games like Planescape: Torment being "terrific," don't forget that we're the specific market audience for it. I have seen many people that have not enjoyed PS:T, as it just wasn't their kind of game. Please don't go completely ignoring their tastes when you make statements such as PS:T being absolutely terrific. I love PS:T as much as anyone else too. As for Lineage, well, Blizzard could put out a game that lookd marginally better than their previous iteration and people would still buy it based on the success of the previous. Lineage came out in 1998. 3D accelerators were still in their infancy, and the other big MMORPG had similar graphics. Once it had the installed base, it didn't need the better graphics because people were already playing Lineage I. I wonder if people would still make the transition if Lineage II had much better gameplay, but WORSE graphics?

Maybe he's just bitter about it. Did you start it?

Game looks sweet. Also looking forward to Call of Duty 2. Two games for the Christmas list I guess.

If you don't like the topic, no one is forcing you to view it. I don't ask for your topics to be closed.

The lack of people playing the multiplayer is why they created Hordes of the Underdark exclusively as a single player game. My first playthrough of Neverwinter Nights was multiplayer though.

The only places I've seen "MDK" used for Murder/Death/Kill was in the movie Demolition Man. Because the fans adopted a meaning for it doesn't mean that that is the meaning for it. Given that the three main characters are Max, Dr. Hawkins, and Kurt, you could have just as strong of an argument for it. Or they could have asked a guy to hit three letters on the keyboard and see what came up for the codename. What MDK stands for is irrelevant. The game is fun, and very entertaining!

Of course FEAR looks better. It came out years later. MDK 2 (I never played the first one) is like 3 games mixed in one. When you play as kurt, you'll do crazy jumping, stealthy sniping and float around with you "parachute." When you play as Max, the six-legged dog that can hold Uzis and even miniguns in 4 of his hands (he needs to for running), the game is an all out action fest of killing hordes of badguys. When you play as the Doctor, the game is a puzzle game. You mix and match components that you find to build things to overcome the puzzles in the game. All three game types are very well done, and the game is littered with goofy, as well as dark humour. The game is just flat out funny, and a blast to play.

Wait a minute....does the current version of Half-Life: Source already have the updated models?

Look at what I quoted in the post you had just responded to: You state that the BIO rep surpassed expectations. http://www.synonym.com/definition/exceeded You'll see that surpass is a synonym of exceed (a synonym is a word that has a similar meaning: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=synonym ). If you were to look a the block of text I was quoting (hint: my responses are usually directly related to the quote directly above that particular block of text), you'd see that you said that the discussion is about whether or not Jade Empire exceeded expectations, and that according to the BIO rep, it did. Again....check the block of text that I quote, before telling me to read what you said. You seem like an intelligent person Volourn. I'm surprised you take everything so literally. Perhaps my assumptions about your intellect were incorrect :\ You made the claim, so the burden of proof is on you. Until then you're just making "false statements" (as you like to say).

My suggestion is to avoid any of the older RPGs that require typing

Another baiting to report? Right. The point I was trying to make was that the new IP thing doesn't fly. If Bioware was merely content by saying "500k is pretty good for a new IP" then I guess a game like Dragon Age is roughly in the same boat, given it's new IP status as well. You see, you tossed out Gaider's comments since he didn't mention Jade Empire (convenient), yet Dragon Age is in the exact same "new IP" status that is going to require over a million in sales. Bioware doesn't make fluff games where 500k sales "exceed expectations" (your words, not Bioware's). Their production values are always top notch and they have an extremely high level of confidence that what they're putting out is quality that is going to have mass appeal because it's a great game. Again, you're not giving Bioware enough credit. Wrong. No where in the article does it say that Jade Empire has surpassed expectations. I suggest you read it again. Couldn't find it. Is this where I do what you do and start screaming "proof" and assume you're just making that statement up?

Dave Gaider didn't comment on Jade Empire because he didn't work on the game. Neverwinter Nights and Dragon Age are his babies. But by your logic, I guess Dragon Age is probably hoping for roughly 500k in sales too. Why'd they make all those limited edition copies then? Also, don't chastize IGN for saying they expect the 4th game to be the "inevitable" FPS (not 100% certainty like you said), and then say Jade Empire 2 is a guarantee.

If they were very much satisfied with the sales, they wouldn't have added the "for a new property" qualifier. Booyah game over word up period!

I don't think that production costs are in the fixed range of 5-10 million. Even then, that's a pretty big range, given the upper end is double the lower end. In any case, I'm not sure exactly what posting your question is trying to solve though.