Is this in stores yet, confirmed? I'm chomping at the bit to get this game.

Well, There is pretty boring... fairly sterile world, nothing to do, etc. The concept is good, but it's pretty vapid.

Second Life is like There's creative half-brother or something. The game creators basically said "here's a world... make stuff in it". They give you avatar tools (to make you look however you want), building tools (simple polygons, but you can make a LOT of things with basic shapes and sizes :), and scripting (LSL, like a cross between Java and C++).

So far, these tools have let people have a full-fledged war (people invented guns in-game, and used them on each other), a tax protest (the creators changed the way taxes were calculated, so everyone got together and marched along the Newbie Welcoming Area with shackles on their feet and big protest signs), a coupld weddings, lots of vehicles, a carnival, and so on.

It's really a REALLY fascinating game... it's had me hooked since July.

No, I'm not being paid by Second Life to tell you this... I'm just an addict

http://www.secondlife.com/

Go there... tell 'em Lordfly Digeridoo sent ya

do NOT use The Master Genealogist for ANYTHING. Trust me on this. My mom used it for like, 10 years, she had all her info backed up on it, but the program gets worse with every version, and the support is god-awful terrible.

She's using anothe rprogram now thank god, but just do NOT USE MASTER GENEALOGIST.

Lordfly

You guys act like it's the oldest game ever. Come on.

Have you people even PLAYEd Halo? It's one of the best party games around... this game is just begging for lan parties.

Before I get flamed to a crisp... no, I'm not an Xbox fanboy... I personally find most of the Xbox-exclusive games a bunch of crap. But Halo is an excellent game, even if it is "old". Not to mention the new modes, new maps, new weapons, updated graphics, and so on.

Give it a shot before shitting all over it in the forums, please. It really doesn't increase your maturity level any.

Lordfly

Got it off 3d gamers, installed it, black screen frozen. Alt-tabbing out causes a general protection fault.

Running a 1.4 ghz, 512 MB DDR, Windows XP, Radeon 9500

I definitely saw this in like every gaming magazine I've picked up in the past 6 months... it was one of the more anticipated titles coming out. Why the hell cancel it?

Boners.

Master of Orion was one of my favorite games. Still is. A shame MOO3 is such a stinker.

Think "Spreadsheets In Spaaaace!" and you're not too far off. You can either do everything yourself or nothing yourself, the computer does a fine job of doing it for you anyway.

It's not terribly fun. I have more fun doing my taxes, unfortunately.

slightly offtopic, but I figured I'd give a negative review of the cd

I have every metallica cd from kill 'em all to S&M, and I love 'em all. Except St. Anger.

I definitely downloaded St. Anger, just to spite Metallica (Napster bad? k, I'll just IRC xdcc it then).

Generally, I do not like the album at all. It sounds like Linkin Park, or whoever else wails on their guitar, then sings softly, then wails again, then changes tempo, and then ends. Fuckt hat. If i want to hear guitars, I want a constant beat, thrashing metal goodness, a sweet solo, and then the end. AC/DC does this. This is why AC/DC still kicks your ass.

And lars? WTF is with the trash can lids for snare drums dude? *bassCLANGbassCLANGCLANGbassCLANG* *silence* *bassCLANGCLANGCLANGbass* sigh...

Tempo changes bother me. So does screaming. Stop screaming, James, your voice sucks enough already.

*goes back to listening to MAster of Puppets*

Josh

Furious, I really don't think you're thinking as to how difficult it is to beta test a mmorpg, ESPECIALLY gameplay stuff.

Look at Everquest. Yes, I know dead horse and all that, but look at it anyway. Even better, let's look at Ultima Online, because I used to play that. Every gameplay tweak usually pissed 30 people off for every 2 people it made happy. Why? Because it changes the balance, the dynamics, the very nature of the game. If, out of the box, it was a difficult thing to become a Grandmaster Mage, but once you did, you were king of the dungeons, and then a patch comes along and tweaks it so any nerf with a staff can cast fireball-breathing dragons, you'd be pissed.

My point is, it's alot easier to piss and moan about gameplay changes, without first sitting down and realizing that they have to weigh in on alot of factors before making it. A beta-testing community of 1,000 people is going to have different dynamics than 10,000 on 20 servers. It's just that simple.

You can't beta-test human nature

The game companies have to constantly second-guess their playerbase so they don't get bored with it. If they don't... well, look at Motor City Online. No significant patches for like 6-7 months prior to it being pulled from game shelves. No wonder it died.

SO meanwhile, I'll continue enjoying my gaming hobby, while you continue going into cardiac arrest for yours on the simplest of issues.

Josh

With all due respect to nin, this is EA you're talking about They're not exactly known for revamping the game for an addon, which is what this would require.

The way the game works traffic wise is thus:
1) The simulation does all the required calculations for making the city run under the hood (how to get from here to there, etc.)
2) The rendering engine gets the calculations of what zones went where (for instance, a Sim living in a rich house going to his CEO job downtown), and generates cars based upon those calculations (this Sim would be driving a sporty car, for instance).

The game's rendering engine is not exactly realistic... cars appear and disappear when they arrive at their zones, sometimes without arriving at their zones... traffic laws are not obeyed very well, cars constantly blend into one another... even TRAINS stop for CARS, for crying out loud. Either that or the cars disappear or simply just drive through the train. Not terribly realistic. Were they to accurately simulate the traffic visually, your computer (which is already huffing and puffing at calcuating 500,000 sims commuting to work and back every day, every second) will visually implode, sending your hapless sims into the great Bitbucket Up Above.

Personally I just turn the traffic visuals off anyway...

Josh

I like the new transportation models (one way roads, etc.), but the rest sounds too gimmicky. I've been playing Simcity since '93 on the SNES (aah, memories), and I'd hate to see it go all gimmicky on me. Train wrecks? Yay. Dispatch fire, return to building my neighborhoods.

And yes, that third screenshot is a DEFINITE fake. I play the game daily, and here's how I know:

1) Helicopters are damn hard to find, and definitely never show up during a disaster.
2) There are no ambulances to dispatch during a disaster. They only show up when you put down a hospital for the first time.
3) The firefighters shoot water, not foam.
4) The helicopter also doesn't cast a shadow, at least not that I remember.

Not to mention that in the game currently, traffic magically disappears and reappears for the heck of it... it's pure eye candy. The REAL simulation continues going ahead doing it's thing, though, thankfully.

bleh. Maybe I'll just download this expansion pack from some less-than-reputable sources, because it sounds like just a bunch of micromanagement headaches.

Josh

...or does every new RTS game press release nowadays start with "<game x here> combines the epic scope of traditional turn-based strategy (TBS) games with the fast-paced action of RTS games." I mean, come on. It's one, or the other.

Personally, this sounds just like Empire Earth. But then, I haven't looked much at this. A demo would be nice.

Josh

You know, if you go in to the game without expecting "TEH B3ST GAM3 EVAR!!!!11", it's pretty fun.

A buddy of mine has the full version, and he let me play it. The first thing I did was find a shovel, and walk into someone's house (after a warning that I shouldn't). The guy walked in the room that I had just trespassed into, and wondered what the hell I was doing. After a few seconds of pause, he went into "freakout" mode and tried running out the door. I chased him down with said shovel and knocked his head clean off.

Yes, it's violent. Yes, it's base humor (piss jokes... huhuhuhuhuh). Yes, it's very sick and twisted (you have to piss on yourself to put out a fire, for instance). But if you don't expect Beowulf or Shakespeare (or even Unreal Tournament), it's fine.

Only gripes I have with this game:

1) The load times are ridiculous, even in the full version. 30 seconds per zone. Meh.
2) The mirrors aren't actually mirrors; it looks more like walking by someone in a deathmatch than an actual mirror (delayed movement, movement that doesn't correspond with what you're doing, etc.)
3) Anyone packing heat takes like 5 shots to the face with a shotgun. You're guaranteed to take damage, as they continually fire even though you're blasting them in the face point blank. Innocents, however, go down with one clean shot. I guess that's the point, or something.

Josh

...was that the shiftless bastards at EA kept removing the support team. The developers of MCO (Trouble, Cadillac, G-man, and so on) really DID care about the game, and they wanted the fanbase to work it out. The problem is, any time any of the devs would speak against EA's company policy, they would strangely vanish from the website and forums. No reason, they just left. And then 6 months later you'd hear about them getting shitcanned.

Another problem was that the game simply didn't have any competition. It was a very "everybody wins" kind of thing. For instance, the most popular racing type wasn't competitive racing, but something called "team trials". Basically everyone goes as fast as they can around the track, and if their average time is high, they get money. Everybody wins!!!
I think that's why MMORPG games are sucking right now. If there's no adversary to go up against, if everyone is going to win and get fabulous amounts of money, what's the point?

The companies want everyone to "win", of course. It keeps everyone happy. Nobody wants to be a loser.

But the thing is, in games, there HAS to be a loser. If there isn't a loser, there IS NO GAME. Simple as that. It's deeper than it sounds, trust me.

MCO had a great concept, and a great dev team to start. I jumped ship around 6 months ago, right before they added the import cars. But then EA had to meddle with it until it was dead in the water. Not advertising the game helped alot too. Does anyone remember an ad for MCO? Didn't think so. It was doomed from the start, and now EA will mark it up as there not being enough interest for a racing game.

Where the hell is EA Online going to go from here? Sims online is a dud, MCO is cancelled, Earth and Beyond is, from what I hear, quite sterile (no PvP at all? Come on), Ultima Online is 6+ years old, Ultima Online 2 was cancelled just as it was becoming promising... sigh.

Piss off, EA. You're ruining it for everybody.

Josh

Obviously you haven't played the game... it went live Saturday, and currently has over 1000 paid subsrcibers, who forked over their money before they had to (meaning they liked the game so much they gave up their free month).

It's actually quite fun to play.

And it's called "a tale in the desert".

Josh

I betcha it's going to come out October of this year. Mark my words

Reasoning: All GTA games have come out in October.

Lordfly

I haven't had any problems with the game crashing... in fact, it has yet to crash. Then again, nothing really crashes on my system, so I guess it's just me.

Shame that you guys are missing a sweet game

Anyone know how far the connections city-to-city go, in affecting zone demand and economics and all? IE, can I have a big city on one side of the region connected fully to the other city all the way on the other side? I realize it'd be going through all the smaller non-cities (using the connections), but do they affect each other?

Lordfly