hostyl1

"The neck stabbing was, oddly, satisfying." Ryan Davis on Assassin's Creed.

God bless you young man, gone too soon.

Generally, I just get the Bombcast and Beastcast (though I'm really behind), Mass Alex, Nancy Drew Clue Crew, and the occasional Quick Look. Being home full time, I've tended to watch more streams here and elsewhere instead of the pure audio of the podcasts that I would do when I went into the office. Every now and then, I'll stick with a GB stream for 20-30 min, but no way I could keep up with everything they do (which is amazing, BTW and I'm thankful for it!), so I went with 25%.

Late to this post, it just happened to end up on the front page today. Truth be told, I *hated* Steins;Gate the game. Perhaps that's not the right term, but I certainly didnt *get* the game at all just playing through it. Like you, I could not suffer Okabe; could not put myself in his shoes. Having a 'protagonist' that I was actively rooting against did not make for enjoyable reading. I pretty much only liked Daru and Suzuha (ironically, due to story developments, that becomes not surprising). As well, mechanically, I dont know how anyone could suss out what responses to make to steer toward a particular ending without a guide. I found the whole process obtuse. I ended up with Suzuha's ending and thought I'd be done with the whole thing.

I ranted about this on another gaming site, and the folks there urged me to go through all the routes, which I did. Some of the endings I felt weren't "earned" by the writing (particularly Farris comes to mind), but I began to see why some liked it - though still not for me.

On a lark, I fired up the anime and *that's* where it clicked for me. I guess for me, there was something about Okabe's characterization that didnt come across well in text (I dont know Japanese) but came through in the English VA of the anime. Watched all of them, every episode, side stories, whatever I could find. "Drunk Kurisu" might be one of my favorite characters of all time.

Havent gotten around to S;G-Zero yet, but it's in the backlog.

Umm, I'm a premium member, though I missed UPF this week.

Maybe not "once", but did you ever play that Avatar game?

This is exactly the right way to think about things. For example, MS could have announced that the 10-man family share thing was limited to digital purchases. This would be an advantage for the consumer and for the publisher.

However, the problem is, MS (and Sony and Nintendo) not only have to placate consumers and publishers, but also retail. They need retail for product delivery and co-marketing. Thus it's hard for them to give an advantage to digital that doesnt exist for retail. They are kinda stuck that way. But if it's really important for their business model to go digital, eventually they are going to have to basically shun retail.

As far as I'm concerned though, this is nothing but good news. It's a win for consumers. I know what the benefits of full rights to physical media are, not just some general allegation that 'the power of the cloud' will make games better. Not only did MS try to force a change on gamers, they did a piss-poor job of selling why these changes would be good. They realized their error and corrected. I give them props for that. We'll see what lies ahead.

Like many, I'm less than impressed by the Xbox One. The name is rather odd; I'd rather they went with Ryan Davis' suggestion and just called it "The Xbox". OTOH, I like the simple styling of the box. Plenty of ventilation, yet still has a flat surface I could put a remote or something on top of.

The emphasis on the Kinect voice stuff did nothing for me. In fact, it was more of a detriment. When they showed that you could just say "HBO" to change the channel, all I could think of is my pre-school age kids annoying each other by saying "Disney Jr." and "No, Nick Jr." back and forth. They already say this trying to get *me* to change the channel. If they could do it themselves, they'd think they were gods.

Also, I'm a *huge* NFL fan, been playing Fantasy Football since '98, yet I couldn't give two shits about Fantasy Football integration with a gaming console. I have a laptop and a smartphone that I use to get updates. Been doing this for years and dont see the big improvement by having it on an XB1. I wish they would have said a but more about the "exclusive content" they are getting from the NFL. If they are getting things like the 'Coach's Tape' or 'All 22' camera angle of the games, that could be exciting. Short of that: meh.

As far as games, IMO, most of the games are just more of the same and, frankly, stuff that I dont play anyway (4 Forza games on the 360 and I never played one). I cant even get "excited" by "Quantum Break" because the trailer was so fucking cryptic that I have no idea what is going on (not excites, but I am intrigued).

All in all, The One is far down on my list. The PS4 has me more excited, but really, I'm leaning more and more towards enlisting in the "Master Race" and just building a gaming PC. I'm not huge on MS exclusives and while I like Sony games, most of the stuff I play is 3rd party.

Of course, I reserve the right to revise and extend my remarks come E3. ;)

Ficking Dusney!

Seriously though, as many have stated, LA was a shell of its former self. I'm actually less sad about this than I was about the closing of Black Rock Studios many moons ago. With titles like Pure and Split/Second, they were actually doing something cool and well received.

We'll see how the LA IP is handled by the rest of Disney Interactive Studios. All Hail "The Mouse"!

I am 100% okay with having a scientific study done by the (relatively) impartial CDC. I am confident that they will find what we already know, there is no causal relationship between violent videogames and gun-violence. I am a scientist and believe that more information is better than less information.

As a gamer, I'm tired of old people who've never played one of these "violent videogames" talking out of their arse about how they are so sure that the games "desensitize" people. It really gets me when they dont include movies, TV, the News, hell even our National Anthem is about shit blowing up!

In this particular case though, the dude who shot up Newtown was an adult anyway. Young, as he was only 20, but that qualifies as an adult for every purpose other than buying booze.

Now, I'd *rather* that $10mil be spent on Early Childhood education or Childhood nutrition or even building some more playgrounds. But if it will shoot down (pun intended) this fallacious line of thought once and for all, go ahead and do it!

Then again I picked the nick hostyl1 (hostile one) so maybe I've already be compromised (desensitized). ;)

It took over 35 posts to get to the real answer to this question, and even then it was buried in a list of like 50 games, some of questionable quality. (Seriously, Elebits?)

My vote is for Zack and Wiki: Quest for Barbaro's Treasure. It is the first game I recommended to all those 'casual' Wii owners who were looking for that "other" game to play beside Wii Sports. It used the controller well, had a great art style, and good humor. Oh and the puzzles were pretty interesting too.

I suppose that a strong case could be made for Wii Sports though. I think that almost *everyone* universally enjoyed that game.