Sidoran

I played through the game over the past couple of days, mostly due to the first episode being free and the others being half off on XBLA, and while I enjoyed the game overall I just don't understand why there is so much love for it. Most of the characters essentially spend all of their time bitching at you or each other and then they die. Why am I supposed to care about them? More often than not I was actually glad that they were gone because when they weren't acting like petty brats, they were leaving someone hanging (sometimes that someone was me) that really needed their help. The only characters I came away caring anything for were Lee and Clementine.

The parts where you move around the environment are tedious and frustrating. There were times when I would see an area I haven't explored yet and think "Damn it's going to take forever to get over there!" just because you move needlessly slow. On top of that I usually found an item I needed before I found out why I needed it, which meant that I needed to backtrack just to pick up a thing I could have already had.

Where the game really grabbed me was making choices and then seeing how things played out. So much so that I didn't want to put the game down, I just really wanted to see what was going to happen next, despite the lack of fun and interest I was getting out of the rest of the game. Sadly I think going back through a second time to see the other choices wouldn't be nearly as engaging now that I know things can only play out a certain way no matter what you do, and that goes for more than just the ending. Speaking of the ending, that was the only part of the entire game that had an emotional impact on me, and was so well done that I felt tears starting to form in my eyes. This wasn't the first game to do that to me though, and I kind of wonder what types of games people have been playing all this time when they say that this is the first game that triggered these kinds of emotional responses in them.

At the end of the day I came away feeling pretty conflicted about TWD. After finishing it I immediately wanted to suggest my friends to play it so I would have someone to talk about it with, which is definitely a good thing, but at the same time I couldn't really recommend it to anyone I knew because the parts where you actually play it are so bad. I also came away with the impression that a lot of people went into this game really wanting to feel something from this game's story and characters, because I personally don't feel that it warrants as much praise as it's gotten. That stuff is well done at times, but the overall package isn't "game of the year" good in my eyes, honestly.

I'm throwing in my vote for Nanako. She's just more naturally endearing to me while not even seeming like a major character for much of the game.

I like Clementine a lot too but she felt a little more forced.

I get the impression that they no longer care about games that offer a similar experience to what they've seen in the past. They mostly seem interested in games that offer completely new experiences, games that change the way they think about games overall and games that are just plain dumb stupid silly fun.

Seeing this list makes me miss the last couple of generations where a top ten like this would have looked almost normal. Couple of questions:

I love Dynasty Warriors, but the lack of English voiceovers kind of scared me away from Orochi 3. Is it difficult to keep up with what's going on just by reading the popups in battle?

I suck at pretty much every fighter that isn't Smash Bros. Would I have fun with Persona 4 Arena if I loved Persona 4: Golden?

So if someone ever gets beat to death with an Xbox controller, can we blame it on the guns?

@Pepsiman: Maybe there's a barber shop next to it.

...

Nah, you're right. It's more fun to think that it's there for no reason other than "WOOOOO JUMP TIME!!!"

It makes me kinda sad how the Vita has pretty much already been dismissed by consumers and developers alike. I think it's actually a pretty cool handheld. The only thing I don't like about it is how ridiculously expensive the memory cards are.

Something I've noticed here a lot lately is ending a sentence full of glowing praise for something with "goddamn".

I'm going to say that's mostly Ryan's fault.

Was there ever any kind of post mortem with Bioware about what they were thinking when they made that ending?