extintor

@frostyryan: yep - that's the dividing line. Intrusiveness.

When a game is designed such that it is an entirely balanced experience, that both provides challenge while also respecting the players time *without* micro-transactions, then if micro-transactions are subsequently added to the final product then that's not a problem.

Its when the game explicitly brings microtransactions into the core of its design (non-aesthetic elements specifically)... or pay to win as its known... that's basically when the overall experience becomes tainted and micro-transactions become a legit problem.

I understand games are expensive to make... and that pricing them to consumers is difficult... and that people's willingness to pay varies massively person to person, but I would regularly and relatively happily pay an extra £10 for a game at purchase rather than have micro-transactions designed into a game experience. Perhaps the traditional price points need to be raised?

Patch is up

http://forums.eu.square-enix.com/showthread.php?t=190872

addresses early game crashes and some performance issues - apparently (haven't tested it yet)

I had this crash 3 times. In the end Windowed mode (unchecked full screen on graphics options) was all I needed to change to get me through.

Its a bit sloppy to have a crash-to-desktop bug during the game's first major in-game cutscene! Hopefully this particular problem will be patched soon. Otherwise I've had no problems with performance on my I5-6600, 16GB, GTX 970.

that's very promising indeed. Jeff's review (I'm assuming Jeff's taken this one) drops in an hour. I'll be super-interested to read what he has to say (good and/or bad)

@ivdamke: yeah you could be right. At risk of sounding irritatingly hipster, I never bought into the NMS hype and was always intrigued about it but never excited for it (because Hello games never came out and said what it was, and what to expect).

DX:MD is right on my wavelength though (going on the idea that it is intending to build on its predecessor... which for me was one of the top 10 games of the last generation). I have an expectation for the experience that's very high, but then like you say, that's maybe not the general perception.

DOOM is flat out unrivalled GoTY at this point as far as I see it, but this is potentially the one that might challenge that for me.

would it be fair to say that this is most anticipated release of the year so far? It's the one I've been looking forward to the most but I'm talking on a general 'all video games' level...

Is it a timed exclusive? I've never heard that mentioned but I could have missed it along the way?

Sony did seem to be pushing their NMS exclusivity pretty hard at some point and that did add some fuel to the hype. So much so that I remember a lot of Sony fans being outraged to discover it'd be coming out on PC back when that information came out.

I wonder if the way the actual product turned out (i.e. a moderately enjoyable 3 to 4 star game but nothing exceptional), and the response to it, is something that Sony anticipated and its marketing strategy has been correspondingly to gently move the spotlight away from it and on to other things?

Designed or not, the times where I've wandered away from my ship, got lost, had to deal with adversity, etc. have been the most engaging times I've had with the game so far.

There are PLENTY of contemptible things that are associated with Hillary herself. She's not her husband though so I wouldn't list the things he did as reasons to not vote for her (or to vote for her). But yes, more parties are a good thing and help to shake up the status quo when it really, really needs shaking up. Lincoln was part of a third party back in the day, and his party stood for some pretty damned important stuff when it needed standing up for most. They didn't win at first, but they persevered and voters increasingly abandoned the Whig party to join them. Third parties aren't a waste, or a bad thing, they are a necessary corrective when the anti-democratic rot sets in of parties either moving too far out of step ideologically with too large a segment of their voters, or when society moves on from one received set of ideas to another set... and a party doesn't keep up.