wow, one of his best. The whole regenerating health really gets me in most modern shooters. It takes all the tension away? Simply wait behind cover for a few seconds and you're good to go! Whatever happened to heart racing tension, hoping upon hope to find the next health kit, knowing that just one more shot from the enemy would be enough to finish me off.

Dialects gets created and die out all the time. It's just a matter of time and geographic location of a population. And if the isolation is long and severe enough you get new language. While it's interesting to document the different dialects and languages being spoken all throughout the world, trying to save them would be a tad too much in my opinion.

It's like trying to save leaves from decomposing. They get regenerated every summer. The old ones need to die out to give room for the new ones.

>> ^Sarzy:

As someone whose genes pretty much guarantee I will eventually start balding, this intrigues me.


This technique doesn't sound very useful for you due not only to the difficulties they mention, but also because it wouldn't fix the underlying problem, which is that chemical signalling in your scalp is telling your hair cells to atrophy. What you'll probably need to do is wait for a drug that inhibits your natural levels of hormones such as Prostaglandin D2 (or it's receptor) in the scalp. This hormone (and a derivitive) seems to be the one that lead to baldness, so hopefully help is around the corner.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120321143013.htm

Please don't use regenerating health... please don't use regenerating health...

Religion is poison, and unfortunately a large part of the church has become a mere religion, but that isn't what Christianity was in the beginning. Christianity is about a man who claimed to be God, who came to Earth to take away the sin of the world. A man who proved it when He rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven to sit at the right hand of power. What Christianity is about is having a personal and experiential relationship with the Creator of the Universe, being forgiven for your sins, and being adopted into the family of God as a son. It is about having the right to call God your Father. It is about unity, and family. It is about love. When you become a Christian, you become a new creature in Christ, being indwelled by the Holy Spirit, and transformed and regenerated.

Enlightenment through spirituality is attempting to make the imperfect perfect. It is trying to take a shattered piece of glass and glue it back together. It is trying to fix an undefined problem with an unknown solution. Jesus told us what the problem is, which is sin. That we've all done wrong things and transgressed Gods laws, and we need to repent of those things and seek Gods forgiveness. That we are living in a fallen world with a corrupt nature due to this and that sickness and death was not always the true order of things.

Jesus Christ is the only one to solve the problem. He defeated death on the cross and made the way for every person to receive eternal life. The solution is not to try to repair a broken spirit and heart, it is to receive a new spirit and heart from the only perfect man who ever lived. To be enlightened you must be born again. You can only be born again by the Spirit of God who comes to dwell within you. You need to be washed clean, so draw near to the fountain of living water. Pray to Jesus and ask for forgiveness of sins, and to be your Lord and Savior, and you will never thirst again.

>> ^Auger8:

>> ^xxovercastxx:
>> ^shinyblurry:
I do have definitive evidence; If you repented of your sin and asked Jesus to come into your life, He would do it.
This is a perfect example of your unwillingness to accept facts that do not support your preconceptions. There are thousands, if not millions of us who have done just this and received nothing.
Your hypothesis has been proven wrong over and over again and you still preach it as the truth. This suggests that you are prideful and unwilling to accept your mistakes. This is not the only time you have been demonstrably wrong and won't acknowledge it.
If you have nothing to teach and are unwilling to learn, why would anyone want to talk with you?


Are you saying there are no insincere converts? There are also plenty of people who come to Christ and fall away later because their faith had no foundation in reality. It's the churches fault mainly, which has preached an "easy believism" to gain converts without showing them that foundation, which is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Neither are you a Christian unless you are born again and regenerated by the Spirit of God. If that didn't happen, there was a lack of committment or understanding in there somewhere.

Perhaps because they live underwater and we don't. Plenty of animals have abilities that we do not. An eagle can see for miles around them. A shark can regenerate its teeth. Bats have sonar which helps them navigate in the dark. What separates us is that we are made in Gods image. Meaning, we are imbued with certain attributes which resemble Gods divine nature. For instance, man, like God, has an intelligence, a mind. We each have a personality as God does. We are creative beings, and use language. We are also moral beings. The initial perfection was a spiritual perfection, but since the fall we have been corrupted by sin. When we turn from our sins and repent, we are new creatures, and transformed into the image of Christ. This is how we are reconciled back to God, and how we attain again to the initial perfection of creation.

That's a most excellent answer and I agree with every word of it. Faith is a gift from God, and even the act of turning towards Christ is by the work of the Holy Spirit. I was urged by the Spirit to say what I did, so I assumed it was for a reason. I feel God blessed it, and that it was His will. You're right that it would be impossible for someone give their lives in totality without being reborn, however, I put that out there that that is what God wants, and even the intention of doing it is useful to God. He could use that and support it and make sure it happens. People do drop to their knees and give their lives to God every day, and whether it is from going to church or seeing a message like mine, whatever it is, I know it is all by the grace of the Spirit. So we're in full agreement, which is odd if you're not a Christian. How did that happen?

>> ^dr_izzybizzy:
It seems to me that one of the basic tenets of orthodox Christianity is the belief that humans are incapable of being totally committed to the service of God, of worshiping God in Spirit and in Truth, or even of having faith at all prior to their regeneration and new life in Christ. To suggest that it is necessary (and therefore possible) for us to make a total submission of our will to the will of God before we invite Christ to enter our life and take over is to put the cart before the horse, for the very reason we need Christ to "take over" our lives is the fact that we are incapable of obedience (willing submission) on our own. If we could do it before receiving divine assistance, we could do it apart from divine assistance, which renders Christ unnecessary, which no orthodox Christian would ever affirm. In fact, we cannot even be willing to submit (which, to be sure, is different from willing submission) prior to the reception of grace. To think otherwise is to fall into the heretical trap of Pelagianism, which has been condemned among orthodox Christians since the 4th century.
And so, Augustine argues that if, as the Bible says, God creates in the believer a new heart to replace their heart of stone, then we cannot assume "without absurdity" that "there previously existed in any man the merit of a good will, to entitle him to the removal of his stony heart, when all the while this very heart of stone signifies nothing else than a will of the hardest kind and such as is absolutely inflexible against God. For where a good will precedes, there is, of course, no longer a heart of stone."
...which is why Anselm prays "Teach me to seek you, and reveal yourself to me, when I seek you, for I cannot seek you, except you teach me, nor find you, except you reveal yourself."
...and Aquinas reasons "a man cannot turn to God except through God turning him to himself."
...and Luther writes a whole treatise on "The Bondage of the Will"
And, to be sure, they all consider themselves to be drawing logical conclusions from what they read in the Bible, quoting passages like:
"No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him" (John 6:44)
"You did not choose me, I chose you" (John 15:16)
"Without me you can do nothing" (John 15:5)
"Turn thou us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned." (Lamentations 5:8)
"By grace you have been saved, through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God--not because of works, lest any man should boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9)
So, in sum, orthodox Christians have, for at least 1500 years or so, agreed that there is nothing humans can do on their own to prepare themselves (i.e. be worthy of) the reception of grace(i.e. to have a new life in Christ in which he "takes over") -which is precisely why Christians have no reason to boast. To say we must do something first, whether it be "to believe" or "have faith" or "be willing to obey," before we can receive grace (a life in Christ) is to treat grace as a reward, which no orthodox Christian would maintain. I'm sorry to say, what you have asked of us is not only impossible, it appears to be unchristian (which, to be fair, I'm sure was not your intention).
I applaud your desire to share your faith. I encourage you to learn more about it.
>> ^shinyblurry:
The reason I said that is because God requires a total commitment. God is looking for people who will worship Him in Spirit and in truth. So, if you're half-hearted about it that isn't going to get you anywhere. God will provide the evidence that He is there, but you have to be willing to give your life to God first.
Hebrews 11:6
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
>> ^dr_izzybizzy:
So...doing X will lead to paradise, not doing X will lead to endless misery?
For curiosity's sake, why shouldn't I ask Jesus to take control of my life if I'm not ready (i.e. what would be the negative consequence of doing so)?
>> ^shinyblurry:
There is only one way to eternal life, and that is through Jesus Christ. If you want to know Him, find a quiet place and pray that He enter your life, and let Him take it over. Don't make the request unless you are willing to turn yourself, and your life completely over to God. God bless.
John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
>> ^vaire2ube:
imagine the double rainbow!!
he says we should accept our mortality, but stopping aging and melding minds with technology to live forever is kinda my hope. I enjoy watching this all unfold and id like to continue to.

It seems to me that one of the basic tenets of orthodox Christianity is the belief that humans are incapable of being totally committed to the service of God, of worshiping God in Spirit and in Truth, or even of having faith at all prior to their regeneration and new life in Christ. To suggest that it is necessary (and therefore possible) for us to make a total submission of our will to the will of God before we invite Christ to enter our life and take over is to put the cart before the horse, for the very reason we need Christ to "take over" our lives is the fact that we are incapable of obedience (willing submission) on our own. If we could do it before receiving divine assistance, we could do it apart from divine assistance, which renders Christ unnecessary, which no orthodox Christian would ever affirm. In fact, we cannot even be willing to submit (which, to be sure, is different from willing submission) prior to the reception of grace. To think otherwise is to fall into the heretical trap of Pelagianism, which has been condemned among orthodox Christians since the 4th century.

And so, Augustine argues that if, as the Bible says, God creates in the believer a new heart to replace their heart of stone, then we cannot assume "without absurdity" that "there previously existed in any man the merit of a good will, to entitle him to the removal of his stony heart, when all the while this very heart of stone signifies nothing else than a will of the hardest kind and such as is absolutely inflexible against God. For where a good will precedes, there is, of course, no longer a heart of stone."

...which is why Anselm prays "Teach me to seek you, and reveal yourself to me, when I seek you, for I cannot seek you, except you teach me, nor find you, except you reveal yourself."

...and Aquinas reasons "a man cannot turn to God except through God turning him to himself."

...and Luther writes a whole treatise on "The Bondage of the Will"

And, to be sure, they all consider themselves to be drawing logical conclusions from what they read in the Bible, quoting passages like:
"No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him" (John 6:44)
"You did not choose me, I chose you" (John 15:16)
"Without me you can do nothing" (John 15:5)
"Turn thou us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned." (Lamentations 5:8)
"By grace you have been saved, through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God--not because of works, lest any man should boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9)


So, in sum, orthodox Christians have, for at least 1500 years or so, agreed that there is nothing humans can do on their own to prepare themselves (i.e. be worthy of) the reception of grace(i.e. to have a new life in Christ in which he "takes over") -which is precisely why Christians have no reason to boast. To say we must do something first, whether it be "to believe" or "have faith" or "be willing to obey," before we can receive grace (a life in Christ) is to treat grace as a reward, which no orthodox Christian would maintain. I'm sorry to say, what you have asked of us is not only impossible, it appears to be unchristian (which, to be fair, I'm sure was not your intention).

I applaud your desire to share your faith. I encourage you to learn more about it.


>> ^shinyblurry:

The reason I said that is because God requires a total commitment. God is looking for people who will worship Him in Spirit and in truth. So, if you're half-hearted about it that isn't going to get you anywhere. God will provide the evidence that He is there, but you have to be willing to give your life to God first.
Hebrews 11:6
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
>> ^dr_izzybizzy:
So...doing X will lead to paradise, not doing X will lead to endless misery?
For curiosity's sake, why shouldn't I ask Jesus to take control of my life if I'm not ready (i.e. what would be the negative consequence of doing so)?
>> ^shinyblurry:
There is only one way to eternal life, and that is through Jesus Christ. If you want to know Him, find a quiet place and pray that He enter your life, and let Him take it over. Don't make the request unless you are willing to turn yourself, and your life completely over to God. God bless.
John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
>> ^vaire2ube:
imagine the double rainbow!!
he says we should accept our mortality, but stopping aging and melding minds with technology to live forever is kinda my hope. I enjoy watching this all unfold and id like to continue to.

@NetRunner: I personally can't stand the new style of shooter with regenerating health, cover systems, and two-weapon loadouts. So news of a shooter (a CONSOLE shooter, at that) that returns the old-style mechanics is pretty exciting to me.

I could go on exhaustively about why I feel that way, but I won't.

I don't always agree with Yahtzee, but I've watched enough of his videos to know which of the complaints he makes about games will drive me up the wall, which ones I won't care about, etc.

>> ^NetRunner:

I'm starting to feel like Yahtzee is a bad reviewer of games. I haven't played Resistance 3 yet, but all I got from this was that he loves it because its mechanics are old-fashioned.
Maybe all of us gamers are starting to get a bit long in the tooth, but I've not become particularly nostalgic for "the good old days" of gaming. I mean, do most gamers spend a lot of time wishing old game mechanics would come back from the dead? I've played enough remakes of "classic" games I loved to realize that most of them don't hold up in comparison to modern games. Gaming has largely moved on.
I for one love the addition of cover and regenerating health to shooters, and don't really like the idea of going back to health pickups and strafing in and out of cover.
Oh, and maybe I just don't play a lot of shooters, but are any of the top-tier series really still all/mostly brown? The only ones I know of are Gears and Resistance...in their first iteration only. From hearing Yahtzee, you'd think this was some mistake developers are still making, but I can't recall the last game I played that didn't make use of a healthy portion of the color wheel.


I'd like to experience some of the good old days of shooters again not because games were better back then, much of the design has moved on, but now days there is just a flood of games all using the same mechanics as each other with no variety or substance.

Resistance 3 was a breath of fresh air, old school style gameplay mixed with modern mechanics. The health system, however was imbalanced. They could've done more to make it work better, but overall though, i really enjoyed Resistance dispite a few questionable design decisions. The fact that you can carry all the weapons at once nearly made me tear up.

DNF is a good example of totally cocking up the "old school" approach by implementing the WRONG modern features. Firstly the regenerating health. This right away causes a problem; you can regenerate your health, so for some challenge we need to make the enemies do a lot more damage to keep the player from abusing the system. What happens? You are almost always sitting back behind cover while waiting for your health to regen before firing again. That's not Duke Nukem! I heard other ideas were that you needed to kill an enemy to regain health, THAT is Duke.
Then there's the 2 weapon limit. George Broussard in all his game design incompetence said they couldn't find a way to implement a weapon wheel effectively on consoles... Resistance 3 seemed to do it fine. So did HL2 years back. Moron.

Regen health and 2 weapon limit can and do work for some games like Call of Duty, Halo and Gears of War, but FFS let's try something a little different once in a while. But some developers use them as a development crutch; less testing, balancing and design required. Less effort in other words. Or they use it to make the game less complex, which is a bad thing. Ninja Gaiden is a good example. It seems to be going down a path of less and less substance, there's only the combat. This is terrible. The original game's store, upgrades, potions, rewards for exploration, non-linear main world all helped to pace the game better rather than an exhausting trudge through constant unrelenting combat seen in Ninja Gaiden 2 and from the sounds, even more so for the third game.

>> ^Asmo:

I think Yahzee isn't technically a reviewer of games, he's oped'ing about games with humour.

I think that's right. Even if he was a reviewer, I already know that for the most part he hates games I like, and likes games I couldn't care less about (Hi there Driver: San Francisco!).

>> ^Asmo:
Winning a fight with a few % health left against all odds is far more satisfying than hunkering down behind a wall, regen'ing, popping out to shoot, regen'ing etc.

I guess this is why I'm not a big shooter fan. Narrowly winning a fight usually makes me think I've made a mistake, suck generally, or just need to turn the difficulty down a notch.

Most times these days you're only really in danger in boss battles, and usually there's some trick to the encounter you need to figure out, and once figured out it's not that hard to execute it.

>> ^Asmo:
Dead Island doesn't have regenerating health or a cover system, which really do help ramp up the 'survival horror' factor.


I bet ammo's hard to find too? Yeah, for a survival horror game, it seems like keeping you feeling desperate and overmatched is the name of the game. Regenning health has no place in a game like that.

At least one of the reviews of Resistance 3 said that it plays a lot more like a survival horror game than the previous ones did. Now if that's what they were going for, that seems like a good reason to do away with the regenerating health, but if they just did it to amp up the difficulty it seems like they could've done something different.

Also, it belatedly occurs to me that Resistance always had health packs. You had 4 little bubbles on your health bar. If you partially drained the bubble, not taking damage for a few seconds would make the bubble refill, but if you completely emptied it, it stayed lost. Health packs would refill empty bubbles. I wonder if they're still using the same system, or if there's no more regeneration.

Based on the story reasons for why your health regenerated in the first 2 games, the new protagonist should have regenerating health too...

>> ^ChaosEngine:

I don't think yahtzee dislikes the idea of cover, just the stupid, context-sensitive, stuck-to-wall style of cover.
And as for regenerating health, it has a number of problems. First, it rewards not playing the game. Pinned down? Instead of making a tactical decision about the risk of a fraught run to get that health pack, you're waiting. It robs the game of tension.
And the devs hate this. So how do they counter? With endlessly respawning enemies until you reach a certain point. So you frequently end up making a frantic dash to what you hope is the next checkpoint instead of engaging the enemies.


I like the *cough* "stupid" context-sensitive style of cover. Rather than strafing back and forth, I just pull the left trigger. Instead of stupidly exposing my entire profile to fire, I only expose part of it.

Health packs don't result in me making a tactical decision to grab them during firefights. It makes me backtrack and search for health packs I passed by because I didn't need them at the time, but now need after my last firefight.

Also, the kind of tension you're talking about isn't about health packs, it's about death being some sort of big deal. Most games these days dying doesn't rewind you much, and they almost never just boot you back to the main menu and tell you to restore from your last save.

I think that's a good thing, because I find big death penalties to be a really lazy way for developers to try to get you emotionally involved in the gameplay. It can also easily backfire, and frustrate people to the point where they stop having fun, and decide to never buy another game in that series again.

>> ^NetRunner:

I'm starting to feel like Yahtzee is a bad reviewer of games. I haven't played Resistance 3 yet, but all I got from this was that he loves it because its mechanics are old-fashioned.
Maybe all of us gamers are starting to get a bit long in the tooth, but I've not become particularly nostalgic for "the good old days" of gaming. I mean, do most gamers spend a lot of time wishing old game mechanics would come back from the dead? I've played enough remakes of "classic" games I loved to realize that most of them don't hold up in comparison to modern games. Gaming has largely moved on.
I for one love the addition of cover and regenerating health to shooters, and don't really like the idea of going back to health pickups and strafing in and out of cover.
Oh, and maybe I just don't play a lot of shooters, but are any of the top-tier series really still all/mostly brown? The only ones I know of are Gears and Resistance...in their first iteration only. From hearing Yahtzee, you'd think this was some mistake developers are still making, but I can't recall the last game I played that didn't make use of a healthy portion of the color wheel.


I think Yahzee isn't technically a reviewer of games, he's oped'ing about games with humour. His reviews aren't particularly objective but they never claim to be.

And yeah, a lot of us do spend time wishing for old mechanics to come back. Winning a fight with a few % health left against all odds is far more satisfying than hunkering down behind a wall, regen'ing, popping out to shoot, regen'ing etc. Leaning around corners (rather than sticking to the wall and suddenly getting a huge panoramic as far as the camera can scan) is another example. No, we don't generally want verbatim copies of old games to come back, but some of the meatier bits would be nice.

I'd humbly submit that older games don't hold up against modern games because they aren't supposed to. That doesn't mean older game concepts don't hold up. eg. Dead Island doesn't have regenerating health or a cover system, which really do help ramp up the 'survival horror' factor.