Messages

I think the bible can be valuable as a moral guideline for some, though it might be a bit contradictory. I mean, just the Old and the New Testament are coming from very different sides...
...but it should be clear that the bible is more one big metaphor than anything else. If you take the bible literally in this day and age than you're either uneducated or ignorant.

The Tiger by DJ Shadow.
Amazing song, heard never something like this before or after.
Great rythm, dark, emotional, energetic!!

The german voice acting is pretty good, actually
Seems to be a fun game. I should buy it when I have some money to spare...

Well, I kinda guessed this reasoning behind the skeleton key, but I had no idea of its cultural meaning. It's kinda like monkey wrench in Monkey Island 2 then.

I personally replay my favorite RPGs all the time (FF6, FF9, any Suikoden, Skies of Arcadia, etc) but many adventure games are geared towards re-playability. (LB, any QFG, KQ6, MM, Art of Theft, ATOTK, etc)

I'm not sure if you misunderstood me there or not. I said indirectly that RPGs have replay value, so...

But I think only a minority of adventures have replay value. KQ6 had some because of the two paths. QfG is half an RPG, so it's no wonder where it comes from.
Blade Runner and Indiana Jones 4 were very replayable and like you said Maniac Mansion, but these are already all I can remember.
It's no wonder, most adventure follow just one story path from which you can't deviate.

But my point was, dead ends just make you replay parts again that you already experienced and at most times in exactly the same way. It feels like wasted time then.
Sure, it's fun to replay a game after some time, but not so to replay it in parts before you have even finished it.

[before]

Personally I thought some dead ends / walking deads in King's Quest 6 were worse than others. It depended on if you knew that you could have missed something. Often you're just stuck because you didn't take an item earlier and you have no idea why.

For example, the catacombs. Before you go there you're told to prepare yourself, which basically tells you that you should take everything with you that isn't nailed down. Therefore I didn't consider this as much as a bad dead end.

You could also go in the castle unprepared (missing the mint and the mechanical nightingale), but I think here the game didn't give you a clue that you should prepare yourself well because once you're in there's no way back later. Sure, the doors close behind you and can't be opened, but the game should warn you before you get into a dead end. It was obvious with the catacombs, but not here. So, while you could think ahead to take the mint leaves and the nightingale I didn't get the feeling that I had to, so I didn't like this dead end really.

A really bad example of a dead end was when you forgot to take the key from the skeleton guard in the realm of death you couldn't unlock the chest in the castle. It's especially annoying because I still don't understand how the player should've been able to deduce that this was the necessary key! Yeah, keys unlock locks, but not every key unlocks every lock. This was just stupid.

Personally, I think I never would design a game with dead ends. While I thought the catacomb one was fair I think it's possible to design a game without ones and I don't see any advantage in them. They just may force you to play a segment again. And since adventures don't have much replay value in contrast to, say, RPGs, it's just wasted time.

Maybe Tim wasn't actually allowed to release this so he deleted the news post?
Weird...

Actually, afaik I know you're wrong matti. Obama is against same sex marriage, but for civil unions.

At least that's what he said during the campaign.

Edit: Oops, didn't see Nachos post.

[Obama / Biden:]

Ok, I am not goint to discuss with Snarky, because I don' t like his tactics, but the topic is still interesting to me, so,  I am going to debate with Ozzie, who thinks that I have "painted myself into a corner", apparently.

Man, I didn't even make any arguments, how can you think that this could be an interesting discussion then? Your post is much too long in relation to mine. But well, I guess I have to answer. Even though I hate it to talk about politics.

What was the problem with Snarkys posts anyway? He made two short posts which were pretty fair. Well, whatever...

Here I said two things: One is that making fun of the popular political party is stupid. Now, let' s analyse that:

Well, so far, I don't know any good sketches that just do that. Normally comedians pick apart things that certain politicians said that sound kinda weird or stupid to them or seem hypocritical. It's not about the party per se, only what certain politicians say or what stance they take.

Imagine now one of those monologues making fun of McCain, and Sara (Sara or Sarah?) Palin, one of those praised shows when everybody is laughing of the good, intelligent puns... I guess you are even smiling remembering one of those... 

Imagine that...

And imagine now that the author of the monologue changes the direction of his darts and stars aiming Obama.

Same spirit on the jokes, same level of harm... But now directed to the fashioned, polite, all-of-us-love Obama. Can' t you imagine surprise faces, and some (all/much/one at least) of the audience thinking: "Wow... This guy is stupid" or "This man is a moron! How he dares???"

Can you rationally argue to me that the scenario I am painting is unaccurate? I think that if you imagine what I explained, propperly, you can' t do anything that agree with me that many of the people won' t react good. And if you ara a comedian, taking a path that is going to make the show unpleasant for the audience is stupid, sorry. Humour is for making you laugh, not the opposite.

Well, jokes have to be funny and I assume that it is much easier to write jokes about Sarah Palin than about
Obama. That and shows like The Daily Show are geared towards are more left-wing audience, of course.
I'm not a comedian and I assume that you aren't either (I'm not sure how I come to that conclusion ), but look at the potential for jokes.

Obama / Biden:

- Well,  Obama is all about hope and change and promises everything
- He didn't seem very patriotic because he didn't wear an american flag pin
- There was something with a guy called Jeremiah Wright, old stuff
- Biden messed the names up and actually attacked his running mate
- Obama has a weird middle name, so maaaybe he's a muslim or even a terrorist!! Which already brings us to...

McCain / Palin:

- McCains whole campaign is about throwing mud at his opponent and labeling him terms which aren't about anything bad per se, like community organiser (whoo), socialist (scary!), muslim (ohmygod!!), marxist (well...), terrorist (okay, this one is just as bad as it is untrue)
- The whole Joe the Plumber rhetoric
- Sarah Palin calls for patriotism (though she was a member of the Alaskan Independent Party or whatever its name)
- Her plain incompetence, like saying that she had foreign experience because she could see Russia from Alaska
- The talk about a "true America", you know, like big cities, democrats, homosexuals,... are part of a fake America
- The desperate attempts to connect Obama with Bill Ayers and Acorn
- John McCain promise of a respectable campaign yet he slings the most mud
- ...

I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea. There were some jokes about Obama on the Daily Show (like about his huge money spending or his promise of sunshine), and I didn't think "This Jon Stewart is a jerk!". But I guess that there isn't much potential to make more jokes about Obama.

My second statement is that making fun of the non-fashioned party is not brave (or is coward, if you preffer). Did I say that the jokes are bad? Did I say nobody has the right to laugh of someone beating McCain if that person likes political satire and he thinks the puns are bing funny? No.

I just said that it' s not brave.

1. Since when is comedy about braveness?
2. Why do you think that political comedy beats only down politicians that did no wrong?
3. What do you think about John McCains appearance on Saturday Night Live? Oh, and this old Daily Show interview is hilarious, too.

Sometimes one, sometimes the other party is more in fashion. The last 8 years it were the Republicans and they still got their "beating". And why should you critic something were you don't see any wrong? BTW, Jon Stewart was a huge John McCain fan and said that he would have voted for him in 2000.

And Ozzie... be honest. Seeing how popularity polls are in America, don' t you think that an Obama oriented show is going to get an applause, no matter if the show is supperb or just average? I honestly think that it should be definitelly bad for not receiving claps... Making humour that you know is going to succed even if it's not good is not brave.

That two things are the ones I said... If you think that is painting myself into a corner, debate with me...

Well, I always think that the Daily Show is a bit funnier than Colbert Report. I guess I can still distinguish in terms of quality then.
And I thought that the Daily Show of last night was not so funny as usual, even if it bashed Dick Cheney!

I think without political comedy.....you could only cry, so I'm happy it exists.

Oh, and this interview should be comedy...

Nah, he just painted himself into a corner.

Well, I can understand LimpingFish, my first thought was also "this looks so......casual, ugh!".
But apart from that I actually like the graphics.
I just hope that it is also interesting enough for "normal" adventure gamers. I guess we'll see!

The problem is that robvalue just preaches but doesn't discuss his points.
The problem is that he expects from us to "see the light" und agree with him without questioning.

And you have to ask yourself how much sense it makes for the small community of ours to boycott palm oil? Such a boycott must be bigger and better organised, and maybe it's smarter to intervene on production level than on consumer level, and there we have barely any might.

Wow! Looks great!
I don't know much about Oz to be honest, so do I have to catch up on that front first?

The premise reminds me somewhat of Discworld Noir (fantasy world meets film noir)........coincidence?

This sprite is definately a bit weird.
First, the character looks like he doesn't have a neck. There's no nose and no mouth either. What should be hair looks more like a cap to me.
The shoulders shouldn't hang down like that, they should be more straight up!?

The feets look more like the legs are melting and leaving a puddle behind. The legs themselves look like they were glued together.

I can't be more constructive at the moment since I should go to sleep now, but I hope it points out some of the things that are definately not right.

Some tutorials might help. The stickied Tutorials Redux thread has a huge list compiled.

Whoohoo!
I think I should finish the first part now, but whatever, I'm really glad to see this finished.
Will download...

Well, this was a short fun game!
Nice voice acting, too.

Very random and senseless, but also enjoyable, and this counts for me.

Reminds me of the woman in the Heavy Rain Casting Trailer...

I disagree with this sentiment.
I wouldn't care if the president has a religious belief, because it's his personal thing. Many people need religion as a spiritual guide in their life, that's okay.

But it becomes a problem if the president justifies his actions through his religion. Like Bush does.

Sure.
McCain prefers to bomb countries straight-out instead of first going into diplomatic talks.

McCain wants tax cuts for the rich, Obama gives tax cuts for the poor and middle class and heightens the taxes for the rich ones.

McCain also wants to lower the taxes for big corporations, though the taxes for them are already quite low because of the countless loopholes. Obama wants to plug those.

McCain may be more experienced than Obama, but while Obama isn't so long in politics I think he learns fast.

McCain (or more Palin) is talking about the real America and those wonderful small town where the world is still so happy and idyllic as it should be which sounds to me like they want to further seperate the country like Bush did in his term. Obama wants to unite the country.

Yep, status quo indeed. 

Sure, you don't know if Obama will do all the things he promises. I think he won't since not all of his promises seem to be financially affordable.
But the same goes for McCain.

And Darth, Nixon or Kennedy, Carter or Reagan, Bush Sr. or Clinton, those didn't make a difference, right?  :

I think Palin's view is interesting. Kids shouldn't get sexual education, but be sexually abstinent.
They surely know then what to be abstinent of...

Expectations too high? I think it would be enough if a good movie would be the result of a game adaption. Apart from Silent Hill (I would recommend watching it, very enjoyable) I can't think of one. If it's true to the source material, that's another question.
Uwe Boll has neither managed to make a good film nor to stay true to the games.