@patrician: Those people are speaking nonsense; the GC controller is very, very bad. It's only good compared to its predecessor, the N64 controller, which was a travesty on all levels.
Yes, this. The only reason one would love that controller is if your only context is the N64 one.
The true best controller is of course the Snes one, sure it won't work with a 3d game, but damn that thing was great, haven't had a dpad that felt great since.
Just finished the game and I really loved the entire ride. I will probably replay it at a later date and make a few other dialogue choices just to see how much that affects things but I'm pretty satisfied with how things turned out.
Some thoughts about the story in the spoiler section below
As the story unfolded in the intro I was hit pretty hard by his wife succumbing to Alzheimers, *oversharing warning* My grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimers in the late nineties and is now at the point where she doesn't recognize any of her family and has gotten so bad she can't even form a sentence at this point. My grandfather was hellbent on taking care of her and not having her put in a home, but even with everyone chipping in taking care of someone with Alzheimers is a 24 hour job, and we just had to face the fact that she needed more help than we could provide. The horrible feeing I get in my gut every time I visit her in the home makes every action Henry takes in the leadup to the game make total sense, and while it's not a good thing that he choose to run away from everything I can totally understand his reactions. All in all I really liked how they portrayed his journey to accepting that he has to go back and face his wife again (at least in my game, I don't know how different things can turn out).
For my money that title goes to Akira though both Akira and GitS suffer from trying to cram in too much in too short running time when they adapt their respective manga series. GitS suffers a bit in my mind by focusing more on style over substance.
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