I was actually looking forward to this game, but the demo utterly turned me off. Then I find out how bizarre the co-op is, and the campaign is only around 7-8 hours? What was Obsidian thinking with this? And for god sake don't make me play a female character if I want to be an archer....
My hope was the focused nature of the hack and slash would give Obsidian a chance to really have a polished product for a change. WOW was I wrong. And what is happening to Square? So strange to see a simple game with solid appeal just get mangled like this by veteran developers.
Another small thing is how when you click play on a video, it plays THAT video. Small touch, but the constant commercials on other sites make it so refreshing.
One of the elements that made Giantbomb an instant favorite of mine was it's long and unscripted video/audio content. Almost every day there is a new piece of quality content to put on and enjoy. Bombcasts come once a week, but their run-time represents that. Quicklooks are a great, often funny way to decide if you want to purchase a game. They eschewed the model of 2-5 minutes of slickly produced content in favor of a looser and longer approach. The genius of this lies in the reality of creating daily content: You have to mic up, get your recording equipment ready, edit everything, prepare it for the web and upload it. All this happens regardless of length. Since you are already at that point, why not just let things go on as long as they need to naturally? For having a modest crew, Giantbomb does an amazing job of providing solid content by relying less on effects, graphics and editing. Instead, they let their analysis, personalities and talent do the work.
What really triggered my appreciation of this was a visit to ESPN.com. Despite the vast resources available to them, ESPN opts to keep ANY piece of video content at or around 3 minutes. Including everything available on their premium subscription service. The TV side of things makes sense - commercials and time slots force them into a soundbyte driven kinetic torrent of flashing lights and easy concepts. But for all the enthusiasm for sports out there, any analysis presented online is either in written form without visuals or a truncated afterthought bookended by commercials. I'm positive there are a few underpaid interns around that campus who would be happy to jump on camera and offer running commentary or deep analysis (ala youtube videos) on specifics of games and players. Mechanics, plays, styles, etc. Really breaking things down. This could be a paid service and net them easy cash.
The same goes for Gamespot - they HAVE longer bits of content, but they are buried amidst an ad heavy experience that feels like a chore to browse.
I really hope Giantbomb's business model proves successful - it has set a new standard for what a small web savvy group can provide in the way of raw, enjoyable content.
I think the point about issues relating to time periods approved for game development rings true.
And yes, I know of Bounty Hunter. I played the hell out of that game and thought it was actually really well done for the time.
The comment about the expanded universe on Boba Fett was really what I was getting at. For any of us that got into that stuff as kids, he was a really cool roguish character. And his popularity might be inexplicable for some, but it's certainly real. Star Wars Galaxies had people sacrificing months of their lives to assemble mandalorian armor and build slaves ones. It WOULD sell huge
mmm only prob i have with Raiden is that superman move. Seems like they get a free escape if you block it because he bounces off of you out of uppercut range. Dunno if you can dash quick enough to hit him before he recovers...haven't played against too many Raidens.
Yeah. It doesn't seem to have a huge downside for how easy and quick it is. The combination of that quick teleport, combo and superman seemed to utterly befuddle anything I could do. I tried to block and use skill but it seemed vastly harder than anything I'd seen before. I apologize to any victims of thunder god based sexual abuse.
There seems to be a lot of confusion about the inclusion of a "1" in place of an "i" which is not featured in the original English spelling of the word "Rape". I'll have Sony Online Entertainment's people look at this situation and release a patch 7 months later.
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