Kotaku 
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Denver, 12:25 PM
Sun Nov 22
17 posts in the last 24 hours
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08/11/09
08/11/09
08/10/09
Hopefully it's NOT X-COM, now, so I don't have to feel bad about ignoring it.
08/10/09
08/10/09
BTW that picture doesn't seem right at all. It looks like Mr. Levine just refused to sit in front of the white screen and turned his whole chair left, so after tireless of hours of begging and negotiating from the cameraman/camera woman to turn back in front of the screen, he/she gave up and took the picture as it is.
08/10/09
/end absurd butchering of the English language in favour of excitement...
That's right Americans, I put a "u" in favour, what you gonna do?
08/10/09
08/10/09
08/10/09
08/11/09
"To the citizens of the United States of America, in the light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.
Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy. Your new prime minister (The Right Honourable Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed. To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:
1. You should look up revocation in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up aluminium. Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'favour' and 'neighbour', skipping the letter 'U' is nothing more than laziness on your part. Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters. You will end your love affair with the letter 'Z' (pronounced 'zed' not 'zee') and the suffix ize will be replaced by the suffix ise. You will learn that the suffix 'burgh' is pronounced 'burra' e.g. Edinburgh. You are welcome to respell Pittsburgh as 'Pittsberg' if you can't cope with correct pronunciation.
Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up vocabulary. Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Look up interspersed. There will be no more 'bleeps' in the Jerry Springer show. If you're not old enough to cope with bad language then you shouldn't have chat shows. When you learn to develop your vocabulary then you won't have to use bad language as often.
2. There is no such thing as "US English". We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of -ize.
3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn't that hard. English accents are not limited to cockney,upper-class twit or Mancunian (Daphne in Frasier). You will also have to learn how to understand regional accents - Scottish dramas such as Taggart will no longer be broadcast with subtitles. While we're talking about regions, you must learn that there is no such place as Devonshire in England. The name of the county is Devon. If you persist in calling it Devonshire, all American States will become shires e.g. Texasshire, Floridashire, Louisianashire.
4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys. Hollywood will be required to cast English actors to play English characters. British sit-coms such as Men Behaving Badly or Red Dwarf will not be re-cast and watered down for a wishy-washy American audience who can't cope with the humour of occasional political incorrectness.
5. You should relearn your original national anthem, God Save The Queen but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through.
6. You should stop playing American football. There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American football is not a very good game. The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays American football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football. Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US Rugby sevens side by 2005. You should stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the 'World Series' for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.15% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders,your error is understandable. Instead of baseball, you will be allowed to play a girls' game called rounders, which is baseball without fancy team strip, oversized gloves, collector cards or hotdogs.
7. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry guns. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous in public than a vegetable peeler. Because we don't believe you are sensible enough to handle potentially dangerous items, you will require a permit if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.
8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 2nd will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called Indecisive Day.
9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean. All road intersections will be replaced with roundabouts. You will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time,you will go metric with immediate effect and conversion tables. Roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.
10. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips. Fries aren't even French, they are Belgian though 97.85% of you (including the guy who discovered fries while in Europe) are not aware of a country called Belgium. Those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut and fried in animal fat. The traditional accompaniment to chips is beer which should be served warm and flat. Waitresses will be trained to be more aggressive with customers.
11. As a sign of penance 5 grams of sea salt per cup will be added to all tea made within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, this quantity to be doubled for tea made within the city of Boston itself.
12. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all, it is lager. From November 1st only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer,and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. The substances formerly known as American Beer will henceforth be referred to as Near-Frozen Knat's Urine,with the exception of the product of the American Budweiser company whose product will be referred to as Weak Near-Frozen Knat's Urine. This will allow true Budweiser (as manufactured for the last 1000 years in Pilsen,Czech Republic) to be sold without risk of confusion.
13. From November 10th the UK will harmonise petrol (or Gasoline, as you will be permitted to keep calling it until April 1st 2005) prices with the former USA. The UK will harmonise its prices to those of the former USA and the Former USA will, in return, adopt UK petrol prices (roughly $6/US gallon- get used to it).
14. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun.
15. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy.
16. Tax collectors from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all revenues due (backdated to 1776).
Thank you for your co-operation and have a great day."
08/11/09
07/18/09
I want to be interested in what he has to say, but all I can do is imagine him dressed up like Serpico and screaming at a cat.
07/18/09
07/18/09
Incidentally I love this photo, which I believe is taken about 30 seconds from where I live in Chicago (he's got the Wrigley and Tribune Buildings behind him).
07/17/09
07/18/09
07/18/09
...and stealth action was delivered to the masses. Thief was an awesome game and a great contribution to gaming.
07/18/09
Metal Gear says hello.
07/18/09
07/17/09
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed bioshock quite a bit. But as an old system shock 2 fan, it didn't quite live up to its heritage, nor did it do anything new for gaming. It became a poster boy for a 'step forward' when it was little more than a fine game.
07/18/09
07/17/09
07/17/09
07/17/09
BioShock was hardly more than a shooter with few RPG elements mixed in, and a pretty good narrative / unique story and setting.
That's not ambitious, that's just an excellent FPS of the modern days.
Ambitious is something like The Last Guardian, Natal, Heavy Rain. Something that is innovative, untested and could go either way. BioShock was relying on many many old proven formulas.
07/17/09
07/17/09
07/17/09
07/17/09
Not yet anyway. :P
07/17/09
07/17/09
07/17/09
07/17/09
07/17/09
Its just a shame that people say the same kind of things about Fallout 3 which WASN'T ambitious OR innovative as Bethesda made no effort to leave the safety zone of first person action rpg hybrids and try and do something the hadn't done before.
07/18/09
I see what you're trying to do, and it's irrelevant. jandlecack brought up the perfectly valid point that Heavy Rain is a very ambitious project. You don't have to have played a game to know that. He's not judging that it's good or bad, which you would have to play to know that.
Heavy Rain could be the most ambitious game of all time, even by Peter Molyneux's standards, and suck balls, much like many of Molyneux's projects, where as Bioshock was not THAT ambitious, but was a great game by many people's standards. In the end of the day, Heavy Rain is more ambitious than Bioshock.
So, TL;DR: you fail, try again.
07/18/09
07/18/09
07/18/09
Prior to Bioshock's release, I watched many of the developer diaries. I can remember Ken Levine saying that "this game will drive a stake through the heart of all the FPS clichés". He talked about how every enemy would be unique, how every item in the game would be logical rather than a floating health pack, how the gameworld would be fully fleshed out with AI life that operates independently of the player. Makeshift weapons could be constructed by random objects laying around. Players were meant to be tasked with difficult moral choices in order to survive. Even the golden rule of FPS, that you can die and then must reload, was said to have been abolished.
All the ideas sounded great in theory. It's a shame that in execution much of the original features were scrapped in favour of a more streamlined game. It was still a great game, but it didn't do anything new.
07/18/09
I just don't consider it innovative. The ethical part was a simplified good/evil karma system seen in some RPG's placed in a slightly modified storyline.
07/18/09
07/17/09
As a side note, I'm not sure how I feel about the trend where an innovative team makes a successful initial entry in a series, then hands that series off (whether by choice or by force) to a new developer. Obsidian seems to do that fairly well, but sometimes it doesn't work out too well. I'm still on the fence about BioShock 2, which is a bad sign in and of itself because I loved the first one to death.
07/17/09
*runs screaming into the night, chased by torch wielding mob.*
07/17/09
07/18/09