@\NightandtheShape/@

I must admit that the shiney tank on Sawyer bike looks very swanky, I don't know if I could go in for it myself, I'm currently coming up with a bizzare plan to reduce the amount of chrom on my bike... I'm thinking about powder coating everything in a nice matte black...

*Points and laughs some more*

Molyneux, created a genre... He's been behind good, and bad games. This basically comes down to a subjective decision, what is good and what is bad is purely subjective. I'm one of the first people to say that Fable isn't exactly a great game, especially where RPG's are concerned, it tends to do the exact opposite of what makes an RPG good in my opinion. I can on the otherhand say that I have, for many years enjoied alot of Molyneux's work, it doesn't take a single person to make a game, but the initial vision and project management certainly can be attributed to Molyneux. Populus, Powermonger, Syndicate, Black & White, and The Movies are all quality games which I have played which Molyneux has had a hand in, I've also heard pleanty in regards to Dungeon Keeper, and Magic Carpet, although I have never played them at any great length to make a true opinion, they simply haven't fully appealed to me. Kaftan, what is your greatest achievement in games? I feel confident in saying that you have been nowhere near as successful as Molyneux, critical analysis is always positive, but you seem to have some kind of personal agression towards Molyneux. The games industry is a business, and PR is a part of that business, companies promise all kinds of things and they don't always deliver, even Obsidian are guilty of this. Experience can make us arrogant, don't fall into that trap, especially at such a n00b level.

*points and laughs*

Bethory freaking AWESOME!

I'd not even touch a difficulty slider even if I was having a tough time of it.

Clearly a programmer and designer disagreement occured again....

Guess i didn't find it funny.

I'm sure you just call me Nightshade coz ya know it narks me LOL. The fact that he construes it as a lie is what disturbs me, he is truly ignorant, and its people like that who cause more problems than its worth. If there was a reason that Bioshock doesn't support SM 2.0, it sure as hell isn't because they want people to upgrade GFX cards, developers want as many people as possible to play a game. Greylord: Blizzard don't build cutting edge games in regards to technology. You're right, he shouldn't be shelling out on a game if he's struggling with bills, and if he is going to buy a game he should read the requirements as it is stated as need shader model 3.0.

Can you elaborate? Sure, to be blunt, it's most likely down to the engines design and required specifications. The patch while allowing the game to run, is still full of artifacts, shader model 2.0 has several limitations, one of those is to do with the amount of instructions that you can actually write, can't remember the exact number, also such cards are hardly high performance. The company that developed Bioshock will have been aware of those requirements, I would certainly place money on the fact that while the game can be forced to run on a system with a shader model 2.0 card, that it will perform both poorly, and look crap. Development time would have been required to do this, and was most likely not a requirement as the perception would have been restrictive to the developers vision. Considering that shader model 2.0 exists within two other form also 2.0a and 2.0b, that would also have to have been taken into consideration, increasing development time. You have to bare in mind that Bioshock was developed for PC and XBOX 360, due to the nature of the fact that they're very similar as development platforms, writing a shader for PC or XBOX 360 and porting them back and forth is mostly down to the compiler, they're very similar jobs from a programmer perspective, the XBOX 360 is shader model 3.0 equivalent, but I have no knowledge to the fact that it actually has support for shader model 2.0, it also means less time would be required for shader development, they can both use the same thing so to speak, thus only meaning that extra development be required for shader model 4.0. The game uses a modified Unreal 3.0 engine, which focuses on next gen technology, it is most likely an influence of this system. Shader model 3.0 has existed for 2 gfx card generations, 6 and 7, model 2.0 is infact rather old by todays standards, cutting edge games aren't targeted at the more casual gamer market, even requiring a shader model 3.0 card is hardly demanding latest tech, 6 series cards are considered to be low end technology. You can pick up a low end 6 series card for about $50. There was the exact same problem with NWN's loads of people were complaining, because there Voodoo video cards werent supported, due to its open GL requirements, yet you could actually force the game to run on earlier and unsupported GPU's, but just because you can doesn't mean that it would perform. The software is designed to function with shader model 3.0, just because you can force the game to run in SM 2.0, doesn't mean that the game could fully support 2.0 at any point, atleast not correctly and reliabley, were it to have been released with limited shader 2.0 support there would be a bunch of people endlessly complaining about that I imagine. I always find casual gamers to be pretty funny, I don't understand why they even buy a PC, they don't keep them upto date! Why not buy an XBOX!

I'm not shaken, I'm not even amazed... Infact I've never read a more uninformed bias article in my life. The guys a jerk and understands nothing.

I find them hillarious.

I tend to browse Amazon, then go to the company website. So where, out of those two, are you getting unbiased information? Hey, reviewers aren't perfect, but they put less spin on a product than a company website. Also, reviews aren't the only thing the gaming press does, they also put up previews and consolidate gaming news so you don't have to visit a dozen individual company websites. Amazon allows user reviews, which is great, but I don't see how those are more trustworthy than a gaming site. Heck, it could just be the game's developers posting about how wonderful their product is. I use the company website to get specific information, not so much about the gameplay, more to do with hardware specifications and potential problems from said forums, If there is a major problem that doesn't seem down to generally retarded users I may reconsider, this is usually down to how well a company has suported products in the past, or if its the first product etc... Its not exactly difficult to see what kind of an outfit a company is. I don't even read Amazon reviews, well unless I fancy a giggle. I just look until I find something that tickles my fancy, and then i buy it. I'd wanted to play full spectrum warrior for a while, but because I didn't buy it for years, it eventually cost me 1p, and it was the best 1p I have ever spent. 1p a good game, and I never read a single review of the game, and I'd never spoken to anyone in depth about the game.

If written properly, which I imagine it is, the resolution, aspect radio, and games camera lens are irrelivant, they will always calculate the correct result, this is due to the data thrown into the perspective and view matricies, its just that certain resolutions are alot more commonly supported by monitors. The code itself should be totally dyanamic.

I tend to browse Amazon, then go to the company website.

Which one? All of them? Yes, if I was ever interested in the first place.

Oh I wouldn't deny that there is some content in regards to information... It just always seems supplied with an opinion. Depends where you read I guess, as I don't actually use reviews to inform my decisions, I just buy the damn game.

But a review is more than an opinion. We'd like to hope, my problem is that, they hardly ever are...

The way it is presented, the explanation for that, and the detail given. Reviews are a necessity because there needs to be a place that people can go to get a general idea of what a product is like before purchase and scouring random forum posts in vague parts of the web trying to weed out the ones that constitute "I hate <platform>" or "it sucks because of belts and zippers" is ridiculously silly. Reviews: 1) Give a general opinion of the game. 2) Qualify that opinion. 3) Describe the game. All 3 of which can be used to aid an intelligent choice of whether or not to purchase beyond "****sux." And reviews usually have far more information than just the stated opinion. Maybe I'll revisit this later and give you an analysis of a randomly selected review from gamespy to help illustrate my point. An opinion is an opinion. Need you really spend more time on this? I understand the point of reviews, I just don't see them as a particually good thing all of the time. Oh Media are still parasites :|.

you realize you just called Mk a parasite right? Yup, but he knows what I think of what he does... I actually kinda like Mk, but that don't change the fact that his job is parasitical. At the end of the day, its critical, which is fine... I like critism, its good, the problem is reviewing is nothing more than a biased opinion. It is hardly ever objective. Reviews are fun enough to read, but I don't hardly ever agree with reviewers at the end of the day. It has been known that companies will pay the media to give good reviews. I also have a problem with the fact that a review can make or break a game, I'll always remember what Mk thought of Dark Messiah, the irony for me was when gears of war was released, GoW suffered from some of the exact same flaws, yet DM was generally disliked and GoW was loved... Which thus showed me that reviewers go into something with a bias. At the end of the day I simply ask, what makes Mk's opinion more valid than Volo's? Nothing.

The games media and the people who work in the games media are parasites.

I just see it as proof, that we understood what we were doing better than the US forces in Iraq, we're pulling out, but were still there to support the iraqi's in the area. Its simple, we came, we saw, we kicked alot of ass. We should have never gone into iraq, but we did, and we're done. But then again, I reckon its down to the fact that the Americans will be pushing at Iran from the Iraqi front, and we'll be supporting on the Afgan front. DOWN WITH ISLAMIC EXTREMEISM! DOWN WITH AXIS OF EVIL! Next stop Iran, then North Korea! WOOO! </Sarcasam off>

Well you got me interested, I preordered MotB on the strength of this thread. It's the amazing power of the crack badger!

I'm one of those weird people that enjoied IWD:HOW alot, infact I loved the story....

Oh I wouldn't dream of it, I love Obsidians work.