shin_nihon_kikaku

You’re sick of my arguments and I’m sick of posting messages to people who don’t understand them. It’s mutually beneficial if I just say “get reamed”, I’m not coming back. I can’t believe it’s taken me almost a year to realise how futile this forum lark is. Messages read, disagreed with, then instantly banished deep into the realms of ‘page 2’. Even though I only viewed this forum for an hour a week on average, I feel like I’ve wasted an eternity. God-knows how it feels for you lot, you seem to be on it for hours upon hours. I’m stopping myself now before I descend further and further into the sadness and time-wasting of which Internet geeks are famed. This is the first (and last) forum I ever joined and I only did because I was having trouble getting an emulator to work. Funnily enough, I only stayed because of the PC technical help, which was stupid. Like there aren’t hundreds of thousands of places to get help. In the meantime I’ve discovered the true meaning of the expression; “It’s like talking to the wall”. I posted a few times out of my hatred for the western games industry in general and the magazines I read that continue to paint a rosy picture of it, I then proceeded to take this frustration out on a bunch of completely random forum guys whose opinion carries no weight at all with anyone. Why, I did this, I don’t know. But I saw the error of my ways about a month ago, and was planning on trying to ban myself, so I wouldn’t be tempted to come back and waste yet more of my time. I wish I could say “it’s been fun” but, well, it’s been a complete chore, and damn all those people who constantly reply to posts solely to disagree with anything anybody else says. Some people will argue, for hours on end that the sky isn’t blue. Forums are a fantastic place to come into contact with them, I’ve found. So, yes, you will be rid of me and I’m happy to say that I’m finally gonna be free of all of you. (apart from Gryphonklaw who’s been neutral about everything, which I respect) Aaaahhhh. You feel that? It feels like a weight has been lifted.

My my, you have been bitchy lately, haven't you? always trying to prove us wrong and show us up... We defended CFE against YOUR baseless attacks which you launched before you had ever played the game. Again you stereotype all reviewers and say they "don't understand" the subject matter - a ridiculous accusation. You are on a high-horse preaching about videogames from the point of view of "design concepts" and you don't understand the "art for the sake of art" or "labors of love" that are MGS2 and certainly CFE. What kind of a game designer are you anyway? In the MGS2 review your discussion of your post seems less like an official position and more like 1 angry guy with twisted ideas. What company do you even work for - if any? In short, don't antagonize us by trying to prove your superiority - we do hit back. Bring it on. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> "Before I had ever played the game"? I don't need to play something to know whether or not it's going to be crap. Case in point - CFE. There are plenty of things that can be used to ascertain the quality of something, without having to spend four hours with it first. As for game magazines, I've never needed to take the advice of a game review since I was about 7. By relying on my own intuition, I've never bought a poor game yet. How do you explain that? In fact it's the other way around. Any crap I've bought has been the magazines' fault. On the odd occasion I've punted on something (that I wouldn't have otherwise touched) based on all-round high review scores, I was right. Halo = 10 out of 10, Burnout 3 = 9 out of 10? Gimme a friggin' break...Game journalists = Absolute cretins. You want to defend the press? Of course, they are fine when they are merely reporting on news, events and press releases, it’s when they attempt to think that it all goes downhill. The best we have to offer in the west is ‘Edge’. Many gamers are apparently amazed at Edge magazine’s ‘insights’. In reality, much of its content is total tripe, regardless of the fact that it’s well-written. Edge hides the inadequacies it shares with all other games magazines behind its use of the written word. And to good effect. People will believe anything if its interspersed with a few adjectives they don’t understand. Just because you cannot see how game journalists are wrong 90 percent of the time and that their opinions are almost exclusively ‘utter bullsh*t’ doesn’t mean nobody else can. I don't expect for a second that you could understand what's wrong with MGS2 or anything else that's been over-rated beyond belief by the totally ignorant press. You have NO idea what it’s like to see the industry the way I do….oh wait… yes you do…you are on a forum……If I have no respect for professional game journalists how much respect do you think I reserve for people like you? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You could just leave the forum now and I don't think anyone would mind. We've been dealing with your high horse BS for a while now, including flames like that last one, and without any actual evidence of your great position in the industry. You've been asked several times, but never mentioned a game credit, company, or even a job title (other than a vague "designer," which could mean just about anything) that I can remember. I'll lay it out right here.. I worked for Sony Online Entertainment for about a year before going back to school for a degree, and have credits on at least two of the Everquest titles. My two best friends work for Sammy, and one previously worked at Activision, with credits on several games between them. Your turn? Better yet, why don't you just get going. Anyone who's worked in the industry knows that "industry insiders" are, get this folks, just normal people. The good ones are gamers, the best ones are dreamers and do-ers, but they're not some mysterious group of elitist a******s like you. It sounds like you went to some school for game design and they probably taught you all kinds of theory and told you you were all set to be the best of the best. I got news for ya.. Like any abstract art form, video games are subjective. Games come from a combination of designers' minds and marketting's research, in varying proportion. It's usually pretty clear which got the lion's share, but you can't absolutely and universally quantify a game's experience based on this, game design theories, or any other criteria. Everyone gets their own experience out of a game, and no one person's opinion is any more valid than another's. You can sum it up a little if you pick a target audience, such as "rpg fans" or "girl gamers," but very few designers or companies make their games specifically for "elitist a******s," nor do reviewers write for them. Reviewers write from a combination of personal experience, lack of personal experience, and monetary pressure. They are human like everyone else, and some are good and some are bad. To say "their opinions are almost exclusively ‘utter bullsh*t’" is ignorant at best, and to try to pass it off as some kind of high knowledge is the most utter bullsh*t of all. You're just another "guy on a forum" like the rest of us. Pull the stick out or go away. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Before you moan and groan, this isn’t an argument against your points, just my stance. I don’t work at a games company and I haven’t avoided answering such a question. It’s you who hasn’t read what I’ve been saying. I AM STILL AT UNIVERSITY. I’ve stated this umpteen times. Knowing whether something is good or not without having to play it, to go back to a point made earlier, is basically a question of company history. Edge may think that a useless, nobody company like Bungie responsible for such failures as the ‘Marathon’ series and ‘Oni’ can turn their fortunes around and come up with a masterpiece, but I don’t. To me, Halo is the ultimate poster boy for this. I see it as a complete mediocrity, but the press and consumers are blind to it. Companies can’t change their ways. I have never seen a single developer renowned for developing garbage or borderline average games, go on to create something extraordinary. It just isn’t going to happen. But at the preview stage, the press give every game a chance from despicable tripe like ‘Call of Duty’ and ‘Brothers in Arms’ to mass-market pap such as ‘Need for Speed Underground’ and the ‘Jak & Daxter’ series, just in case they end up embarrassed on the (incredibly minute) off-chance that a game they slated turns out to be exceptional. This carries over into their reviews of the finished titles. Almost every game the press reviews is over-rated. I have no idea how this can be the case, we’ve all seen and played truly exceptional games, we know they exist and what they are like and yet still the press insists that ‘Project Gotham Racing 2’ is an ‘eight out of ten’, or a ‘ninety-five percent’ or a ‘five out of five’….What the hell’s happening here, I don’t know. I still stand by my opinions, however off-the-wall they may seem to you and whether anyone else can understand where I’m coming from or not. I’m not saying “I’m right and you’re wrong” but you’re not even listening to my point of view. In my eyes, magazines ARE on the whole incompetent. They’re okay for suggesting purchases to new gamers, but beyond that, I wouldn’t trust their reviews as far as they could spit. Yes, games are subjective, in so much as the atmosphere, the concept and the style of game a particular person enjoys, but the quality of the experience and the developer’s talent and vision shouldn’t be open to subjection. It’s clear whether a game is good or not, whether a game should have been made or not. Much of the problem where the games press are concerned comes from the fact that, to me, almost every western game is hopelessly lacking and yet still gets high praise lauded upon it. On average, the game journalists’ standards just aren’t high enough. If they demanded better we wouldn’t have to endure all this garbage, all these utterly pointless releases, month after month, issue after issue. And all magazines are essentially the same. How can an entirely disparate group of magazines (if you based your thinking on magazines that review film, you would believe had different priorities and convictions), split down further into individual reviewers still arrive at one almost conclusive opinion for almost every game? This is exactly what happens – one only needs to look at the Game Rankings website to see that review scores, from magazine to magazine, around the world don’t drastically fluctuate. Films are also subjective, the difference is; a standard train of thought towards a particular film is far from achievable across the board. As for games, the press is wholeheartedly certifying the rubbish western developers continually serve up, so this is interpreted by the ‘creators’ not as “We need to drastically improve” but rather “let’s make sequels to the entirely futile Brothers in Arms”. According to the average score of all featured magazines and websites on Game Rankings The 50th best game of all time is Ratchet & Clank 3. 35th best is Burnout 3. Tony Hawk’s 3 is the 29th best. These games all have serious problems. How can this many reviewers have completely missed them? Because they hardly know what they’re doing. They don’t analyse. They sit there transfixed by mediocrity, just playing for fun, they're enjoying it but not realising what’s actually wrong with a game, they then have the cheek to come up with the self-same scapegoat problems such as ‘the camera isn’t up to scratch’ or ‘it’s too short’ or ‘it’s too easy’. These are wearing incredibly thin. Not once do I hear specifics that actually are to blame for screwing a product up. Burnout 3 has got a complete stinker. A blatant, glaring, truly despicable design atrocity that is specific to this game (but has appeared in a less intrusive way in a few other racing games and went un-detected there also), and not ONE review I’ve read has picked up on it. Needless to say the game gets all around nines… As for the fact that journalists are just people. You're right. They aren't people who have been playing videogames since before they could talk. They aren't people who base their whole life around the art. They are just people who enjoyed playing games, went on to possess a journalism degree or a degree in English and consequently thought - "what better way to earn money than to play games and write some bumf about them". It should mean far more than this. The fact that they are blind to blatant flaws in almost every game they review proves it doesn't really mean a hell of a lot. My monthly intake of the ramblings of the games press adds up to pretty conclusive proof that the games press are on average, not professional enough. Not by half.

Good information, thanks. Although I neglected to metion that I'm actually trying to get the album art to display in a particular media player 10 visualization - Energy Bliss (the one with the clouds). Any one else have any thoughts on how to do this?

Just a quick question regarding Windows Media Player 10. Does anyone know how to make the desired album cover (image) appear in the ‘now playing’ window (the one that by default is a blank cd design and zooms in slightly when a new track starts)? A handful of my albums have the image but most don’t. Applying a picture doesn’t work, this only makes it appear in the lower right hand corner of the screen under ‘buy cd’. Help appreciated. Thanks.

It was Sony and the product was Sonic Stage. This puts mp3s and WMAs onto my mini-disc recorder.

My my, you have been bitchy lately, haven't you? always trying to prove us wrong and show us up... We defended CFE against YOUR baseless attacks which you launched before you had ever played the game. Again you stereotype all reviewers and say they "don't understand" the subject matter - a ridiculous accusation. You are on a high-horse preaching about videogames from the point of view of "design concepts" and you don't understand the "art for the sake of art" or "labors of love" that are MGS2 and certainly CFE. What kind of a game designer are you anyway? In the MGS2 review your discussion of your post seems less like an official position and more like 1 angry guy with twisted ideas. What company do you even work for - if any? In short, don't antagonize us by trying to prove your superiority - we do hit back. Bring it on. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> "Before I had ever played the game"? I don't need to play something to know whether or not it's going to be crap. Case in point - CFE. There are plenty of things that can be used to ascertain the quality of something, without having to spend four hours with it first. As for game magazines, I've never needed to take the advice of a game review since I was about 7. By relying on my own intuition, I've never bought a poor game yet. How do you explain that? In fact it's the other way around. Any crap I've bought has been the magazines' fault. On the odd occasion I've punted on something (that I wouldn't have otherwise touched) based on all-round high review scores, I was right. Halo = 10 out of 10, Burnout 3 = 9 out of 10? Gimme a friggin' break...Game journalists = Absolute cretins. You want to defend the press? Of course, they are fine when they are merely reporting on news, events and press releases, it’s when they attempt to think that it all goes downhill. The best we have to offer in the west is ‘Edge’. Many gamers are apparently amazed at Edge magazine’s ‘insights’. In reality, much of its content is total tripe, regardless of the fact that it’s well-written. Edge hides the inadequacies it shares with all other games magazines behind its use of the written word. And to good effect. People will believe anything if its interspersed with a few adjectives they don’t understand. Just because you cannot see how game journalists are wrong 90 percent of the time and that their opinions are almost exclusively ‘utter bullsh*t’ doesn’t mean nobody else can. I don't expect for a second that you could understand what's wrong with MGS2 or anything else that's been over-rated beyond belief by the totally ignorant press. You have NO idea what it’s like to see the industry the way I do….oh wait… yes you do…you are on a forum……If I have no respect for professional game journalists how much respect do you think I reserve for people like you?

I want to know if anything bad can come from uninstalling all Windows Hotfixes. I recently had a problem with a program quitting on me, after I e-mailed the company a few times for help, they told me it was one the hotfixes causing problems. I uninstalled the particular Hotfix and the program worked. Is it safe to uninstall ALL the hotfixes? i have about 40 of them showing up in my Add or Remove programs list. My windows Xp worked fine when I first installed it about 2 years ago and since all these un-neccessary automatic updates my computer has encounted thousands of problems with my installed programs. Thanks BTW: I've never installed SP2 (as it will do more harm than good) and there are still about 10 updates from SP2 that I have never allowed to be installed. Those damn f_ckers at Microsoft install automatically without my permission. B@stards - and yes, I turned off auto updating.

I never really use M3U's in my Windows Media Playlists, but I just started trying them out and am wondering how I can create them with my own albums. Do I need a seperate program or something? Thanks

This isn't a major problem, just an annoyance. When I press Ctrl+Alt+Del on my laptop, it comes up with 6 options (log off, shut down, task manager etc), whereas on my desktop PC the task manager instantly pops up when I press the 3 keys. How do I change the settings so the laptop will work the same as the PC and bring up the task manager straight away. Thanks

As long as it doesn't work like the atrocious methods of earning custom parts in VF4 evo that is....

I told you when it was first announced that this game would suck ass and you were all falling over yourselves to defend it. Still, now it's got a review score you believe it? Reviews should never be taken as gospel. I have little to no respect for game journalists, they don't understand the first thing about the subject matter.

I’ve never seen Family Guy but it would have to be absolutely horrendous to be inferior to The Simpsons. The Simpsons is utter, utter garbage and has been for longer than I care to remember. I used to like the show for the first three or four seasons but I don’t know whether I was young and stupid or if the writers became old and stupid, but regardless of which is true, the show has descended further and further into irrecoverable doldrums. Homer has become a morally reprehensible creation. What started out as a funny (and likeable) exaggeration of all the bad traits of the world’s blue collar workers and fathers has become OTT in the extreme. Homer used to have a heart. That emotion is non-existent today, cropping up once in a blue moon, usually when they can’t think of an ending. The writers actually make light of bad parenting and selfish, lazy attitudes. I don’t care if it is only a cartoon, it is making awful parenting seem okay. Marge used to be the foil to Homer’s stupid, irresponsible decisions when it came to their children but she’s just as despicable as him while he’s got even WORSE. Bart is a disgusting little brat who is totally un-likeable and has been sending out an atrocious message to the youth of the past decade. Religion is a running theme with the show and I’m not exaggerating when I say that at least 1 in 5 episodes base the main story around religion with side stories accounting for the rest. The writers try to hide their views by poking fun at religion but if they weren’t brought up in a church-going family and didn’t believe in such tripe they wouldn’t be doing it at all, never mind as much as they do. I am a total atheist and despise all forms of religion, it is the cause of much that is wrong in the world. I’m not going to get into my feelings about this here but to have an apparently non-religious TV show constantly trying to teach the virtues of god in hidden ways is just stomach churning. The writer’s need to play a different damn tune. Equally despicable are the writer’s constant jibes at every single thing you care to mention from sports to the military to movies and their own TV network. All this is only through their own (deserved) inferiority complex. They should have a go at themselves, the talentless, childish miscreants. The stories are absolute garbage. They used to make sense and have a semblance of understanding about narrative, motifs and dialogue, now it seems like they just throw anything they can think of in there and attempt to write a story around the mess they’ve created. Any realism the show had in the early days has gone totally out of the window in favour of cheap gags. The writer’s saw how easy it was to make the Halloween specials and now every single episode revolves around ‘treehouse of horror’ style jokes and utterly absurd plotlines. Oh, and that completely annoying cow-bag who does the voice for every single non-lead female character on the show and can put on ONE voice, renders the show even more ‘un-watchable’. This smacks of so much sexism it’s absurd. For a start, every woman in the history of the show sounds the same and if that wasn’t bad enough, every professional, working woman character puts on this disgusting ‘rich b*tch’ act. The amount of money they must have by now and they still don’t feel it necessary to hire more vocal talent. King Of The Hill is a far superior show to the increasingly mindless antics of this annoying family and remains realistic while managing to be both warm and funny. Things I guess were on the list when The Simpsons was first being brainstormed. And, please, don’t even get me started on South Park. That ‘show’ is so childish and asinine it isn’t even worth mentioning anywhere, ever. It makes The Simpsons look like it was written by geniuses and that's no mean feat.

My favourite is the 3 in 1 PC joybox (USB) with an official dreamcast arcade stick connected. Awesome. Depends what type of games you play primarily though...

Then I guess Fatal should spend most of his time in there. He can't open his (figurative) mouth without hating on somebody...

I concur. use Zinc and you can play it at its proper speed TODAY.