VincentVendetta

No it's a New Zeland film directed by Peter Jackson. Also, if you like social commentary, David Cronenberg and Michael Haneke are great movie directors. Haneke might be surprising since people link him more to drama than horror, but you can see influence from the genre in Funny Games, Caché and even The White Ribbon (Village of the Damned). Let the Right One In (the original) is also the best vampire movie of the last 25 years and propably the best film about bullying.

Dead Alive is amazing. The goriest film you will ever watch and yet it is so entertainning. I don't know if you've seen Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho but it is pretty essential.

How does that prove anything? Sure you can take part of a work of art and create something else with it, but that doesn't change the original creation! You just created something else!

@xbob42: Well, I'm glad that we can both agree that video games are not movies. Still, the argument that artistic intent cannot be respected because of player agency is completely absurd. Art, in any case, is directed to an audience. Art cannot exist if no one can see it, right? Artistic intent does not mean there is ONE way to enjoy a game, just like there is not ONE way to understand a film, or ONE way to perceive a painting, or ONE way to enjoy music. Artistic intend is simply a plan of the creation, showing where it wants to go and how it wants to get there. One can agree or disagree with that direction or its effectiveness, but that's not what's important here. What's important is how the audience cultivate its own perception of the creation, how it makes the links between the elements INSIDE the creation or even outside. But one cannot change the creation, he cannot change objective elements inside of it, only its vision.

Man, reading the comments on this articles in the veins of "Fuck artistic intent, I want to play games MY WAY and no one's gonna stop me" just makes me laugh.

"How come people don't take video games seriously?" Because if you don't, why the fuck should the rest of the world?

Seriously, if you want to change the aspect ratio because you don't agree with the game's artistic vision, you might as well play scenes from a movie in random order or skip major chapters. Sure, artistic excuses might be flimsy, but if this is how the creator wants you to experience its work, then we should judge it as it is. If we're talking about pure technical tweaks... fine. It reminds of when I watched Eraserhead and the DVD asked me to change the lighting of my television, saying that the blacks you normally see aren't true blacks.

Also, if you think super letterbox is weird, have you heard about 1:1?

I already own a Vita, so no. Also, man I love Persona 4 Golden. I can't believe I stopped playing it for so long.

Honestly the last times Gamespot gave 10s, the site was going through a bit of a personality crisis, with pretty much everyone leaving. I mean I remember when Gamespot gave 10s to both Grand Theft Auto IV and Metal Gear Solid 4, both games that did not, I repeat, DID NOT deserve such a high score, especially if you look at people's view of those games today. People still see Ocarina of Time, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 as important milestones in popular gaming culture. GTA IV, on the other hand, was quickly diminished by the competition. I tried replaying GTA IV a few years ago; it bored me so much that after 20 hours, I decided to replay and complete Saints Row: The Third for the fourth time! And MGS4 is universally seen as kind of a ridiculous joke. A fun joke, sure, but not the important work people said.

So yeah, with all the freelancers in and almost every thought-provoking critic out of Gamespot, a 10 does not mean anything to me. It just strikes me as desperate more than anything else.

@fredchuckdave: I got into my head to go to my library and rent Celine Dion's Best Of CD. That and The Orb's Adventure through the Ultraworld and, of course... Paul's Boutique.