Rothbart

I've been frustrated with Game Freak for longer than I can remember, to be honest. The sheer potential the Pokemon franchise has is staggering, yet every game just ends up feeling like they took the safe route. For one, is it too much to ask for them to hire a writer or two? To try and actually make a worthwhile story? Pokemon feels like it has always been developed in a vacuum, where other, similar series like Shin Megami Tensei don't exist. Obviously I'm not saying that Pokemon should "grow up", but they could at least address the fact that so many of their fans have been with them for a long time, and tire of the same old grind. What was the point of all that backstory with AZ and the Kalos wars and such if we don't get to see it? It's so lightly hinted at, like the mere notion of mentioning that people might have died is too much for them.

On top of their light/nonexistant stories, there is so much you can do with an established world where mystical creatures coexist with humanity, yet the most we get is some Mystery Dungeon type deal that never bleeds into the main series. People dream of having a setting as potentially rich in lore as Pokemon, yet they do nothing with it. Honestly, the fact that no effort has been put towards some fabled Pokemon MMO, open world adventure game, or heck, anything innovative at all, makes me wonder if they're understaffed, under budgeted, or just plain incompetent. It would be so easy to take a page from other stories and franchises and make it their own... As you can see, it really gets on my nerves whenever I'm reminded of how wasteful they are.

Plus, yes, they totally ditch every goddamn system they create for no apparent reason. It's like they're afraid of any sort of evolution of the series, as ironic as that is.

@amir90:

I don't think I can cope with that. I can't, I don't think I can begin to understand a mind that could conceive such an idea. The weirdest part is that he talks as if he's completely normal! That means there are others like him.

Probably just another symptom of the gross overspending rampant in the AAA market these days. Honestly, one of the only draws of Destiny is the production value. If the same kinda game came out on Steam for, say, 35 bucks and looked a quarter as good, there wouldn't be so many people fussing over it. It's just so odd to see the recent stream of mediocre to pretty decent games coming out with immense hype engines behind them.

Should have just hired Nolan North to fill in at least four of those roles anyway, hah!

It was sometime in the early Nineties, I was probably about three years old, I accessed the Sesame Street page. Even then I was looking up shows I liked.

Besides, Patrick isn't the most observant gamer. I don't know about the average player, but the solution was very obvious to me in nearly every moment he got stuck. I mean, I'm no puzzle savant, but there probably is a base level of game literacy required to get everything out of it.

@chrisharris: And Karl the Invoker, of course :D

It didn't cost me much (Steam and all) but I'd have to say it was The Path. After half an hour walking aimlessly through the woods, with no sort of direction whatsoever, my suspension of disbelief was wearing really thin. I'm still not sure if that game has any sort of story, or if it's just a walking simulator.

Oh yeah, there was also Drakengard for the PS2. It's kind of fuzzy at this point, but all I remember was being utterly underwhelmed. God of War 3 was also really terrible... you'd think that by the third game in the series, Kratos would have had some character development. It's one of the few games I had to stop playing because it actually made me feel bad for the world I was killing, just not fun.

The longer the U.S. puts off updating their archaic system, the harder the transition is going to be. We're talking Internet Explorer levels here. Might as well count things in furloughs while we're at it.

I once sent the duders a package full of salty Norwegian sweets and candy made from bugs, which Ryan prompty put in the communal office plate. Hell of a guy, truly inspirational. It's been a year but here I am, tearing up again.

Living in Italy for most of my life, I'm not too sure what the average white American looks like. I could probably spot Neapolitan from a mile away, but I'm just out of luck when it comes to the States. So when I came across this piece from the Body Measurement Project, which apparently was created using anthropometric data provided from the CDC, I couldn't help but wonder: is Jeff Gerstmann the archetype of the average American? The model is a bit shorter and skinnier than him, to be fair.

Does everybody look like Jeff in the U.S.?