Sunjammer

The only reason I don't own a Wii U yet is that beyond Zombi U there are "no" games for it. I think Bayonetta 2 and The Wonderful 101 are the games that will fix this for me personally, though the Wind Waker remake is triggering some weirdly intense draw as well..

Either way, there is nothing about the system itself that pushes me away. It simply needs the content.

I was amazed the first time he replied to one of my emails. If anything, as often has he was disagreeable, he was remarkably open to debate. Him actually printing one of my emails was a huge, HUGE deal to me.

I loved his writing style, his willingness to give B-movies a proper shake, his willingness to tear pretension to pieces or praise it in turn. Rest in peace Roger, and thank you for all the provocation.

@beachthunder: To be fair, I ditched a day of work to finish it in one day. It's not a tiny game.

Dude! Me too! What a weird game to think of, right? Reminded me more of Singularity than Bioshock, sometimes.

I think the game gets better, then gets worse, then gets better, then gets worse, then gets better, then a LOT better, and then a LOT worse. And then you go to bed because you've played for 9 hours straight and should have gone to work and oh god what have you done

Just finished it. I took my time and collected most of the logs and took in the scenery. While I think the game is an absolute masterpiece of presentation, and a ton of fun to play, I was super disappointed in the story. I'm really not a big fan of stories that wrap themselves up by invalidating most of their own content. I just thought it completely fell apart in the last third. You could interpret the story as never having happened at all, which is infuriating. Songbird, Comstock, Vox, the weird ghost mom thing (wtf, seriously), none of it winds up having any actual meaning; It's just Booker and his daughter, which would've been fine if the main character of the game wasn't really Columbia.

It just seemed random and inconsequential to me. It made the world I'd played through much less interesting.

I will say though, that the many worlds, constants and variables bit? Absolute, pure, world building genius. It reminded me a little of the end of Contact actually, if anyone remembers that movie.

It's a reboot, then. Practically nothing in those screenies remind me of Thief 1 or 2 (2 is the absolute pinnacle of the series IMHO), but more an evolution of Thief 3 heavily crossbred with Dishonored. I'm not seeing any hammers, pagans or keepers, and the story notes seem to be a retread of Thief 2 without the grand politics.

I can't help but feel a little wistful. This isn't "my" Thief; Stephen Russell is an old man, his voice is going, I will eat my hat if he voices Garrett in this one, if it's even Garrett at all. The original games had UI for sure but it didn't intrude on the world. I don't need "Thief-vision" or whatever, I want to skulk and listen at doors and peer through shadows. These guys even talking about combat as though it's a viable option makes me sad.

I'm sure it'll be wonderful (games typically are these days) but all I want to do right now is boot up Thief 2 again and run across the rooftops of Life of the party.

Wow dudes... I think you really made a big stumble here.

Typography in general is messy and tough to read, with some weird aliasing on almost every header or serif font you've used (I'm on Chrome). The entire "balance" of the site is off, with so much ornamental embellishment tons more eye travel is needed to even just find the stuff that is of any value; Of course this is a "training" thing where the more we use the site the more used to it we will be but first impressions were really low.

Right now it's pretty unpleasant viewing. I have to say. Reminds me of the remake GameTrailers got, and I still can't get over how messy that site is today. I gather this is somehow built around mobile rendering, but on the desktop the experience is much worse.

To be clear, I'm in no way suggesting this information be hidden. I'm questioning the value of its prominent reporting by mainstream consumer-oriented press, and whether doing so indiscriminately, especially in an environment frequented by loud fanboys, is beneficial to the industry.

@bushpusherr: I don't? Hm.

I always thought of games as an even trade. I keep them alive, they give me things I love. If either side breaks their part of the bargain, it falls apart. I think the "hard core consumers" if you will, owe the industry a certain vote of confidence. It doesn't make sense to me to not buy a system and then be pissed it's not selling well, and then be pissed it's not getting better games, service or more exclusives. Games platforms are services, they are pretty much desperate for income to improve.

I think I look at platforms as different from the games that run on them. I don't owe a developer I've never heard of a damn thing, and I certainly don't owe a developer of poorly received games any clemency just to "give them a break". For games systems though, that's a little tricky. I think you'd have to be a pretty jaded duder to look at the Wii U and not think okay, there's some potential here. Fact of the matter is, nothing has really delivered on that potential yet, and there are system stability issues that hold it back. All these things are true, and good reasons to hold off on your purchase.

But I don't think simply trusting the herd is good enough a reason to not buy it yourself if you have the itch to pick up a unit. "I really want one, but nobody else does, that makes me feel uncomfortable!" That just strikes me as the games press short circuiting the natural order (stability, game quality, word of mouth) and instead simply saying that the thing doesn't sell well, QED. It doesn't inform anyone other than inject further doubt and insecurity. I'd prefer that doubt to come from the attributes of the system in question, not from some sort of idea derived from sales statistics.

I probably overthink this. Like everything else :-/