Humanity

I think I prefer the theme park treatment with beautifully hand crafted areas rather than the organic worlds of Skyrim and such with lengthy stretches of forests or mountains that contain nothing of interest. Developers have been leaning so heavily into the open worlds lately that it seems like they forgot the power of a well scripted, tight gameplay experience. Dragon Age really blends the two really well in my opinion. Within the "zones" you still get the feeling of an open world without any of the needless fluff. You get just enough forest or just enough desert to get the feeling for that particular location without it feeling pointless. There have been plenty of open world games where I would stop and wonder who spent the time to model this hill, or this valley, in which nothing is happening. It always felt like a waste of time and a hindrance to my travels.

@bargainben: Well as much as they touted the tactical camera, it's pretty safe to say that it's not very good. I guess because they didn't want to figure out how to make interiors look proper when the camera zooms out high up and we're stuck in this super awkward zoomed in overhead. I honestly find the tactical camera so cumbersome to use that it's one of the main reasons why I don't set up combos. Everything about it is unwieldy. From the way you select enemies, to the way your characters will often not execute on the commands you've queued up to small annoyances like the camera panning to the character you've selected forcing you to pan back up to the single enemy you're stacking effects on.

For a long time I couldn't figure out why it feels so different from Origins and I guess it's because it doesn't feel like you're in control of a "team" but rather it's like you're the leader of a squad. The focused down camera on a single playable character really eliminates the advantage of tactical planning. I've just recently realized that I have no idea how any of the attacks of my other characters look like, or even how most enemies look like in detail because I'm always far away from the action, shooting spells, with the camera almost clipping into my shoulder.

I really love the game. I think the idea of smaller contained zones as opposed to one big open world map is brilliant and it lets the game give each individual area it's own unique style as well as help cut out the fat. Also I understand why they're still appealing more to the console market instead of making a full out Origins 2.0 for the PC crowd. That said they really need to decide on one style and go with it. Right now it feels like the game is 80% console specific with 20% holdover pc mechanics getting sort of in the way. The tactical camera is half baked and the combat is kind of trying to be tactical while mainly being an action game. I think they should have just gone full on with the combat and made it more dynamic. When you freeze an enemy the game should automatically go into slow mo' for a second and a context sensitive prompt should pop up if one of your nearby characters can execute a combo. So you'd freeze a guy, slow mo, a prompt appears over their head with Shield Bash and Cassandras icon above it, you press X and time resumes with Cassandras shield bashing the dood. If more than one combo is possible it would show more icons with a particular skill for each party member that isn't on cooldown in a neat cross pattern.

I know that sounds really dumbed down and action oriented but if you're going to keep the game in an over the shoulder perspective that would make it work a lot better. Kinda rambling now though, so apologies. Bioware you can steal this idea I give you full permission!

I don't know, it has been in development for a while. Apart from it being a weird time of the year to release a huge game I can see Phantom Pain being complete. Then again the amount of detail and polish that go into a single Metal Gear game is enough to create two regular games of the current generation.

@announakis: Well don't get me wrong I still use the sword plenty, I just don't use it exclusively. If some mobs decide to aggro on me instead of the tanks I will kill them with the sword and sometimes if there is just one boss style character left and we're obviously doing well enough where I don't need to be on barrier duty then I'll jump in and hack him up. Other than that I like standing back and watching the fireworks, although I think we can all agree that the camera angle for casting spells is pretty awkward.

I play as a KE and really the only time I use the blade is when fighting against dragons. For typical mobs I just use spells and maybe the slow-mo bubble. Also I think it really depends on your mindset. I love being completely overpowered in RPG's. I love being able to tear through everything and feel like a complete badass. This is why I really appreciate static enemy levels - because they make weaker enemies feel pathetic as they should and higher level enemies a challenge or more. There is nothing worse for me than a game like Skyrim that dynamically scales and you never feel any progression because each time you level up you meet harder enemies.

Also I have a real hard time actually doing combos in the game so I enjoy being able to not rely on them. In Dragon Age Origins back on the ol' PC I felt it was really easy. Freeze some enemies and use bash to shatter them. Put enemies to sleep and cast horror over them to make them panic. Etc, etc. In Inquisition I find it difficult to tell Sera to go use a knockout powder and then have Cassandra lumber over there before that enemy either wakes up or gets hit by someone else. Apart from spells all the melee abilities have this incredibly long wind up. Then again I've been playing as a mage all along so whenever I switch over to Cassandra or Iron Bull I feel completely lost.

I also wish the spell selection was a little better. Sleep, Mass Paralysis, Weaken, Fireball. Those were some of my favorite spells from the original. Here they're either missing or seem a lot weaker. Immolate is alright but fireball was devastation and knocked people back. Then again people are already claiming the game is too easy and this or that is too powerful so I can only imagine if they brought back all those original spells there would be even more complaining how overpowered mages are.

Matchmaking is probably on of the top three problems this game has. If you take aside complaints about the amount of content present, then not having any real social features, like an MMO would, is terrible. I mean you have have to jump though some weird hoops to even get your clan tag to show up in the game - and this is all done through the Bungie website instead of the game. It is, one of the many half-baked and completely bewildering design decisions that look like they either ran out of time or there were several teams working on different parts of the game and they came together at the last moment which would explain a lot of the jarring transitions. It's also possible that they are just incredibly incompetent at making anything other than great feeling shooting mechanics.

Donkey Kong huh ..well, that is an inspired choice!

I think we can be pretty sure it will. Most MGS dialog, when it is bad, is done with a wink and a nod. Final Fantasy games have been very self serious for a while now with a lot of the funny and quirky parts from the 2D days left behind in favor of brooding and teenage angst. What is my destiny?!

No way. Metal Gear dialog might as well be Proust compared to most of the stuff you find in Final Fantasy games. I mean sure Metal Gear is goofy, but it's not cringe-worthy.

I'm a little offended you would put Gods Will Be Watching on a list, much less at number 1, but it takes all kinds it seems! That game could probably be at the number 1 spot for most disappointing game of the year. Wonderful art, an interesting story with a fun twist and the most mind numbingly bad gameplay I've seen in a while. The constant repetition and tiny margin of error.. getting 'Nam style flashbacks just thinking about it.