Brad3000

I am probably going to look pretty foolish after having just defended Downpour a few comments back but I have to say, I found PT to be insanely boring and not scary. There were some great, creepy moments and disturbing images but walking back and forth in a hallway for dozens of minutes on end, tediously looking for some obscure trigger to make the game move on sapped any scares out of the set pieces. It was basically a gorgeous hidden object game with a baby crying on endless loop in the background. That radio broadcast was terrific the first time I heard it but by the time I'd heard it 30 times I was just so inured to it it retroactively erased any creeps it might have once given me.

You are wrong about Downpour Patrick. I genuinely feel like the anti-horror attitude and cynicism of the SF office (I love em, but come on) caused you to put on your hater-pants while you played that game. It is the best mainline Silent Hill since 2. And I came to this conclusion having played it right after replaying 2&3. The monster designs are bad and the combat is semi-broken, but the environments, puzzles, side quests and exploration are some of the best that the series has seen and the story is one of the more coherent stories in the whole series.

Edit: The final boss area does suck pretty bad though.

@john1912: You're not the only one who loved Downpour. I honestly think that most of the haters have never played it. It had some of the best environments and puzzles of any game in the series and the story was easily better than any of them since 2.

I am so sick of everyone talking about how Silent Hill has been shitty/dead for 10 years. It has certainly seen its ups and downs but Downpour was genuinely my favorite Silent Hill since 2. It had some mediocre monster designs and combat that felt almost broken at first, but the story, environments and puzzles were up there with the best of them. I honestly believe most of you going on about how bad it was never even played it, you just read a bunch of reviews and made some assumptions. Well the SH games have NEVER reviewed well - Silent Hill 2 got all 7s in EGM when it came out.

I am having a weird reaction to Road Not Taken. I don't really enjoy it at all - the puzzle mechanics feel unwieldy, arbitrary and overly difficult - and yet I am compelled to keep playing it. I don't know why. I play it for 20 minutes & think "nope, I don't really like this game" so I turn it off... Only to find myself wanting to play it again a few hours later.

I'm sorry Patrick but I feel like taking an executives very clear and specific words as a news story is perfectly reasonable and you might be the one posting unsubstantiated info. The Microsoft rebuttal was extremely vague in its wording and dodged any direct mention of turning retail Xbox Ones into dev kits. Even Chris Charla's twitter response is carefully worded "we have said that..." doesn't confirm that it is still the case, only that it has been said in the past. It's a very skillful dodge, intended to leave the impression that something was said when it wasn't.

SEGA 32X.

So does the bad guy have just one stumpy leg?

Seriously - how bad is that art? Looks like they hired a freshman from art-school who hasn't taken any life drawing classes yet.

I have no problem with the subscription content. I'm fine reupping, even though I don't give a shit about most of the games they've been playing. What I have a problem with is the almost total lack of quick looks in the non-sub area. There are so many games going by every week without even a mention. I am not a person who wants to watch whole games be played, or gets much out of watching a crappy old dos game get booted up for 20 minutes. I generally subscribe to support the site because I like quick looks, even though they are free. But given how little content is being generated on the QL side these days, I do occasionally wonder why I bother. It can't be for the 30 minutes of UPF I scan through every Friday can it?

I am only about 2 hours in so far (as I'm playing it with my wife and can't just sit down and barrel through it) but I am loving it. I was a little worried after the mixed reviews but I don't know why - Cage's games have always been love/hate affairs and I've usually been in the "love " column. Beyond is no different.

I don't know why the nonlinear storytelling is so bothersome to some people. I am actually finding the structure quite intriguing. Maybe it will wear on me after a few more hours, but so far I'm not having any problems keeping up or seeing how all the pieces fit together.

I do feel like interaction is even more limited than it was in Heavy Rain - which I thought had more gameplay than people gave it credit for - but so far it isn't hampering my fun.