After someone necroposted one of my ancient threads I decided to go back over my posts and see if if any of my posts were embarrassing.
I have great big piano playin' hands. The first time I picked up an xbox(original) controller all I could think to myself was "How the heck do people play this thing?" After about 30 min or so the tendons in my lower forearm started to ache like I had just had a four hour marathon wank. After an hour I had to put it down and never picked it up again since then.
Speaking of the Ps2 controllers, it was okay for short stints, but after serveral hours (eg. when I got my copy of GTA San Andreas) and spent like 15 hours playing it I developed a medical condition that could only be described as "Ps2 Claw."
I find it interesting that I finally signed up for the forums to complain about the old Xbox controller. It wasn't a big issue at the time really. All I can think of is that I was planning out how to get some publicity for my reviews, and wanted to make inroads with some of the community before doing so.
So, here are some questions I am asking out of personal curiosity.
What was your first post? Does it reflect the reason that you came to these forums? Pehaps it was a Zero Punctuation comment, or a response to a particularly flamey Halo 3 topic? Or, was it something else, a seemingly random post that got you interested?
Are some of your first posts a little embarrassing, maybe something you would want to disappear from your profile? Why or why not?
Has your posting style changed at all since you've been part of this community? Have your posts become easier to read? Or, have you pretty much remained the same?
EDIT: You can find your comments in your USER CP under the posts tab, simply click on the arrow point right next to the numbers and you will be taken to the oldest posts
Much like Wilson, my first post was about a Controller, the Wii controller.
Me: I've played a wii at a mates house and found the controls to be shocking. While playing Redsteel the Wii-mote never seemed to point at what I wanted to point and I felt like the remote was trying to piss me off when the cross hair jumped over targets or would just stay next to them. And then when I complained about the controls I learnt that sunlight effects the receptors I nearly chucked a fit.
It was like this for nearly every other game as well.
I was going to buy a Wii but changed my mind after play testing it and I find it ironic that the recolutionary controls of the Wii that define what it is turned me away from.
Just my 2 cents.
PS:Wii bowl is fun.
As you can see my spelling and grammar has gotten much better. Atleast i hope it has.
My first post was in reply to the rumor about 90min cut scenes in MGS4. Despite having been a regular forum scanner and fan of the website, I couldn't stand to let the ridiculousness of the discussion go any longer without perspective. The game has core characters named after animals for goodness sake. The gameplay and writing needs some serious tweaking... Metal Gear is fun for alot of nostalgia reasons, but I don't think the series aged as well as it could have.
Concerning your questions, I don't think my style has changed much. I generally avoid forums due to the fact that they end up just turning into some sort of flame war, and the pacing at which people post make it next to impossible to have a serious discussion or present any valid argument.
Mine was bout first person games other than shooters.
Sir Awesome: im sure i have played a nfl game a while back with the option to go first person it was a intresting change of pace but not something you would want to play the hole game with
I joined because I liked the look of the community, not because of any specific thread. But heres my first post any way...
Someone who is not me anymore: most of these arnt scary in "oh my god im in the dark and something else is here" way, but scary none the less mass effect: when your talking to sovereign, and how hes just so emotionless when talking about genocide. assasins creed: when you trigger your first city wide alert and have every gaurd attack you at once halo 3: the first time you see the scarab come over the roof, in the minute or so before you realise you cn now kill them
Huh...I was a lurker here for a while but apparently my very first post here broke my number one rule with forum posting: never post a link to your own work.
In my defense, it was just to the general webzine and I was responding to an article claiming that all video game journalism is terrible.
Stammer: I have a feeling that Starcraft II is going to kill the series when it comes out. It's really nothing more than an expansion pack with hardly-tuned graphics and very few additions. But what already have killed their series? Well, I don't know if you'd consider Perfect Dark to be a series with only two games, but I know PD64 was one of the best games ever invented and PD-Zero was one of the worst games on the 360 (or so I've heard, I'd never tried it). Brawl actually kind of killed the series for me. They made every level the exact same, took out all of the good Melee levels and put in the crappy ones. Though they added a lot of new stuff, the stuff that they added all sucked and it might as well have just been Melee with a few new characters. But come on? Pit? Sonic? And really, Snake? Has Metal Gear been on a Nintendo console since the first one? That'd be like adding Cloud Strife because Final Fantasy was once upon a time on the Nintendo console.
This is my first post. I remember I signed up on these forums because after sitting on the sidelines for so long I finally wanted to contribute. I love ranting. This was a rant. I'm awesome. I was awesome at the time. Go me!
Johnn Johnston: Nice rant, Stammer. For a first post, that is rant-tastic.
Why thank you.
Forgot to mention- the aforementioned post was actually in the "What games killed their series" thread. Back in the day where I had my screenshot of the Goblin saying "Gonna stab me some noobs." as my display picture. :P
Someone was asking asking questions about Graphics tablets in the Off topic.
No-one else was giving them a useful reply and it looked like he was about to drop $300 on a Tevion tablet (imagine spending $20k on a Ford Pinto and you're about there). Rather than have him find out about this when it inevitably died on him, he was politely informed of the Godliness that is the Wacom brand.
DO NOT under any circumstance buy a tablet From Medion, Tevion or Aiptek. They're all the same products. All very, very badly made and all a false economy. I had one and all it was was a bag of tracking issues, freezes, random pressure settings then finally non-functioning. My flat mate bought one too, exactly the same problems with it. We both use Wacoms now.
So I started with being uncharacteristically helpful, didn't last mind you.
Johnn Johnston: Nice rant, Stammer. For a first post, that is rant-tastic.
Why thank you.
Forgot to mention- the aforementioned post was actually in the "What games killed their series" thread. Back in the day where I had my screenshot of the Goblin saying "Gonna stab me some noobs." as my display picture. :P
Now you have Chell and the Cube, possibly until the end of time...or unless you change it before then.
I always used to fuel myself with my passions, My love for my daughter (and my wife when we were happy), some of my anger at the injustices and stupidity, and over all, I strove to make the world a better place around me... Anymore, I find myself looking at the world and just being disgusted with it, and wondering if maybe humanity hasn't just gone so far off track that nothing can save it... And that is why I asked the question. If you had to commit a great evil to bring about the Greater Good, is it still evil?
On the first point, I consider myself a casual misanthrope and so can identify with what you're saying. There is no other animal on the planet that kills there own kind in the numbers that humans do except perhaps ants. We're also the most bigotted species on the planet (you ever catch Calico cats enslaving Siamese cats or forcing black cats to eat at seperate food bowls?) We're also the only species that blushes, we're the only ones who've found a need to.
When you suggest though that all of humanity is irretrevably horrible, you're not really helping the situatuation. It's true, it's kind of depressing to live right in this age, but things are getting better. Humans are a hundred times more civililzed than they were just a 1000 years ago. Things that would have been common practise back then wouldn't be thought of now. We still have things like wars, but, whereas wars consisted in the old days of raping the women and finding as grotesque a way as possible to kill everyone else, these days we have things like the Geneva Conventions. Maybe we don't always follow them but we are at least mature enough to recognize that even in war times human rights must be respected. Something our ancestors would never have considered.
It's a young race and sadly enough, the majority of it is still really juvenile. It's not worth just tossing away though. As I've said before, living right now is less than impress, however, a millenia from now, who's to say what sort of condition the world will be in. Personally, I expect it will be pretty reasonable. And if that prediction is true, it will have made living in this time worth while; if only because of the end result.
Oh, and I don't beleive in good or evil "only the sith deal in absolutes!" - Obi Wan. So doing evil to accomplish good really just breaks down to doing actions to acomplish other actions. It's a matter of perspective.
Someone looked like they needed cheering up plus I'm a big fan of philosophical debate so ... I figured why not.
How has my posting style changed? I'm not really sure. I haven't been here all that long really.
I don't think your posting style would have changed that much. It looks like you already posted like an Escapist when you joined, so you wouldn't have been influenced.
This was way back in the December "Worst Controller" thread
qbert4ever: ok, i've been wanting to ask this for a while and now seems like the right time. Why is it that most people hate the boomarang controler for the ps3? I mean, sure it look odd, but did anyone hold it? Try it out on a game? All I see about it is "What a nasty bad, bad, evil face-melting baby-killing piece of crap that thing was" but no reason behind it. If someone could tell me what the problem with it was, I would be very happy.
also, I have to jump on the N64 hate wagon, I know hindsight is perfect.... but please. That was a crampfest at the best of times.
This was back before I had ever seen a picture of the thing (or, from looking at other posts, learned to spell), and that more or less explained all. Though thinking back, I'm still a little pissed that nobody answered me.
Heh. My first post was in a "Games that disappointed you" thread (how many of those have we had?). It ended up being a huge, detailed list of things that disappointed me about Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, followed by a short list of some other games that disappointed me.
Duck Sandwich: Marvel Ultimate Alliance - it had one of the most awesome concepts for a game ever: A beat-em-up type game with 4-player co-op throughout the whole game, several playable characters with various cool powers, and character customization. A recipe for nigh infinite replay value. A great concept, ruined by bad gameplay. When I buy a game, I buy it for the gameplay alone, pretty much, so I can easily overlook such things as "OMG TEH HULK ISN'T IN IT WTF". Things I hate about the game are:
Huge Imbalance - Some characters' moves are just weaker versions of others, Some are almost completely useless, and one move, when maxed out, makes you COMPLETELY INVINCINBLE TO EVERYTHING for 3 minutes (and you can pretty much use it as much as you'd like). Also, melee combat is pure crap in terms of damage compared to special moves.
Bad hit detection - In any game I've played where an enemy can use a ground shockwave (think Bowser's stomp from Super Mario 64) the only way to avoid getting hit was to jump over. Try doing that in Ultimate Alliance and the shockwave will hit you anyway. What a load of crap.
Enemies not flinching - For whatever stupid reason, if the enemy's in the middle of using a special move (ie, a beam or shockwave) you can't make them flinch. So you'll often find yourself hitting an enemy to stop their attack, only to find out that they can laser you even when your boot is embedded in their face
Random Chances - They're avoidable, but annoying nonetheless, especially when implemented into an otherwise fun power (ie. X move does weak damage, but has XX% chance to Instant Kill, or Y boost gives your attacks a low chance to do double damage )
Blocking - I don't mind the concept of blocking itself. I just hate how it makes you basically invincible against almost anything. You can literally throw yourself into a mob of 5 or so guys, weigh down the block button, go make yourself a sandwich, eat the aforementioned sandwich, come back to the game, and find your character unscathed.
Overall, you can try to get your way through the game with skill, and using whatever powers are the most fun to you, but it seems that mindless button mashing and "leveling your characters right" (putting points into Glitch Shield and Instant Win Attack) is much more effective. There are more flaws, but I think I've covered all of the major ones.
For some reason, I actually enjoyed it for a while. But I think somewhere around the 3rd playthrough, my standards for games rose, and I got sick of it after dying because a stupid clown has no problems throwing a poison grenade when he's in the middle of getting pummeled.
Blood Omen 2. Horribly glitchy and dull combat. The only redeeming features are the cool main character and the novelty of holding an enemy by the throat with one hand, and hitting them in the crotch with a spiked club in the other. That's the last time I buy a game without looking at reviews first.
Mega Man X6 - Bought this as part of the Megaman X Collection, so it wasn't a huge loss. X with a Z-Sabre was a cool idea. It was like combining X and Zero into one character. The level design was utter garbage. So bloody cheap. Horrible bosses. For those of you who haven't played the game one of the bosses is a DUNG BEETLE THAT ROLLS ITS SHIT ACROSS THE SCREEN AND THROWS IT AT YOU.
The most entertainment you'll get out of the game is from its hilarious Engrish quotes. "THE BADDLE HAZ JUSD BEGUNN!" "ZELLLLLO!" "DIE XXX! JUSDIE X!" "It's not just normal rain...IT'S ACID RAIN!" "How dare! He talks about Zero that way..." "Maybe I'll be able to feel the nightmare directly."
I still have the occasional big ol' rant, so my style remains same ol', same ol'.
As it turns out, the "Recent Posts" part of the Profile maxes out at 51 pages for me, and hid my last few. The "last" post listed didn't really seem like my first, so I reverse the sort, and voila, earliest post, first page. Much better.
My First Comment, Located on the thread Favorite Video Game Weapons: The Stock Market in Sid Meier's Railroads. None can stand before the mighty whims of Rail Economy! BuWaHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!
Ahh, that takes me back. Incidentally, it was a double-post. How embarrassing..
AnGeL.SLayer: Art is what you make it. It is the expression of ones' self and can be in many forms. The art being sugar coated for the masses is another matter all together. It is not a question of it being art or not. It is a question of morals by the game creator, forced upon them by the public and all the people who set the standard for rating the games.
I had completely forgotten what my first post was. It makes sense that something about movies would get me in, but this post lacks zazz. Or possibly razzmatazz. But I followed this up with brief reviews of the films I had seen recently, and those had a little more charm to them.
Larenxis: Rear Window has my vote.
I'm surprised North by Northwest has so many votes. I only saw it once, but I found the storyline chaotic and I didn't care about the characters. What made it a classic?
Fun Fact: My spellcheck approves of the word razzmatazz.
My first post was on the question of playing a game with racist or sexist overtones:
TheNecroswanson: Any form of offensive overtone in a game just adds reality to it in my opinion. Though I do believe a videogame should be presentable, it's hard to make games NOT feel like a happy rainbow world where everyoe gets along without adding strong overtones like that. For the love of Happy Gilmore in Fable the ony two black people ( I use his term as Africa and America don't exhist in the game*), in the game you are given the chance to kill or simply let live. So you have to make the choice between Racism and genocide, or simple compassion. Maybe it's not a question of WOULD we play them, maybe it's a question of how often we find ourselves sub-conciously doing so. It may not always be intended, but you can always find some overtones in most games. There are many exceptons yes, but once again we come back to these being rainbow games about absolute good overcomming absolute evil after reaching lvl.99.
*Edited in because I realise the statement could have been perceived wrong, and decided to clarify.
Anyway. I came here on refernce of a friend and have pretty much made this my Shanri-la of gaming communities. My first posts were a little timid at first, but as you can all plainly see, my rage has seeped ever so much more into my posts as time has gone by. I REGRET NOTHING! *nude*
PS: I just want you all to know that I love you, even those of you whom I despise (you know who you are). For you all make up the one community where I have ever felt at home.
Hmm...seems good enough, the grammar and spelling is decent. Doesn't look like much has changed. Yep, I'm proud to not kick this post out into the rain like some homeless child.
I'd get the urge to play it, then remember it's not there. I mean, the game is basically "Hitman" plus "Full Spectrum Warrior". I sold it to get the godfather game; worth it I suppose.
Nothing very groundbreaking. But this is the first website I actually bothered to join for the forums.
Cheeze_Pavilion: vaga_koleso, I have to disagree with your characterization of religion. You said:
Anyway, my own version of why Jesus didn't play games (with which I agree) is perhaps a bit controversial... but I'll say it anyway :) I think that Christianity more so than other modern religions, and certainly more so than ancient pagan religions, has a concept of fearing God
And
Contrast this especially with relationships that the ancient Greeks, Egyptians and Romans had with their Gods - they (the relationships) were much more easy-going and thus conducive to play.
I don't think this is accurate. Leaving aside those three religions for a moment, you're forgetting the ancient pagan religions of the region of Mesopotamia. It's been a while since world history, but I remember the Sumerian gods and goddesses being pretty frightening.
Coming back to those religions, I know in Egyptian religion there was some belief that after death, the heart was weighed against a feather to determine if the person experienced an afterlife of bliss or pain. And as for Greek/Roman, while their gods and goddesses were certainly more *playful* I wouldn't say they were "easy-going" at all. One only has to think of how the Greek gods chained Prometheus to a mountain to have his liver (I think it was) ripped out by a giant bird every day as a punishment for bringing fire to man, or of Sisyphus who was condemned by the gods to roll that rock up a hill for all time. Like I said: playful, but, not easy-going; playful in that cruel kinda way.
If I was to generalize, I'd say that if you look at the evolution of religious thought in general, it evolves to be more and more serious and somber in the later phases of mankind's development, and so some of the youngest religions such as Christianity are already so serious as to make mixing religion and games simply inappropriate.
I think this is a case of us bringing our modern mindsets to the table. A lot of articles on this site are all about how 'serious' games should be taken because our modern mindset is that games are 'just for fun' when to the ancients, that wasn't true. As people have mentioned, the Greek games had religious elements to them, as did Lacrosse for Native Americans in the areas that today are Canada and America, and the ancient Mayans had Pok-a-Tok. And of course Rome was always holding 'games' of some sort to celebrate anything and everything.
I have a feeling that the idea that 'games' are not 'serious' is a product of the Industrial age than of any religion. Why wasn't there more gaming in Christianity? Maybe *because* games were used by pagan religions, and so the games of the ancient became suspect, along the lines of what joshg said about divination.
Also, I think we're forgetting that art and music are hallmarks of Christianity, so, I wouldn't say that religions get *somber* as one goes forward in history. There's no Christian 'dance' either--even though dance is a part of many religions--and that makes sense because of the focus on the body as something flawed and physical pleasure as suspicious.
Then again, instead of celebrating the gods with games like the Romans, Christians celebrated the saints with feasts, and eating is certainly about the pleasures of the body.
So why no gaming? I don't know, but, I think the idea that it's because Christianity is more "serious and somber" is inaccurate because it both mischaracterizes other religions as being more "easy-going" than they really were, and it projects our modern categories like 'games=idle fun distraction' on the ancients for whom games were very serious affairs.
If I had to hazard a guess, I'd just say that art and music and eating and brewing and distilling wound up being big in Christianity the way games and dance are big in other religions. Maybe just The Parable of the Charioteer never got written down by historical accident, and games never wound up in the 'dna' of Christianity.
Then again, the 'games' of bull-fighting and jousting did go over big with Christians, though not the Christian Church. But this reply is long enough as it is... ;)
But I don't bother with posts like that anymore because it seems you've decided that I'm a troll, so.
After someone necroposted one of my ancient threads I decided to go back over my posts and see if if any of my posts were embarrassing.
I find it interesting that I finally signed up for the forums to complain about the old Xbox controller. It wasn't a big issue at the time really. All I can think of is that I was planning out how to get some publicity for my reviews, and wanted to make inroads with some of the community before doing so.
So, here are some questions I am asking out of personal curiosity.
What was your first post? Does it reflect the reason that you came to these forums? Pehaps it was a Zero Punctuation comment, or a response to a particularly flamey Halo 3 topic? Or, was it something else, a seemingly random post that got you interested?
Are some of your first posts a little embarrassing, maybe something you would want to disappear from your profile? Why or why not?
Has your posting style changed at all since you've been part of this community? Have your posts become easier to read? Or, have you pretty much remained the same?
EDIT: You can find your comments in your USER CP under the posts tab, simply click on the arrow point right next to the numbers and you will be taken to the oldest posts