Of course it's real. Anything that sets off even a very small positive response in our brain can become addictive. Learning something or finishing a task releases a small amount of endorphins, so even school can be addictive. Different people are more prone to becoming addicted to different things, so it's no surprise that a small percentage of gamers are also addicted to games. Although the stories of game addicts are sad, these are also the extremes and don't really qualify for a large investment of the public's time. All that does is negatively label games. Instead, we should be much more worried about the more prevalent addictions which affect a large portion of the population... television, bad eating habits, drugs. All of these things can be equally devastating as a gaming addiction, but affect a much larger portion of the population.
I also second Shadow of the Colossus. What more heart-breaking Valentine's Day scenario exists than unrequited love? Ignoring all the assumed plot happening outside of the actual game, the protagonist spends the entire storyline battling giant monsters to revive this princess, with each victory bringing him closer to his own defeat. And once he has accomplished his mission, he "dies", and shortly thereafter, she awakes, knowing nothing of what just happened. "Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all." Well, in this game, it is the latter.
>4400 comments, let me guess how many are fanboy comments.... >4400? So, does GS get more ad money because of this inflammatory story getting 90 pages of comments? That's the only reason I can come up with as to why GS would do this. Normally if you want to do a graphics comparison, you do a BENCHMARK. I'm sorry... but comparing screenshots across platforms is not a benchmark... there's just too many uncontrolled variables.
the great thing about dbz... u could probably make another flowchart like this in 10 minutes, and it would be completely different and still totally hilarious
@Natdaddy Mirror images are only good for comparisons when everything except one thing is controlled. For example, when comparing performance of cpus in otherwise the same computer, or switching video cards. When comparing two different consoles that are NOT using the exact same game (remember, these developers have to redo some of their work for the different architecture), we can't narrow down why they look different. PS3 fanboys would like to believe that because the ps3 is newer and the programmers haven't "figured it out" yet, that is why the games look worse. So, rather than playing the fanboy war, realshot suggests that we compare exclusives to each other, because in this case, the developer is only concentrating on one architecture. It's not a bad suggestion, and is only equally as biased as the mirror image comparison. As an aside, this is actually one of the only reasons for supporting console-exclusive games... the concentrated effort on one architecture would reduce "lazy" graphics as we see in the pictures above. "Lazy" is the wrong term... these programmers are under intense pressure to meet deadlines for co-releasing games across platforms, so I would say that graphical weaknesses are just a casualty of this process.
Graphical comparisons from different consoles are ridiculously stupid. Two different computing architectures from machines released a year apart means significant differences in terms of programming experience from the developers. It's like comparing games on a PC vs. a Mac. And in the end, do we actually decide on which console to buy based on minor differences in visuals? No, this article is just fanboy fodder, and we've all thrown ourselves on that grenade.
@CodingGenius "Is is wrong that whenever I see Mario Kart for any platform, I want to pop in the SNES version?" Yes. In fact, you are so wrong... it's right.
Is there a way to use the controller in an old school snes format? The wheel is sometimes extremely unresponsive, which is terrible for driving on cliff levels. Or am I doomed to using the nunchuk?
although SMK was the o.g., I'll have to give it up for the n64 being the best (but just slightly better than smk). The jump in course quality between the two puts the "awe" in "awesome". Koopa Beach? Royal Raceway? Rainbow Road? These are just a few of my favorite tracks. I will give props to SMK for the best controls ever. What do you expect from perfect simplicity?
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