f13.net

Speaking of slow news days: UGO opens up its vorpal blade on 1UP staff (http://www.massively.com/2009/01/07/1up-layoffs-and-the-ripples-therein/#continued).

Full list of staff let go (http://www.joystiq.com/2009/01/06/assessing-the-damage-at-1up/).

Games journalists and their related blogosphere is taking this very seriously.

Just makes more room for Kotaku.

God, that is a bloated writing team. The only two that got any exposure whatsoever were Shane and Milkman. And Toastyfrog, before he apparently left (Jeremy Parish). Eh, whatever though, site was dog slow, badly designed, and all around annoying.

Also, I linked to this I think in the War Recruitment thread? Maybe the thread in gen disc. Bleh. I don't remember. Unimportant, really.

Edit: I clicked that link that said they didn't pick my favorite game for their top ten/GOTY thing. That top ten reads to me like they made sure they picked EVERYONE'S favorite games. Also, wow, Fable 2. Really. Really. The Auto-RPG. The closest thing I've ever played to actual progressquest.

*sniff* G...goodbye EGM.

I will remember you not as you were, but for who you tried to be
/me pours out his 40

And what, pray tell, was that?

They had just started reviewing PC games. EGM and I were going places. We were going places together.

It's a shame since I thought 1Up had some decent writers and podcasts.  It wasn't the same after Shawn Elliot and Jeff Green left though.

Too much crappy 360 games love, and one embarrassing fanboi to defend Sony.

That's all I ever got out of them.

I think you just described this forum.

I'll miss EGM.  I haven't actually read it in years but it was the magazine which opened my eyes to the actual industry.

Where the fuck am i going to get my Seanbaby fix now? dude needs to go back to his website.

We have at least 5 or 10 embarassing PS3 fanbois. That said, I'm pretty sure most of us think the Wii fanbois are more embarassing :)

MMO derail: when are Massively and MMORPG.com gonna cave? 

Home isn't helping.

No doubt.

I don't recall ever actually going to 1up for anything.

I went there for the slow load times.

You went for the slow load times but you stayed for the mediocre games journalism?

Isn't that a redundant phrase, like saying the bad badness?

I liked their podcasts, and the people themselves were pretty cool.  Their front-page content, though, was often lacking in substance.

I think Massively has already been through one round of cuts.

J Moses, UGO's CEO comments on the purchase (http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2009/01/07/ugo-chief-tells-us-his-side-of-1up-purchase-saga/).  Also, some less positive comments from Jeff Green (http://jeff-greenspeak.blogspot.com/2009/01/no-youre-not-same-1up.html).

See, that's the thing.  I can appreciate the PS3 for the really nice machine that it is.  Hell, if I were without a current gen console at the moment this is the one I'd pick up.  The PS3's problem is that it doesn't bring enough different to the table for me to justify it's purchase when I already have a 360.

The Wii, however, is inexcusable.

I'm one of the non-embarassing ones, right?


I think you meant to say "when I already have had several 360s."

I see what you did there!

This totally made me sad when I heard it. I did love the suite of podcasts (some more than others), but the post-Jeff Green/Shawn Elliott GFW Radio podcast just was not the same.

Jeff and Shawn MADE that show, as well as 1UP Yours when they were on it.

1UP Yours was still a good show, though, all things considered. Retronauts is continuing, at least.

I'm pretty sure I'm one of the embarrassing ones myself. Even if I don't talk about games.

For instance:


Blu-Ray.

Not prone to breaking.
Better controller.
Better exclusives.
Hard drive standard.
Free online service.

Blu-ray (if you're talking simply for watching movies) is becoming a non-factor in the console wars due to price drops on stand-alone players.

Controllers are debatable.

Better exclusives is really debatable, and even then it's only debatable if you assume everyone has a good PC.

Hard Drive standard... well it allows for developers to make installs mandatory on the PS3 for seemingly minor benefit.  Other than that, I'm not sure what impact it's had either way.

You take that back. YOU TAKE THAT RIGHT BACK.

Nathan Drake will kick you right in the gob.

As a matter of personal preference, LBP is really the only PS3 exclusive currently available that I care much about.  Uncharted is a good game and all, but the gameplay isn't far removed from the Gears of War games which I prefer largely due to co-op.

Wut?

I don't understand the sentences he just said.

Pretty easy to understand.  Uncharted and Gears of War are both primarily third person shooters focusing heavily on getting behind cover and the popping out and shooting.  The only way that type of game interests me at all is playing through in co-op.  One of these series has co-op and multiplayer.  One of them does not.

Uncharted focuses heavily on story, personality, and directed action. Whereas Gears of War focuses mainly on training you to be a racist dickbag online.

They both happen to involve a cover mechanic and guns.

I could put some of that in green, but then I'd be hiding my opinion. Uncharted should not be played for the combat though.

I don't think I've ever hidden the fact that I personally don't give much of a damn about story in video games these days.  There are exceptions (mostly Western RPG's for various reasons) but for the most part it isn't a selling point to me anymore.

On a completely different note, as much as I liked Uncharted, I'm hoping there are more puzzles in the sequel to make it stand out as an "adventure" game, and that they are a little hard (unlike the first).

Have you played it yet?  I was actually thinking about getting a PS3 for LBP until I played it.  It's hard for me to fathom how they got this wrong, because they got so much right about the game, but the way the characters move; that mushy, underwater feeling killed any potential joy that the game might bring.  It's really a goddamned shame, because that should have been a system-mover.

Uncharted is great, but not $500 great.  Never cared about Metal Gear Solid, so their other big exclusive doesn't mean much to me.  God of War 3 is something I'd love to get, but it faces the same problem Uncharted does.  An 8 hour game isn't worth forking over $500 when I've already invested so much on a competing console.  Sorry, but Sony is just boned this generation.  Maybe next time.

LBP controls are a tad unresponsive, I agree... But it's fucking great and pisses me off severely, like a good platformer should.  :grin:


I could understand not liking the current lineup enough to buy a PS3. Personally, I think it's finally come into it's own, and I'm getting my money's worth. With Blu-Ray having it's way, that's another perk. I think 2009 may be a great year for more people though.

Eh, I'm through with physical media.  You can get a 1TB hard drive for around $100 now off of Newegg.  This finally allows me to convert all the DVD's I've been ripping over the years into really high bitrate .avi files and just turn the computer hooked up to my TV as a complete media center.  I can run Windows Media Center on the damn thing where I've got all my movies cataloged, a Netflix instant watch plugin (one for Hulu is on the way), and my cable channels running straight through the computer.

BluRay is great I guess, but it still means storing the fucking thing and having to swap discs.  I've left that shit behind.

So a bunch of the now former staff got together and seem to be starting up an indie podcast by the name of Rebel FM.

it's pretty easy to find, just go to iTunes and look for the #2 overall podcast on the site (yes, overall).

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=301774100

How the fuck do you fail to monetize that amount of draw?  Jesus christ Ziff-Davis.

PS3's biggest problem is that it has a really good foundation to build upon and is still stuck in the "promises, promises" mode.  There are quite a few great games for the system, and there will be a great many more further down the road, but none of it is really enough yet to convince people looking for a videogame system that it is worth the price tag.

As a blu-ray player, however, that thing is money well spent.  If you can't tell the difference between DVD and blu-ray, that's great; cheaper purchases for you.  I can't go back now, though, I've opened that box and I've allowed the visual and aural gods to ejaculate all over my face.

I've only had a little bit of time to mess around with LBP.  The controls have been the one thing most people have complained about, and from what little time I've had with it I think I agree.  It's still something I'd probably have a lot of fun with, and I'd really like to support Media Molecule for largely succeeding with doing something new and different.  If nothing else, it's gotten MS to work on their own version (http://xboxlive.ign.com/articles/943/943832p1.html).

And to a large extent I agree with what you say about being done with physical media.  I've got my PC hooked up to my HDTV as well.  It would be nice though if Netflix got a better movie selection for their streaming movies, but aside from that I don't have any complaints.  Of course as far as new movies go, I'm usually sick of watching them before they leave my theater, so it's mostly just older stuff, and the rare TV show that I'm interested in watching.

The price to quality ratio of blue ray players keeps changing in a way that undercuts the PS3 value prop. 2 years ago if I wanted a blue ray player it made sense to buy a PS3, now it does not.


I think the biggest problem is that the system is hard to program for and everyone knows that the next PlayStation will use another different architecture, whereas the XBox is easy to program for and will always use DirectX and VisualStudio. (Meaning the time you invest in tech doesn't entirely go to waste) If you are going to make a "next gen" game the 360 is more appealing even ignoring relative installed base, trhe difference in power doesn't make up for the difference in development.

It's like the Saturn and PS1, even some 2D games looked worse on the Saturn because they were developed with the PS1 in mind.

Making a game only for the PS3, or making it for the PS3 as the primary platform then porting to the 360 just doesn't make a ton of sense to most folks.

What Sony needs to do is demonstrate that the PS3 is significantly more powerful than the 360, enough to be considered something other than a peer platform. Killzone 2 is maybe a small step in that direction.

Yeah, but we're already 3 years into this generation of consoles.  Now granted, I expect the life of this gen to be longer than the last one, but still...  If you haven't significantly changed the market by now you probably won't.  And more powerful, sure.  However, it's not more powerful by much, and tapping into that power is by all accounts a massive pain in the ass.

I think Sony really wanted to do 2 major things with the PS3; use it as a showcase for the Cell processor, and push BluRay.  They succeeded with the second one (Yay?  I guess you get one more quick dip into the wallet before everything goes broadband), but failed miserably with the first.  Worse, by going with a funky, nonstandard architecture they really made their platform take sloppy seconds to the 360's more conventional hardware.

Killzone 2 is only a step in that direction if you're trying to prove that you can make a better looking game on the PS3 so long as you have 4-5 years and huge piles of money to spend on developing it.  Killzone 2, MGS4, Heavy Rain, GT5..., all great examples (or have the potential to be) of what can be done on the system.  For 99.9% of developers out there though, those kinds of games aren't financially viable unless Sony throws out some money (which they're in less and less of a position to do these days). 

If a Haze or a Lair can spell financial ruin for a developer, you'd better believe if something like Heavy Rain were to flop, the good folks at Quantic Dream will end up having their organs harvested and sold on Ebay by Sony to help recoup development costs.  Gran Turismo 5 would probably be a money pit if not for the fact that they got people to spend $40 on a demo of it (hell, they got the Japanese to buy the same demo twice).

It doesn't undercut it's value. It's still just a game console. If I were in the market for just a movie player, sure, I'd just get a player then. The point here though is that it's a blu-ray player that enables to you to play many of the same game titles that the 360 has (that all span from running just as well, only slightly worse, or slightly better than the 360 counterparts.. nothing dramatic), and has a nice selection of it's own exclusives. It's a worthy addition to whatever else a gamer has, and in some ways, an upgrade (I would say more like an upgrade in terms of conveniences and features, not so much in processing power).

As long as I keep seeing cool games in a store, I can't bring myself to give a fuck how theoretically difficult it is to program for. Even if it was, the games still exist. And at least it's not a majority of crappy shovelware bullshit. Fortunately, it's taken seriously.

And they'll buy it a 3rd time. And most of us will buy it a second time.

Sure it does.  When it launched it was a good blue ray player at a competitive price. Now it's a mediocre, overpriced blue ray player. Relative to other players it has definitely lost value.

It never was just a blu-ray player. It's a blu-ray player with the added value of being able to play games. Or a game console with the added value of being able to play blu-ray movies. One of the two, but not whatever it is you're thinking. Comparing it to the price of a movie player doesn't make any sense. ??? Unless you're trying to say that the game playing capabilities carry no value, or are severely overpriced. In which case, it isn't that either. It is equal to the 360 Elite in pricing, does all of the usual console shit that it does, and plays blu-ray movies on top of that. Not to mention, saves you a little money on internet fees and a wireless card. You're not only measuring it against a completely different type of product, but if you did measure it correctly, you'd still be wrong.

Your point, that it's such a value since it plays BluRays, is invalid if the consumer doesn't give a fuck about BluRay.  This is most definitely the case with the lion's share of the market.  Particularly in this shitty economy, when you can either buy a $12 DVD or a $30 BluRay, guess who loses that battle?

And you're pricing it against the Elite?  A version of the Xbox that no one in their right mind should get?  How about that holiday bundle they're pimping right now with a 60 GB hard drive and two games for $300?  Shit, if you really want to go crazy you can look at the Arcade version which is undercutting the Wii.

Fair enough point if you think the Elite is overpriced. I see people buying them though, even here.

If you don't care about Blu-Ray either, that's totally fair. I'm definitely not interested in convincing you of the differences between Blu-Ray and DVD's. If you already believe they're similar enough, then there's no point in talking about it.

Let me go back to LBP though -- it's still a great game. It's on some people's GOTY lists for good reason. The sticky in-air movements and jumps are frustrating and a bit foreign at first, but they aren't some overlooked flaw or anything like that. It's just another element in a game centered around physics. You'll get used to it once you stop expecting to move around like megaman. They're definitely not the things that will hold you back in the end.. Once you get used to it, you'll still be getting your ass kicked by puzzles and good level design.

I don't feel too bad about mine, since I got it for $300 (thanks, Dell!).

We're still talking about the pc, amirite?

Mailing shit is expensive and continues to get worse every 18 months or so. So you have to put in more ads to cover that cost, which means it's bigger and more expensive to mail.. Which means you raise the price of ads or the mag.  Eventually you hit a breaking point on the ads to content ratio and lose subscribers.

If all I had to pay was a few bucks to pick up game reviews, and I could trust what was being said to me I'd have read more magazines.  At $7 an issue, fuck that. I have the intertubes and more geeks that will give an honest review than revenue-seeking monkeys afraid to piss off this months sponsor.  (Not to mention even being willing to read a print magazine makes you an anomaly or "very old" these days.)

The LBP controls made me drink a whole bottle of rageahol at first, but I got used to them.  I fired up a platforming game and expected my avatar to control like all my others from Super Mario Bros. to Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin.  OK, it's not actually the controls.  It's the physics involved, which I dub SackPhysics.  A quick summary of SackPhysics would be to compare SackBoy to Luigi in SMB2.  I did get used to them and I managed to get into the Emitter Palace before I quit and drank some more rageahol.

In a completely different vein: if you like building shit, get LBP.  I had to abandon my initial tank-tread design due to some tool limitations (unsure how to create a gear with equidistant teeth) but am working on a possibly simpler design involving rubber wheels and the same track, except inverted so that the teeth are on the outside.  The part of this whole adventure that really gave me a nerdgasm was when I realized I needed to build a frame and various tools in order to build my bulldozer.  Specifically, I made a large frame to hold the gear-wheels suspended while I put the pre-build treads on them.  To secure the treads, I used a simple winch while most of it was suspended from ropes.  The idea failed due to a lack of material strength, unfortunately, since SackMetal isn't as strong as real metal.  Depending on the outcome of the rubber-wheel design, I might go back and convert it to wood.

Remind me to tell hundreds of people that every day while they read magazines here.

The print is dead crowd, they so funny.

I can get away with reading a magazine in places where I cannot get away with playing my DS.  One of these places is my home.

Dude, you work in a library.  That's pretty much like working in a crypt.

I'm a staunch supporter of the "physical media is dead" crowd.   ;D

ETA:  Who the fuck goes to the library to read magazines anyway?  Is it the ambiance?  That heady bouquet of homeless person and deathly silence?  What is it?

I don't think print is dead, but the people reading a magazine in the library aren't exactly adding to that magazine's bottom line.  I have canceled subscriptions to  magazines or not subscribed at all because I can read them at the library.