I thought about doing an extensive post on why Giantbomb is the only videogame website worth a damn anymore, but I'm feeling pretty lazy this afternoon. Hence, I'll just mention one little thing on a mountain of things that bugs me about the quality of writing on some of these sites. Andy Chalk, writer for The Escapist, wrote this little gem yesterday "  Interplay President Eric Caen has ratcheted up the rhetoric a couple of notches by declaring that if push comes to shove, Interplay will just take its Fallout ball and go home."  
 
Aren't there any writers left who won't use three goddamned cliches in one sentence? Ratcheting implies only one direction, for instance, but most people will just use it to mean movement at all. Is the rhetoric permanently on the up? Can Pete Hines not diffuse the situation, only make snarky or defensive claims from this point on? Then there's the ol' chestnut "if push comes to shove." God, I love that people use this all the time. I mean, it's not like there's a million other alternatives to convey the same idea. How about "declaring that if fucked with" or "declaring 'oh no you di'int!" Lastly, the writer compares Interplay to a spoiled child. I'll admit, this last line made me chuckle a bit just because it's a funny mental image. What does a Fallout ball look like anyway? Still, its effect is diminished by the rest of the egregiously limp sentence containing it.  
 
The article is filled with other hackneyed bullshit, despite it's brevity  http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/107161-Interplay-Claims-It-Could-Take-Back-Fallout Look guys, I know it's just a dumb little article about videogames; hardly worth a mention. I just hate to see good writing space gone to waste. Shit, maybe I'm just jealous.