Well I already have plenty of dislike for them (while not being able to completely abandon them because of how much I love Star Wars...), but one thing keeps piling on top of another... dropping adventure games for not making enough, cutting back internal production in favor of mostly outsourcing (and less quality from internal stuff), that game quality slope they've been sliding down since about 1999 (in '02 they proclaimed great things about coming back, but have ... erm not exactly delivered ...), the cancelling of Sam & Max II, and now this... Lucasarts is following so many other big American publishers and chopping their Cube support. Hmm, Acclaim, Midway, Lucasarts... and ... less than equal ... support from EA, ActiVision, etc, etc... as I've said before, Japan may have boosted its Nintendo output from the N64 but America has cut it quite dramatically...
Rumor? True. But it's got too much sense behind it to be ignored.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/03/26/...92390.html
Quote:RUMOR #2: LucasArts is ceasing development for the GameCube.
Source: GameSpot's very own and ever-active forums.
The official story: "I have not heard anything of that nature." -- LucasArts' Heather Phillips.
What we heard: Spurred by lengthy forum feedback, we tracked this rumor to its original source, a recent GamesIndustry.biz piece. The article talked about the general decline of support for the 'Cube among third-party publishers outside of Japan. LucasArts was singled out because of the success of its Rogue Squadron series, one of the few successful adult-oriented, nonsports franchises for the Cube. However, a look at LucasArts' game roster does indeed show a dearth of GameCube titles in the works, even though upcoming PlayStation 2 and Xbox games like Mercenaries and Star Wars: Republic Commando are listed.
Bogus or not bogus?: Officially not bogus. The company line reveals that LucasArts still supports the GameCube. But what good is an official endorsement if there are no products in the pipeline?
... Is this a good time to mention that rumor of a Rogue Squadron collection for X-Box?
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_pag...b&aid=3179
Quote:ey publishers quietly scaling back GameCube support
Rob Fahey 15:47 24/03/2004
E3 likely to look a bit barren on the Cube third-party front
Third party support for Nintendo's GameCube continues to wane, with the console set to be bereft of a game based on the Euro 2004 football tournament while Lucasarts has confirmed that it has no more titles in the pipeline for the system.
Both Electronic Arts and Codemasters are working on multi-platform football games for Euro 2004 (EA has the official license, while Codies have the England team license), but neither company will be bringing its game to the Cube.
Although Electronic Arts says that its commitment to the Cube "remains strong" despite the decision not to do a Euro 2004 title, and that it will be releasing a number of games for the platform this year, Codemasters has joined the ranks of publishers with nothing in production for Nintendo's home system.
Also joining the swelling ranks of publishers without any Cube titles in their portfolios (which already includes the likes of Acclaim and Eidos) is Lucasarts, which currently has no titles for the platform on its internal schedules. This is more of a blow to Nintendo than the other publishers, since Lucasarts was responsible for the successful Star Wars: Rogue Leader games on the Cube.
Another publisher, Ubisoft, currently has no GameCube titles on its schedule but says that it will be announcing a number at E3 - and of course, a Cube version of Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow will appear at some point in future, as will a PS2 version.
While support from Japanese publishers remains strong, with Capcom and Namco both committed to the system while Square Enix and Konami are also producing a limited range of exclusive titles for it, western third-party support for the Cube is facing a serious decline this year.
This leaves the system relying largely on Nintendo's own portfolio, buoyed by titles from key Japanese publishers, and the company is expected to unveil a new range of software at E3 including sequels to Metroid Prime and Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker.
Capcom and Namco (Konami? Seems about as low-level of support as they gave the N64... and Square? One game so far.) vs Acclaim, Midway, Lucasarts, Eidos, and limited support from EA and others... The N64 isn't loooking quite as bad in comparison anymore... :(
Except with the N64 it was bad all the time and not just the last year/year-and-a-half.
Can't say that I'm surprised since LA games just don't sell very well on the 'cube, not even exclusives. They have to make money, you know, and GC owners only want to buy Nintendo games. It's our fault.
It's the fault of the third-parties for not making good games.
Good games or not (which is debatable), even the poorest-selling LA games sell much better on the X-Box than the GC.
And really, even superb third-party games sell like shit on the cube. Look at the poor sales of Prince of Persia and Beyond Good and Evil for evidence of that. Face it: GC owners only buy Nintendo games. No matter how good they are.
It's catch-22, I think. We don't buy very many third-party games because there aren't many good ones, and they're aren't many good ones because we don't buy many third-party games.
Both PoP and BGE got really terrific reviews so we can't claim ignorance. They were two of the most-talked-about games of the '03 holiday season, and no one bought 'em.
Consider me for example, I have a GCN and play all manner of 3rd party games, but it doesn't help that for the most part, the 3rd party games available on all systems end up being best either on XBox or PS2, not Cube. Either it lacks multiplayer or entire gameplay modes. Prince of Persia for example is undeniably best on XBox, only because it has one whole extra old game stored on it. That was enough to push me to that version.
Yes very true, and that brings me to my other theory which is that people who own just GCs are only interested in Nintendo games, and people that own more than one system and do like third-party games buy the superior versions, which are usually on the X-Box for one reason or another.
I have Beyond Good and Evil so it's not MY fault. :)
Yeah same here, but by "us" I mean GC owners in general.
Yeah.
*cough*LIKE ABF WHO STILL DOES NOT HAVE BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL!!!*cough*
Must have a cold or something.
i bought BG&E so it's not MY fault.
Then in conclusion, it's all ABF's fault.
And I mean really, when is it not?
It isn't NOT never his fault...I think.
No, I don't think you're not right.
Not not. Not not not noterfresd.
Dr. Doughknot was Powdered Toastman's nemesis.
Umm.......................................no.
IGNORANT FOOLS
Powdered Toastman doesn't always NOT need to not be NOT married sometimes!
remember that time when none of this was my fault?
Yeah, I remember that. Good times, it was.
Quote:*cough*LIKE ABF WHO STILL DOES NOT HAVE BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL!!!*cough*
Ahem. *someone* was not paying attention. I bought BG&E over two weeks ago! ... for PC, yeah, but I got it...
OB1 you know that so why didn't you say the truth? :(
Oh, I played it some more today. I'm over 5 hours in now. Got through the Nutripils Factory... but to get the jump thing for the boat I need 15 pearls and I have 9 and they say I should get the pearl detector but I have under 1000 money and need a whole lot...
...erm, anyway...
Rayman 3 runs just fine on my PC except for a very small number of areas that're easily ignored. BG&E? It's odd. I did turn off/down some options, but it still looks very nice... what's odd is that while many areas the framerate is fine in a few it's much lower. The city. The waterway through the city and the walking district are VERY poor framerates... while even the biggest caverns in the "dungeons" run at a much higher framerate and I barely ever notice problems in 'dungeons'... very odd...
Oh, the games themselves! Rayman 3 is a great game. It's like Rayman 2, but more... which was a great decision. I really, really loved Rayman 2 so seeing the third one be similar is great. It's still a linear, immensely fun, and not overly challenging 3d platformer... just with 'uniforms' that last a limited time and have special powers added to the mix. Great game! Get it if you liked Rayman 2... especially if you see it for $10 like I did!
As for BG&E... hmm. It's a very good game. Probably not quite the same 'constant fun' thing as Rayman, but it's supposed to be slower and more thoughtful so that isn't so bad. I like it. The game has fun action-adventuring and nice puzzles... sometimes challenging. The most interesting design decision is the death system. EXTREMELY generous. Maybe TOO generous. Oh, I like being respawned before the action I just did in the room I'm in (and with 4 health -- sometimes quite a gift!), but ... it reduces the difficulty level significantly...
Oh, and maybe I just need to get farther or do more stuff, but I wish they gave you more money. :D There are a lot of things I want to get... like more healing items AND those cool things...
Anyway, it's a very good game, but has some flaws, including simple combat, for instance, and how in the 'stealth' areas it's so simple -- run into next area/into convenient piping duct/etc and you're safe and they give up, and the story... the story's nice, but not quite as expansive and detailed/twisting as a game as this type could have used. Oh well, still fun, but it could have been better. But still, very good game.
Oh, but third party Nintendo support isn't MY fault. I have a lot of third-party titles for N64 and Cube... over half on each (third vs. published by Nintendo), for sure. :)
And I've supported Midway and Lucasarts and Acclaim... I have 1 LA, 2 Acclaim, and 2 Midway Cube titles and 2 LA and 5 Midway games for N64... of course my only EA game for either one is BAR, but that just shows that EA doesn't make a whole lot I'm interested in anymore. Eidos I don't care about. Same with ActiVision.
Quote:Ahem. *someone* was not paying attention. I bought BG&E over two weeks ago! ... for PC, yeah, but I got it...
Actually...it still is your fault. You bought in on the PC, that doesn't exactly help Nintendo. I, on the other hand, have it on the GC. BAM!
i too have it for gamecube...and it doesn't have those funky slowdown moments you describe when it's on GC...BAM!
What the fuck?? You bought the shitty PC version?? Oh jeez ABF, that is so sad. The PC version has the shittiest controls in the history of shitty controls. It doesn't even have gamepad support! Haha, I can't wait until you get to the final boss and punch your computer in frustration because you chose to get the version with the terrible controls.
Really dumb move, ABF. Insanely dumb. And your PC isn't even good enough to make it look better than the console versions. WHY DID YOU DO THAT??
YEAH YOU FUCKING DUMBASS, OH MY JESUS, I FUCKING HATE ABF
I know!
BTW did you get BG&E, lazy? You really need to get it if you don't have it yet. One of the best games of 2003.
I still haven't got to play BG&E yet since my brother has had the GC for sometime.
I'm at school and don't have a TV most of the time you know... that's why. It's also why last time I was at the store (when I got 8 games) 2 were PC and four were GBA...
Oh, despite that (i'd explain if you want again but it isn't really worth it) I beat XGRA last thursday... not exactly a hard game. I think it's probably the first futuristic racing game I've played where I NEVER HAD TO RACE ANY RACE TWICE. Yup, I beat the whole game by just racing each race once and moving on! Now I did not manage to unlock the best team but I got the other stuff... too bad. Great game, just lacking in challenge and with a VERY easy gameplay setup (league-based, so you can make up for mistakes later. Weak competition much of the time. Very easy point minimums to keep going -- so easy that as I said I never failed a league! And as I said I was never even killed once, I think... well ONCE, but that's it. You get no points and go to the next race. In some games that'd be bad but with this one...
Oh, I realized something when I was beating it. The final circuit was not super easy. I finished quite low positions several times (7 tracks long). But that didn't matter! It just lets you keep going and at the end I had enough to win, I guess...
Oh, then I played XG2. I realized againthat it wasn't super-super-hard-competition that makes that game so tough. It's that blasted 'only save every 4 tracks'... if that game had a save like XGRA I'd have beaten it years ago...
Oh, let's compare anyway. Both games have very similar numbers of races to complete. XG2 just makes completing them significantly harder. Especially the final circuit. Like the two before it it's 12 tracks... save after every 4... but what makes it so hard is this. It's a full 8 car field and you must win every race. Yup. Now it is POSSIBLE to win every race in this game, obviously, but still... it's a steep challenge. Last time I tried I did get to the final track once (those last four tracks of that challenge are my good friends now I've done those first three so many times)... and got third. In just about any racing game that'd be good enough to finish the game, but not here... you lose. Start again from track 9.
XGRA... that game is so fun, and the tracks are really well designed (I love the tracks... I felt quite the opposite about XG3, as I've made plain before...), but... man, I wish it had a "Hard" mode with actually challenging victory conditions (that would make the game a LOT harder, if you had to finish well to continue, even WITH save after every race (which I did not use since I never had to redo a race in the game I didn't bother -- and it autosaves after a circuit) it'd be so much harder... and if they tied progress, as well as unlocking cars and getting parts, to how well you acheive those team goals the game would be tough in parts, for sure! I wish they'd done that, the game is just too easy as it is... :(
Erm, back to the subject. You're right, BG&E doesn't support gamepads. Rayman III does, of course... it even supports the second analog stick as the look control! I think that's my first PC game that uses the second analog stick on my gamepad... :) As for BG&E, as I said a lot of the game, like the 'dungeons', don't have framerate issues; it's the overworld (sailing around in the hovercraft) and especially the city that have them. Oh the controls... it's mouse & keyboard. It works... not sure if gamepad would be better or not (obviously I can't try it) but it works... WSAD, and a bunch of other commands over there (uses Q, E, 2, 3, Shift, Spacebar, maybe another), and the mouse for look/action... the one real complaint I have is the menus. Some you navigate by spinning the mouse and some with the keyboard! It makes no sense... and when you have to use WSAD (or the arrow keys) to move in those menus you still need the mouse because Activate and Back are on the mouse buttons! Argh.
... but that's probably a stupid complaint because you CAN remap some of the controls (not the mouse axes) and have two buttons for each command so I probably could add a keyboard Activate command... I just haven't bothered. :D
I've played the PC version of BG&E and it's the equivalent of playing a FPS with Samba De Amigo maracas. It's the most unintuitive control setup I have ever used, and the difference between it and the console versions isn't even comparable. Why did you do that? I don't get it. You have a GC, and you could have easily gotten that version which would both look better and play a million times better than the PC version.
Nope my last post didn't explain it!
Well I think you ought to explain it to us.
Yeah, otherwise we won't understand your reasoning. You've to tell us these things, ABF. We aren't psychic!
Well, I am, but only with frogs.
First sentence of long post, morons!
Quote:I'm at school and don't have a TV most of the time you know... that's why. It's also why last time I was at the store (when I got 8 games) 2 were PC and four were GBA...
As for if I'd have gotten the PC or NGC version if it was summer... I don't know. I might have gotten the Cube one... but I don't know. I wouldn't say the controls in the PC version are awful, OB1... it'd be a tough decision. I might have ended up with the Cube one... but I'm not sure. :)
Quote:First sentence of long post, morons!
:p
That fact that you're not even sure if you'd get the cube version shows just how much of a stupid-face you are. The PC controls are insanely terrible. You're the first person I've heard not use the words "fucking shitty as hell" when describing the PC controls. You're not going to be able to beat the game.
And why not? The combat isn't exactly challenging, or complex... did you just skip that post a while back about my comments/criticisms of this game? I'd love to hear responses, but no one replied either time... not to mention how it took me three or four times saying "I got BG&E for the PC" before you listened... then when you DID hear that you skipped the rest of that post! Argh...
So here it is again. :)
In this thread what I said was this. Read past the first sentence this time!
Quote:Ahem. *someone* was not paying attention. I bought BG&E over two weeks ago! ... for PC, yeah, but I got it...
OB1 you know that so why didn't you say the truth?
Oh, I played it some more today. I'm over 5 hours in now. Got through the Nutripils Factory... but to get the jump thing for the boat I need 15 pearls and I have 9 and they say I should get the pearl detector but I have under 1000 money and need a whole lot...
...erm, anyway...
Rayman 3 runs just fine on my PC except for a very small number of areas that're easily ignored. BG&E? It's odd. I did turn off/down some options, but it still looks very nice... what's odd is that while many areas the framerate is fine in a few it's much lower. The city. The waterway through the city and the walking district are VERY poor framerates... while even the biggest caverns in the "dungeons" run at a much higher framerate and I barely ever notice problems in 'dungeons'... very odd...
Oh, the games themselves! Rayman 3 is a great game. It's like Rayman 2, but more... which was a great decision. I really, really loved Rayman 2 so seeing the third one be similar is great. It's still a linear, immensely fun, and not overly challenging 3d platformer... just with 'uniforms' that last a limited time and have special powers added to the mix. Great game! Get it if you liked Rayman 2... especially if you see it for $10 like I did!
As for BG&E... hmm. It's a very good game. Probably not quite the same 'constant fun' thing as Rayman, but it's supposed to be slower and more thoughtful so that isn't so bad. I like it. The game has fun action-adventuring and nice puzzles... sometimes challenging. The most interesting design decision is the death system. EXTREMELY generous. Maybe TOO generous. Oh, I like being respawned before the action I just did in the room I'm in (and with 4 health -- sometimes quite a gift!), but ... it reduces the difficulty level significantly...
Oh, and maybe I just need to get farther or do more stuff, but I wish they gave you more money. There are a lot of things I want to get... like more healing items AND those cool things...
Anyway, it's a very good game, but has some flaws, including simple combat, for instance, and how in the 'stealth' areas it's so simple -- run into next area/into convenient piping duct/etc and you're safe and they give up, and the story... the story's nice, but not quite as expansive and detailed/twisting as a game as this type could have used. Oh well, still fun, but it could have been better. But still, very good game.
Note -- haven't played in a few days now (okay like a week probably, but ... um, Baldur's Gate II takes up all the time I can throw at it and then some...), but I'm farther than that. Finished that factory. Now I need to somehow come up with the money to get into the slaughterhouse... I need a lot of money but have very little, don't know where it's going to come from, and got annoyed at the prospect and quit for that day. Haven't gotten back since but I will.
and this.
Quote:Erm, back to the subject. You're right, BG&E doesn't support gamepads. Rayman III does, of course... it even supports the second analog stick as the look control! I think that's my first PC game that uses the second analog stick on my gamepad... As for BG&E, as I said a lot of the game, like the 'dungeons', don't have framerate issues; it's the overworld (sailing around in the hovercraft) and especially the city that have them. Oh the controls... it's mouse & keyboard. It works... not sure if gamepad would be better or not (obviously I can't try it) but it works... WSAD, and a bunch of other commands over there (uses Q, E, 2, 3, Shift, Spacebar, maybe another), and the mouse for look/action... the one real complaint I have is the menus. Some you navigate by spinning the mouse and some with the keyboard! It makes no sense... and when you have to use WSAD (or the arrow keys) to move in those menus you still need the mouse because Activate and Back are on the mouse buttons! Argh.
... but that's probably a stupid complaint because you CAN remap some of the controls (not the mouse axes) and have two buttons for each command so I probably could add a keyboard Activate command... I just haven't bothered.
Oh, and does anyone ELSE here have Rayman 3?
I'm not even going to look at your criticisms since you're complaining about the crappy PC version.
Oh right of course the game is SO DIFFERENT that the basic gameplay has nothing in common?
No matter how good the gameplay is, if the controls suck then none of it is fun. Gameplay rests on how good the controls are.