Video Games Thread

[styles]

Sailing through the mini quests now.

[bealec]

Man Spends Decade Playing Epic PC Game

The gamer - known only as Lycerius - posted details online about his epic adventure on the strategy game Civilization II, in which players control a nation through world history.
The detailed game begins at the dawn of civilisation and should end in 2020, but he has continued cultivating his virtual world for another 1,971 years.
He says the three remaining nations have been at war for 1,700 years - and endless nuclear wars have melted the ice-caps and left huge swathes of the world uninhabitable.
"The world is a hellish nightmare of suffering and devastation," he said.
"Roughly 90% of the world's population has died either from nuclear annihilation, or famine caused by the global warming that has left absolutely zero arable land to farm."
Scores of different tribes begin the game, each seeking world domination. The only three superpowers left in his simulation are the Celts - controlled by Lycerius - the Vikings, and the Americans.
"Between the three of us, we have conquered all the other nations that have ever existed and assimilated them into our respective empires," he said, adding that the nations had been locked in an "eternal death struggle" for almost 2,000 years.
"Peace seems to be impossible. So I can only assume that peace will come only when they're wiped out."
Civilization II was released in 1998 by MicroProse. Players have to fight wars, develop technology and forge peace treaties with other nations.
Lycerius said he has had to transfer his save file to each new computer over the past decade to continue playing the game.
"I thought that it might be interesting to see just how far into the future I could get and see what the ramifications would be," he said.
"Naturally I play other games and have a life, but I often return to this game when I'm not doing anything and carry on."
He posted details of his lengthy conquest on social networking site Reddit, where users were quick to draw comparisons between the game and George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984.
The book features three nations locked in an eternal war that no one can remember the beginning of, and where borders always change during minor power grabs.

[styles]

Up the celts!!

[jman]

Civ 2 is a great game though.. I've got all the Civs.. (I love them more than Age of Empires.. but less than Sim City)... can just waste away so many hours on them.. I always end my games with total domination though... the games not over until you blow the crap out of everyone else IMO

[Late]

nextbox leak

Would be more inclined to believe it if it weren't for the ridiculously low price ($300).

[harv]

Yup, there's 12GB in the dev kits at the moment so we're looking at at least 6GB in the retail version but developers have 8GB in the target specs. Am pretty sure that's fake though. If not then it's in line with the 720 being 3 times more powerful than the U, as I've been saying for a while now.

That amount of memory is going to be very expensive, even if they only use DDR3.

If Sony have any sense they'll have the PS4 retailing for as close to 300 dollars/pounds as they possibly can, there's no way in hell that Microsoft will be able to have their console retailing anywhere close to that. We're more likely to see it going for 500 or 600 dollars/pounds. They've completely lost the plot tbh

[jman]

Question about the Wii U controller harv, maybe you can answer this, as its bugging me as it seems like an obvious flaw to the Wii U Controller.... when the Wii U controller is used as a HUD, inventory system, radar in games.. which we have seen working... what happens when the player wants to stream the game to their wii u controller and play on its screen (so not using the tv at all)... how will the radar/hud/inventory system work then???   We've seen them stream 2D Mario to the controller, but then that game wasnt using the screen for vital information.  In games like ZombiU, its going to be impossible to use any of the extra functionality the wii controller gives you, if your streaming to the controller... will they disable streaming in games like this or will developers develop for this particular scenario.

[harv]

It all depends on the developers mate. It's quite easy for a developer to switch to the subscreen only, only takes one line of code apparently. If it's just being used as an inventory or map then they can enable the start or select buttons to bring the map or inventory map, like you would with the other games on the PS3 and 360.

Something like ZombiU though will be unable to be played using the subscreen only for obvious reasons.

Games that can be played on the subscreen only will have it marked on the box. Going to be very handy for playing games whilst having a dump lololol

All Wii games will of course be playable using the GamePad only.

It's a really good idea tbh, one or two of you guys on here and plenty of other people on other forums have complained about their other half interrupting their gaming sessions to watch crappy reality TV bollocks.

Where it's going to be really huge though is Japan. Surprisingly the vast majority of homes over there only have one telly for some reason.

[jman]

Well no doubt about it, the only good thing about the Wii U is the fact you can play away from the tv.. but if theres games where you wont be able to use the subscreen as your main screen then thats just ridiculously crap.. its a feature they should of made as standard.. and avoided the gimmicky motion control features which really dont add much to the gaming experience..

Im quite excited about the prospects of Smartglass myself.. I know it wont be possibly to stream a game from the 360 to a tablet using the technology at present, but thats mainly a limitation of the aging 360 hardware rather than the tech, I've no doubt the nextbox will be able to stream games to tablet devices.. this is far better than nintendos solution because the Wii U gamepad has no processor so its just a dumb terminal really which means the main console's CPU/GPU has to do all the work - hence why it can only support a maximum of 2 gamepads (and there may even be problems with 2 gamepads)... using a tablets processor to do some of the work is going to be far more cost effective for everyone involved, especially due to the fact that anyone living in this century has some kind of device capable of connecting with a 360 already

[Late]

Did you see the "Surface" tablets Microsoft announced yesterday?
It is of course another part of the whole "take over the front room and multimedia experience" masterplan Microsoft started a decade or so back with the first xbox.

Seems to pack a fair bit of punch, so I doubt it'll be cheap. It's 10" screen and windows 8 interface looks perfectly geared toward smartglass type applications and integration between devices.
Should be fine for watching film/tv and playing games on, but you'd want something smaller as a controller/peripheral whilst gaming on your tv.
(I also like the soft keyboard/protector, which clips on magnetically. Gimmicky, but a nice touch.)

MS seem to be making quite a few inroads into mobiles/tablets lately. Taking on Android is a bloody big ask, but it looks like they're gearign up to give it a real go.

[jman]

Yup I nearly posted about that, but couldnt be arsed.. it does look nice, I really like the sliding keyboard thingy.  Windows RT on lower priced models or full version of Windows 8 on the higher priced models I believe.. although I've used Windows 8 and I found it to be a total pig if Im being honest - no start button   Of course, compared to IoS there are bugger all apps available so I dont expect it to be challenging the Ipad in terms of sales or anything, but if its cheap enough then I cant see why it wont sell for the reasons you mentioned.

[harv]

The one problem that the U won't have compared to the PS3, PS4, 360 and 720 is virtually no latency thanks to the U using Ni-Fi to communicate between the console and the GamePad. There's less than 1/60th of a second lag, which would be impossible using any of the Wi-Fi alternatives.

I can see both Sony and Microsoft 'borrowing' the idea, even cloning the GamePad the same way that Sony cloned the remote and nunchuck. But if they can't use a Ni-Fi equivalent then the lag would make it impractical, no matter what sort of power the consoles have under the hood.

[jman]

Or they could just create some kind of wired connection for direct streaming ? 

Rather that than an ugly bulky controller which you have to buy for that purpose only..

[Late]

"Ni-Fi"? Wahahahahaha.

[harv]

Or they could just create some kind of wired connection for direct streaming ? 

Rather that than an ugly bulky controller which you have to buy for that purpose only..

A wired connection is doomed to failure after a generation of wireless controllers...if Nintendo had a wired GamePad you would all be slagging it off like mental lol

What's going to be interesting next gen is going to see what Sony and Microsoft are going to do with IO and sound. Both the PS3 and 360 are partially crippled by having the CPU dealing with IO and sound whereas the Gamecube, Wii and now the Wii U have separate processors to deal with them, freeing up a fair amount of processing power. Developers for the 360 for example are forced to use at least 1 thread out of 6 for sound but it's quite common for developers to use 2 or even 3 threads for sound. That's anywhere between 16 and 50% of processing power dealing with sound

And, yes, Ni-Fi lololol

Edit: Woo hoo!!! Was in central London today for my ESA medical and got my first StreetPass for ages. Have been waiting for bloomin ages to get 1 piece to complete the Metroid puzzle...it's been driving me mental for ages!!! Also my first StreetPass encounter with someone from another country too, someone from Dakota in the States

Medical went really well, the guy I talked to was really nice and very helpful and must have had some sort of experience either firsthand or secondhand as he was very understanding. Told me that I had nothing to worry about and that my ESA will continue which has been a big weight off my mind tbh as I've heard all sorts of horror stories.