Zero Punctuation: The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

[NuclearKangaroo]

even then how many games truthly made good use of destructible environments?

1.
It was called Red Faction: Guerilla.

yeah i mentioned that one and regardless the previous red factions also featured destructible terrain

i wouldnt really call it innovative if it didnt set a trend in the industry

Innovation does not have to set a trend. the need for innovation is that it needs to be different, whether its good, bad, popuar ect does nto make it innovative or not-innovative.

we have different definitions of innovation then

hell destructible terrain has been around for atleast 20 years if you count X-COM: UFO Defense, which also to be honest has the best use of that mechanic ive ever seen, yes even beating the new XCOM

Sadly, i havent played that one.

dude you totally should, atleast if you have any passing interest on strategy games

personally i think the new XCOM is better, but the old X-COM did a few things better than the new guy, one of them is like i said, destructible terrain

the combat in the old X-COM is largely based around line of sight (as opposed to the cover based combat of the new one) therefore making a line of sight between you and the enemy by destroying everything in between is a highly important and perfectly valid strategy, not only that, but destroying the terrain can help you open up new routes which again is highly important in the variety of maps the game provides, from jungles and forests to cities and farms, even alien bases! each with different kinds and amounts of obstacles and buildings, the fact you can freely aim your shots unlike in the new game makes the process of opening up lines of sight and routes a fairly easy affair

another way in which the old X-COM makes intelligent use of destructible environment is by making different kinds of elements have different levels of resistance to damage, jungle plants can be brought down by almost anything, building walls require laser weapons and above in order to be destroyed, finally alien materials are almost impregnable, as far as i know only a blaster launcher can destroy the walls of an alien ship, this again in contrast with the new game in which all elements in the environment have the same level of resistance to damage from what i understand, alien ships seem to be made out of paper, even grenades can open up holes in the hull

also theres stuff like fires and smoke which really affect the way you play (for better or worse)


like i said, worth a look, the collection of old xcom games should be cheap on steam, and you can keep an eye out for the indie reimagining of the old X-COM, Xenonauts (its on early access at the moment), the devs are aiming to capture the spirit of the old game, while giving the formula some necessary updates


...


ANYWAYS, yes the old X-COM made good use of destructible environments

 

[lord.jeff]

There seems to be a lot of hate for the WiiU but to me it's the only system worth getting simply because it's trying to do things other then be a crappy living room computer and the only one with local multi player focus.

 

[SD-Fiend]

The most honest review of Link Between Worlds I've seen so far.

"It's more of the same, except shit. It's seriously not even worth talking about it's so bad."

Why the fuck is everyone pretending this game is good? Is it because they're older than 25 and blinded by nostalgia? Yes.

I dunno maybe they just like things that you don't. I understand that it might be a hard concept to grasp but it's a possibility.

 

[Something Amyss]

There seems to be a lot of hate for the WiiU but to me it's the only system worth getting simply because it's trying to do things other then be a crappy living room computer and the only one with local multi player focus.

Doing things different is only a virtue if someone does them well. And that'sa where a lot of the "hate" comes from.

 

[Lazule]

From the intro I can assume he finally gave Dark Souls another chance because Dark Souls II coming. Fuck yes, well done Yathzee and if you get stuck seek help, were here to give you a hand.

I'll try to carry you though hard boss fights, I'm a Sunbro.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Except the fact as there is demand companies will supply it and over time work at becoming more efficient to make said products.

Except there already is massive demand for solid-state storage. The camera and video market alone would dwarf any demand by the video game market.

Demand doesn't just magically make things cheap. There are real manufacturing issues at play. The fact is, it's a lot cheaper to manufacture a polycarbonate disc with a thin layer of aluminium than it is to manufacture silicon chips and do all the necessary quality control.

There would be heaps of demand for a Ferrari that costs $100, but that isn't going to make it happen. There are reasons that things cost what they do. Adopting them for video game distribution wouldn't have any appreciable impact on prices.

It depends on the benefit to the servers as it's cost vs time. Would the extra time saved for data retrieval be worth the cost ?

Absolutely, if they were as cheap as you are claiming they could be. There would also be power, heat, and space savings. Believe me, solid state storage on servers is going to happen. Just not quite yet. Some servers already use it for caching and high-demand tasks.

However when a game takes 1 minute to load people go nuts.

This points to another reason your idea doesn't make too much sense. If game companies are going to supply you with games on solid-state media, do you think they are going to supply you with the premium quality, fastest components? Of course not - they're going to get the lowest-rated, bargain-bin chips they can find. Think about when you buy an SD card at an office supply store - they are cheap, but they are super slow and often unreliable. Compare to a premium SD card you buy from a camera store or good electronics supplier - they are rated for much higher speeds and reliability. The experience is like night and day when you need to transfer lots of data fast.

It does not make sense for game publishers to be supplying us with our storage media. This is one thing the PS3 got right. You can easily replace the built-in hard drive with a standard 2.5" hard drive or SSD. When the PS3 came out, the starting model was 40GB, and 80 or 100GB 2.5" drives were still fairly pricey. But over the years, costs have come down, so you can upgrade your PS3 to a 500GB or even 1TB hard drive fairly economically today. Or do as I did, and install 256GB SSD. It's great - really fast, silent, runs cool.

In contrast, with the "cartridge" model - your storage is stuck with the speed it was made at. The most sensible model is to allow the user to upgrade their own storage to the speed and capacity they want - and distribute the games via internet, or on whatever the cheapest physical medium is. It doesn't matter if the physical medium is slow - because it will be copied to the user's storage which will be much faster.

I don't want game publishers in the business of choosing hardware requirements and component cost/quality.

Also will all the issues such and DRM etc. some people like to have a physical copy just incase.

So, why can't you just make a backup? Physical media has big disadvantages. People lose discs or they get scratched. With online distribution, I never have to worry about finding the disc - I can always just re-download the game.

And still have to deal with Season passes, cut content and DLC stuff anyway.

And, how exactly does the game being on disc remove those issues? Those are completely unrelated to distribution medium.

People aren't downloading lots of 50GB games yet, simply because there aren't may out there yet.

Yeah, but they are downloading plenty in the 15-20GB ballpark. 50GB wouldn't be that much of a difference, if 50GB was seen as necessary for a game.
With 4K the size could be even more than that.

Heck I've recently spend 6 months in another area of the country.
On the fastest non business line in that area a 10GB install was taking 2 hours to download.
You can say all you want that people will go with it but even now on sub 50GB file sizes there are people struggling simply because they can't get internet fast enough and affordable enough.

Right. But how is any of that an argument for cartridges over optical discs? those people can simply buy the discs. What is a "cartridge" bringing to the table?

The internet isn't going to be taking over anytime soon.

But it already has! I'm not sure what world you are living in. The majority of gamers are getting their games from places like the Apple App store, which don't even have physical media equivalents.

Just look at the fact big companies can't even hold their servers together and that's without everyone also downloading the game from them at the same time.

Except the market isn't going to vanish. Internet connections are just starting to get into a state where downloading a DVD storage level game is possible. The step to games filling blue ray disks (when we finally fully transition generations in 2 years time) will still hit hard.

Why couldn't they just ship a double-disc Blu-Ray set? That would still be a lot cheaper than the equivalent solid-state storage. Assuming that Blu-Rays are still in widespread use at that point. It's much more likely to come online.

The physical part of the market will always exist for one simple reason.
Kids don't have credit cards.

That doesn't make any sense. You can just buy gift cards for the online stores if you don't have a credit card. Your statement is also not completely true. There are quite a few kids with credit cards, or debit cards that at like credit cards. This is a non-issue. "Kids" aren't the main purchasers of games, anyway.

You seem to think the space of a disc is all that's needed to read the disc. You don't seem to realise you need things like the laser and a motor to spin the disc. Not the mention the drive itself now with motors to open and close it / take and eject the disk.

Of course I realise those things. I'm not stupid. I'm just saying a console is not a portable device, so it's easy to accommodate an optical drive. A handheld should get its content vis the internet - and the 50GB+ games you are discussing won't be an issue with hand-gelds, as the games are a lot smaller and simpler.

I mean, it works fine for the hundreds of millions of people who do their hand-held gaming on phones and tablets, and such.

Running off a hard drive or SSD is far easier and would take less space hence it would be possible to do just the same.

Absolutely. Of course you have an SSD in the game device. What I'm saying is that SSD should not be supplied with each game. It just doesn't make sense. You'ds be buying one crappy, sub-par SSD for each game, rather than one large, high-performance one for all your games.

Yep. I Dropbox huge video files to my clients, and between office and home. It works great.

20GB + files.

Really ?

Yes, really.

I happen to know a production company in the UK that used to ship a physical hard drive around between its members because of the volume and size of files. They now are actually set up in the same location but realistically the internet isn't good enough not for sending hours worth of HD content across constantly in bulk volume.

Things are changing rapidly. We used to do that, too. We still would if it were hundreds of Gigabytes needing to be shipped, but that doesn't come up very often.

But that's the opposite of what you said. Just because modern "cartridges" used solid state technology, does not make solid state technology an evolution of the gaming cartridge.

So the 3DS cartridges are not the modern face of cartridges in video games because they don't use old style chips ?
I guess the things we call PCs aren't computers then as they don't use Valves ?

Again, you are changing your argument. You did not originally argue that "he 3DS cartridges are not the modern face of cartridges " - you argued that "the SSD is the modern version of the cartridge".

That's a completely different argument. Your first argument claimed that the SSD is an evolution of the gaming cartridge. I corrected you, and since then you've been changing your argument.

It's the other way around. Solid state store evolved for other purposes, and was adapted for gaming use by a company too blinded by nostalgia, that wanted to recreate a old technology with modern tools.

So you're saying the PSP UMDs which are prone to cracking in the centre are better ?

No, I'm not. I don't know how you would even infer that from my argument. What I'm saying is the model of games being played directly off the medium they are shipped on (whether that be disc or cartridge) is obsolete. I never said UMD was any good. In fact, it's a good example as to why cartridges are a similarly bad idea.

The distribution medium should not be a critical component of playing the game.

Basically what we have now is the evolution of the cartridge.

And it's completely pointless.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

I'm still not seeing how using a cartridge is some great evil. Not any more than having a disc in to play a game.

I never said it was a great evil. You certainly have a penchant for putting words in people's mouths.

I'm just saying it doesn't make sense, economically or technically in the modern age. I also agree that running a game from a disc doesn't make sense. But it does make economic sense as a cheap way to store and transport data until it is installed on the user's local system. A "cartridge" system lacks the economic benefit, while still suffering from many of the same technical issues as a disc.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Wow. Those are some extremely dubious sources.

I'd love to see your own? Or can I presume from this post that you don't actually have any, and we're just meant to dismiss my sources because you say they're dubious?

I just got through explaining to the other guy that we're not in middle school any more. You can't dismiss sources with your word, you need other sources that run contrary to it or at least shed doubt upon it. So I'd like to see which sources you have available that disprove mine.

Yes, we are adults, and adults should know how to recognise quality sources. And those sources had absolutely zero technical information that would support the "1.5x to 2x as powerful" claim. They were simply speculation. How can you not see that? To make such a claim, one would have to run technical benchmarks.

I'm not interested in "disproving" anything. I don't have a dog in this race. I was simply saying that your sources don't support your claim. Seeing as you are the one making the claim, then you are the one who needs to put up the evidence. I don;t care if the Wii U is proven to be 10x faster than the other consoles. I'd just like to see it from proper technical sources, doing proper tests, not rumours.

And yes, the Wii U has been shown to consume less power than the others. But I'm not seeing any actual data anywhere that shows the processing power is significantly higher than the 360 or PS3. A quick search found this, which has power consumption figures and some web browsing stats, but not gaming performance benchmarks:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6465/nintendo-wii-u-teardown

Though I will admit that its processing speed is suggested to be slower than both, most of the internet data compiled suggests that it makes up for this with far greater efficiency.

Doesn't that kind of contradict your original claim?

I eagerly await your evidence showing me otherwise. It would genuinely be nice if someone in this thread was willing to deal in actual citations instead of their own spoken "authoritative word" on the subject.

Wait, what? My "authoritative word"?

Could you please point out where I made any claims about the Wii U's performance in any of my posts?

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Seeing as you are the one making the claim, then you are the one who needs to put up the evidence.

And I did put up evidence.

No, you didn't. You gave no evidence for the 1.5x to 2.5x claim. You gave a link to speculation from non-technical sources.

All you've put up by comparison is your own opinion that the source can't be trusted.

What makes the opinion of your sources trustable? After all, there are no benchmarks or figures provided.

So of the two of us, I'm further along. Still waiting on your "proof" that my sources aren't valid, by the way.

No, you're further behind, by claiming that your links amount to evidence. They don't. The fact that you would try to pass it off as evidence damages your credibility.

As for proof that your sources are invalid - it's right there in the sources themselves. There is no supporting data for the statements. So they prove themselves to be invalid.

The articles themselves say that these are "estimates" - now that the console has been on the market for quite some time, there is no reason to use pre-release estimates, rather than actual tests of the device.

Doesn't that kind of contradict your original claim?

No. The processing power is presumed lower, but processing power is not the only component in what makes a console more "powerful". For example, RAM plays a part (as do other components), and the Wii U's RAM is known to be over double that of the PS3 and 360.

Actually, "processing power" would include things like RAM, graphics processing, and any other efficiencies in the system. Good benchmarks would test all of these factors.

Similarly, devs have been quoted as saying that the console allows for a great deal of compression in terms of its game usage requirements, allowing them to do more with less (thus, efficiency leading to higher power).

And yet you have no actual data to back this up...

You authoritatively stated that my sources were invalid, yet have offered no proof that they are.

But that's not a statement about the Wii U's power. Again, answer the question - where did I state any claim about the Wii U's performance?

So all we have to go on to disprove my sources....is your word. And nothing else.

No, the sources themselves show themselves to be invalid. They are "estimates" from some "sources" with nothing technical to back them up. They are mere opinions/speculation. They are worth nothing. You are really straining your credibility if you are going to continue to stand up for such shoddy articles as proof of anything.

You're basically saying that these unnamed devs may not be devs at all

I did not say that.

but then continuing to say that their information is wrong,

I did not say that.

So it's essentially akin to saying "they're wrong, trust me". Do you really not see a dilemma with that logic?

No I don't. Especially as a never claimed they were wrong. I'm just saying they have provided no data to show that they're right.

I'm not saying that I can't possibly be wrong, I've been wrong before. I'm saying that if you can't back up your claims with your own evidence, then under what authority can you claim mine to be false?

I never claimed them to be false. I said they were dubious, because of lack of supporting evidence.

 

[EvilRoy]

-snip-

So, you have no evidence to dismiss my claims, then.

That's becoming increasingly obvious by the fact that you're not only not providing any links, but you're not even providing anything to dismiss the claims I made. You just literally said "they dismiss themselves" and that's it. Nothing else.

So I was mistaken to hope that perhaps you were here to actually have an academic discussion about this. That's a shame. But I'm glad we established this in advance, so I know not to bother with further replies.

My source puts the WiiU roughly on par with the 360 and PS3. They note that the WiiU has untapped potential as the game tested was a port, but there is no indication that it is 1.5 to 2 times as powerful as them. http://ca.ign.com/blogs/yodasboy/2013/03/07/wii-u-graphics-vs-the-hd-twins

Seriously though - this is not how an academic conversation works. If you sources are shit, then they're shit. No countersource is required to demonstrate that. One need only note the issues in the methodology or credibility. The issues brought forward are good ones; For goodness sake, in one of the articles in the first few lines the author admits the statement is a rumour and probably bunk.

If you seriously think that in academia you can cite dubious or unsubstantiated sources and not have that information questioned you are going to have a hard time post-secondary. You don't think a thesis could contain sources of questionable nature, and the student could simply answer the board with "well do you have a source that says otherwise?" when they bring up the issues do you?

 

[EvilRoy]

My source puts the WiiU roughly on par with the 360 and PS3. They note that the WiiU has untapped potential as the game tested was a port, but there is no indication that it is 1.5 to 2 times as powerful as them. http://ca.ign.com/blogs/yodasboy/2013/03/07/wii-u-graphics-vs-the-hd-twins

If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong. That's fine. Already said I'm fine with being proven wrong, provided there's, ya know, actual proof behind it.

Seriously though - this is not how an academic conversation works. If you sources are shit, then they're shit. No countersource is required to demonstrate that. One need only note the issues in the methodology or credibility.

Er, no. It's fair enough to state that you can disable an opposing argument by noting flaws in the research, but if you intend to claim something in opposition, then you need your own pool of evidence to draw from. Simply dismissing the other side's points is not enough.

No, you kind of don't. Consider a more ridiculous example to make the issue more obvious - a news report citing two anonymous developers claiming that the WiiU contains a tiny man who creates the gameplay and visual by reading a script on the game disk and using his acting and props behind the TV screen. Do I really need a countersource to dispute the claims made in the article? Of course not.

In this case the issue is roughly the same. In the first few lines one article the author immediately admits the article is based on a rumour, has not been confirmed by Nintendo, and despite being quite old has not been updated with confirmation from Nintendo - implying that it was never received. Another report you cited includes speculation on specifications for the Wii U that have since been proven false - something that I noted without requiring a reference.

If you seriously think that in academia you can cite dubious or unsubstantiated sources and not have that information questioned you are going to have a hard time post-secondary.

I've already graduated from post-secondary school. Twice. I may even be going back a third time in due course. And I teach for a living. Please don't try to lecture me on how academia works or how I'd struggle in that environment. It's not only off-topic, it's just plain rude. >_>

[/quote]

I don't mean to be rude, and I've apparently gained one less post graduate degree than you, but this is something that I actually came across during the course of my thesis. My professor noted a technical paper included methodology that would be considered questionable by today's standard, although at the time it was more or less normal. His reaction? He threw the whole report in the garbage and called me an embarrassment to the university. So please understand my trepidation at accepting your claims that this is acceptable, although I realize that standards will be different between universities and professors.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

-snip-

So, you have no evidence to dismiss my claims, then.

No, but you have no evidence to support your claims, either.

Further, I am making no claim other than that your sources are dubious. I am not making a counter-claim. I am not claiming you are wrong. I am simply saying that you haven't supported your claim.

The reason your sources are dubious is that they contain no technical information to support them. They don't even contain any explanation as to why they should be believed. They are simply saying "The Wii U will be faster because we say so."

That's becoming increasingly obvious by the fact that you're not only not providing any links, but you're not even providing anything to dismiss the claims I made.

Why would I need to dismiss your claims? All I'm doing is asking for evidence of them, I'm not trying to dismiss them or disprove them. But some people "estimating" something does not count as evidence.

You just literally said "they dismiss themselves" and that's it. Nothing else.

Nothing else is needed. Your "evidence" amounts to somebody saying "I think Leonardo DiCaprio will win the Oscar this year." There is no substance in the links you provided.

So I was mistaken to hope that perhaps you were here to actually have an academic discussion about this. That's a shame. But I'm glad we established this in advance, so I know not to bother with further replies.

That's what I'm trying to do. Maybe not "academic," but "intelligent" at least. Your links don't hold up to passing scrutiny - let alone academic scrutiny. They would never be allowed in an academic paper.

If you want to have a serious discussion, then be serious. Pretending that those links prove anything is a joke. I'm not trying to attack you for it or prove your opinion wrong - that's just the fact of the matter. What you are saying is nothing more than opinion until you can provide some proper evidence. The way you are reacting to this doesn't exactly show that you're interested in serious discussion, because nobody without an agenda to push would take those sources seriously.