eloj

The first version of SkyUI is out.
 
All "It's not /that/ bad" UI apologists (that's you brad) are welcome to not use it. :-p

I don't want to live in a world where a detective quest doesn't come up Francis York Morgan.

Or Tex Murphy.

This one took some doing... my strategy was to just google "Hardest Video Games" and run down the inevitable top 10 - 20 lists. Most of Perry's hints mean nothing to me (no offense).

Have 7 of 10 of #10 thanks to a handy list. This is going to be painful. Which these quests displayed the answers you've already gotten right, would make it easier to reason about, in so far that's even possible.  10 hard games from the set of games that have ever existed. That the quest-creator thought about. Games harder than Silver Surfer and I Wanna Be The Guy, apparently.

> the industry itself has places like GDC and DICE where the speeches run wonderfully long and the jokes are 100% inside
 
 True, but we're not invited there. Sure, there's GDCVault where most of it is paywalled. DICE is even more closed up unless my googlefu failed me totally. Saw only the odd video of talks out there.
 
 Granted, not really the same genre, but why can't one of these conferences step up and live stream and have complete archives on youtube and so on?

This leak is crap. 4.4/5.

Sounds like this Reviewer did his job, which is give an honest (none fanboy) review of a game. That's pointing out the positive elements, while at the same time pointing out the mistakes. Just because a reviewer points out mistakes, doesn't mean the overall game is bad. If anything, it helps developers focus on these problems when they make a sequel or another game in the future.

Lastly, while I appreciate Patrick bringing this review to my attention, as it was enlightening, I think critics lamenting nerd rage is as silly and futile as developers and PR teams lamenting critic rage. [...]

Sorry for the rant

I didn't read the review Patrick is talking about but I did read G4's review by A. Sessler in which he gave Unch 3 a 4/5. In all honesty I don't really care that he didn't give it a 5/5 but his complaints were about the "tacked on" multiplayer, 

"but reviews can (and should) also function as a design critique, and the best kinds of game reviews are informative to the player and developer, providing an outside perspective that illuminates what did and didn’t work."
 
I wonder where Jeff stands on this issue? The reason I'm asking is because in one of his one-man videos (the recent one from Vegas I think, or possibly the one where's he's installing UC3 MP) he was asked if he'd ever tried to make or pitch a game, and he basically said that he had not and didn't feel like he could. This to me suggests he's of a different mind, because you can't critique something you don't study (I was going to say 'understand', but on some level we all 'understand' game design, if only through 'osmosis')
 
I am however with you, and Jeff is the one person on GB who's opinions on games are most frequently "out of sync" with my own -- perhaps due to a difference in view on this. Game design critique should be central to a community like this, but honestly, reviewers seem mostly unequipped or even disinterested in the task.
 
My challenge to you Patrik is, if you haven't already, read Lenses, then write about (or discuss on the bombcast) why this ISN'T required reading for a game rev^H^H^Hcritic.