Lazyimperial

@hassun: Hopefully that's a joke. If not, eh. A great, reliable reviewer has a divide between the "professional" and the "personal." Sure, they might know industry member John Doe, do streams with him, chat on a podcast with him, and / or hang out off the clock... but if John's game lands on their desk, that personal stuff can't be a review factor. The reviewer's job is to look at a product, warts and all, and write a review that advises potential buyers about the quality of such said product. Letting a personal friendship and feelings get into that process would damage both the accuracy of the review and the reviewer's credibility. It isn't worth it.

Hopefully John Doe gets through the anger stage, understands the review wasn't personal, and the friendship can continue. If not, that happens. Eh. Probably doesn't help matters that a Giantbomb 2 out of 5 translates to a "40%" on Metacritic, which is a low F on the American grading system and translates to a badly failing grade. 2 out of 5 does not mean failing here (that's a 1 out of 5) so much as below average. You could still get enjoyment out of it, but it has noticeable flaws that detract from the overall experience.

Heck, that's not even taking into account that this industry often seems to grade on a 6 to 10 scale... in which case 6 is usually seen as failing and 4 is thus a nightmare grade. :-P

I'm just going to assume it's a joke, rambling aside. Still glad to have more Johnny Gat. Maybe he'll wake up at the start of Saints Row V and ramble about his strange Overwatch dream before the Saints conquer a trans-dimensional hood in order to try and restore Earth.

Edit addition: Heck, I'd also like a game set in the Agents of Mayhem alternate universe wherein the Boss builds the Saints and starts taking over again despite the new timeline. Maybe purple-clad gangstas that end up getting the world destroyed are an inevitability of all timelines and thus a fate that cannot be denied. >:-P

Eh, I have no regrets. It's nice to see The Saints again, even in this Nier kind of alt-universe fashion. Besides, it's rather fun. That having been said, it did kind of make me think about Saints Row 3, smile, and immediately re-download Saints Row 3. Currently 8% of the way done with a new play-through, haha. I'll get back to Agents of Mayhem... in a bit. :-P

Oh, and I do find the character selecting stuff a bit odd. I'd understand only getting three at any given time if they were all part of a Mass Effect kind of squad (with you controlling one of the three squad members at any given time). However... it's just you, and you press a button to cycle your character to one of the other two in your active list.

Why not just have all twelve in that list considering the lack of an actual squad? Was it because players would effectively have to die 12 times (character dies and you shift to the next one on your list until either you win or all your boys are dead) before they'd be screwed and that'd be way too much? It isn't as bad as ReCore (belated grumble GRUMBLE) since you don't need any specific character combos to get through certain puzzles, but the current system does necessitate more ARK visits than I'd prefer.

Kind of makes me wish they had more npc activity in the city and two squad mates following you around being idiots. I always loved the missions with npc henchies in Saints Row proper and it would make things more lively. But again, oh well. I still like it just fine. :-)

Yeah... :-/

Aside from the interesting, somewhat droll idea of something being "super racist" as opposed to "racist" (no idea what the criteria is for judging that), the Union Jack isn't racist in the least. Some people are trying to remove it from flags, yes, but that's because Australia and New Zealand are no longer colonies and some people in those countries want flags that represent their independence.

It's much less race and more nationalism / political identity stuff. "Me Australia. Me powerful country. Me have own flag!" sort of chest beating thing.

As for the game, it looks alright. I hope this doesn't wind up dead in three months like a lot of other multiplayer-only games. Seeing only a few thousand people on Steam during launch week is a bit worrisome. *shrug*

Edit addition: this is a confusing era.

I don't mind optional cosmetic items in games... but I do mind when they are done in a scummy fashion. Oddly enough, Brad gave a perfect example of scummy exploitation of human behavior (i.e. the list of hats you can buy apparently always below the character in Dota's character selection menu, the "see how it looks" function on the freaking character selection page as well, and the pause before matches tempting the weak willed to sink $90 on a VIRTUAL HAT they can get no other way) and then followed it up with incredulity at people frowning at the cosmetic purchase system in Dota. *shrug*

Like Jeff mentioned, these companies hire the same behavioral psychologists that casinos use to plan out their skinner box systems. They fine-tune such said systems so that you'll get just enough of what you want (Overwatch character costumes, Dota hats, weapon skins, etc.) that your gambler urge stays sated and you keep pumping cash into the slot machine.

Done right, they can be fairly unobtrusive and optional systems that help supplement increasingly more expensive game development (which is why I have no qualms buying Crown Crates and costumes on Elder Scrolls Online. They offer a great product and I treat it like Patreon-ing someone that occasionally gives me silly digital attire in return). Done poorly, they're revoltingly exploitative, explicitly preying on "whales" with bad self control.

I think Dota veers into the latter category way too often, hence my occasional cringe when I see it. :-P

@boonsong: Haha, wow. You're right. I just checked the newsfeeds again and it looks like they bluffed the net. I'm genuinely impressed. Rich Kyanka would be proud. :-D

https://twitter.com/PCGamesN/status/894938805014331392/photo/1

Brilliant. Ninja Theory, you earned every penny of my thirty dollars.

I thoroughly enjoyed Heavenly Sword, Enslaved, and the DmC remake (though I missed the white hair). So... I pre-ordered this and rolled the dice. Looks like I made a good call. Can't wait to see this myself, especially considering the glowing recommendation from Brad. I hope this game does well for Ninja Theory.

I also kind of hope they make a patch that makes the permadeath mechanic optional, but that's me. :-P Permadeath stresses me out because I don't have a lot of time for games anymore (alas) and the thought of dying one time too many seven hours in and losing all my progress is mortifying. It looks like they've balanced the game around the concept so that it's very hard to actually trigger the permadeath punishment (8 deaths purportedly gets your creeping crud arm tendril up to the shoulder, and presumably you have another 4 or so deaths before it reaches your head and you're done for), which is both good and bad. It's good because it means that while I'll have anxiety as I play, I'd really have to muck up a lot to really be screwed. It's also bad because it probably impacted the overall difficulty and encounter planning for the game, which is likely why some people are saying it's "too easy."

I think I get what Ninja Theory was going for, but I wish that maybe they'd have made the creeping crud a "Fable-esque" tracker of player deaths instead and maybe tied an achievement to completing the game either as a squeaky clean Pict or as a tendril-laden monster woman. That way there'd still be a consequence for screwing up too much, but it wouldn't be restarting a 6 to 8 hour long story-heavy, linear, puzzle laden game.

Also, wow. I expected outrage culture to rear its head (it is a perennial bloomer), but I admittedly never expected so many people to stand up for the GB crew and call shenanigans. I'm pleasantly surprised.

@alex: Haha, both of you are making me wish this game had space zombies in it. Family dialogue like that just screams "I'm going to be the first to die, and it'll have emotional resonance because 'I haz family'" to me.

What a missed opportunity.

@worlddude: ... and I can guarantee that it would be a complaint if 2/3rds of the cast was white. The moons are in alignment, and it's both an era of internet and an era of outrage at everything. :-P

Also, I have no intention of pretending to know the intent of the Tacoma team. Were they pandering? Were they daredevils railing against "the status quo" and fighting "the man" with Roberta the mechanical engineer? Eh, who knows?

If it worked for you, great. If it made me and some others chuckle and think of trying-too-hard children's books and informational videos, great too. We all got something out of it. The art spoke to us, hehe.

Oh, and pshaw. I know you aren't trying to stir anything up, duder. You're speaking your mind on an internet thread with civility and proper grammar. I applaud it. :-)

@worlddude: I think your counter-example is going from one extreme to the other. No one said they were expecting "Leave it to Beaver - Now In Space!" or the like.

Frankly, I thought the same thing Hewitt and 108 did. There's a fine line between inclusiveness and trying-too-hard cliché. That crew roster at the start made me remember elementary school. "How could Odin go rogue," I pondered, "when he has a rainbow of friends?"

Teasing aside, I think Vinny's term of "rummaging simulator" is very apt. I spent the Quicklook waiting for xenomorphs, splicers, cyborgs, and / or necromorphs to burst out of walls... but that isn't this game. It gives me the feeling of watching one of the extended, non-combat, ambience and exposition bits from the beginning of Dead Space or Half Life, only the bit never ends and that's the whole game. Hours of build-up to... your partner falling asleep on the couch.

Frankly, that does nothing for me, and that's okay. Some people really enjoyed collecting audio logs and wandering around Bioshock's setting, digging through desks and dumpsters for information about the world and lore. For those people that wanted more of that without any of the combat and puzzles to get in the way, they have this genre and they're more than welcome to it.

Kind of odd to see these game distillations, though. Doom for combat, The Witness for puzzles, this for walking and rummaging around exposition-village. *shrug*

Edit Addition: You know, I wouldn't mind seeing a full play-through of this during that yearly non-profit gaming marathon event that Giantbomb does. I found Gone Home relentlessly dull on my own, but managed to actually see all of it via Dave Lang's hilarious segment. Granted, he kind of took the piss out of it and kept joking about monsters being just around the corner, but I had such a good time watching him rummage that I immediately went online after his stream and bought... Killer Instinct and a bunch of its DLC. My wallet got monked. :-P

Hahaha! Bravo, Dan and Vinny, bravo. :-D I love it.