The Gamer's Quarter

[dessgeega]

so outrunsp has, like, whole different stages! crazy!

i scored the two leftmost endings, again.

they needed to call casino town "casino night zone".
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[elvis.shrugged]

Finally, Dess. Isn't it amazing?

I think I like the SP stages more, especially when you play them all strung together. It's like Cruisin' USA, except really awesome.

Which car have you liked the most, so far?

Oh, and the other modes are worth trying. They're fun in a minigame-sort-of way, and may help you improve at the main game. I've spent most of my time playing in the Outrun mode though.

[JasonMoses]

I got the all clear on Raiden III after about a week of play, and decided (coincidentally) to pick up Outrun 2006. Bizarre! At any rate, it's quite good. I'm finding the controls initially a little finicky compared to actually playing the arcade version with a wheel, but I can't find much fault with anything else it does so far.

[dessgeega]

[Scratchmonkey]

Oh!

So it's basically Conway's Game of Life with some additions made.

Not that I think that's a negative or anything; I'm actually kind of glad somebody ran with it.

[dessgeega]

well it's a-life, but it's not nearly as abstract as cellular automata! conway's life isn't really a simulation of life as it is a set of abstract rules with interesting (emergent?) properties. it makes no attempt to simulate nutrition, reproduction, mutation or evolution. evolve! actually tries to encompass those things, though without losing a level of abstraction that makes it straightforward and accessible.

for example! this is the initial "genetic makeup" of all the yellow dots at the beginning:



the grid on the left determines how one of those dots will behave in a given situation. when a dot gathers enough energy to reproduce, the offspring will start with a copy of the parent's grid - though mutation has the possibility of randomly zapping one of those genes to something else!

the sedentary creatures in the above scenario had mutated so that their response to "two or more friends nearby and no foes" was "stop". those who stopped on the patch of tasty plants had a stable source of nutrition, of energy, and would be able to reproduce and pass on their "stop" genes. those who stopped out in the wilderness probably will not survive, and their genes will not be passed on.

so that first herd has successfully adapted itself to changing conditions! making this an effective simulation of evolution - which conway's life, and other forms of cellular automata based in static rulesets, is not, i'd argue.
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[Scratchmonkey]

Yeah, I can see why you're so hyped about this -- it's taking some formalist concepts and making what seems like a pretty interesting game/simulation out of them. It's available on your webspace, right? If ever get DOSBox working I'll check it out for sure. It also seems like something that would be dying for a remake (possibly even a web-based version) and I mean something fairly low-fi, as much as Spore seems to be a natural evolution (groan) of this type of "game".

Two pedantic notes:

- Yeah, Conway's Game of Life is pretty much the canonical example of emergent behavior.

- Oh gh0d I was going to write something about punctuated equilibrium and evolution here only now I think I'm just going to go to bed. (Short version: the overall process of diversification of life seems to be predicated on swift reactions to board-clearing processes like a giant meteor strike rather than gradual change (and of course I'm not implying that you were suggesting anything along those lines I just can't stop myself from typing stuff like this SHIT).)

[Intentionally Wrong]

I've been fiddling with Evolve, myself. Generally I'll load up two species, run the sim until one dies out completely, then tweak that species in a way that seems like it might help (sometimes making use of modifications that late-generation individuals sported) and then restarting the sim. I was originally just trying to beat the preconstructed "Raptor" species when I came up with this surprisingly efficient killing machine:


Hypes make up for haphazard action genes with speed and reproductive malice.

After creating a couple different species to try to upset my new top predator, I had a much better grasp on the way action genes work. You really have to consider the "flow" of your creatures' AI; if the only way a creature can reach a "green light" circumstance is from a circumstance you've flagged as "red light", they're going to remain stationary. Clever manipulation of Green Lights can make for some surprisingly sophisticated behaviors.


These guys, on the other hand, don't need sophistication to rock the food chain.

After I got bored of that I tried making a trio of "rock/paper/scissors" species, each of which could wipe out only one other. "Rock" proved a little too good, in that it beats Paper, Scissors, and everything else I've thrown at it. Admittedly, I haven't thrown much yet, but I'll do that next.


The inevitable conflict: the endangered hypes dash themselves to death on the ever-growing rocks.

This game's great, dess. Thanks for pointing it out.

[dhex]

they need an intelligent design version.

it only has one button.

i am way not smart enough to get into things like this. i never really had a head for sims, you know?
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[dessgeega]

jason love, i am probably going to copy your species into my game later.

outrun 2006: i tried to buy something in the store and it said "you need to buy this on the psp version of outrun 2006." why would i do that? that's not the game i own.

anyway, i've now seen all of the outrun mode endings, except for the 15 stage continuous ones. i've unlocked the continuous version of the outrun2 stages. it is not easy.
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[Intentionally Wrong]

My current version of Rock has the metabolism and spawn threshold sliders dropped all the way to the minimum. It's hell on aggressive species, but avoidant species like Chickens or Brachiosaurs do just fine. I've found it's important not to set the mutation level too high; anything about 75% is just so spastic that efficient strategies don't have any chance to survive and propagate. I wish there was a way to specify generational variance in mutation rate, especially if that number itself was also subject to change--that'd make species like the Wildplasm a lot more interesting to me.

[Neal]

I've been MIA now for a long while due to a graveyard job and going back to school, but I've been going back and playing some of the old snes rpgs when I find the time. It makes me incredibly happy to say that I enjoyed Illusion of Gaia just as much now as I did when I was twelve.
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[dessgeega]

so now i've gotten a high score on both goal Es in outrun 2006. i'd reached the goals before, but without clearing the 500,000 point minimum for a high score. now it says "enma daioh" next to each of the goals on outrun mode. except for the 15-stage continuous goals, of course - both of which i've unlocked now. and yes, continuous mode is really where the diversity of sp's stages shines.

i copied the hypes and rock into my own game of evolve. i created a new species ("campers") which behaves similiarly to the rock, but which can travel very quickly (as individuals) between "camps". they and the rock co-exist just fine.
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[Shapermc]

So what do you think of Outrun?
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[Shapermc]

[Pijaibros]

Would they also fix that free first round attack that the first player gets?

Yes I know, it's just wishful thinking. I'd buy the game if so.

[Cycle]

The full season of Sam & Max is available, so I decided to go ahead and order it. I played through the first episode last night and it was quite a blast.

First, the writing is brilliant. This is the first game to actually make me laught out loud for a long time, not just with dialouge, but also with sight gags and some scripted events. Very few jokes fall flat on their face, at worst, many atleast make you smile. It's like, almost up there with Futurama quality, one of my favourite sitcoms of all time. The main story itself is entertaining, too, by the way. I hope they put more surprising twists and turns in future episodes though.

Most of the voices are great, however I wish Sam put a little more energy into his role. Max is great, though! All the more minor characters also sound pretty brilliant.

Puzzle-wise, the game was a bit inconsistent. Over-all it could have been tighter, because sometimes I wated my time somewhere before finding out I had to do something else first, and one or two puzzles I felt were a little too obscure. On the other hand, there are also some brilliant puzzles which are very clever and, most importantly, actuall fun. Hopefully the make the design and flow tighter in future episodes, and feature more innovative and fun puzzles. Luckily, inventory puzzles were kept to a minimum and it was more focused on trickery and such. I kinda wish Max gave you more hints if you were really stuck.

So yeah, it's off to a great start!

I also hired Red Steel and finished it with my brother. We really enjoyed it! I wouldn't have regretted paying full price for this game. It's true it did need some more poslish before it was released. There are frame-rate drops, some horrible (yet only occasional) glitches, the occasional game crash and some of the controls and certain areas of certain levels could be refined. If they delayed the release a month or two and fixed most of these, I think this game could have been a must buy.

I love the atmosphere, the controls are lots of fun once you get to grips with them, the sword fighting is pretty much a more complex Punch Out! but they are still enjoyable. I like the breaks between missions, and nodding and shaking your head when talking to someone (I've wanted this in a FPS for years). I love how pretty much everything blows apart during gun fights. The slow-mo stuff is great, and getting people to surrender is briliiant. It was just one hell of a ride, with lots of fun little touches along the way.
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[Lasa]

I played Twilight Princess for a few minutes on a friend's wii.
It's not nearly as visually charming as Wind Waker was, maybe it's a better game though?

[Winged Assassins (1984)]

I did a little Serious Sam the Second Encounter and it is still a game that hasn't aged much visually at all in the four or five years since its release. It's probably the colours.

It still has the best minigun in any game ever.
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[dessgeega]

someone please explain car classes in outrun 2006 to me. i want a new car: i've done probably as much as i can with the novice cars, and i've got lots of outrun miles and nothing left (that i want) to spend them on. should i get an intermediate A car (and if so, which one looks best in black? black is a prerequisite)? should i get the "outrun" version of the car i've been using? what's the difference?
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[dongle]

[JasonMoses]

Dess: different classes just have better ratings in acceleration/max speed/etc.

I bought the F40 because that's the car I usually drive in the arcade, then I bought the outrun version because it's the same thing with better everything. Experiment! See what you like. That kind of thing.

[Cycle]

[Winged Assassins (1984)]

The problem with the Second Encounter is the flow of the action, there are too many parts where enemies are just thrown at you one after the other. It gets really monotonous at many times where the first game only got mildly monotonous at very few times. And that room in level three which bounces you around only pisses you off, it's like a huge speedhump just placed down without much thought. However, the grass and trees make the outdoor areas less barren than the first game, and I do prefer lush greens to sandy yellows. And the sniper rifle makes one satisfying sound when you fire it, it feels really good blasting one of those laser robo chickens in the head.

It's really a shame what happened with the sequel. I played the demo with the medieval castle and village and I really liked the look of it. But yeah, LOL WACKY.
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[dessgeega]

so i unlocked one of the intermediate A cars (the first one i chose the game told me i had to unlock on the copy of outrun 2006 psp that i do not and will never own). then i unlocked a black paint job for it. then i unlocked the "outrun" version of the novice car i'd been driving. the outrun car seems to be the same vehicle but FASTER. the intermediate car provides a good new challenge, though.

oh, and a new outfit for ladyfriend!

so yes, i'm being asked to play along with some stereotypical male fantasy - the expensive car, the hawt girlfriend - and what bugs me is that the woman, in all her vapidity, is just part and parcel of that fantasy. it irks me, maybe, because the case isn't that extreme - i'm not being asked to play the role of a violent lunatic, just someone out for a pleasure drive, and that "expensive car" goes hand-in-hand with "expensive woman" leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
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[dongle]

Oh, ok, so it's more (or at least initially) the sexism that pisses you off which is part and parcel with the heterosexism. I understand now; thanks for clarifying.

[elvis.shrugged]

Yeah, all the "Outrun" classes are just the same car, but overclocked, hence they're faster and a lot meaner.

I stick with the novice and intermediate cars, personally. The pro classes are fun to experiment with, though, especially if you score a perfect run. I've never seen my score raise so much.

Yesterday I played Tempest 2000 through composite cables on my big-screen (analog) TV. It was fun.

[aerisdead]

[dessgeega]

well, the thing is - and i wrote this in my blog in response to shaper raising basically the same point about ferrari produce placement - while those things do exist in the original they don't draw attention to themselves in the way they do in 2006. in outrun, i drive a red car - in outrun 2006, i visit a showroom to look at fabulous ferrari models. in outrun, there are two heads in the car - in outrun 2006, i share my car with a one-dimensional character who shouts "how far you gonna take me?" between stages and waves her scrawny arms in the air while i drift. these things are more obtrusive in the new game, and harder to ignore.

it seriously damage the experience, but it does make me wince a little every time.

and yeah, the driver's part of the problem too. the cars have enough character - why not let the passengers remain undefined? let me fill in my own blanks.
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[Shapermc]

[aerisdead]

[helicopterp]

There was a point there and you missed it by a wide margin. You ought to read back over what you quoted from her slowly and pause to reflect. Then see if you can't come up with something a little more useful.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[helicopterp]

And I've finally messed with the Mercenaries game in Resident Evil 4. I can't imagine why I avoided it for so long.

After a few hours spread over a couple of days, I 4-starred them all and unlocked the secret characters. (Aside: Why does Ada move differently than the others?) Are there ratings higher than 4-stars? Or am I basically done with this?
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[Pijaibros]

Y'know, if the "male fantasy" bugs you so much in Outrun Coast2Coast, it is possible to drive a car that isn't a convertible. Then you won't be privy to any of those offending visuals.

There's at least 5 models of Ferraris that have covered tops in this game.

[aerisdead]

[helicopterp]

Okay, I won't be snide, and I'll contribute. For the record, I was being snide because your tone from the post above it was so incredulous. It seemed as though you thought you had never read anything so dumb in your life.

Now, I haven't played any of the Outrun games, but I'm going to make an assumption here for my argument, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong: Outrun is not a driving simulation game, but much more of an arcade racer. Because of that, the inclusion of Ferraris, even if you would like to drive a Ferrari (and I would love to drive a Ferrari in real life), is not integral to the game. The cars could be BMWs or Saabs or Peugeots or Saturns or (god forbid) Yarises. Or they could be non-name branded, fun-looking, fun-to-drive red cars. Whatever. The game is going to play the same way regardless of what name they stick or don't stick on the hood.

Now, the argument against the Ferrari license isn't just that it's frivolous advertising (although it certainly is that). The argument is that it's excessive authoritarian imposition on the game's reality. What absolutely had no reason to be specified was specified, and it usurps a degree of mental authority from the game player who already willingly exists in someone else's constructed fantasy by playing the game. The extra control manifest in this design choice is pointlessly stifling, and can absolutely detract from a gaming experience for plenty of people who don't want to be forced to drive the Ferrari name.

The car licensing itself isn't that big of a deal--I understand that it's as reasonably unobtrusive a way to incorporate advertising into a driving game as you're going to get, and companies making games are trying to make money. But it is indicative of a larger trend in the game's design that exerts itself much more detrimentally in the female companion's somewhat offensive and very obtrusive characterization.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[helicopterp]

[elvis.shrugged]

[Scratchmonkey]

Actually, Mr. Helicopter, I think that although in theory, the car being a Ferrari shouldn't have any impact on the gameplay (and it doesn't, from a purely mechanical standpoint); however, the car being a Ferrari does have an impact on the experience of playing the game. In other words, the car being a Ferrari and the name itself has semantic content that's connected to the main motifs of Outrun, the major one being "love of driving" and other being a fantasy essentially connected to the idle rich -- driving along stunning scenery in a ridiculously expensive car with your coke-addled mistress.

Also, I do think that the jump between the amount of "FERRARI!" in the original Outrun and in Outrun2 is due to a jump in fidelity and media size and not an increase in the desire to commercialize the game. Going out and getting the Ferrari license for a Sega Master System game was significant because, as it's been noted, it would have been really easy to make it a generic sports car.

To use another example, it's like the review of Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball where the author claimed that the game wasn't sexist because you could replace the girls with Animal Crossing characters and it would be the same game. On one hand, yes, the "game" would be mechanically the same; however, the experience of actually playing the game would be completely different.

ETA: And really, the argument about the significance of semantic content is going to be highly contextual. The DOA example above is extreme because the semantic content of the game is so strong (giant-titted women fight for your pleasure) that the idea of it not being noticable or affecting for somebody is patently ridiculous. In the case of Outrun, a lot of people aren't going to notice or care that the girl is in the car or that the car is a Ferrari or not. However, I don't think they're trivial, in the way that the species of the trees by the side of the road is.

[Shapermc]

[Scratchmonkey]

Yeah, if I would pick one thing to vilify about OutRun2, it would be the mission mode and unlockable content. Great example of designers feeling like they have to add videogame tropes regardless of whether they fit with the concept of the game.

[elvis.shrugged]

[JasonMoses]

[simplicio]

I see this as Ferrari: The very fast car mystique to F355 Challenge's Ferrari: The very fast car simulation, really.

I stopped playing it before I ever finished everything. I guess, due in part to those mini games, things started feeling repetitive. Not something I'd mind popping in again from time to time, though.

God, I've hardly touched games in the last couple months. I've got this rental copy of PW: Justice for All, and I pick it up now and again, but my desire to appreciate the great writing and structure of it wanes pretty quickly in the face of feeling like I'm doing the same thing over and over. Plus those major kinks and lapses in reason I always heard about.

[dessgeega]

unlockable content is almost always needless padding. i'm glad i was able to unlock the important stuff (by which i mean the continuous modes and the radiation track) quickly, though.

so i've also been playing hacklite for the amiga, which john h (who wrote that column) helped me get running. it's pretty swell - cobbled together from hack and nethack before the latter started getting really ridiculous, and with a revisionist agenda similiar to crawl's. it's a nice romp, though not perfectly balanced, and the controls are inconvenient in a few ways. it makes me want to play crawl, which i inevitably will, though not now, because i know crawl's a pit and i don't have the time right now to throw myself into it.
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[helicopterp]

I feel a little misunderstood.

Scratchmonkey, my point wasn't that the Ferrari name has nothing to do with the game's experience; the bit about it not changing the gameplay was just the set-up. I understand the connotations of the name. (And I realize, having read what y'all had to say, that the connotations of Ferrari are much more appropriate to the Outrun experience than I thought.) My point was that the in-you-face-itude of it (according to Dess's comment about the super-showrooms and all sorts of different models and stuff) is a needlessly stifling design choice for some people.

I really didn't mean to get hung up on Ferraris at all, though. I just wanted to continue using that aspect of the game's design as an analogy for the woman-in-the-passenger-seat design choice.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[Scratchmonkey]

I gotcha. I just tend to jump down people's throats about that sort of thing because plenty of people honestly seem to think that the mechanics are the only thing that people take away from the experience and it just drives me cream crackers.

[Winged Assassins (1984)]

Y'know, I kinda liked Outrun 2006 when it was a simple game of driving fast, red cars which hadn't been overcomplicated like it has now.
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[JasonMoses]

Oh, Shaper. I'm going to disagree with you about the "sega doesn't know how to develop a game for console release" on the basis of VF4 Evo alone. Having recently played that, Outrun 2006's console-version modes just feel like such a colossal miss.

[aerisdead]

Guys,

I really enjoyed the mission mode. It was silly and fun - like the Crazy Box/Pyramid/Whatever mode in Crazy Taxi. And I liked the races, up until the final set where they just became stupidly, pointlessly hard.

The game is pretty great, really. You can play Outrun2 or SP in basically any way you want (traditionally, 15 stage continuous, stage at a time, time trial, etc etc) or you can play some "fun" stuff. And no matter which way you play you'll unlock the music and all the cars fairly shortly.

I liked it all round.
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aerisdead