Goldanas

Games can be games, games can be art, games can be escapism, games can be bad, games can be good, games can be whatever the fuck they want to be.

There are too many games out there, and in our society there's people out there making a game for you, no matter who you are. Hey, maybe they even made one for you a year ago, two years ago, maybe 20 or 35 years ago!

Now more than ever you can have the experience you want, in an absolute instance. If you're really adventurous, you can even make one yourself, but even so, there's no shortages of experiences to be had.

So quit fighting about it either way, and play a game, or recommend one, discover something new, or replay something old.

Haha, came here hoping for some news on it. Eager to hear Dan's take from the front lines.

I don't think preordering is good (and I know it'd bad for you guys because much of your job revolves around you telling people if games are good or not), but I don't believe this is a case of PREORDERS ARE BAD GUYS, SEE!

It's an online stress test, and it went down. The full game didn't go down. The online stress test that's available months before the actual release did. You want to point at Batman Arkham Knight, that's a perfect example of preordering gone wrong, or AC Unity, but this isn't even the actual game that's having issues.

Furthermore, You could get a code from Amazon or Gamestop, for no money at all, and cancel any "commitment" you made to purchase, at any time, with no money lost.

It's important for consumers or anybody to fight the good fight to retain their rights, but blowing up on completely unrelated events only damages the argument and serves it up for invalidation, especially when it comes time to actually apply it in a real anti-consumer disaster.

I agree, civilians would be cool, but then Batman doesn't work as a game.

Spiderman 2 and the other games in the franchise like it had this system where there were civilians all throughout the city, and there were ambient crimes you could choose to help in or not. You can do that in Spiderman, because he's a little more ambiguous, sometimes a little morally misguided.

Not Batman.

Batman doesn't kill. He helps everyone in his immediate view no matter what, and has insane plot armor to make certain that he can. Batman does not work in a city where you may potentially be able stun civilians, much less simply ignore their pleas for help. Worse, stand high above them and watch as they are mugged or stabbed.

What's the solution? Make the enemies forever in a loop where they never hurt anyone? Make it so that the crime is always happening, and you can stop it once and for all, whenever you decide to get to it? Then the enemies never feel like a threat.

In a game world where you're already making concessions for Batman to use a giant tank by making unmanned drones, and making the Batmobile have some magic stun field that gently lifts thugs out of the way of Batmobile's certainly fatal treads, and where it also already seems like any of the things he is doing could be ultimately fatal, I don't think there's any room to give the player further freedom to fuck with civilians.

And so there are no enemies. And I would rather there be none, than have the game put up more strange arbitrary concessions or invisible walls to prevent me from mistreating civilians.

This would be a pointless article if you didn't go over the games that have the room to be more ambiguous with the protagonists treatment of civilians, like GTA, Infamous, etc. I don't think you should try to fit the Batman game into their mold. It's okay for games to be different, and you should play this game, or give it more of a chance, instead of brushing it off entirely simply because it isn't Superman Returns.

I think it's silly to get so hung up on the semantics of one word and write a 3.5k word article on it. I'm not sure how often people are even saying that journalists are "forcing" developers to do their will, but I know that I've read "You shouldn't try to force your culture on others' culture", which isn't trying to say that you are literally putting a gun to someone, but that you are making a suggestion that they should put one culture into another's, for no other reason than that it fits your culture and not theirs. "You" is not referring to journalists, but rather to the general person.

This reads to me as a long, dodgy way of trying to avoid the argument, and still come out like you're right, which I think is a big problem for most writers or bloggers in this space: They can't admit they're wrong, even just a little bit, which is the case here.

It really doesn't matter. It's one hundred percent good to be wrong. I am wrong all the time. And I apologize for it. And I learn. I get the prevailing sense from all these blogs and this article that it's just Austin coming up to say "I don't care; I'm right; you're wrong."

A good portion of us live in a North American bubble that gives us all this lovely privilege and influence we forget we have.

Best of luck. I know I've shat on Patrick many a time, but mostly it was because I wanted to see some improvement in his writing and video presentation, and I believe we have seen some of that, especially in these recent videos and group activities. I hope that he continues to improve and grow wherever he goes next, and I have no doubt that he will have a positive venture.

I'm not a Halo guy (or an Xbox guy for that matter), but it really impressed me with the treatment they gave this collection of games. The way level selection stuff works, the way the multiplayer maps can fall into any category, just the huge breadth of options that you don't typically find in any game. It's really quite impressive.

It just bums me out that lots of games are all being marred by these serious online issues. Driveclub, the original launch of GTAV, and this just to name a few. It also bums me out that a game like AC: Unity, which I feel is pretty decent at its core, and takes a lot of steps in the right direction for the combat, just completely bombs out due to all these technical issues. I hear LBP3 has its own set of technical problems as well.

It's such a bummer that lots of these major releases are just not finishing on time. This November should have been a precursor to all these great games, but instead it's mostly a trainwreck.

Well, apart from the Bayonetta games on Wii U. That's been solid.

I'm not sure I understand the "choice" argument. To me, it seems like another moment for EA to screw the ease of use for the consumer just so that they can have their piece of the pie. It's like Origin all over again. Origin is not a choice, it is a mandate. Do you want to play Battlefield 4? You must use Origin. If there were choice in the matter, I would also be able to purchase under Steam or Uplay, and use it through those systems, without needing the Origin client.

If there were a choice with this, EA would also put some of these games on PS+, which I don't think they will (and vice versa you should see Sony and others' games in this access thing). They put Dead Space 3 on PS+ just this past month, which was nice, but this sets a precedent for them to not include it with my existing service. It's the problem you see with cable companies right now, where if you want to watch Dodgers games or even entire major channels, you can only see them with one of the carriers. This is not choice. It is hording, and creating an environment where customers get less value and have to double dip in order to get their content.

tl;dr: I'm all for multiple services, but they must all have the same or mostly equivalent offerings in terms of content. How they should sway are the extra perks to that service that are either an added feature, or an enhanced way of experiencing that content.

@ultimaxe: They appear to have added Rain and Patapon 3

They are definitely admitting they were wrong about the Kinect, but they are standing by their price point. The Xbox One with Kinect is still $499, and they're only getting to the same price as the PS4 because they took out the camera.

The worst part is that Microsoft has come out and said publicly that the camera cost almost as much as the console to make (probably both in production and R&D), and yet the console only drops to $399 without it.

If anything Microsoft is saying they think their product is worth more than it actually is.

The Xbox One, by itself, should be $299 or less.