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Nov. 23,1999

Yes Virginia, there will be a Quake 3 arena retail test!

The Big news is Q3 has gone gold. I'm not really impressed. Lets face it they just released the "Demo test". That is for you reading along not "Really" a demo just a test of the demo. If you can't pony up a real demo how ready can you be with a bug free game? Do You smell it too? Yes kiddies it's the dreaded get it out the door for Christmas push. So much for when it's ready I guess. Dose anybody remember the last time Id released a game when it was done? Supposedly it was Quake 2, but that was rushed for Christmas too and had like 10 patches in the first month. Sheesh. The really sad part is people are going to be rushing the stores to buy this buggy unimaginative bit of crap. Such is life. Id will never go broke banking on the short memories of the gaming public.

I guess Q3 will be available for Christmas even if it's not ready. Gotta love those game publishers.

Well I got Messiah to run.... Kind of

If you don't have like a P III 500 with about 128 ram pass this one by. Even with it's "Scaleable" game engine it runs like a slide show on my system. It's dang near impossible to get this game to play. Once more then two character are on the screen it's just slide show city. Making and effective try at possession is pretty much a matter of luck. Once again I can see a neat game under the bugs. But frankly there is not that much going on here. The Graphics in the ads look really cool. But in the game it's nothing to write the folks back home about. I did encounter a few non system related bugs too. While crawling along and edge as BOB I fell out of the level. I really don't understand what this game is using that is so resource intensive. And unlike Urban chaos there are not many details to turn off. I kind of hope some one with a fire breathing system tries this out and tells me what it's like. On the other hand I'm not sure I need the grief.

I really wonder if Oni will run on my system? that demo is late too.

Killing is my business.... and I'm on vacation

Why am I posting screen shots from game scores? Well there are a few reasons.
1) to prove I do know my way around a death match level.
2) Because everybody like pictures.
3) This is my personal page and I'll post what I like on it.

Thinking back to the good old days

You know, once apon a time there was something called shareware. As games went this pretty much meant you downloaded the shareware version of a game and got to play the first episode of that game. The Shareware versions was just sniped right out of the full game. As the Shareware version ran so did the full game. These were the glory days for the consumer because you always knew what you were buying into. The Shareware version of Duke, Quake or War craft where all just little slices of the game. And thinking back the slices were not that small really. Even still the download sizes for even a full episode were slim compared to today's humongus down loads.

Now you download twice as much and get less then half of what you use to get. A full episode? Nope. More like a few rooms. The demo also has a disclaimer. Don't judge the full game by the demo. The publisher is more then aware that the demo is a buggy pile of crap. You are suppose to rest assured that the developer will fix you pet bug before the full game comes out. Often, demos have higher system requirements then the full game. They say this is due to the fact they have not optimized the code yet. For the new people here, that is a lie.

As much as people like to act like computer games are taking bold steps forward they are not. The business practices of the game industry get more suspect with every release. We are constantly expected to take more on good faith, from people that lie with every breath. Just look at all the games that went Gold and announced a patch before they even reached the stores. Somebody signed off on a buggy game. That is just the way it is. But things are not going to get better until we stop acting like every steaming pile of crap they drop on us is manna from heaven. We a way too excepting. Just because something is new we often think it's better. And sometimes what is new.... is not all that new.

I wish Shareware would come back. But I don't think it will. For the time being we'll have to put up with Technology test, compatibly test, Demo test, Demos that do not reflect the finished products, AVI files of the game, MP3's of the games sound tracks, Sneak peeks, Pre- views, Reviews and every other marketing tool other then a small part of the finished game.

Things are not getting better. I'm sorry they just are not.

-Sparrowslain-

Nov. 22,1999

Urban Chaos revisited

You know the other day I talked about Urban Chaos and then forgot to tell you about the game. Well let me make up for that oversight today. After a bit of tweaking I got the game to sorta run for me. This included turning off all the details. But frankly it did not make much of a difference in the game at all. Once again I find myself wondering why they put them in at all.

Thinking about Darci

The Female protagonist is rather a different type from you average game babe. She is not really a babe at all. More of a person. I must applaud Mucky foot for doing this. She seems rather like a real women cop type then some bimbo. I did like that. I'm sorry to report the game is not as good as it's heroine.

Bugs a plenty

There is a cool game here somewhere. It sort of reminds me of the crusader games. I know it's in 3-D but I still get that feeling. As cool as this game might be. I would never consider buying it based on this demo. Like all demos these days, it has a disclaimer in the front saying this does not represent the finished product. This of course is no consolation to me. Why play a demo if it does not tell you what the finished product will be like? Since I have no way to tell if they will fix the many, many bugs in this demo. I have to say this game is a total full on pass.

Player AI?

This game depends on an AI code for the player to operate under. Most games have some sort of this. But this game is heavy handed and frustrating. When you pull your weapon, it targets a bad guy..... sometimes. You supposedly can change who you are targeting by hitting the action key. But sometime that works and sometimes you just crouch. This can drive you nuts. In a group of 3 bad guys and one hostage, I could not get Darci to NOT target the hostage. The 3 bad guys had guns and were pointing at Draci. But she kept pointing her gun at the hostage. So I put the guy away and she beat up the hostage. This is bad when you getting shot at by 3 villains. You also can not choose to avoid a fight. You have to get all the bad guys in under 4 minuets. But while running to the bad guys some thug would get in the way and I would have to fight with him until he was dead or arrested. I tried repeatedly to knock him down and get back on task. The game would not let me do this. The game also handles like crap. press the turn key and you turn in very slow graceful arches. Like diving a big truck rather then a person. When you knock a bad guy down you can arrest him.... sometimes. You'll hit the action key and maybe it will arrest him maybe it won't. Also if you back up the game goes into super lag mode. Also, if you knock down a bad guy while fighting a bunch of villains, if you arrest one of the bad guys the others will sit and wait for you to finish up. That is just weird Gus.

This game is really frustrating. But the worst part is you can see a really good game under all the bugs. I did play this demo for about 2 hours frustration and all. Since this is the only demo I think they are going to release. I have no clue what if any of the bugs will be squashed. So sad that such an innovative game should be so buggy.

Messiah demo..... sort of

Once again another sort of demo. For those of you thinking you going to get a taste of what Messiah is like forget about it. This is a Compatibility test not a real demo. If you head over to the Shiney web page you'll see them ducking bug reports saying "It's only a compatibility test". For the record is a 70 meg. 5 hour download waste of time. I can't even get it to run at all. I keep getting a direct draw error.

The bigger issue here is I did see it reported on 2 separate web pages as a DEMO. They did not mention it was a compatibility test at all. You did not know it was a compatibility test until I started to install it. I'm getting really sick of this trend. Make a demo you lazy bastards. The demo was suppose to be out the 15th of November and 6 days later we get a compaiblity test. What a load of crap. What is the point of making demos that are not demos? If it's not good enough to be a representation of the final product why put it out there? Gamers want something to base a purchasing decision on. We want to know what the game is like. With demos like Urban Chaos and The Messiah compatibly test we get no such information. I can't at this time recommend you waste your time with this. It's a huge download and I can't even get it to start.

Earl says.... buy games from us and Getcha some !

Yeah Earl is a playa wid da Ladies.... At least the ones he pays for

Wow sexism seems to be a marketing craze. This is kind of a low rent version of yesterdays picture. You gotta know that any place called Da game boyz is pretty much a bunch of gangsta wannabes anyway. You know, the kind that dream about walking in to a room full of women and saying "How be all my Biot-ches". But at least Earl looks like a geek with Elvis side burns. Oh well. Do you really think things are getting better Kenny?

Ack.... The return of cold hard unfeeling numbers

Here is the skinny for last month. I know everybody just loves this stuff.

For the whole month of October we have the top twenty titles:
Place Title Publisher
1 Age of Empires II: Age Of Kings Microsoft
2 Deer Hunter III GT Interactive
3 Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear Red Storm
4 Command & Conquer 2: Tiberian Sun Electronic Arts
5 Roller Coaster Tycoon Hasbro
6 Cabela's Big Game Hunter III Activision
7 Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Gold Edition Red Storm
8 Sim City 3000 Electronic Arts
9 Starcraft Havas
10 Homeworld Havas
11 Need For Speed 3 Electronic Arts
12 Driver GT Interactive
13 Half-Life Havas
14 Tonka Search & Rescue Hasbro
15 Lemmings Paintball Psygnosis
16 Harley Davidson: Race Across America GT Interactive
17 Flight Simulator Microsoft
18 Madden NFL 2000 Electronic Arts
19 NASCAR Racing III Havas
20 Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition Havas

Nice to see both of the Rainbow games in the top twenty. Good to know that people will play a game even if it's complex. I feel I should point out that Blizzard is still in the Top twenty with Warcraft II. Dang that is like a 4 year old game. The moral of this story is good games sell. Still no Drakan..... Ummmm, I wonder what is up with that?

for the week of November 6:
Place Title Publisher
1 Age of Empires II: Age Of Kings Microsoft
2 Deer Hunter III GT Interactive
3 Roller Coaster Tycoon Hasbro
4 Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear Red Storm
5 Cabela's Big Game Hunter III Activision
6 Delta Force 2 NovaLogic
7 Flight Simulator Microsoft
8 Asheron's Call Microsoft
9 Harley Davidson: Race Across America GT Interactive
10 Flight Simulator Pro Microsoft

The most shocking thing here is that Ashron's call is selling. Dang skippy. People sure do like to get ripped off. Any persistent world game is a game you never really own. I really feel someone should just give the client software away and then charge for the service. I predict the first publisher to do this is going to clean up. But that is just what I think.

-Sparrowslain-

Nov. 21,1999

Yet another visit from NoWhereman

Today the 3-D max ninja showed up and gave the Quake 3 arena demo test a whirl. His comment was "why have you not uninstalled this yet?". Guess he did not care for it. oh well. Hard cheese Id I think you have lost another customer

Urban Chaos demo

Well this one is not a demo test. But it dose say it dose not reflect the finished game. So in effect yet another disclaimer. What did I think of the game play? Not really impressed. The demo ran really choppy on my system. But more to the point I can't see why.

There is a bigger issue here. Why are games swallowing down more resources all the time and giving us less impressive game play? The graphics in this demo are nothing shocking. The game play is very console like. As a matter of fact Road kill, a devotee of console games seem to feel it's not so bad outside of the choppy frame stuttering. All this stuff has been done to some degree with lower system requirements. If you going to make a game that plays like a 99$ console title it should not require a monster computer to run it on. We are constantly getting less bang for our hardware bucks all the time. Just look at Q3. You can't even run it in software mode but the game play is very much like Quake 2 (P 90, 16 megs ram) and that is not much different from Quake (486/66 8 megs ram). So why is this happening? Think about this, the poly count for a model in Q2 is 700 max. The Q3 models have 1,000 poly count. Do they look really all that different? They should. If you ever made a model you would know that and extra 300 polys are quite an improvement. But you just don't see them in the game. It's a huge rip off.

There is a solution. Most would call me crazy for even suggesting it. But I think it could save games from themselves. Make and insanely low min requirement, and have it so any game sold to the public would run fine on it. Let's say it's a p 133 with 16 megs of ram. No hardware acceleration. If you could get a game to run on this antique system , and run well Imagine how it would run on your vastly superior system. I know people like to tout the high end systems. But really, how many games out there are twice a good as Quake 2? Yet they require twice as much power to play a game that is not twice as good. The math dose not add up.

The industry is very into cutting edge graphics. But really it's the game play that matters. Most of the advancements in game engines are no big deal. I have to point out the curved surfaces in Q3 to NoWhereman. I must tell you he was very unimpressed. I feel I should point out the best game ever made, System shock 2 is not stunning visually. But the game play is so deep and compelling that you really don't sit and whine about it. All we are getting for doubling the minimum requirements for games is small, meaningless incremental changes. Lets knock that off. Game play matters suit man. Look at how well Age of Empires II: Age Of Kings is selling. 2-D graphics and all. game play rules, High system requirements for incremental changes drools.

As to Urban Chaos. I don't recommend it as a download. It's only 25 megs but not very good.

What the hell is wrong with this picture???

Over half the worlds population is female. I have always wondered why the power that be have never actively perused marketing to that very large demographic. Seems games that appeal to women sell very well. Barbie's riding club was in the top 10 for a long time. But when it comes to the hard core there seem to be resistance to letting women into the club. Women have either not been portrayed in the games at all, or, if they were in the game they were busty and scantily clad. The only exception I could mention to this rule of thumb is Rainbow six and Rainbow six: Rogue Spear. I pretty sure had the marketing guys at Pig-no-sis directed Drakan at a female market the game would have sold better. But they chose rather to strap some major league hooters on the heroine and call her the hottest babe in computer games. This pretty much told the women market "this game is for loser geeks and not for you". But I'm not here to talk about that.

look Beavis... I'm going to, um... Score, hehehehehe

Lets look at this picture. We see the words " You know you're going to score" in bright green letters as your atypical inflate a babe checks out l33t d00dz with wanton lust in her eyes. l33t d00d on the other hand has man size bidness to take care of. The Chick can wait. He's checking out Ebworld and Playing with his joystick while surfing the web. Lets talk about what is wrong with just the picture.

1) take a look at the woman in the chair. In real life do you think she would be sitting around waiting for l33t d00d to get done surfing the web? This is the kind of women that gets all the attention she needs. And because of that she is painfully aware of when she being taken for granted. In real life that would be and empty chair. But in fantasy world... women are object that just sit around waiting to be used. That is what she is here.

2) notice the cable on the wall next to the woman's leg. It runs from a tab on the screen that says Toys backward. Do you really think that is an accident ? I don't. This ad is telling you either she is a toy to l33t d00d or that you can order her from EBworld.

3) Ok I know I'm kind of making a general statement here. But do you really think the kind of guy that read Ebworlds webpage and smiles looks like l33t d00d? I don't. I have been to big LAN parties and seen what most hard core gamers look like. Not one of them looked like l33t d00d.

4) The comment "you know you're going to score", how many games now a days have a score? Not many. Most the time you complete the mission and move on. This is some Geeks attempt at word play. It has all the elegance and sophistication of a Beavis and Butt head episode.

5) The Joystick. No web page I know of accepts input from a joystick. So why is l33t d00d using one to surf the Ebworld web sight? Frankly most hard core gamers laugh at guys that use joysticks. But there is a reason it's in the shot. Notice Bambie the love slave.... She is checking out l33t d00d's BIG JOYSTICK.

Frankly I don't see how anybody could look at this ad and not find it at least childish. But this is the kind of thing the good people at Ebworld thinks would appeal to their market. Are they right? Well it does not appeal to this customer. I have bought stuff from them in the past. But will spend my gaming dollars elsewhere from now on.

Keep in mind that anything you see in a print ad reflects hours of work. Nothing is left to chance. That cable from the toys tab to the woman's leg would have been removed if it was not intentional. They are sending a message. It's a fantasy message to all the little Geeks that think having the most frags gives you the biggest penis. Buy from EB world, We think women are playthings too. If you are cool enough to buy from us, stunning women will sit around waiting for you to finish up your web surfing so you can "Give them what they want". It's sleazy and repugnant.

Women are not objects. They are human beings. They do use computers and they do play games. If more of them played games then game would get better. Women are more likely to try something new. Their massive inclusion in gaming could cause a renaissance of gaming. suddenly new and experimental game would not be such a risk. There would be a viable market for them. Men for the most part are stuck in the mud. But women are far more willing to try something new. Women being involved in gaming would also bring something valuable to the gaming community. If nothing else the sheer numbers or women would assure that. There are all the talents and abilities that any human being possesses. Each women is a person and each person is a unique historical phenomena. Why don't you just let the women play?

Until the men folks in gaming say enough is enough this stuff is not going to change. I have had my fill. I'm boycotting Ebworld and suggesting you do the same.

-Sparrowslain-

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