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@andarthiel: I'm right there with you on this. I bought it and am pretty satisfied with it. Admittedly, I don't have a ton of time to play games any more with work and family taking up most of my time, but it's hitting the spot for what I hoped it would be, PC performance issues aside. The game world feels right and game looks pretty good, even if it's not a technical marvel (again, don't play a ton of games so can't say how it actually stacks up to the latest games).

Interested on your perspective regarding GB's approach, which has basically been to not cover it, versus others like Gamespot and Polygon, who haven't reviewed it but covered the hell out of it, and Wired, which reviewed it with heavy bias.

I am OK with sites choosing to cover or not cover whatever they want as the marketplace is big enough to allow different approaches. Not covering a major release that has mainstream appeal beyond the core gaming audience is certainly going to cost the site clicks and views and potentially growth of the audience but if GB decided that the juice wasn't worth the squeeze on this one due to the backlash they'd receive (internally or externally), then that's their choice. Businesses need to know their markets.

I am less OK with places like Wired, which let someone issue a scored review that had little to do with the game and more to do with the author's personal experiences and thoughts on JKR. Reviews are always opinion pieces so there's not a "right" or "wrong" review but I do think that if you decide to review something, whether it's a game, a book, a movie, etc., the review should focus on the product itself. The extent of the Wired's review of the actual game was that the game is mid, nothing special. That's fine. Not every game is for everyone. But I would think an average, big budget game would score 3 out of 5, or a 7-8 out of 10 with score inflation, not a 1. Assigning a score like that I believe damages the reputation of the publication, not the product. If you look at your staff and choose the person most predisposed to hating (or loving) the product and who can't suppress a personal bias, you're doing your audience a disservice. I think many publications handled this professionally since many of the reviews I read noted that the author was not a big Harry Potter fan (a cynical view would be that they were hoping to find a reviewer less inclined to give a positive score but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt).

We don't live in a vacuum so it's almost impossible to not let circumstances outside the end product in front of you impact your view of that product but, if you can't separate the circumstances from the product itself, then maybe you should not be reviewing the product and instead write a piece outlining the circumstances. People would be abhorred if they really dug into the labor practices that exist in the supply chain of pretty much any of the electronic devices they use daily. I think it's good to investigate and note these things (though rarely will you see them noted in reviews of iPhones, Android devices, PCs, Teslas, etc.) so people can make informed decisions about the companies and individuals they're supporting, but I also think it's important to give a fair assessment of the product itself. In my opinion, it's perfectly fine in a review to say something is a good or even great product and score it accordingly but then say, despite that, I don't recommend you buy it because [insert issue with the producer].

On the journalism vs. opinion/criticism point brought up by other commenters, totally valid. Most people, not just gamers, don't get the difference. To be fair, the line has blurred so much in the past decade or so, since straight news pieces don't get as many clicks as hot takes. Particularly in games media where the journalists are also often the opinion writers.

Anyway, glad to see other people are enjoying the game. Or boycotting. Or whatever they want to do.

If you run a quick google search, you'll see some of the discussion on likening Mario Tennis to a fighting game. Kotaku did a pretty extensive writeup on it if you're interested.

The sport of tennis is pretty limiting in terms of what you can do as ultimately tennis is a pretty simple game compared to other sports (not easy, as it takes a lot of coordination and skill to not just hit a ball moving at high speed but land it in a specified area, but simple in terms of rules and strategies). I absolutely think they should have come up with unique special shots for each character that did different things (i.e., not just different animations) so you have to learn how to play as and against them all as a baseline.

As for Mario Golf, I think there's more potential for differentiation there. For instance, maybe Bowser has excellent driving ability but is terrible in the short game while Peach can't drive but is great with irons (she usually has a floating ability when she jumps so maybe she has excellent control of the ball when she lofts it up and can have it change direction or spins). Maybe a character like Waluigi who is usually a more "defensive" type character is middling on most skills but excellent playing from bunkers or the rough. Again, I'm not expecting the game to be a Tiger Woods game in terms of attention to detail and minor variations between characters' abilities and more expecting the typical archetypes like power, balanced, technical/finesse. I just want there to be enough differentiation that the characters feel somewhat unique and make me want to try them all out and maybe pick certain ones depending on the course being played.

There was definitely something off about this game.

Looks great. Feels like a Mario universe game. Plays a decent game of tennis. I’m not expecting Mario sports titles to be sims but at least resemble the sport and I think this game does a good job of that while also including power ups that make it a Mario sports game.

And yet…

It just didn’t hold my interest very long. The campaign seemed more like a proof of concept of what they could do with the tennis mechanics and they actually did manage to pull off a bunch of clever mini games. I am primarily a single player person so that also really doesn’t help in a game like this. But it would have been interesting to get to use different characters in the campaign, either to play through a whole campaign or have sections of the campaign where you play with different characters.

When the game launched, a lot of the discussion was about how this game is actually more like a fighting game and I think that’s why I ultimately faded on it. So much of the competitive play is about playing the game a certain way because of how the specials are (un)balanced and I’m just not into that. When I play sports games, I like to play with a bunch of different teams that use different strategies but there’s usually flexibility to mix things up. In Mario tennis, there’s one way to play each character and that’s it.

Holding out hope for Mario Golf.

I think the issue here is the question itself. When we ask whether politics should be kept out of "games," it's like asking whether politics should be kept out of books or music. Gaming is an entire medium of storytelling. I think people like to bring up the "keep politics out of _____" line because it gets clicks and fosters a lot of debate but I think whether to keep politics out of gaming isn't a great one of those topics.

That said, my position here is that we should give creators the ability to make whatever games they want. If a game wants to take a stance, be about promoting a certain worldview or appeal to a certain group, that's fine. If it's something I find unappealing or it goes overboard banging the drum, then I get to vote that with my wallet and my time. It doesn't mean the game shouldn't be made if it's not made specifically to appeal to me. Someone else might like it and good for them. Same goes for other creative media like books, music and movies.

While I've seen a number of people say that games that don't address politics are basically saying they're OK with the status quo, I fundamentally disagree with that opinion. I think that a game not being political/taking a stance/giving fair and accurate representation of a particular group of people may be a conscious choice but, far more likely, it may just be because that is not the point of the game and tackling those issues in the game wouldn't make sense or be relevant to the game or story it's trying to tell. Not all games have to tackle political issues. Just like not all books and not all songs do either. They can try if they want to, but it doesn't mean they must.

I'm a fan but can only take him in small doses unless he's doing a deep dive on a particular wrestling topic I find interesting. The clips posted on YouTube are a great way to consume his content since the podcasts can get pretty longwinded and into topics that might not be of much interest to you.

If you're of a certain age, then you can really appreciate his knowledge and perspective on wrestling and the business around it. If you're younger or like a more modern style of wrestling/booking, you're not going to like his takes. He's very in tune with what made wrestling work back when it was a big deal. He's big on details, believability and logic so all of the acrobatics and lucha style and things that look cool but require too much orchestration (e.g., multiple people grouping up to catch someone doing a dive to the outside) drive him crazy. He basically likes a big man, this is a serious fight style and wants you to genuinely believe that the people in that ring would beat you up. I think promotions would benefit from having him around as a consultant to sanity check them and tell them when something is too stupid but I don't think anyone should give him full control at this point since the industry has progressed since the 80s and 90s.

It's hard to discuss him at this point without getting into his politics but I'll just say that his politics don't interest me too much (I'm a stick to your lane kind of person and don't listen to wrestling podcasts for political commentary just like I don't go to CNN/Fox News for wrestling takes). For people who don't really listen to him, I think they'd be surprised to find out he's pretty far left - the Louisville accent, affinity for his pickup truck, "Black Beauty," and some other quirks could make you think he's a Trump supporter rather than the Trump hater he is. I think his cohost lets Jim go down the political rabbit holes because it gets Jim really fired up and removes whatever filter he may have had for when they get to the wrestling discussion. And Jim speaking unfiltered about wrestling and the business is when he's at his best.

I'm trying to demonstrate some restraint after going overboard on last year's summer sale. (To be fair, I was just building my PC at that point so I wanted to have a decent library to test it out and enjoy my first taste of non-console gaming since about 1996.)

The only game I've picked up so far is Witcher 2 for $4.99.

I'm hoping the Skyrim Legendary Edition drops below what it was on the Flash Sale on Day 1. Other than that, Rogue Legacy is probably the only game I actually want. I've been playing the demo and am loving it but I'm going to wait and see if it drops below $11.99. If it doesn't, I'll probably just buy it directly from the developer's website since they have it on sale at that price for another 8 days.

I'll probably grab a few other games if the deal is just too good to pass up on but Skyrim Legendary and Rogue Legacy are the only other things I'm looking to buy.

Not cool. Google Reader is one of the two pages that opens up when I start Chrome (the other is Gmail). It's also one the most used apps on my phone. I've checked out the desktop, web and mobile alternatives in the past and none of them are as clean and simple. Also, apparently many of the alternatives use Google's API so they'll be rendered useless as well.

There is no reason why companies shouldn't attempt to raise prices next generation because they are always free to lower them if sales are slow, just like they already are doing this generation. Sure, the price of a new release game is $60, but how many games actually stay at that price point for more than a few weeks? People already know that the price for most games will drop soon after release so only the people that have to get in on a game on Day 1 or in that first 2 or 3 weeks end up paying that much.

With certain games - COD, Halo, Madden, FIFA and other big sellers - why not push the price up to $70? There are tons of people out there who will pay it. As a consumer, I don't want to see this happen but, from a business perspective, I don't see why they wouldn't want to give it a shot. They have nothing to lose since they can always drop the price later if the market really won't allow it. The problem is that the market probably will let it get away with the price increase, just like it has with DLC and microtransactions. Until consumers start voting with their wallets and saying no, publishers will keep pushing the envelope to find out just how much people really are willing to spend.

The industry really could use a variable price point structure, as mentioned in the OP, because all games are not created equally and aren't worth the same amount. I, personally, would think that there's a large market for mid-tier games that release at $30 - meaning they're not AAA but also not Indies developed by 2 people - but it seems that everything's been pushed to those two extremes, with no middle ground. How many games have you played or have you read about in a review where the impression was that the game was good, but probably not worth $60? The problem, I've heard, is that publishers refuse to release games below the $60 price point because it would create the perception that the game was of lower quality and that could have a negative impact on sales. Most video games have their best sales in their first month so they might as well take advantage of the initial sales boom and then lower the price after sales numbers diminish.

I've been luckier than a lot of people (I've racked up 16 hours according to Origin but I think at least 3 of them consist of me having the launcher open trying to connect to a server) and I really am enjoying the game when it lets me play. Like many others, however, it really annoys me that this game is forcing me to be connected to EA's servers at all times - I don't care about the always online thing to the extent that it requires an internet connection to play because I only play games on my home PC which is always hooked up to the internet (barring some kind of outage) but when the problem is on EA's end, that's garbage.

If it wasn't EA, I'd hope to maybe get some kind of DLC content for free (or maybe even a few bucks credit in the Origin store) for not being able to play a brand new game, but it is EA so I'm not holding my breath since EA doesn't really care about consumers unless it involves squeezing more money out of them.

I should have done what I did with Diablo 3 and waited for the kinks to be worked out before buying.

I was working on a pretty boring project a few weeks ago and took that opportunity to jump into the Bombcast time machine to help the day go faster. I downloaded some of the game of the year podcasts because I figured that those would give me a sense of what was going on with the crew back then (I only started visiting the site and listening to the Bombcast frequently in 2011). Project ended though so I'm back to only listening to the current ones.

If the Bombcasts were formatted and archived in such a way that you could jump to the point in the episode where they're discussing a particular game or topic I would be more likely to revisit old episodes.