Are you trying to say that Indian credit cards that are 3D-secure enabled don't work for IAP? This is absolutely untrue. I have both AMEX and Visa cards issued in India, and simultaneously use them for domestic and international online purchases, IAPs, and in-store. Never had a problem. Frankly, I've never heard this.
So, if you make a purchase on an Indian website, you get 3dsecure, but you don't get one on an International purchase? It used to work fine for me till a while back, but the newer RBI guidelines have specifically mentioned 2 factor auth against international transactions[0]. Since its just a guideline, it is not enforced as such equally by all banks.
But what value does the overhead of having the foundation and all its associated risks (such as those highlighted in the article) have over the current scenario, when many marks are happily going along day-to-day?
I guess the site should have been indicative, but I'd love to have had more details about the study. Even little things: he posts a photo of his food tray. How does he eat something like spaghetti and meatballs(?) (or whatever that was) using silverware while inclined -6 degrees from horizontal? What was the result of muscular atrophy? How did he use a laptop at that angle to play SC2?
This is a beautiful piece about a wonderful, wonderful game. As much as I love Super Metroid (which, despite her criticisms, I think is superior in gameplay and puzzle-platforming), she is spot-on about the ham-fisting of the story.
We should all write like this about video games from our past that made us feel something special.
> Samus’ motives in keeping the last metroid alive are unclear: are they purely utilitarian, or has she had a change of heart? The game’s rules, possibly mirroring Samus’ wishes, don’t allow for the metroid baby to be killed—bullets seem to barely miss or pass through the metroid. Of course, killing the metroid would doom Samus to a slow death deep underground, but this is not immediately apparent.
This almost makes Metroid II seem as good as Link's Awakening: The story that asks the player to destroy a whole world despite almost every character in the game telling you how terrible that would be for them. And why? Simply because the game mechanics reward you for it. Kill everything in the name of adventure...
Ditto. One of her complaints is about the doors in Super Metroid, and I can understand it. Thinking back, I think they may have been going for 'someone's already been here' (which is done masterfully in Uru). But it's so relentless, that it never sets in. Eventually you just gotta blame the goofy space pirates. (In fact, I think this is lampshaded in Metroid Double Prime where the pirate logs make note of how inconvenient the door mechanisms are.)
But especially in the two Primes, it feels contrived. I absolutely adored the two games, but there's a feeling the whole thing is a setup for the character. Too many special circumstances in the ice or rock that somehow awaited Samus showing up at just the right time with the right weapon. The earlier games don't have that, I think, and I can see how Super Metroid starts the trend.
I've long suspected that Super Metroid is my favorite--and I think this logic applies for many other video game series--because it's not only the first one that I played, but the first one that I beat. I find myself nodding along to every criticism of the game, but there is just something special about that first play through. That incredible sense of simultaneous delight, fear, wonder, confusion, and suspense is still a really vivid memory for me two decades later.
Believe it or not, I have never played any of the Primes.
Totally understood. I feel that way about the first Prime: I'm slightly embarrassed to say it was the first Metroid game I really played (the original Metroid was just too much for little kid me). But I played it to full completion; it's possibly one of the first things I ever really finished in my life up to that point. I played MP at a friend's house, a couple hours at a time, utterly losing myself in the graphical beauty of the game (dude you can see her gun hand's gesture in X-ray mode!) and the calm exploration music. It was soothing, and I appreciated it a lot. The friend was an older disabled gentleman who kept his home open for the neighborhood kids to have a safe place to hang out; I knew him from church and wasn't a part of any real social group, but he thought I might enjoy it. And so I rode my bike over and played and left in the cool evening. Often he'd be tidying up his Animal Crossing dailies before or after.
I wish I was as eloquent as the OP in describing the experience, since I would love to have that feeling again. Oh well.
The circumstances of a good game well played can burn in and amplify the experience. So I consider myself lucky, since quite few games feel that much deeper given the state of my life while playing them. I can see and agree with all sorts of flaws in the games, but they'll remain special simply because at the time, they were.
> I can see and agree with all sorts of flaws in the games, but they'll remain special simply because at the time, they were.
I don't really have much to add to that, except that this is a really succinct way of describing, I think, what you, the author, and I are trying to say.
I don't own a Wii U and I don't unfortunately have any plans to get one. That sale is popping up all over the Internet though, so I guess this is the first time it's been offered on the Wii U as a bundle?
Metroid Prime Trilogy had a limited run and this is the first time it's been offered digitally. It's also one of the first three Wii games released on the Wii U that don't require you to go into Wii Mode first to play. (basically, booting up a virtual Wii inside of which you launch your game)
I do wonder if the doors—at least at first—were more supposed to be metaphor than prop; given that you have to blast them open, perhaps they were just an indication of passibility to the player, where Samus would just see rubble or rock walls or rust-frozen mechanisms needed to be blast-cleaned, etc. One visual symbol standing in for many scenarios.
The original Metroid needed them for expensive loading transitions between areas, as palettes and the scroll buffer were swapped out. Interestingly, they also serve that purpose in Prime... If you've ever shot a door and had it change color to show it unlatched but refuse to open for several seconds, that's the console stalling on loading the area behind the door.
Have you tried Zepto[1]? It's ~9kb gzipped, and is compatible with a lot of jQuery's API. I've found that for a lot of the stuff I used jQuery for, it's mostly a drop-in replacement.
Crotch bursting (which is the hilarious technical term for it) is more common than you'd expect. Major reasons are over-washing, but a bad fit, stretch fabric, too-thin fabric, and poor stitching are the major reasons for failure.
If you are finding that your jeans are always bursting at the crotch, identify first if it's happening at a seam. If so, buy a different brand. If it's not, wash your jeans less.
If you must wash them, do it inside out, and always let them air dry. Don't use bleach, or any detergent with oxidizing chemicals (this is more common than you'd think). Ideally you should't even wash them in a machine. I think the absurd movement to wear jeans for months without washing is unacceptable if you ever plan to wear them outside of sitting down at a coffee shop, but hand washing them is much gentler and will have your jeans last for years. I own more than one pair of jeans that are years old, and have seen hundreds of days of use without any damage.
