DeVore... you're in the well!

Kinetic^

Well folks, we've a special member of the Boards.ie community for you to ask questions to this week, DeVore! He's one of the founding members of Boards.ie but is also an avid gamer and has kindly agreed to answer questions for us.

Questions at the ready! Go!

Jumpy

Ninjas or Pirates?

Are you a PC Gamer or have you been converted to the evil that is Console gaming?

Have you ever ragequit?

Nevyn

Which is better Wow or LOTR?
First pc/console game ever played?
What Competions wins have you had?
What console have you not had but wished you did?
What is the worsest game you have played in the last 3 years?
Do you finish out games or get frustrated and leave them?
What game have did you miss playing and keep saying must get around to that one?

Jazzy

Do you still play Quake in any form?

Where would you have ranked yourself in Ireland at QW & Q3?

Best Irish player ever?

Favourite pr0 quake player in history?

Super Nes or Megadrive?

DeVore

Jumpy wrote: »

Ninjas or Pirates?

Are you a PC Gamer or have you been converted to the evil that is Console gaming?

Have you ever ragequit?

Ninjas! Ninjas would be all like, climbing up the side of the pirate ship all stealthy like and the pirates would be all "arrr, I'm getting stabbed in the head with a katana, arrr". So umm.. yeah. Ninjas.



I am an everything gamer. I play anything and everything. Cards, boards, figures, roleplaying, consoles, PC... anything that can be construed as a game, I will play it. Been playing games since I was 5, when I first started with Chess.


Have I ever ragequit? I dunno ... I've quit a few singleplayer games in utter disgust at the idiocy of the designers. I've left online games because there were too many muppets. I guess I probably have but I dont recall any specific occasions... I'm sure I have at some stage though

DeV.

cherryghost

Hows the pressure of being one of the founders of boards.ie holding up?

Still have enough time for the gaming or are you too busy with your life?

Whos the best mod evar?

DeVore

Which is better Wow or LOTR?

Hmmm, thats a hard one. I think I enjoy Lotr more because its more quest driven then WoW. There is less grinding in it... I think the PvP is better in Wow though... (I dont like PvP in my MMORPGs).


First pc/console game ever played?

First PC game was one I typed in from a ZX80 fanzine. How hardcore is that lol... First real game I remember being addicted to was Elite for the C64. I sucked the marrow from every bone of that game.

First console game was Tennis on my mate's Atari.


What Competions wins have you had?

I dont really enter competitions as such. I suppose the biggest would be being the manager of the Irish Quake Team when we won the 4 nations (and stuffed the UK by one point in the dying seconds...). That felt gooooood.
I've won quite a number of poker tournies too, and made some nice cash from them.

What console have you not had but wished you did?
The original Atari. I wanted it soooo bad but my father wouldnt buy it. He did buy me a Vic20 eventually (but not the tape deck... god bless him, he doesnt understand the first thing about computers).


What is the worst game you have played in the last 3 years?
I bought some budget p.o.s. game for the xbox a while ago and the menus looked like someone had programmed them in VB 1.0. It seriously looked just like an old amiga menu. It was some complicated to even start a new game that I couldnt manage it, even with the manual. It was AWFUL.

In terms of real games that I consider awful... Tiger Woods for the Wii was dissappointing because it was great on the Xbox. Full Auto was poor. Army of Two was niggly. Beyond that, I dont tend to buy crap games as I research them pretty well. Red Alert on the Xbox was a dissappointment too...



Do you finish out games or get frustrated and leave them?
I get bored or I get attracted by the next new game... its rare I finish a game completely....

What game have did you miss playing and keep saying must get around to that one?
I've been promising to get stuck into Fear again. Fallout 3 as well. Halo Wars. Batman. There's quite a list

DeVore

Jazzy's Q's:

Do you still play Quake in any form?

Urk?? Werent you at Lanparty2 this weekend? I was there playing Q3 (badly).

I dont play much Quake these days though, I dont like Counterstrike or MoH etc... I liked QW and I'm oldschool.



Where would you have ranked yourself in Ireland at QW & Q3?
Depends on the flavour... I was and am an awful dueler. I used to play DM pretty well and played with nD and CT. I was a very well respected defender in CTF and I would have been probably in the top 15 at Clan Arena.
In total, at QW I was good to very good, but not a patch on the likes of Koopa or Beast.

Best Irish player ever?
Again, depends on the flavour. Koopa Beast Bunny Reaper Zero Tomb... there were a lot of great players. I guess most people would pick Koopa or Beast. Hard to choose though... there would be another half dozen I could name as well...


Favourite pr0 quake player in history?
Reload from Australia, nice bloke and they had similar issues to us about recognition internationally and broadband penetration.

Super Nes or Megadrive?

Tough one, The SNES I think.

DeV.

Overheal

I see you have read Dune. Ever read the whole series? And do you know how to get Dune 2 to run on windows past the 3rd or 4th level?

DeVore

Hows the pressure of being one of the founders of boards.ie holding up?

I dont think of it as pressure at all... why would it be pressure? Some days its tough with all the rows that filter up to my inbox... but most days its pretty interesting. Never a dull moment and its certainly afforded me some interesting opportunities and had me do some pretty bonkers stuff.

Still have enough time for the gaming or are you too busy with your life?

I'm very busy with life at the moment... I've been shooting a drama series and getting my place sorted out and trying to get SSF up and running and rehearsing for a play with the Boards Drama Group so there isnt a lot of time for gaming but I took this weekend off to go to LanParty2 and also Forza 3 just hit and I'm going to belt into that this week.
I try and protect my gaming time... I've a few mates are are hardcore gamers too and we still all crash into my place and fire up Burnout Party or Tiger Woods regularly. We play Carcassonne to death along with Catan. Currently Brutal Legend and Deep Space are favourites...



Whos the best mod evar?

I have no idea. Thats an impossible question to answer.


Keep em coming, I'll drop in and out over the course of the week and reply when I can.

DeV.

Kinetic^

Do you think you'll get in to LANs again? (apart from the weekend just gone that is)

In Forza 3, do you spend more time on the track or in the paint shop?


Any plans on getting Gran Turismo 5? Did you have/play prologue? Thoughts on it?

Seeing as you've played quite a lot of Quake over the years, any tips for people who haven't played that much of it?

noodler

Anyhoo, are you a football man? Pes or Fifa?

Kinetic^

Noodler, please keep it relevant. If you have an issue with modding on this or other forums of the site then take it to help desk. Thanks.

DeVore

Do you think you'll get in to LANs again? (apart from the weekend just gone that is)

There are some lans I will go to but lans used to be about mates and while they still are for some, the idea that people wont go because the prizes arent big enough, kinda leaves me cold. I like GalwayLan because a bunch of people I know go to it and we have a bit of a mad fun time, half in the bar


In Forza 3, do you spend more time on the track or in the paint shop?

About 50/50 I would guess... I want to do some mad stuff with Forza3, time permitting...


Any plans on getting Gran Turismo 5? Did you have/play prologue? Thoughts on it?

Absolutely I'll be getting GT5. Loved Prologue, even if it was a big demo. I played the nads off it. Owned every car in it almost (I didnt grind for the F1 car because I was sick of grinding for cash).

Seeing as you've played quite a lot of Quake over the years, any tips for people who haven't played that much of it?

Learn the levels. Learn them backwards, literally... I used to run levels backwards so that if I was bugging out of a fight, I could fight as I retreated
Knowing the level is step 1. Practising is everything else.


DeV.

wes

Whats your fave Mario game?

DeVore

noodler wrote: »

Anyhoo, are you a football man? Pes or Fifa?

No. Football games are one of the few games I dont play at all. Most of my mates play Fifa 10 lately. I can sit and watch them and I am thinking about maybe giving it a shot but they are all ninjas at it and I dont like football much.

My father was a professional footballer (Bohs, Transport, QPR) and ran rings around me as a kid. One of my particular personality traits is that I dont like to lose. At all. Winning isnt everything, but losing is nothing.
I wasnt a well tempered young man and so if I couldn't win easily I wouldnt play. I played rugby and sprinting, both to high levels (Silver All-Ireland medal and represented Ireland at the 100M sprints) but football just became something I associated with failing
As an adult, I dont like the tribalism it engenders in otherwise perfectly reasonable people. I dont like the laddisness that pervades it and the whole culture around it.

By the way, as an admin I can see everything that is or was written on the site
Feel free to ask me anything you like, game related or not but lets keep Boards stuff out of it, thats what Feedback/Helpdesk is for.

DeV.

Overheal

So was it a hard decision to ban l33t sp34k all things considered? Were you a script kiddie ever?

Podge2k7

360 or PS3?

DS or PSP?

Forza 2 or Gran Turisimo 4?

Will you be getting Modern Warfare 2? If so on what platform?

What game did you spend the most time on?

L31mr0d

Would you download a car if you could?

What old game would you like to see remade?

If you had to kill one medium, which would it be, Video games or TV?

Who do you listen to when you need to know if a game is worth playing or not?

DeVore

wes wrote: »

Whats your fave Mario game?

The first one... I played it to death with my mate. His mother was separated from his father and she didnt give a monkeys what we did. We would stay up all night dialing into BBS's in Norway and running up enormous phonebills that his father had to pay (which made her happy). We must have wardialled half the country, dont ask me why Norway...

So that was a big Mario game for me.

I played Donkey Kong in the arcades religiously (btw, if you havent seen King of Kong yet... get it. Its *awesome* in a weird sort of way). I played the first game with both brothers in it (where you thump the floor from below to stun the tortoises?).

More recently I have been playing against my 7 year old nephew at Mario Cart... he's a little bollix with the shells. Its been fun to induct him into my world heheh...

DeV.

monkeyfudge

DeVore wrote: »

He did buy me a Vic20 eventually (but not the tape deck... god bless him, he doesnt understand the first thing about computers).

The very same thing happened to me with the Vic20.

Good thing it took cartridges, typing code out of C&VG was never fun.

DeVore

DeVore wrote: »

Jazzy's Q's:
in the top 15 at Clan Arena.
In total, at QW I was good to very good, but not a patch on the likes of Koopa or Beast.

You were easily top 5 in Clan Arena . I would have picked you over Koopa when it came to CA.


Do you ever think you could get back to your best in Clan Arena ?

DeVore

Overheal wrote: »

I see you have read Dune. Ever read the whole series? And do you know how to get Dune 2 to run on windows past the 3rd or 4th level?

I dont think Frank Herbert has finished writing them... has he?

No, I got bored of it very quickly. I didnt like the series at all. The film is a mess because 2 hours was cut out of a 4.5 hour "epic" to make it commercially viable.

No idea how to get Dune 2 to run under windows. I did REALLY like Dune the game... something very satisfying about nuking the bejaysis out of your opponents city.

DeV.

DeVore

Overheal wrote: »

So was it a hard decision to ban l33t sp34k all things considered? Were you a script kiddie ever?

No it was easy. L33t sp33k was cool for about 17 seconds. Its the online equivalent of having a Super Secret Friends Decoder Ring when you think about it.
I despise txtspeak too. Communicating through the written word is one of the most fun games I regularly play. Its weird when you think of it like that but really, crafting a great piece of writing that is both clear and incisive... thats tough and its a talent/skill... so its really a game.

I was never a script kiddie... they are scum. They hijacked the hacker ethos and are pygmies standing on the backs of giants who do real hacking. (look up the real meaning of that word).

I was a hacker of sorts... it wasnt about cracking boxes then it was about pokes and peeks and registers and BBS's. You could find yourself in a mainframe with no username and password having a chat with the sys admin. You respected their machines and they in turn let you look around or sometimes even gave you elevated priveleges. I knew guys, teenagers who were even sys admins on massive mainframes (roughly the processing power of an iPhone now!) inside big corporations, simply because the main sys admin trusted them. They were useful helpers rather then vandals.

My thing was social engineering. I can be persuasive when I want to be
I was for more interested in how the people behind the keyboard worked rather then the computers themselves. I hacked because I wanted to see and do more with computers, not because I wanted to know about them particularly. Certainly not because I wanted to destroy anything.

DeV.

Overheal

Well I am sorry to hear that yeah he died then his son made 10 odd books from leftover notes. more to follow too apparently.


More Questions:

Most memorable moment in gaming?

If you were a warhammer army which one would you be (fantasy/40k)

Have you ever been too scared to play a title (Doom/Half Life/Res Evil)

Your preferred Dice and Paper RPG?

Favorite TCG of the last 15 years?

DeVore

Podge2k7 Questions:

360 or PS3?

I had a 360 and a Ps3 in the same flat with Amp... we played the 360 a lot more. I just bought a Slim and I still love the graphics and the high defness of it all, i think its a better console ultimately but still... I play the 360 religiously... For online, 360 kicks the nads off the PS3 and Sony totally and utterly screwed the pooch by taking out backwards compatibility. That, was retarded.



DS or PSP?

I own both of these too. (I'm a nerd, ok!).
I find the PSP to be a better technical object, but again it gathers dust while my DS tends to travel with me.
Again, Sony's attempt to enforce itself on the world with dumb sh*t like UMD format, meant the world walked away from them. If they had made it an open platform with unix on it and homebrewable up the yazoo.... we wouldnt know what a "DS" was.



Forza 2 or Gran Turisimo 4?

Jesus you ask hard questions
Forza 2. I just played more of it and it had car painting in it which I, weirdly, fell in love with.
I dont drive so its quite strange that I have a fascination with car games.


Will you be getting Modern Warfare 2? If so on what platform?

No I wont. I dont like a lot of the modern FPS's ... they tend to be very "twitch-reaction" based and I prefer more cerebral stuff these days. Call me old.

Also they have bum-jumped their fan base with this lack of dedicated servers and patronised them with corporate bollocks as if they are idiots. I wouldnt buy it now for sure.


What game did you spend the most time on?

Quakeworld... no game like it.
After that it would be Descent, Elite, Eq, Wow, Lotro, Forza2 in no particular order.

DeV.

smooch71

Do you think the whole planet should boycott Modern Warfare 2 to keep Steffano from whining on about it?





(Just kidding Stef)

Jazzy

DeVore wrote: »

Learn the levels. Learn them backwards, literally... I used to run levels backwards so that if I was bugging out of a fight, I could fight as I retreated
Knowing the level is step 1. Practising is everything else.

must agree with that. its the same for a lot of games played online. you have to know exactly where you stand on the graphical representation of where you are or who you are. as said, the rest after is practice.

***

qw / q2 / q3 (cpma or osp) or q4. which is your favourite and why?

Streets of Rage 2 or Sonic 2?

If on a desert island with no internet connection but all the consoles to have ever existed, what 3 games would you take with you?

DeVore

L31mr0d's Questions:
Would you download a car if you could?

I downloaded the Audi R8 this week... but I dont think thats what you meant

I dont drive so I wouldnt download a car but I do think comparing torrenting a film with robbing a purse is silly and doesnt help the discussion about the future of media. As an aside, I used to play in Graham Linehan's home poker game.

What old game would you like to see remade?

Elite (and not that Frontier thing). Quakeworld... they have never had anything like as good a game since then. Not HL, not CS, not Q3... all are just sickly methadone replacements for the hardcore heroin of QW.

Actually I'd really like if they STOPPED remaking the same games over and over again and put money into new and fresh ideas like Braid.




If you had to kill one medium, which would it be, Video games or TV?

Boy... even if I didnt HAVE to, I'd kill TV. Doubletap to the chest and one to the head. I cant wait to see the old supply chain of media/journalism, where we sit and they decide what we get to choose from, die. Distributed publishing and consumer-patronised content is the next step. I hope to be involved in it too if possible. Big Brother? X-Factor? yeah, *boom*.. headshot...


Who do you listen to when you need to know if a game is worth playing or not?

www.penny-arcade.com They've never steered me wrong. Also boards.ie.... opinions here are honest, unbuyable (unlike IGN etc) and also from gamers. Thats pretty powerful and very important we retain that objectiveness.


DeV.

Jumpy

DeVore wrote: »

Quakeworld... no game like it.


DeV.

And sadly there never will be.

RIP QWTF.

Zillah

Do you enjoy Zero Punctuation?

Did you like the ending in Call of Duty 4?

Have you ever played Chrono Trigger, and if so, would you agree that it is an example of how great game design can make a game wonderful regardless of the technology behind it?

Have you ever been asked for an autograph because of your role here on boards?

Would you agree that there is something inherently wrong with sports based computer games, in the same way than an old person using a mobile phone looks wrong?