Justin258

The books and music.

I don't generally listen to video game music as a leisure activity; however, some of it provides for excellent study listening material. The soundtracks for the Elder Scrolls series, for instance, are designed for ambiance and mood. They are not designed to constantly draw your attention to the beats and the rhythms and the lyrics; rather, they're designed to fit the game world and to focus your attention on that. While being a homework helper isn't their intended purpose, it is a very practical application for me.

The books because I like to read stuff. Just stuff. Bad stuff, good stuff; I'm especially tolerant of bad stuff if it presents more information about a story I like, though I haven't read much in a while. An example of an excellent video game book is Halo The Fall of Reach and its sequel, First Strike. Both books, as far as I'm concerned, are shining examples of how to successfully describe space combat while keeping the suspense up. If you like space navy fiction at all, you should probably read these two books regardless of your opinion on the games.

EDIT: Changing post for seriousness.

1) I probably wouldn't have such shortsighted friends in the first place. However, if one of them were to say something like that, I would calmly tell them that I don't want to play CoD at the moment. Why only "not at the moment" instead of "fucking never"? Because I (holy shit!) really like Call of Duty! Every one of them (except 3)!

Besides, I've noticed people at my college playing Mario Kart on the Wii. Mindblowing, isn't it?

2) The older members of my family berated my gaming habits for a long time. There was some truth to it - there were many times where I would forego something that would have been good for me to play more games. Still, it was rude and disrespectful of them. However, at this point they have pretty much given up on trying to get me to stop and have left me alone.

So, were they to say something about my gaming habits, I would just completely ignore them like before.

@css_switchfoot said:

I'm willing to wager the majority of people who buy used games aren't going to pay full price for them anyway. Right now the 10 buck unlock thing works for them and makes the game companies a little extra cash.

I'd also be willing to wager, due to the success of Steam, that the new consoles might not even use discs at all. It would cut down on the cost of manufacturing the console and they could put that money towards a bigger HD. They'd also sell a lot more extra HDs for whatever price they want. The technology is there to do it.

You (and many, many other people) are vastly underestimating the number of console users who still don't have their console connected to the internet. I won't say that this won't be a digital only console, but it would be a dumb business move to cut out all of those people.

OP: If there's a will, there's a way. If MS wants to cut out used games, then they can do that. If they want to find a way to do it offline, then by God they can try. Maybe the games will come on proprietary flash memory which, when connected to an Xbox, writes an undelete-able code to the memory card that only allows it to be used on that console. The upside to this would be an installation on the HDD (FTW!) but no letting your friends borrow your games (fudge)

@AnimalFather said:

@believer258 said:

@AnimalFather said:

xbox has already revealed that its going to be the 6670 card and wii-u is using the 4870

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/01/24/xbox-720-will-be-six-times-as-powerful-as-current-gen

According to your very link:

will yield 20-percent greater performance than Nintendo's forthcoming console, the Wii U.

You should check first.

Also remember that consoles don't need to be as powerful as PC's; their hardware is made from the ground up and completely standardized (i.e. it will be the same for every single one) for graphics.

Does not excuse using a graphics card that will be two years old at the time of release, but it's hardly as bad as it seems.

if you watched the video before typing you would see that the video discredits igns claims. pwnd

I will trust IGN before I trust some random dolt on the internet about unreleased, hardly specified hardware.

Remember that this stuff will be specialized for the consoles. Not stock parts. We won't really know until release. Besides, the best way to measure this as of now is release date, and the Xbox is releasing a whole year after the Wii U.

And, before I wash my hands of this thread, PC's will always be more powerful so this argument gets very irrelevant, very quick.

Good day!

@AnimalFather said:

xbox has already revealed that its going to be the 6670 card and wii-u is using the 4870

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/01/24/xbox-720-will-be-six-times-as-powerful-as-current-gen

According to your very link:

will yield 20-percent greater performance than Nintendo's forthcoming console, the Wii U.

You should check first.

Also remember that consoles don't need to be as powerful as PC's; their hardware is made from the ground up and completely standardized (i.e. it will be the same for every single one) for graphics.

Does not excuse using a graphics card that will be two years old at the time of release, but it's hardly as bad as it seems.

@Branthog said:

Unfortunately, we're a long time away from consoles having the resources to produce a world large enough that it could justify being spherical, like a globe (because it's unlikely you'd have a whole planet the size of a small city). Instead, it's easier to confine everything and implement silly "end of world" limitations, like "this bridge out of the city is always under construction".

There will be games/worlds that evolve to that point, eventually. The resources just dont' exist, yet. And even when they do, they'll almost certainly only apply to MMOs, because anything that is meant to tell a story or convey a particular experience will require a much smaller set of information and a smaller world. You don't need an entire planet/country/continent/etc to tell the story of Alan Wake, for example.

Before you go wanting an entire planet to walk around, remember two things:

1) Skyrim is huge, and took three years, lots of money, and tons of man-hours to build. And yet there are still issues with the game. My point with this is that even if we get enough system resources to make an entire planet, such a thing won't be feasible in a business sense of the word.

2) Say it does become feasible in every sense and it does happen, and the game itself is good. Think about it for a minute. Just Cause 2's open world is quite possibly the largest (excepting Arena and Daggerfall) open world ever made, and it's almost too big.

I'm not condemning such a project. I'd buy it if it were good. But I would never expect to actually complete all or even a third of something so massive. I just don't, personally, think it's worth making something so huge.

OP: I'm actually fine with putting invisible walls outside the edges of a city. Water, rolling plains, endless deserts - those three would serve the same purpose and they are essentially invisible walls. It's when they block off sections of city with invisible walls that I get annoyed.

@Goldanas said:

Get yourself used to paying bills. Start paying for your own cell phone, insurance, etc. Maybe even tell your parents that you'd like to start paying a little rent. Start scoping out food prices and make notes of how much you eat, and tally your expenses compared to how much you make. Always be sure to factor in the possibility of the unknown expenses like cars breaking down, etc.

Money is the only thing that matters for the most part and it's wear most people fail. They're too eager to move out before they've really done the math and they party too much until they're out of time and money.

This, this, this, this, this

THIS

The importance of learning how to manage money cannot be stressed enough. Ever. Not having a basic understanding of how much money you need to spend, when to spend it, and when to keep it can ruin entire lives.

Drastic sentence? No. Not at all. I'm not telling you that moving out now is a completely bad idea because it's hard to be "fully" ready for the entire escapade. No matter how much you prepare, something will surprise you. Still, you should first and foremost make sure you can manage where every one of your pennies goes on a month to month basis.

Unless you're filthy rich. In that case, can I buy you a beer?

EDIT: Also, learn some basic household skills if you don't already know them. Cleaning house, cooking, etc.

Almost as important as learning to manage money is learning to manage your time and making yourself keep to that management. Do you have to wake up at 6:00 in the morning? Well, go to bed soon enough to get yourself sleep. Does your house need cleaning this weekend? Clean it Friday night so you don't have to do it on Saturday. Do you need to cook a meal for dinner because eating out is expensive? Set a time to start cooking and don't change it.

Really, the biggest deal is learning to manage your own life instead of someone else being there to do it for you. That is far more difficult than it appears at first.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes, out of the ones I saw. I'd like to see Drive at some point in time as well as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Winnerof the 2011 Fuckin' Failure award goes to Transformers: Dark of the Moon, for being the most shittastic use of dialogue ever and the worst use of John Malkovich that I've seen. This coming from someone who enjoyed the first two.

EDIT: I guess I'm not sure why I needed to say that last bit. I just felt so strongly annoyed at the film.

@Jamakan_Inc said:

Sounds pretty tempting, it's the controls that sound the most worrying. The A button to shoot? Sounds a little loony, so it doesn't play exactly like RE5? Wouldn't that be the logical thing to do?

Trust me, once you get used to it (took me about fifteen minutes) it doesn't feel wrong at all. In fact, it feels pretty good.

I do wish that they had added an unlockable cheat or something that allows you to move and shoot, though. Maybe as a reward for beating the game? Would have been fun to see how much the game changes with that ability though.

@MysteriousBob said:

I would also argue that the Wii controls make the game way, way too easy.

Ever played the Wii version? (shivers). Maybe it was just me, but I had a hard time getting used to them. It felt seriously messed up. I switched to a Gamecube controller pretty fast.

I don't think we need a Mega Man 11. I never did like the original series, anyway.

I would, however, enjoy something more creative. Another Mega Man ZX, maybe, this time with the whole Metroidvania thing done right.