RedRavN

Considering there has not been much of a drop in total revenue in the games industry and that the market has been trending upwards dispite a serious recession, I find it hard to believe that real people are losing jobs over piracy. We have also seen the biggest releases in video game history within the past couple years. The video game industry has been healthier than ever in my opinion and the dissolution of certain companies and the rise in mobile and indie games is not a bad thing. That statement about piracy has never been quantified in any accurate manner and is no more than speculation at this point.

You would have a much more sound argument that piracy helped expand the market and increased the health of the industry and at least you would have numbers to back it up. I am not defending piracy, copyright infringement, or theft and would like to see reasonable services that provide a legal alternative. I just think that statement is full of shit and only people who have no familiarity with economics and business would believe it. I find using blanket statements like that one to generate support for actual legislation that takes away individual rights and bypasses the legal system entirely is surely unethical.

The game seems like a pretty decent one. But for 200 million you would figure they would have at least have made something a bit more innovative. I just feel like if this was a single player version of kotor 3 a lot of people would be dissapointed. I also think they could have spend a bit more of that money on the graphics of the game which look several years dated in my opinion.

@DarthB: That sounds like an unbelievable PR disaster waiting to happen. Besides how can you have an ounce of credibility or journalistic integrity if you review a project you were producer on? If anyone is going to do this I would love a modern john romero review of daikatana :)

I would definately say alpha protocol at least on PC. That game still does some things better than any other game like that finding intel gives stat bonuses, the intelligent timed dialog and the extremely branching story. The core mechanics are not bad per se, they just take some time to get used as the systems designed for the game are very unique. At least in my experience, the game is no where near the buggy mess I have heard about and runs maxed out at 60fps.

I think it would be a very noble gesture if they did boycott it. SOPA/PIPA ceases to become a political issue when it actually effects the employment of people such as the giant bomb crew. Its better to fight back then to just sit back and passively loose our rights to benefit corporate gain.

I suppose that criticism in a game review requires some type of qualifying statement to really be appropriate. For example, its one thing to say that "uncharted 3 is linear and therefore less of a game than it could have been" and another to say "There are examples in the industry of less scripted games being great and the market is saturated with linear games, so some people might be dissapointed that the experience feels familiar".

Good or bad design is at times subjective, so perhaps a reviewer should be extra careful when doing that comparison.

I also think its funny how people are making all kinds of inferences about ME3 when none of these articles are even about that.

@lionheart25:

Yes, I did play arkham asylum and found most of the riddler trophies 80-90% before I moved on to another game although I replayed the main story on newgame+. You are correct that arkham city has a lot more stuff in it. I believe that there are about 450 riddler challenges all things considered and some of them can be quite tricky to grab. I really like the fact that the challenges are now tied to a prettty cool questline that gives non-ocd gamers like myself a reason to find as many as I can. I like to feel like there is some reason for me to be running around backtracking for hours instead of moving on to more quality content. Also, arkham city seems like a fantastic game, I'm about half way through and feel like I will certainly jump into newgame+.

To play the devil's advocate here, I am more of an ADD gamer and tend to jump around a lot to to many different styles of games. This can be a bit of a problem also because I have shamefully not finished some of the games I have wanted to. For example, deus ex human revolution is at a standstill and that is a game you want to focus solely on if you want to get immersed in the world. Also with skyrim I just get overwhelmed with the amount of quests and stuff to do and end up getting burned out and wanting to play something similar. Skyrim is the worst if you are an ADD gamer.

I want this game so bad. The two max payne games really had a great story and atmosphere and were wicked fun as well. I wonder what direction rockstar will take with it.

I would prefer scoreless reviews to be honest. I like to be able to form my own opinion based on what the reviewer likes and dislikes in the game. I also think there is a clear place for criticism in game reviews as a discussion of the medium at large gives your points more context in the grand scheme of things. It also takes the game in question out of the "bubble" it exists in so you can say, for example, "this game's combat is clearly not broken, but it lacks in some of the innovation present in these other games, which makes it inferior".

I really think the only way to get rid of metacritic is to move away from scores. It helps the consumer because they form an opinion based on the actual content of the review rather than just the number. Otherwise a person might see an 8/10 review score, buy it and then realize its just not fun for them.

@D5tryr: Because the general public can't effectively disect an opinion for personal relevance. If you want to maintain readership you need to include some sort of score system. I am all for scoreless reviews and like to interpret a review as I see fit. I'm not trying to sound like an elitist but how many people would really be interested in a scoreless review? I guess Kotaku is a good example of this. You put out great, interesting, challenging content and have a small readership. I really think that something must be done about the reliance on metacritic and numbers in general before scoreless content becomes the norm.