Oh, I know that. I didn't misunderstand that part.
I was just saying how retarded it was that I was expecting to just hear the quick little sound clip when I clicked on it, but was instead met with an "embedding disabled, watch on youtube" message. Had me laughing at how unnecessary and stupid it was to disable embedding on a two-second clip, something which is practically made for embedding.

Fuck that.
Seriously, it's not even the fact that it's going to use more modern technology as the characters. I could accept that, given the right implementation.
The thing that murders it for me is the fact that it's going to be live-action/cg. Which of course implies that there are going to be human characters in more prominent roles, rather than focusing almost entirely on the objects.
No doubt the human characters will play the "straight man" role to the wise-cracking, goofball iphones and whatnot.

This one hurts.

I wouldn't say always.
Nothing wrong with cg, as long as it's used well (the Infamous one isn't cg by the way; it's just computer-colored to have that look).
I prefer the cg US cover for Dirge of Cerberus, for example, as opposed to the Japanese version, which uses artwork.

http://oi46.tinypic.com/2qmg7ti.jpg

http://oi46.tinypic.com/2a613m1.jpg

The problem is, the Japanese cover just looks like a totally random piece of concept art, rather than a legitimate cover design . It's like they opened a book of concept art, closed their eyes, pointed to something, slapped it against a boring gray background, and that's what ended up as the cover.
The US cover may be cg, but it still comes off as a very deliberate piece of covert art, besides also being a very high-quality bit of rendering work.

I also don't see what's so bad about cg in general when, let's face it, the games themselves are cg. It makes less sense to have a shot of artwork on the cover, something which likely never shows up in the game, than it is to have a cg rendering, a more legitimate representation of the game's contents.

God, that's heartbreaking.
The silver lining is that he's actually alive though. A while back, he apparently just kind of... disappeared. Nobody could say what happened to him, so I kind of always assumed the worst.
I kind of like the way he's talking though. Pay close attention, and it doesn't seem like he's bowing out from console games altogether. When he says he's "retired" from console games, he specifies that his boss told him he has to say that. :lol:
It sucks that Japanese gaming has basically come down to this, but I still have hope that a great like him can make a comeback. Still one of my favorite developers/personalities in the business.

I don't think I've seen the elevator scene... apparently the public demo is different from the one that was with Dragon's Dogma (I think it even says so when you go to download it).
But that's kind of the point I was making to Ryudo before; multiple scenarios focusing on different styles is a good thing. From what I played, I liked Leon's stages most as well.

I love survival horror, I just won't hold the general lack of it against RE4 and 5 when they're so good otherwise.

Don't remember when the biggest games on ps3 were full auto 2 and Ridge Racer 7 (which were just full auto and ridge racer 6 ported over).

I wasn't saying no system has ever been like that, just that I cease to care about a system until there's something truly new and worthwhile on it. As it is right now, WiiU is just set to be a PS3/360 with a touchpad.
The excitement I see people developing over that doesn't make any sense to me.
All I was saying is that I'm waiting to get excited until I see something new, exclusive, and interesting. And right now, almost nothing on it fits that criteria for me.

Horrible Bosses.
I actually liked it a lot. Hard not to with the combination of Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, and Charlie Day (probably three of the most likable actors working in comedic movies these days). It's just a dumb-funny comedy, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. The movie was made for a laugh, and it did its job.
Also Jennifer Aniston is fucking hot .
Still .
And she spends the whole movie stripping down and talking dirty.
There is nothing bad about this whatsoever .

I just feel bad I don't like it. Mainly because niche games are usually my ally and I try and support them esp when quirky and stylish.

I think, if it ever drops in price far enough, you should try it again. The demo is obviously a bit limited. It only shows the bare bones of what the games ends up doing, and it doesn't get anywhere near the real meat of the story.
The gameplay is such that as you keep progressing, and as you keep overcoming new obstacles in different ways, it starts to get addicting. You're constantly learning new ways to do things with the admittedly simple mechanics, and the game keeps surprising you with how unexpectedly deep and functional it actually is. It eventually gets to a near-Tetris kind of addictiveness, and the story does an incredibly good job of constantly urging you forward.

It's not a game for everyone, so I fully understand if it just never really grabs you. But at the very least I'd still recommend trying the full game, as the demo doesn't even scratch the surface of its appeal.

I'm one of the few that liked JSRF better.

I guess I wasn't aware of the general opinion on one game versus the other, but yeah, I liked JSRF better too. Not that JGR was bad; it was obviously excellent. JSRF just shined it up, was more open, and offered (in my eyes) more appealing design work almost all around.
If only it weren't for that goddamn Birthday Cake song.
Curse that damnable song.
At least JGR had Dragula.

^^I've been feeling the same way. I mean, in the past it's taken them a full year to get each of the games translated and released outside of Japan, and it was done by a relatively small team as far as I know (part of the whole reason we keep getting the games; low-cost localization = more realistic expectations for profit)...
But with a game this size, who even knows how long it would take a team like that?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUxKmzSqgWQ[/youtube]

I really don't want to get AC1. Youtube?

You could go that route I suppose, but nothing adds impact to a story like interactivity does. Without actually playing AC1 and experiencing it for yourself, all future mentions of Altair (of which there are many in AC2 and Revelations) will probably be a lot less impacting than they would otherwise.
Just watching a bunch of videos will make him feel like "that guy you saw ", rather than "that guy you were ". And actually being someone holds a lot more weight than just watching them, obviously.
Though I'd say the same for any game, really. It's an interactive medium. In most cases, just watching videos negates the whole point.

Holy shit.
Just saw some footage of Ken's Rage 2, and goddamn does it look improved. I didn't have much of a problem with how the characters moved in the first game myself, but it's still awesome to see how everything has been sped up, with new moves and animations all over the place.
Having finished the first game pretty recently, the improvements are incredibly obvious just from the first few seconds of seeing it. The environments thus far still look a little empty, but hopefully they'll at least match their counterparts from the anime a little better this time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OSsEfFatMY

And even cooler is seeing the new trailer, which shows off a bit of the sort of "re-interpreted" parts from the first series, along with footage from the bits covering the second series as well. Adult Bat looks like he'll be incredibly fun to play as.
Can't wait to see more of Ein and Shachi too.
And goddammit, I want to see some boss battles now. Hopefully it'll have an actual lock-on button this time

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVbuQY-aFmU

This one has me pretty excited. People will no doubt still have their complaints about it, but both as an adaptation of the anime and as a flat-out beat-em-up, this looks like it'll wipe the floor with the first game.
Already bought.

EDIT: I may have to wait on making a video for the first game like I had been planning, and do it on this instead. I was intending it to cover both the game and the anime, so this looks like it'll be a bit more apt.

I'd forgotten all about the voice acting in Jet Set Radio until I played the HD demo just now.
I love how DJ Professor K's voice actor sounds like he's trying really hard to sound enthusiastic, but also totally sounds like he's reading his lines for the first time.
That, ladies and gentlemen... is good old-fashioned videogame charm.

Also it's been a while since I've seen those beautiful deep-blue Sega skies. Just not enough of that in games these days.

A suggestion:

A twenty-something signs up to test high-tech weapons in a series of Duels to wipe his debt. His next opponent proves to be his equal... but if one of them doesn't win soon, both will lose!

Just my preference, but this one combines the mention of duelling to test weapons (which is an awesome freaking idea) along with the idea that one has to kill the other, or neither will remain alive.
I think the "weapons testing by way of duel" is the clincher, the unique twist on action concepts that immediately sets it apart (kind of like the idea of curving bullets in Wanted, for example). And the "both will lose" part makes sure they know that it has a sort of Battle Royale-style requirement for death, which would immediately get someone interested in the possible tension it might allow, since these two are apparently equals in skill.

Who are all these strangers, and why are others changing their names? It's all very confusing , and makes me hate immigration and desegregation even more than I already do.

Thanks to your avatar I imagined that whole thing in Dr. Claws voice.

:lol:
That whole "once you see it, you can't un-see it" concept applies for me here.
Kiba's post just got a whole lot more awesome.

I thought that shit was so funny. Like he's trying to be all punk rock about it. :lol:

I honestly don't think I've ever seen another mainstream band that tries so hard to fit into a specific "scene" label as much as they have. I remember seeing a Behind the Music with them, and half the damn thing was them talking about how every time a new album or song came out, they'd wonder "is it punk enough?"
Hilarious and pathetic all at once.

The man is making some good sense. I studied all three games and i love em all to pieces, but I gotta say, you ever notice most people play the start of Xenogears, stop, then months/years later play the start again? The game has really bad pacing, it takes over an hour to even get into a fight and even longer to get into an exciting fight, and hours to get into a mech fight.

I still haven't finished the game, but I can't say the reason I've started/stopped/started again is because of pacing. In fact, my absolute favorite part of the game is still, even after having finished over half the game, the very beginning in Lahan village before the fighting even starts. And that's just because of the totally innocent atmosphere.
Not saying you're wrong about the pacing, just that that's never been the problem with it for me.

Personally though, I'd still say the idea of good or bad pacing in an 80+ hour long RPG is kind of a joke anyway. What with the presence of level-grinding, exploration, item hunting, and side-questing, the pace is dictated very much by the player. Can't really see why an RPG fan would have a problem with that anyway, since progressing at your own pace has always been one of the appeals of the genre itself.
EDIT: ...like AG said. Sorry, only skimmed his post befre typing that.

just don't tend to fly quite so much anymore (unless they're indie games, in which case they're generally DLC-only).
I wonder if the aspects that made the originals so unique could ever be translated faithfully to a retail game made now...
It depends how they made it. They could go down the route of making it like Sonic 4 with a 2.5D game, that could work. Actually thinking about it, I think it would be better to go down the Sonic 4 route with it, not sure what people think.

That could work, I think, but it would probably feel like a step backwards. They've already covered the 2D route pretty thoroughly with the two Genesis games, and just a little bit extra with Ecco Jr.
If they want to keep moving forward with it, I think the best route would be to go fully-3D, like the DC/PS2 iteration. The series is very reliant on (and is very good with) atmosphere, and I think keeping it in a fully-explorable 3D environment would be the best way to go about utilizing that strength.
Part of what I said also questions whether it could work as a retail game, specifically, meaning one that would be released physically in stores, sitting alongside the rest of the big guns. If it were 2.5D, chances are that it'd be digital-only.

They're just never effective. They always look like a bunch of commercial actors trying too hard, rather than being movie-like, they way they're intended. The worst I've seen was really recently, for Borderlands 2. The live-action commercial looked like a bunch of idiot cosplayers running around a playground somewhere. It's just... bad.
Use game footage, or don't do a commercial at all, I say.

To be fair, I rarely read reviews prior to playing a game either. I play games based on whether they look like they'll actually appeal to me, not based on what other people think is good or bad.
If I do end up reading a review, it's usually because it's on a game I like, and I'm really just seeing what I agree/disagree with the reviewer on, and whether they bring up any interesting points.

:lol: The topic title has changed.

But yeah, those tidbits about alternate routes depending on the character sound great.
I think this is going to turn out better than I was expecting. I still have my gripes about certain things (chiefly how close the camera is to the characters) but it's sounding like it'll be a great experience either way.

Yeah, there are some multiplayer modes out there that are pretty sweet. Assassin's Creed has a good one, as you said. Red Dead Redemption's seemed like it'd be cool, riding around causing havok with your own little posse. The old Splinter Cell one seemed worthwhile too, with its whole mercs vs. spies thing.

Well the dick being in his mouth in one of the shots was certainly a, um... interesting expressionist act.
Peeps being all artistsic.

Haven't heard this in the longest time, but stumbled upon it while doing some research, and it all came back.
Easily among my favorite Jesper Kyd tracks.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aQFdRFzBDY[/youtube]

"Best" always ends up being purely subjective, even if one tries to be ob jective about it. I personally try to make a distinction between "best" and "favorites" myself, but obviously people won't always agree.
They are kind of right that games tend to blend genres these days, but that just makes it important to set even more specific distinctions between different types of games.
I'd personally name Uncharted 2 as at the very least one of the greatest action/adventure games ever made. But "action/adventure" can cover a lot of ground, so in saying that, I need to specify that I'm speaking in comparison to all other games that involve a combination of shooting, puzzles, and some manner of "platforming".
Genre distinctions aside, it's just an amazingly solid action game with great level design, excellent control, fantastic acting, and one of the absolute best senses of adventure and excitement ever put in a game.
Almost anything negative that a person could say about it simply comes down to personal preference issues, rather than the actual quality of what's there.

Same goes for many popular titles these days: solid genre games with adrinaline ridden set pieces that get praise like if they were ground breaking or the works of geniuses.

Just to be clear, I was never making the point that it was innovative or ground breaking in any way. It absolutely isn't, at all. It takes elements from other games and runs with them. I simply think it executes those ideas extremely well, and can't think of another game that necessarily does the same things better .
If it's been glorified by people as something completely original and innovative, then I suppose I can understand others having certain feelings against it. But that still doesn't diminish its ability to incite (in most audiences, at least) an excellent sense of excitement and fun.
That's what I love it for. Not speaking for anyone else.
And I don't generally hold hype against a game as a detractor. If the game weren't hyped at all but were still exactly the same, I don't think anyone would be arguing against it like this.