I can send you 1337 screenshots to torture keep you appraised of the game's greatness.

Having actually done just that to certain associates ,
Ray (pointing out that the above own the game now)

Hmmm. Is there a causal relationship between that? If so, please send me some screenshots :).

The official date for the UK import here ist October 18th and the US import costs a whopping 56€ for some reason :(. So I'm quite interested in that new way to synthesize a game from 1337 screenshots

Never going to play the local german version

After all, X percent of nothing is nothing

Yes, but the issue here is wether X percent of something is more than Y percent of something else. Unless you know the precise values of "something" and "something else" there is no way to calculate the end result.

Sales with a smaller profit margin or no sales at all? Which would you prefer?

And this is exactly the point where this kind of logic is flawed. How can the profit margin of "Sales with a smaller profit margin" be smaller than the profit margin of "no sales at all"? You say that by lowering the price you get a little less profit than with a high price. But that's to be preferred because with a high price you get no sales, i.e. no profit at all? This doesn't make any sense.

So now they have a potential customer who wants their product, but feels it's too expensive, so they don't make any sale at all. Now that's not good business.

It may very well be good business. It all depends on how many people have your opinion (and also act like that, which is something entirely different, but that's another issue). If you increase the price by 10% but only one of a hundred potential customers declines to buy it because of that you still have a much higher profit.

And, as has been pointed out before, you may very well get the business of those people that first declined to buy as well, if you lower the prices after a few months.

[Edit] added the last point...
This comment was edited on Oct 3, 17:34.

But films cost 10 times that to make and I can go see one for a fiver. Or I can buy it on DVD for £20. Music, also, but I can buy that for a tenner. So why are games so expensive. I think until the games industry can truly justify that, campaigns like this should be no surprise.

How long does it take to watch a film? Two hours. A good game will take at least 20 hours to complete. So you can watch ten times more films in a month than you can play games, hence games have to cost more to make up for the smaller demand. Additionally the target group for games is a lot smaller as well, so you get even less demand and higher prices.

Music is entirely different because you can listen to it "in the background" while doing other things. It cannot be compared to movies or games.

I can only say one thing: in the long run the free market will take care of the pricing issues. If cheaper games make more money, the prices will drop. Publishers DO perform experiments in that regard. Just take Serious Sam - a very popular game for 20$. If SS made significantly more money than other games we'd automatically see more of these prices. But it seems that it hasn't (has anyone got any hard figures for that one?). Publishers may do stupid things sometimes, but usually they are able to see which projects make more money.

and the stars of the industry have just as much right to be "rich" as actors, musicians, authors or anyone else who works in a creative industry for the hard work they put in and the entertainment they give to people."'

Yep, they would have that right. However, the thing that most people seem to overlook here is that game programmers actually get LESS money on average than programmers of other kinds of software. There was a recent study that concluded that salaries in the game industry are about 20% lower than in other parts of the software industry.

There ARE highly successful people who own whole parks of Ferraris and castles and stuff like that. But it is important to realize that there is only a small number of them. For every John Carmack there are a hundred programmers that earn a lot less money than they could get elsewhere and work insane hours for it. All for the love of creating games. How does THAT fit into the image of ultra-rich game companies "ripping off" their customers, as pictured in the article?

This comment was edited on Oct 3, 13:33.

It is consistently disappointing to me to see people read reviews (not just mine) and assume the worst

Well, that's just my experience with reviews. You have to admit that there ARE quite a few reviewers out there that don't take their jobs seriously. I don't know you, so I cannot tell beforehand what kind of reviewer you are, so I just take everything I read with a little doubt and try to find hints on wether the person that's writing it knows what he/she is talking about.

it would be nice if people were sure what they were talking about before making exaggerated accusations and calling a review's integrity into question on a public forum.

Come on, don't take it personal. I thought I had spotted two mistakes in the parts of your review that described things I knew about (i.e. NOLF1). Since I cannot verify the info about NOLF2 until I have the game I simply got suspicious and posted about it. After all, that's what a comments system is for.

because you're not sure if NOLF1 had a skill system or the ability to remove bodies, that must suggest that this entire 1500-word article was "taken from press releases" and that we "accidentally got the score right"?

No, but as I said: it made me wonder how much else is not based on personal experience. Such things lead me to suspect that he has no problem to write down things he heard about as personal experience ... and that's a bad thing in a review. After all, reviews are essentially about trusting someone else's judgement and I want to be certain that that judgement is based on facts, not hearsay.

Additionally, I'm always a little prejudiced against early reviews - I cannot help to wonder if the reviewers really played the game long enough to form a solid opinion.

I apologize if there really was a skill system in NOLF1. I can only say that I played through the whole game without ever noticing any difference in Cate's abilities and the manual doesn't seem to mention anything about it.

I remember paying $49.99 at walmart for HL with the intention of returning it after i had copied the serial number

<simpson's nelson voice>

Don't worry, it is a victimless crime. Like hitting someone with a baseball bat in the dark!

</simpson's nelson voice>

Unless I am mistaken, all the first game offered was the body remover.

Yes, I was referring to moving bodies, which was definitely not in. In fact, I remember reading an interview that stated that they included the body remover because they thought a "weak" woman like Cate wouldn't be able to move fat soldiers out of the way. Guess Cate did some body building for the sequel :).

but didn't Hall or one of the other people talk about a very limited, behind-the-screen skill system? Something along the lines of the game (supposedly) increasing your skills over time

I don't remember if he did. And I just looked into the manual (yay, I actually read the manual over a year after playing through the game :)) and it doesn't seem to contain any reference to such a system.

Hoping that the game gets the credit and sales that it is due this time,

That makes two of us. It is sad when you mention such a cool game to your friends and nobody even knows it exists. Hopefully they will do some kick-ass marketing for this one!

Cannot wait to play NOLF2 - the single player game looks excellent - and just got 90% on GameSpy today so now *really* looking forward to it!

Hmmm. I just read that review and I wouldn't put too much value in it. The guy who wrote it obviously never played NOLF and used some misunderstood marketing info for some of the paragraphs:

As in the original, you can move dead bodies to prevent alerting other enemies to your presence, and a body remover spray allows you to dispose of them permanently.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't remember being able to move bodies in NOLF 1.

Another interesting (and well implemented) aspect of NOLF2 is the skill system, which has been dramatcially improved over the one in the original game, and gives things a bit of a roleplaying flavor.

A skill system in NOLF 1? Must have missed that one, too...

All this makes me wonder how much of the rest of the review is really based on personal experience and how much is simply taken from press releases.

On the other hand ... all this doesn't matter much because - based on the demo - it seems that at least the writer (accidently?) got the final score right :).

Where can I find the cheat codes for my VW? I want to know how to activate the god mode

I like the alt-text.

So, Blue, what does N.E.W.S. stand for?

I actually got NOLF included when I bought my GF4-4200 (the full version, not a demo). Never played it.

Worth playing?

Two words: Do it!.

I missed out on NOLF when it first came out and bought the Game-Of-The-Year Edition for a budget price late last year. After playing this game through I couldn't believe that I had almost let it slip by unplayed. It is one of my favorite games of all times. In my opinion NOLF is what games should be all about: pure entertainment. There are very few games that ever made me actually laugh out loud, but NOLF did. And there's quite a bit of suspense and great gameplay, too... an almost perfect game.

doesn't look that good tbh

Yeah, KITT's definitely missing some sheen. After all, it was always highly polished in the TV show, if I remember correctly ... even after driving through the desert for hours :).

Don't know if you can really make a good "spy game" just with a car. Would be a little awkward to sneak around on four wheels. It remains to be seen what this one ends up to be but I'm not holding my breath...

Also, just because you have ad-aware installed doesn't mean you have the most up to date reference file

Actually I got into the habit of always downloading the newest AdAware version before scanning. So, I'm pretty sure that I've got an up-to-date signature file.

Also, I'm using Opera, so all that scumware that's targeting IE has no chance at all.

since a few days i was wondering why i always get those stupid porn (kinda) popups.

Yep, I've been getting the same banners regularly for a couple of weeks now. And I'm 100% sure (well, as sure as one can be right after running AdAware) that they are indeed generated by BluesNews. Already posted about this when they first appeared...

I agree that they're probably location-specific - I'm german with a german ISP and the banner contains some german text. No idea wether "Skandale24.com" is really a porn site, though. I sure as hell won't visit it just to check (you've gotta have SOME standards about popups :)).

EDIT: typo

This comment was edited on Sep 24, 11:25.

Infogrames doesn't want U2 and UT2K3 to compete against each other for the holiday season.

Hmmm. Am I the only one to think that these two games won't be competing at all?

UT2K3 is a fast-paced reaction-based multiplayer deathmatch game (ok, ok, there's also some of those new-fangled teamplay stuff as well :))

Unreal 2 is a story driven single player FPS adventure.

It would be like comparing Mafia with Super Mario 64 just because they're both played in 3rd person and have some italian characters in them.

I agree that the naming scheme is a little awkward, though. Everyone will just think of the game that interests him/her the most as "the new Unreal game". Not a good thing if confusion is to be avoided.

This comment was edited on Sep 23, 11:39.

Nevertheless, the lawsuit claims kids and their parents didn't know how fattening the food was.

Yeah, you have to be 80 pounds overweight to get up one day and say to yourself "Gosh, I think I might have put on a leeeetle weight - maybe it's connected with something I eat?"

It's only a matter of time until people with a minority complex sue Everyone Else(TM) because they make them feel bad and therefore cause psychological stress. Which results in them not being able to go to work ("god, I'm SO stressed") thus preventing them from making the millions they would surely have earned if they had been able to go. It's only fair that everyone gives them a hundred bucks in compensation...

Can't we just file that one big lawsuit Everyone against Everyone about Everything, come to a settlement (Everyone pays a hundred million dollars to Everyone, which cancels each other out) and get back to living our lives?

This comment was edited on Sep 23, 09:09.

... is dead on target. "The cord that connects the typewriter to the TV" sounds all too familiar

Hitting myself for never having tried that lying and stealing part :D.

I just read through the comments on the donation page and noticed that some people are expressing their concern about blue "begging/asking" for donations.

Actually I think there's quite a difference between actively asking for money and just having a paypal button on the site. These things depend very much on the way they're implemented. For example, I wouldn't want to visit Bluesnews if it had a start page along the lines of:

"Please support me by clicking HERE. After you've done that click below to see the news."

A simple paypal button below the menu to the left is something entirely different, though. I don't want Blue go around demanding donations (he wouldn't do that anyway :)), but simply to allow me to donate something out of my own free will.

I guess those of us that really want to donate will find a PayPal button no matter how small and bland it looks. And those that don't want to donate will probably not even notice it. So everyone can be happy and as a side effect Blue might even get some money out of it.

Please consider it Stephen! Just a small button somewhere and I'll be happy :).

the governments of the world that have space flight technology have a responsibility to preserve the moon from rampant raping & pillaging by anyone who can afford to get there.

Yeah. We should be satisfied with doing that on earth.

Sorry, in a cynical mood right now...