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Score another point for Japanese publishers. Capcom seems content to pull back and milk the safe franchises that they assume will appeal to the stereotypical Western gamer. Who knows what the fuck Konami is doing these days (Metal Gear?!). Sega is Sega. Square-Enix-Eidos and friends have cast such a wide net they've lost all sense of what their brand is anymore other than a billion Final Fantasy spinoffs. Nintendo continues to make money but is still confounded by the Western online and digital download markets.
 
Really the only Japanese publisher who seems to consistently take risks and even attempts to understand the Western markets is Atlus, who's been unafraid to release small titles, "Japanese" games, and a slew of non-mainstream genres. Kudos to them.

" My biggest disappointment was the PC version of Borderlands. Gearbox gave no real support to PC players and gave us a big middle finger with forcing gamespy down our throats and forcing players to figure out port forwarding to even PLAY ONLINE. If they had just integrated steamworks into it for the multiplayer it would work great but Randy Pitchford has an anti-steam platform (not enough to not release it on steam) and that wasn't going to happen. Also the DLC doesn't come out for PC players until much later. It's sad but the PC version of Borderlands is just a really bad port of the console version. Which is too bad because the game is good but I have to play it single-player which gimps the experience. I like Borderlands as a game but F gearbox and Randy Pitchford. I used to like gearbox but no more. "

I think it's worth mentioning that North also played the ridiculous over-the-top Frenchie Le Crochet in The Saboteur. I did a double-take when I saw his name as the credits played... then I thought to myself, hook-handed, foul-mouthed French resistance fighter? Who else!

Am I the only person who actually liked Super Paper Mario? I may have preferred the straighter RPG style of the other Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi games, but I still enjoyed SPM for what it was.
 
I also fail to see how any game that's not even out yet can possibly be a series ruiner. Sure I may groan a bit when I see a beloved franchise take an aesthetic or stylistic design choice that I don't really care for, but it's totally unfair to judge a game without even playing it.  Oh you crazy internet.

Am I the only person who actually liked Super Paper Mario? I may have preferred the straighter RPG style of the other Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi games, but I still enjoyed SPM for what it was.
 
I also fail to see how any game that's not even out yet can possibly be a series ruiner. Sure I may groan a bit when I see a beloved franchise take an aesthetic or stylistic design choice that I don't really care for, but it's totally unfair to judge a game without even playing it.  Oh you crazy internet.

SMGs seem to be the biggest crapshoot. Throw a high muliplier fire SMG on a damage boost spec'd Lilith and you'll be in for some good times.  I also really loved The Spy quest weapon. I personally prefer a high accuracy, and mid-to-high rate of fire over the strong but super low accuracy/fire rate varieties - I prefer a shotgun for that type of weapon.

 Interestingly how much you get out of the DLC time-wise may be inversely proportional to how much you get out of it fun-wise. That is to say, the content itself is fairly short, so if you're getting tons of hours out of it, it's probably cause you're dying alot. For most, the new missions are probably the bigger draw, but they're the shortest part  of the DLC. Edy's mission is not just extremely short, but also somewhat frustrating. Selvaria's mission pack offers alot more, both in gameplay and in story/character, but ends right when you start getting drawn in
 
The Hard EX mode is exactly what it says on the label and it lives up to its name - if you're all about a tactical challenge the extra hard skirmishes offer up alot of fun new gameplay. If you didn't really care about skirmishes, and don't care about pushing your tactics to the extreme, this content isn't for you. It would have been great if they allowed you to replay the story missions in Hard EX, but alas. As such, there's nothing really "new" here,but the increased difficulty and lack of tank makes you approach the old skirmishes from a totally new perspective, so if you replay all the skirmishes, that's a decent amount of game time to sink in. I personally think bumping the challenge up to extreme can occasionally expose the flaws of the dice-rollin' RPG under-the-hood mechanics, as sometimes missions will come down to random chance- like whether or not you or the enemy manages to auto-dodge, activate potentials, or land hits and headshots.
 
If I had to recommend just one of the DLC packs, I'd go for the Selvaria missions. That being said, if you're just a big fan of the game and like some challenge, you'll probably at least ENJOY them all, but might be a bit miffed at the shortness of the missions and lack of true "new" content.

Hm... Street Fighter 4 might be the best game (debatable) but I'd argue that both the other nominees were far better REVIVALS of their respective franchises. If the nominated franchises were volcanoes, Street Fighter would be like Kilauea - very active, constant small eruptions, Monkey Island would be like Mt. St. Helens or something, had a pretty big eruption pretty recently, but not that recently, Punch-Out!! would be like Mt. Fuji or something, been so long since it erupted you probably forgot it's even a volcano. Alright, so that metaphor kinda failed, but yeah, Punch-Out!! is probably the greatest revival.

Their choices are all pretty horrible, and they seem pretty attached to the word "bancho" even though it has no relevance or significance to an American consumer.

I personally chose Turf Wars, but I think combining that name with a name that reflects its Japaneseness, without using a random, meaningless Japanese word would be far more ideal. Like Turf Wars: Tokyo Rumble or something like that.