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Unread postby icycalm » 26 Nov 2007 01:16

The Best High-Resolution 2D Games Yet To Be Released

Half the games on that list aren't even 2D.

Racketboy is a nice guy and all, but man. If you need a clue, just get someone to check your shit before you post it and people start laughing at you. Not to mention the title of the piece.

Not that I've seen anyone laugh expect me, of course. People digg that stuff like there's no tomorrow. Oh well.
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Unread postby zinger » 26 Nov 2007 09:33

Söldner-X: Himmelsstürmer looks to be an ultra-modern 2D shmup that has a number of fresh innovations such as weather effects, collection quests, tactical elements, and a rich weapon upgrade system. This shmup also includes 2-player co-op gameplay and six difficulty levels to keep shooter fans happy.

Can't wait. :lol:
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Unread postby burnsro » 26 Nov 2007 21:47

By 2D he means the game plays in two dimensions rather than three. He is not talking about the graphics being 2D or not.
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Unread postby icycalm » 26 Nov 2007 22:56

Yes, yes, in which case his article is even MORE worthless. Because what's the point of coming up with the best "high-resolution 2D games" if half of them have 3D graphics, in which case high-resolution means nothing (because 3D models can be displayed at any resolution, no matter how high, with nowhere near the extra effort required for 2D ones).

And taglines like "2D refuses to die" are inane in either context. We all know that 2.5D games are not going anywhere.
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Unread postby icycalm » 30 Nov 2007 22:37

http://www.taito.co.jp/csm/title/2007/arkanoid_ds/

This game gets a 1 from me right now. And wait until I play it!
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Unread postby icycalm » 01 Dec 2007 01:00

I was just banned from NeoGAF for starting a thread called "Arkanoid DS lol" and saying that the DS is only suitable for one or two genres -- if that. I swear to god that's all I had time to say before they banned me.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=212696
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Unread postby burnsro » 10 Dec 2007 06:18

I'm curious to know of it's one or two genres that it is suited for? And are you permanently banned or is it one of their timed bans?
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Unread postby icycalm » 10 Dec 2007 06:33

It is suited for 1.5 genres.

As for the ban, it's temporary. About a month. But I am not going to post there again anyway.
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Unread postby icycalm » 14 Dec 2007 02:27

Posted in the Shmups forum:

Image
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Unread postby burnsro » 14 Dec 2007 04:38

Which thread was this in?
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Unread postby icycalm » 14 Dec 2007 05:01

The one about Soldner-X.
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Unread postby CosMind » 15 Dec 2007 03:49

dang, icy, i can't believe how similar you look to stephen segal. simply uncanny.

anyhow, regarding that arkanoid ds - i had some play time with it a couple days back.
i never knew it was possible that a game about moving a little paddle-ish sprite back and forth to bounce a little sprite ball at little sprite blocks could be programmed to refresh at only 20 frames/second. oof...
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Unread postby icycalm » 16 Dec 2007 12:12

l like Action Button's bottom line on the new Mario game:

Bottom line: Super Mario Galaxy is “not a cultural event — it’s just a videogame”


http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=295

Because, you know, I was expecting it to be a cultural event. :(
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Unread postby JoshF » 16 Dec 2007 16:46

We had a topic about that on my forum. I guess someone told Tim he wasn't a complete clown and this was his response. :lol:

Criticizing a Mario game for the narrative? Seriously? Miyamoto should be commended for telling his staff to focus on mechanics instead of wasting their talents and development time with grinding movie sequences. And really, the Mushroom Kingdom shouldn't be Middle Earth so I don't know what kind of dramatic dialogue and voice acting he was expecting.

*atop a flying fortress*
Mario: What is a Kuribo? A miserable little pile of piles!
Bowser: I have been awaiting this battle. But it doesn't have to be this way, there's still time to join me. Together we can rule the Mushroom Kingdom forever!
Mario: Prepare yourself for combat......father!

I've never heard of anyone being insulted by a score system either. When I was playing Darius Gaiden yesterday and I noticed the counter increased I didn't think to myself "ooh what a fucking good boy I am!" In fact I felt rewarded for my high score, not patronized. The computer wasn't making my score any higher. Quite the opposite; it was doing anything it could to make sure I didn't get a good score. This seems so obvious I can't believe he thought it would be an intelligent point of criticism.

The funniest part is where he says the game is easy, and there are more difficult levels but there's no reason to play them because I have 60 stars and that triggered a movie sequence so the game must be over. Come on Tim, that's something a corporate game journalist would say.

It seems this review was more about pointless trendsetting to prove how outside of the box we are here at Action Button Dot Net (especially considering that the bulk of the review had nothing to do with how the game actually plays, but hey thats NGJ.) Then we can say all our detractors are fanboys. He did the same thing when one of his works of art was criticized for being masturbatory bombast with little relation to the game. He sent them a link to IGN. :roll:
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Unread postby icycalm » 17 Dec 2007 01:01

The thing with Tim is that he is a very good writer, but most of the time he doesn't understand how videogames work (or don't work, as the case may be). Add to that the fact that he wishes he was a novel-writer instead of a game reviewer, and you can see why his reviews turn out the way they do.

But not all of them are worthless (from a game criticism perspective)! If you check out the Pac-Man CE and Chronicle of Dungeon Maker reviewes on abdn, you'll see what I mean. Those are perfect reviews, as far as I am concerned.

But then check the boring Gears of War review, or the Saints Row one...

So it's a hit and miss thing with Tim, really. What he needs is someone to reign him in when he goes off-topic. Above all he needs to read some circa 1990 game magazines and realize what game reviews should be all about. The NGJ thing is a dead end -- a byproduct of a childisness of kids growing up and trying to justify the time they spent on getting those useless sociology degrees.
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Unread postby icycalm » 17 Dec 2007 01:37

And this is the kind of people who read abdn:

It’s not a videogame’s videogame. It’s certainly not a gamer’s videogame. It’s candy for gamers, about videogames, expressed as a videogame.


http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=295#comment-3779
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Unread postby JoshF » 17 Dec 2007 02:28

I always thought of it as a knee-jerk rebellion against corporate game journalism without really understanding what's wrong with it. It's certainly not the lack of self-indulgence or vegan burritos.

I guess discussing mechanics is exactly what IGN wants them to do. :lol:
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Unread postby NFG » 17 Dec 2007 05:41

The NGJ thing is a dead end -- a byproduct of a childisness of kids growing up and trying to justify the time they spent on getting those useless sociology degrees.

I had a conversation with Brandon about this recently. I said, and he basically agreed, that because the very nature of a review - of any sort - is subjective, you have to know more about the reviewer to make use of his review. For example, knowing I hate RPGs would go a long way to understanding the 2/5 stars I'd give to Chrono Trigger.

NGJ is, to me, an attempt to give the reader that context with which to judge the review's worth. 1990s reviews might have made more sense when there was so much more common ground. Every game was 2D, every game used pixels instead of polygons, and (let's face it) every game could slot into one of about six different genres.

It's not like that anymore. Every game is trying to be all things to all people. Stealthy action 3D platform shoot-em-up RPGs!! FFS, how can you review THAT with any kind of objectivity?

So I start my reviews with a story: About myself, about the game, about anything that will present the reader with my state of mind.

Tim takes it to extremes, and while he's occasionally a gifted storyteller his reviews are definitely hit or miss, but that shouldn't become a damning indictment of NGJ entirely. It's a criticism of Tim.

You can't write reviews like we used to, they're not worth as much because of the lack of common ground. Something new is needed, and NGJ is it.
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Unread postby icycalm » 17 Dec 2007 08:31

I think that your definition of NGJ and mine are very different. For example, none of your reviews that I have read contain any NGJ elements whatsoever, as far as I am concerned -- if they did I wouldn't have asked you to help out with this website.

I think that what you mean by NGJ is a more relaxed writing style, in contrast to the impersonal robot-style employed by most mainstream reviewers. But if you go back and read circa 1990 reviews you will see that the style was much more easy and relaxed back then than it is now (especially in Britain), with tons of (mostly silly) jokes as well as the occasional personal anecdote.

I'll give you a classic example of NGJ vs OGJ:

http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=190 (don't miss the first comment at the bottom of the page)

vs.

http://insomnia.ac/reviews/custom/arcanaheart/

Now I am not saying that the first review is a GOOD example of NGJ -- about the only person who can write good NGJ "reviews" is Tim Rogers -- just that it is a review displaying all the hallmarks of an NGJ review by my definition -- i.e. that most of it has nothing to do with the game in question.

Similarly, I am not saying that the second review is a GOOD example of OGJ -- just that it is a review displaying all the hallmarks of OGJ by my definition -- i.e. that all of it is directly related to the game in question.

The end result is that the first is a review that hardly anyone has read, and that no one will have a reason to link in the future and talk about, whereas the second is the only piece of writing on the internet worth reading about the game in question.

If you want other examples of perfectly useless NGJ "reviews", I can link a ton of them for you on IC. There's the one about a GBA Castlevania game, for example, where Eric-Jon talks about the OST for two pages.

Good for a laugh if you have nothing better to do with your time? Sure.

Good if you want to find out more details about the game's OST? Certainly.

But a review of the game in question? Only if you have no idea what the word 'review' is supposed to mean.
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Unread postby icycalm » 17 Dec 2007 08:43

NFG wrote:For example, knowing I hate RPGs would go a long way to understanding the 2/5 stars I'd give to Chrono Trigger.


This is another thing. If you hate a particular genre, reviewing a game that belongs to it is a waste of your time, and the reader's.

A crude example would be to take me and fishing rods. I hate fishing -- what would be the point of a fishing magazine employing me to review fishing rods? I would give all of them 0. And how would that be useful to the magazine's tens of thousands of readers looking to pick their next fishing rod?

About the only thing I could do for that magazine would be to write an essay titled "Why I hate fishing" and leave it at that. But reviewing individual fishing rods? There would be no sense in that.
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Unread postby Macaw » 17 Dec 2007 10:51

Fishing is awesome.
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Unread postby icycalm » 17 Dec 2007 13:41

There you go! Macaw is now the official Insomnia fishing game reviewer. You can start off with this:

Image

Note: lifesaving vest not included.
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Unread postby Macaw » 17 Dec 2007 13:56

Holy crap a game on the Wii I would actually want to play.

Maybe I should buy the system now.
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Unread postby icycalm » 17 Dec 2007 14:07

Get a Japanese one.
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Unread postby racketboy » 17 Dec 2007 18:33

icycalm wrote:Half the games on that list aren't even 2D.

Racketboy is a nice guy and all, but man. If you need a clue, just get someone to check your shit before you post it and people start laughing at you. Not to mention the title of the piece.

Not that I've seen anyone laugh expect me, of course. People digg that stuff like there's no tomorrow. Oh well.


Dude, chill out.

First of all, I was WELL aware that most of them aren't true 2D graphics. I state that in the intro. While I personally enjoy sprites more, using polygons with a 2D perspective if more than fine in my book.

Secondlly, if you have that much criticism, constructive or not, I recommend you at least post a copy of your comments on my site (to my face, so to speak) instead of me finding them later via my site stats.

Personally, I have no professional writing or gaming journalism experience and I have no plans to go that direction. I only post my articles, lists, and guides to help out other gamers. Even in the stuff I write myself, I know that I make mistakes and I don't know everything. Most of my big posts are the result of research and I learn a lot along the way. This is another reason I like comments on my site. If I have something incorrect, I can correct it, and if your opinion varies, at least we can debate it.

Don't mean to come of as negative, this is just a pet peeve of mine.
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