While 2's considered the best SH by many, opinions do vary wildly. I found SH:C genuinely funny, but really didn't find SH1 honestly that dark, at least not in contrast to the MegaTen games; it's kinda like getting some food labeled as 'spicy', but it's a very mild spicy. But despite those issues, I still liked SH1 more anyway - it was easy, but at least it had a semblance of difficulty to it, and the monster designs were /definitely/ where almost all of the game's 'darkness' went to.

There was also actual musical vairty in 1: SH:C kept repeating the same boring dungeon them for almost every dungeon in the game. Fuck, they couldn't even be bothered to get a /final dungeon theme/. Not using a hardly used song like Xenosaga or something either, no. It just went and used the disc 2 regular battle theme. To be fair, that did come off as epic, yet still underwhelming, and they replaced the normal battle theme with the boss battle theme.

However... I generally liked SH:C's story better, the voices are /definitely/ better, and despite an odd twist in the ending that I don't really know what to say about anymore, I liked the (good) ending of SH:C much more.

If you don't mind an easy ass game that can get pretty boring, definitely get SH:C. But if you're going to get that, do yourself a favor and make sure to get SH1 as well - and blow off anyone that says to skip SH1, you'll appreciate SH:C more for having gone through 1 first. :P

Got and beat Daxter, as noted in the Daxter thread a few days back, and just got Lumines. Will probably start up SuikV again soon.

Decided to follow my whims, and started reading Snow Crash. Pretty good so far, but I'm only about 15 pages in.

Well, you could make an argument for 'not a next-gen system' to be something stupid said... But not only is that pretty minor, espicially compared to the crap Phil Harrison and Peter Moore have said, but it's also pretty much old news... And has more truth to it to boot.

But, I agree with you on the DS/Wii. Do note that general opinion is /much/ more positive about the Wii, thanks likely due to the DS, while the DS many of us were weary of, and initially unimpressed with. Wii looks like it won't even have the 'initially unimpressive' part... Or will just make up for it with old games. :P

Hey, we have a follow-up! It almost seems like it's 'execs say stupid shit' week. :P

Edit: Even if they get every game humanly imagineable emulated, I still think holding onto the XBox is a good idea. Some games that /are/ emulated have issues, usually frame rate issues. Fable runs like crap, and supposedly so do KotOR2 and Ninja Gaiden Black. And you apparantly can't play Chaos Theory online. So... For me, it's basically the next gen machine that can play Halo. And Sonic.

Oh, I forgot to do this reply since I was reading through all the responses and just kinda... Forgot this one statement while doing so in addition to typing my own, so.

Jimmy: You fucking suck for saying Cave Story sucks. :DDD

In seriousness though, if you haven't actually played it, do so. Just because someone that... isn't well liked is talking about how much they like it doesn't discredit the actual quality of the game, and it's a nice little game that's actually kinda reminiscent of Metroid.

And I would gladly pay for it - but it'd have to be something like 20 dollars, and would be ideal on the GBA.

You know, just because you don't like something doesn't mean you have to be an asshole about it every damn time you mention it. :P

Nice to see my long post pointing out how piss poor programming is at fault was ignored in favor of making an overly lengthy reply to a one line reply.

You seem to be mostly pissy about graphics - perhaps you have a point there with how much of a focus is put on them... but honestly, most of the games that look awesome actually are good games. I don't think the ones that simply look good are remembered for very long by anyone, and at worst you have a decent game that gets blown out of proportion with good graphics; although Halo probably technically doesn't count, it kinda feels that way to me.

Hell, GTA's pretty much the most popular game now, and quite frankly that's the one of the ugliest god damned games this generation. That brings up the controversy point, but I won't touch that for now, though I'll note that controversy in anything sells. There's something else I want to note; I don't thnk we'll ever completely go to realistic graphics. We were perfectly capable of live action filming for a long time, yet people still make cartoons, or CGI movies with characters that don't even look realistic. Lastly, anime's pretty damn popular, so the worst I see is that /detail/ becomes more and more popular, not inherently realism.

Ironically, technology advancing like this, combined  with how long it's been since video games started coming out, could see a resurgence of old school-styled titles. If people want to make a simple, low budget game that's fun, they can have it sold over XBox Live Arcade, and apparantly the Wii Virtual Console, and the same could happen for the PS3. Hell, one of the most popular games on the X360 is Geometry Wars, a 5 buck downloadable game that's not overly demanding graphically outside of lots and lots of shiny sparks, but is about as evolved gameplay-wise as Robotron. And there's a lineup of retro-styled GBA games coming out with the intent to 'look back at gaming's roots'.

One final bit: Is this topic name even fitting now? The loads seem to have been half forgotten in only half a post in, if that. :P

On the XBox 360? Ah hahaha. I think we have more announced, upcoming RPGs for the XBox 360 than there ever were in the lifespan of the XBox. So that's not a concern.

Honestly, my worry has been more that Japanese RPGs were fine... but American RPGs that aren't in the vain of Diablo/Gauntlet were fucked. There's a fair bit revealed at this E3, and this is probably an argument better left to more dedicated computer gamers, but there's seemingly countless MMOs being released, and no normal computer RPGs. I suspect part of the problem is that unlike console RPGs, it's not as huge of a leap for more than a few computer RPGs to MMORPGs. Most of them have you create your own character, take on quests, etc. Hell, something like Oblivion would probably work largely the same as an MMO with some modifications.

What Gast said is more of a concern to me, the advent of action RPGs and strategy RPGs. But if more action RPGs could follow in the footsteps of Secret of Mana, I wouldn't really mind those. Strategy RPGs however rarely grab me, so bleh.

Edit: DR owns for stickying this in response to the thread lock request. Fuck, those piss me off. :P

I don't think it's the graphics (completely, at least), but the programming at fault. Something like Rogue Galaxy is considered one of the best looking PS2 games there is, if not /the/ best, and it has pretty much no noticeable load time, and the same goes for DQVIII. As well, the Jak games and to a lesser degree, although in the same fashion, the Metroid Prime games have little noticeable lag due to hiding well via doors that slowly open and the like. All of these look great, but a game like SuikV will have significantly more noticeable loads while looking nowhere as good, or having as large of enviroments as any of the previously mentioned games.

Personally, I don't mind the loads as long as it's either only one long initial load, or it's just a few short ones intersparsed. Games like KotOR and Jade Empire, whil having large enough areas that it's not very frequent, are long enough to be annoying when they happen. Even then, I tend to tolerate them of the game is enjoyable enough - which is why Morrowind on the XBox just pissed me off.

Oh, and load times are actually probably better off on the PC due to loading a game on a HD rather than reading a slower disc, but I think it's easier to deal with hiding it on a console due to each unit performing roughly the same. I may be wrong in that being the reason, however.

Problem being that Microsoft, for whatever reason, isn't letting the other developers develop their own emulators - The developer for Black wanted their game emulated ASAP, but had to wait on Microsoft developing it.

I guess they could always just re-release the game for the X360, but not only is that not likely to happen for games like Psychonauts and Phantom Dust, but honestly it's just not that profitable either.

Whoops, my bad. I originally read it on GameSpot, but went for the 1up story since it mentioned the fan reaction.

About half the games I have, some of them my favorites of the XBox lineup, aren't supported. It does make me thankful I opted to not wait on playing Breakdown until it popped up on the backwards compatibility though.

Concurred. Like it or not, they did a lot of good with the PSX and generally did a good job with the PS2. And my biggest real complaint outside of stupid PR bullshit like this, is that SCEA's just a bit too anal about quality control. Also the shoddy hardware, but free PS2 repairs help to make up for that.

Also, I'm not surprised at them having designed the motion sensing. But I  still imagine Nintendo had some influence, but... Either way, I'm just glad to see it's catching on, should make things interesting.

1up story.

... Bleh. I understand it's hard, but I'd hate for them to settle for what's already supported, and not bother adding more. Why not give the capability to develop the emulators to the developers as well, and cut on the load/make it run more effectively on the X360? And companies that can't/don't want to do it can just pay Microsoft? :P