[icruise]

Isn't that how many of the older games worked, though? You don't think it's intentional? I picked up my copy today, but haven't played it yet.

[Hawkeye_a]

Woah the PS3 outselling the Wii ? crazy ..... im curious, whats the reason for this ? is it some good software(finally) ? or is it a new SKU ? if it's the latter, i wouldnt exactly put money on a bet that says the PS3 will win this generation.

The Wii dropping MP3 support is kinda awkward and non-mainstream, although im not complaining cause 95% of my music is in AAC format.I dont see why they couldnt include support for both...but its a non-issiue to me cause i dont even use the photo channel (or the weather, news, voting, etc channels).

Wii storage a definate issue...The best solution imo would be to use the SD card as an "online" storage option (ie launch VC games, etc right off the card).....so all you have to do is buy bigger capacity cards, although, i do see Nintendo trying to capitalize on this and releasing a Wii 1.1 with a built in HDD. (And boy would it sell)

Cheers

[exca1ibur]

$400 PS3 price spike + Wii shortage. Games also are starting to come. Call of Duty 4, Assassins Creed, and most of all, Uncharted: Drakes Fortune is shipping now. I just picked it up after work last night. About to fire it up in a few.

[icruise]

I'll have to say, Super Mario Galaxy is just fantastic. It's the game that people wanted Super Mario Sunshine to be (in the sense that it's the spiritual successor to Super Mario 64, and not a side trip like Sunshine was). It's the first Wii game I've played that has really had me saying "Oh, so that's why having this controller functionality is a good idea."

[Hawkeye_a]

Thats cool, i cant wait to try this game.....

but, like i have to ask....is that a good use of the wiimote ? i mean it seems as though the pointing to collect stars aspect was sorta tacked onto the game, just to make use of its functionality. i mean you got coins, stars, "starbits" or whatever... to collect in the game.... i preferred it when there were just coins or rings to collect, but anyway thats a small gripe i have...will have to try this game out tho. hows it look ?

[fhoubi]

I was very surprised how sensitive the remote is, holding it vertically when balancing/walking on a ball... The controls are intuitive when running and shooting a star bit at the same time to stun an enemy or convert a yellow dot into a coin. Graphics levels etc. are great; it just pours over with the love & care put into. And value for money: after 15 hours I collected only 30 stars out of 120...

Originally Posted by icruise 

Isn't that how many of the older games worked, though?

You're absolutely right, I just was absolute sure SM64 (on the Wii) was different, but it is not. I am just a new Mario console player from early this year...

[jokell82]

That's not how Super Mario World or the New Super Mario Bros. worked. They saved your lives in between sessions...

[starman]

Slightly off-topic:

Is it time to close this thread and start a new one? The poll is terribly out of date.

Of course, now that we're in the NN basement, I don't think anyone's going to even see that a new poll exists

[Dakarʒ]

Let's take her to a hunnerd and then shut her down.

[icruise]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a 

but, like i have to ask....is that a good use of the wiimote ? i mean it seems as though the pointing to collect stars aspect was sorta tacked onto the game, just to make use of its functionality.

If that were the only use of the remote, it might seem a little tacked on (although I find it adds a nice element of challenge to have to worry about the star bits while also controlling mario). But they use the controller for a lot of other things as well, such as shooting star bits at things, or traveling from one "pull star" to another. I think it's very well done. Certainly much better than something like Zelda, which really did feel tacked on.

[ort888]

It feels a little tacked on but it works well.

The game is really great. A title truly worthy of being the next real Mario game.

Not at all like Sunshine, which wasn't horrible, but was far from amazing.

[Dakarʒ]

So I rented Portal this weekend finally. First thing that popped out was they didn't have Legacy analog support for all us GoldenEye people, which is pretty pathetic (is it really that hard? More people use Southpaw than Legacy?). So I spent the first half of the game running into walls and such. Thankfully the game didn't require too much dexterity on most of its challenges, so I was able to limp to the end and beat the game.

I love how it opened up on the final challenge, though the time limit was lame, and the sentry bot may have had the worst AI I've seen in a while. I did hear some of the developer commentary and I am interested to see where they go with this next -- though I probably will end up not playing it.

[jokell82]

Originally Posted by Dakarʒ 

First thing that popped out was they didn't have Legacy analog support for all us GoldenEye people, which is pretty pathetic (is it really that hard? More people use Southpaw than Legacy?)

I have no idea what you just wrote... WTF are Southpaw and Legacy, and what do they have to do with GoldenEye???

[Dakarʒ]

Joystick layouts.

[sek929]

Ugh, Legacy...

Get with the program man!

Legacy went out with the C buttons....why won't you let it die?!?

[Dakarʒ]

Because I like to be able to walk around using one stick.

[sek929]

Got something better for your other hand to do?

[Dakarʒ]

Yes, worry about jumping, using equipment, switching weapons, beatdowns

[jokell82]

How do you circle strafe with that setup???

[Dakarʒ]

The same way as you, only on opposite sticks?

[jokell82]

Originally Posted by Dakarʒ 

The same way as you, only on opposite sticks?

I guess I just don't understand then. If you still have to use two sticks to move around why use that layout?

(This comes from someone that HATES fps games on consoles because of the analog sticks. Give me a mouse and keyboard any day of the week.)

[Dakarʒ]

Originally Posted by jokell82 

I guess I just don't understand then. If you still have to use two sticks to move around why use that layout?

I don't have to use two sticks just to get around. Unless you somehow feel the need to circle strafe 100% of the time.

Originally Posted by jokell82 

(This comes from someone that HATES fps games on consoles because of the analog sticks. Give me a mouse and keyboard any day of the week.)

I never found navigating by mouse very enjoyable, either.

[sek929]

Originally Posted by Dakarʒ 

I don't have to use two sticks just to get around. Unless you somehow feel the need to circle strafe 100% of the time.

In Goldeneye 64 all I do is circle-strafe!

[Dakarʒ]

I'd take corners that way, but for navigating the stairs and ramps, it wasn't really important.

The entire point is, your right thumb has more responsibilities than your left, and because of that, I like that in a crunch I'm able to navigate one-handed for a few seconds, which I can't if all I can do is strafe.

[zerostar]

Mario Galaxy is one of the best mario games I have played to date. It is very disorientating at times (part of the fun in this game!) and the camera is not perfect but it does a damn good job at keeping up with you, you can also have another player collect stars and "hold" enemies for a much easier gameplay if you so desire. I am loving Galaxy and this game feels perfect on the Wii (I only have 10 stars so far and I can honestly say this beats OoT and TP as my favorite N game ever.)

The graphics are good for a Wii game (as good as they are getting I imagine) and the controls are perfectly responsive, 4 galaxies in and there is not much repetitive content so-far, and having seen what I have ahead of me makes me want to get there now so this is the first gamed I have played daily in a long time.

[Dakarʒ]

Yeah, I was watching someone play it and I was a little disoriented at first. It almost seems like the camera is supposed to be part of the challenge. But still looks fun.

[icruise]

Yep, it really is great. The first game on the Wii that I truly like, actually (although I admit that I haven't played most of the more recent releases). I saved the princess and am now working on getting all of the stars. Some of the later comet levels are a little challenging.

[Aegis]

I'm really impressed with Mario Galaxy as well. A nice mix of M64 and new ideas. I love that the loading times are almost non-existent. Plus, some of the cinematics while soaring through space are pretty incredible.

[billybob128]

With 95 pages i havn't managed to read all the posts that are here so i'm sorry if im repeating an older post but isnt it about time that we saw apple come onto the scene? lets look at it - over the past 5 years they have stormed the music industry, seen a rise in market share. And then there is the Apple TV. i don't own one, but i have used my brothers and its amazing, the best media centre that i have come across. I'd like to see apple team up with an old gaming company such as sega or maybe even Atari. and if that happened lets be honest the console would kick ass!

[pyrite]

Personally, i think it'd be a terrible idea at the moment. Apple are so good at what they do already, entering a new and saturated market like games industry be an overly expensive and risky move IMO. With Nintendo/MS/Sony fighting it out so brutally already, all with great games and great systems, a fourth major system would honestly just piss me off as a consumer. I've already got my gaming hands full of AAA titles with my 360 alone. Too much to play, too little time.

[pyrite]

I should add, though, that if the market weren't so saturated, I'd LOVE to see a joint venture between Apple and Sega, great idea if the time is ever right

[jokell82]

Apple entering the gaming market would be a horrible idea *right now*. Not to say they couldn't do it and do it well, but right now there's simply no room in the market.



I hope that doesn't turn into the next "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."

[icruise]

Originally Posted by pyrite 

I should add, though, that if the market weren't so saturated, I'd LOVE to see a joint venture between Apple and Sega, great idea if the time is ever right

A failed console maker joining forces with a computer company with no games experience? How can you go wrong? Seriously, just because Apple makes great computers and OSes doesn't mean that they'd be good at making games or game systems, and it certainly doesn't mean that it would make good financial sense to do so.

[pyrite]

granted, but I personally think their design philosophies would be very compatible... sega only failed because they lacked EA backing on the Dreamcast IMO, which also came after the Saturn, which had a very weak games lineup... not really a formula for success. And the DC was still a killer machine, albeit one that only met mediocre commercial success.

As for Apple being games n00bs, their no more of a n00b than Sony were before PSX - and look where that got them
We can dream...

[exca1ibur]

Sony had tons of game developer support. Apple can't even get game developers as it is for the Mac platform. They are a joke in the gaming eye, and for good reason.

[pyrite]

Apple generally succeed in any product or field they take genuinely seriously on entry - and let's be honest, up to this point they've NEVER taken games seriously (certainly not anywhere near as seriously as Jobs would have you believe in his keynotes)... Apple is just not about games.
But if they actually made a conscious DECISION to throw themselves into the games industry (which they almost certainly won't), they'd have just as much chance of success as sony did pre-PSX IMO... If the time was ripe and the market wasn't oversaturated already, that is.

[Aegis]

I think Sega failed because the SegaCD & 32X were a slap in the face to the people who bought them (such as I), then the Saturn was a failure in many ways. They lost everyone's confidence until the Dreamcast came, but I think they gave up on themselves before we did. DC went on for quite some time in Japan and I think it would have elsewhere had they continued support.

Anyhow, Apple hasn't cared much about games for some time. I don't forsee them not only suddenly caring, but taking a huge chunk out of their pocket for a console. We've already got enough, especially with the current generation's prices.

[Hawkeye_a]

I owned a Sega MegaDrive(Genesis) and absolutely loved it. But i gave up on Sega as 3D was coming around. Their mascot has yet to make a successful(critical, economic,etc) leap into 3D. i loved the 2D Sonic games but i will not touch the 3D ones. That franchise is on the brink of fading into obscurity and i think Sega needs to let it go.

As for Apple, i definitely don't see them going so far as to release a game console let alone teaming up with one of the failures of the gaming industry. And gaming on the Mac ? I believe switching to Intel is quite possibly the biggest show of support for games from Apple that i have ever seen. my opinion of course.

As a consumer, i am perfectly happy with getting my computers from Apple and games from Nintendo, and dont really see any major pros to two companies from these industries merging. If i were an investor id see that coupling of two companies like the fore mentioned would have little to no impact on demand or competitive-edge of either, and see any sort of 'merger' as a waste of resources and possibly a reason to sell stock of either.

Microsoft would possibly be the prime example of being at the nexus of the two industries, and as a consumer i dislike their products, and if i were an investor i would not buy stock in a company that continues to sell a product that has not turned a profit in over 5 years.

[exca1ibur]

I agree switching to Intel was this was a critical step but we still have no third party video card maker. ATI hasn't made a retail 3rd party card since they got bought out by AMD. What is even worse is EA pledged support yet they are just doing Cider ports. Other than EA what new company has stepped up to make games? Support like that is a major problem they need to address before they step into the games market. Seems to me Bootcamp, is mac gaming, sad to say.

[Hawkeye_a]

Finally picked up a "U.S." Wii the other day with Galaxy(which i cannot open till Christmas ). I got it setup and all.... and all was working well, Wii sports worked fine , then this morning i popped it(Wii Sports) in again after creating a Mii, and right before the Tennis court loads up, the screen fades to black, stays that way for a few seconds and this comes up...
"An error has occurred. Press the eject button to remove the disc, turn off the Wii console and check the Wii Manual for troubleshooting."

I turned it off, ejected the disc, restarted the console and fired up Wii Sports again, and all went well. Whats the deal ? have any of you seen that error on a Wii ? Is a disc issue or a console issue ? its only happened once and seems to be working fine now. What do you guys reckon ?

Cheers

[Aegis]

I had that error about a week ago with Galaxy. I've had my Wii for months and never had any errors. Then one day when I booted into Galaxy it made a rather frightening click noise over and over then gave me the error. But I popped the disk out, restarted, and everything's been fine since.

[Hawkeye_a]

Happened again !!! i formatted the system and followed the same steps i mentioned above, except this time it happened at the disc channel. restart and it works fine. im trying to see if i can reproduce this error. but i did here a couple of clicks before the error showed up. Do yo uthink its the console or the disc ? i should open galaxy to see if that causes any problems (My firmware is at 3.1u)

Thanks for your reply.

[Aegis]

Hm. Is the disk nice and clean and without scratches? Mine is, so I assumed it was a drive issue. I've heard several people say they had to get the laser replaced rather quickly on their Wii's. So that's a possible cause. If it happens again I'd contact Nintendo about it.

[Hawkeye_a]

So what did you do ? the Wii sports disc has some really fine scratches, personally i wouldnt think they are a problem, but that error hasnt happened with any other disc( i have only tried GCN games). Also im overseas so i dont think the same warranty rules apply, i dont know.

[Aegis]

I did what you did, ejected the disk, restarted and tried again. It's been fine since, so I'm not too worried about it.

At least it works for you after a restart. I'm not sure about Nintendo's warranty details. Maybe you'll still be covered. If you keep getting the error it's certainly worth looking into. Hopefully it's just the disk though since that's the only one you've used.

[icruise]

I just got my xbox 360 back from repairs. Or I should say they actually gave me a replacement system. This is interesting because my system was a Japanese one and they gave me an American system as a replacement. My guess is that they didn't even know about the difference in regions. This means that about half of the games that I have will no longer work (anything that requires a Japanese system will not work, but anything that was region free will still work). This is kind of a blessing in disguise, however. I bought the Japanese system for a Japanese translation job that eventually fell through, and I've been using it for my own entertainment since then. But being limited to the American-released games without region coding (and having to research which games those were) was a huge pain and wasn't nearly balanced out by the ability to play Japanese or Asian games. So I'm actually pretty happy to be able to buy any American game now.

My Asian copies of Halo 3 and Gears of War luckily appear to be region free, so I can still play them, and most of the six or so games that no longer work were ones that I was done with anyway. I guess now I have no excuse not to sell them (if I can find someone online who needs them).

In other news, I got Assassin's Creed for the PS3 and it's pretty impressive. You're rather limited in the interactions you can have with the people around you, which I don't like, but jumping from rooftop to rooftop in ancient Jerusalem or Damascus, trying to evade the guards after you just assassinated someone is an amazing experience. The graphics are phenomenal. It has locked up on me 3 times so far, however, which is something I haven't experienced with PS3 games in the past.

[PaperNotes]

Originally Posted by icruise 

A failed console maker joining forces with a computer company with no games experience? How can you go wrong? Seriously, just because Apple makes great computers and OSes doesn't mean that they'd be good at making games or game systems, and it certainly doesn't mean that it would make good financial sense to do so.

In fact I have an idiotic bastard cousin who thinks he knows everything and one day argued for hours that Apple could create a successful console. No matter how much I tried to convince the stupid bastard that games developers haven't got time, money and energy to devote to YET ANOTHER platform he couldn't get his head around the basic economics of the gaming industry = games cost a lot of ****ing money to make.

[Hawkeye_a]

Originally Posted by Aegis 

I did what you did, ejected the disk, restarted and tried again. It's been fine since, so I'm not too worried about it.

At least it works for you after a restart. I'm not sure about Nintendo's warranty details. Maybe you'll still be covered. If you keep getting the error it's certainly worth looking into. Hopefully it's just the disk though since that's the only one you've used.

Well good news is, i "replicated" the error, by smudging up the Wii Sports disc with fingerprints. I got the same exact error and a "disc cannot be read" error. Cleaned up the disc and all was well. Come to think of it the last couple of times i encountered the error, i did notice a couple of smudges on the disc but didnt think they would produce that kind of an error.

Hopefully thats the last i see of this issue. *knock-on-wood*

Cheers for your help.

[Dakar the Fourth]

So... I downloaded the BiShock demo... Lemme guess, I can't change my analog stick controls on that game either?

[sek929]

Nope, looks like you might have to quit video games altogether.

I know The Orange Box had the same problem, but one thing I LOVE that Valve lets you do is CUSTOMIZE THE BUTTONS! Yay!

Why the hell doesn't any other FPS I own let you set your own jump/reload/activate buttons?