Honestly, if you were a cute little adorable mole and somebody started whacking you with a mallet, I everyone would agree that shanking that somebody would be fully justified.

I don't see the controls as bad, I think they work perfectly. What didn't you like about the controls? Was it just that it used a solar jetman type scheme, or something else?

Solar Jetman has more spacious and relatively more interesting levels.  I didn't want to be slowed down with something like that in such a repetitive and maze-like environment.  That part of the game would have been more enjoyable if it had been shorter, and I felt like navigating with those controls was slow and messy.  Just my 2 cents.

EDIT: Saw Soulliard's comment.  That makes sense, but I'm not sure I personally appreciated the end result.

This game wasn't for me.

I did "beat" it though.  I think.  I don't know what happened.

EDIT: I had no problem with the switcheroo.  That was clever.  I just didn't like the underwater controls or puzzles and I didn't see any meaning to it.

Curseman, that about covers what I was asking.  I'll wait on it like everything else, but I'm definitely picking it up.

Hideous, by not playing the previous games you have failed me and this is totally going in your permanent file.

I am both totally excited and painfully aware that my weekend is pretty booked up, as usual.

I've always said that Super Joe is a pro wrestler.

His posts would be a lot longer.

Also incidentally apparently Apple has added a 3D-in-Javascript API to Safari, but only for the iPhone?!

Yes, and between them and some other ideas I hope an actual standard comes out of this rather than a thousand competing plugins.

VRML wasn't the worst idea but the hardware and infrastructure for web-3d didn't exist back then.  I think that most PCs have the bandwidth and horsepower for this to develop now.

Also I vote Adobe Atmosphere as having the worst possible 3d controls ever for such an idea.  Bad Adobe.  Wait, I take that back because that google virtual IM thing was even worse.

but the Moles had guns and knives.

Game idea here.

... What do you want to know?

EVERYTHING!

No, more seriously I want to know how it stacks up to the previous two home games in terms of how you play it and such.  And I'm very curious about the controls.  But whatever you feel like sharing is fine.

Just played the game; the skin tone issue seems to be pretty much resolved.

This game is fucking great, too.

MORE DATA REQUIRED.

I didn't even realize until recently that "Anastasia" was actually a Don Bluth thing.  I assumed it was Disney.  He even copied the adorable animal companion for the badguy out of the Disney formula.

That's just because that's what you're used to. WASD is not inherently better, it's just that if you're used to it, you're used to it, and it's better for you. People used to the arrow keys or the numpad feel those work better for them.

I used to use the numpad because the shape of the key cluster was more logical to me and I liked all the extra keys being arranged in a neat grid around where my movement keys were.  Eventually, playing a bunch of non-configurable games and getting tired of remapping everything made me switch permanently to WASD.  It is nice to keep my hands at a more natural distance, though.

I think his point is that it's easier to use the mouse to aim and do the traditional mouseaim/strafe with keyboard thing.  I would agree with him that I've never seen a guy rock out Doom as hard with just the keyboard as they can with the mouse.  Aiming quickly makes a big difference.

EDIT: Heh, that totally supports the original argument that it's a "competitive" thing, though.

fusion food sucks. but what about voices in a game that looks old? woha!!! you're in the future now motherfucker.

You're so cutting edge.

Great movie.  Apparently they did a horrible, horrible sequel (without Bluth).  I never want to know...

Well, Portal was a lot like that, I'd say. Except a bit more puzzly... I guess that's why Portal fits so many genres. "Escape the room" games generally play like small adventure games, and there are a number of those¹ that are tackling first-person fully-3d environments.

¹For a short list... Darkness Within 2, the Penumbra series (though I guess that's more survival horror), Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, Myst V

Oooh, I'll check out Darkness Within.  I didn't like any of the Myst games I ever played, maybe they were too big for me.  I was thinking more along the lines of those escape the room games where I miss the key that was under the couch because the 90 times I clicked on the bottom of the couch I didn't hit the right spot.

And yes, Portal was awesome and I never ever stop playing it.

also now that ive actually read your post using an on screen keyboard has nothing to do with the motion sensing stuff which is why it works. its also really really primitive.

The primitive stuff honestly works the best for me (outside of Wii bowling).  I hate the thing aside from Zelda and light gun games.  Otherwise I have no interest.  And Zelda only worked because it just substituted a simple flick for a button press and didn't try to make you act like you were really swinging a sword.  And my arm DID get tired.

That being said the fishing in Zelda was pretty rad, despite making you look like an idiot.  That certainly tried to semi-emulate fishing.  But again, simple motions.

EDIT: Pretty sure you don't even need the motion controls for Punch Out, though.  I generally find motion controls and stylus controls to be horrible and evil, so I'm ok with that.

A conclusion with a photo of oscar the grouch above it?  Really?

But I think it's pretty obvious that MOST of the world doesn't agree with me, which is fine!  I'm not out to *PROVE* anything, just to provoke some thought, that's all.  FPS games are doing just fine without any of this introspection or analysis; Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3 were the top selling games of 2008, with another 5 "modern" FPS titles in the top 100.

Well you are provoking thought, you should be pretty happy with that.

I could definitely deal with more FP games without the S.  It might be interesting.  On a small game note, I love "escape the room games," but I find the mechanics of looking around in those games frequently become "hunt for the right pixel to see the left dies of the couch."  Something like that done in a full first person engine might be way too much work, but it could be awesome.

Whether or not everything I point out in the article is "right" or not is entirely beside the point!

No, if your basic breakdown of what sucks is flawed, it's not a good breakdown.  Not that it is entirely flawed, but you can't make a bunch of arguments towards a conclusion and then say that the quality of the arguments isn't important.

So yeah, I don't see this as nitpicking or railing against the advances or evolution of a genre.  I see my argument as questioning why the core elements of the phenomenon that initiated the creation of a specific genre or subgenre were abandoned in favor of more exclusive, hardcore, and competitive elements, when the masses appear to have rejected these facets of design almost entirely.

I think the burden of proof that these things are so naturally exclusive and "hardcore" is really on you.  Certainly there's room for games losing some of these elements, but it's by no means required that the genre go anywhere but a place that customers and existing developers want it to go.  I'd say "aiming," especially with auto-aim options on a lot of games, is something that nobody wants to toss out of an FPS.  Plenty of games already dispense with the joy of strafing by penalizing you for moving and shooting or by limiting your movement in "aim mode" or the like.  Certainly games can find other ways to do these things (and they have before), but it seems like people go for the ones with the elements you hate so much.

I just want to throw away some of the rotten pieces of our building's foundation in favor of some nice new blocks that are based on the original floor plan.  I want to keep the building, but I'm afraid if I don't fix some of these bits the thing will just collapse or turn into a ghetto.

Based on how well FPS games seem to do as a whole, I don't see this happening anytime soon.

EDIT: I would like to point out that this is all opinion and you don't need to "prove" anything.  Just that the rest of the world doesn't need to agree with you, either.

It's fun.

Haha!  This is what I always think when someone tries to posit some pseudo-intellectual argument about why I should objectively dislike a video game.

I'd argue that the level of polish and the amount of attention that PopCap has paid to metagaming elements and alternative modes of play is actually quite stunning, and makes it a lot more complex and rewarding than it otherwise could have been.

I should pick this up, because that's the element that always sucks me in to stupid little games like Insaniquarium: Must get more shells to buy more fish to earn more shells to buy more fish....

Karoshi 2.0 is easily the best/most creative puzzle game I have ever played.