TangoUp

Any game for which I have to look at an online guide to progress isn't really for me. I had to do it for Ninja Gaiden Sigma (and I got pretty good at it) and Demon's Souls.

And I still prefer NGS inspite of the depressing world and somewhat cheap enemies.

If anyone has ever seen The Adjustment Bureau starring Matt Damon, they will probably understand what I was trying to say in the OP about romance being a driver of the story. I know cinema is saturated with romance but it's mostly filled with how Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon puts it as, "Save the World, Get the Girl" kind of romance. It's not really romance if you just shoehorn two people into a story and have them make out from time to time. And video games don't even have characters making out at all in some games.

Valkyria Chronicles also has a genuinely good romantic plot.

Master Chief and Cortana. And it works too for the most part. (No Xbox so I saw a Let's Play on Youtube of the entire game).

Maybe you're talking about the subplot between Akiba and his squad leader but that was supposed to be melodramatic at that point in time in the story. It was nearing the end after all. But if you think about the tension between that squad leader and Snake earlier in the game or the tension between Snake and the lady who hung out with Liquid and Vamp or between that same lady and the spectacled doctor, there was a lot of subtlety everywhere.

And this coming from someone who has never played any Metal Gear game but MGS4.

Mass Effect's romance isn't bad though. The romance with poem reciting Ashley in ME1 was good, romances with Miranda, Tali and Jack feel different in ME2 and there is genuine character development in Miranda's storyline. ME3 was a little weak to be honest.

Awkward pixel sex aside, portrayal of sex scenes isn't inherently bad when you compare it to stuff like Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden etc.

I do mean the former. Which favorite videogames of yours have these kinds of interactions?

Oh and I forgot Prince Of Persia 2008. It was excellent in using the romance angle.

Quite amazing that a game like GT5 is the top selling game on the PS3. Brand loyalty can only take you so far though.

I'm going to avoid (new) GT games from now on though. Sometimes, it literally feels like a badly programmed AI is making decisions at Polyphony Digital.

Excuse the word fanboy but this is a trend I have been noticing recently only because of the radical increase in its severity. I don't remember this being much of a problem more than 2 years back but recent releases in the video game industry have created a very vitriolic atmosphere for game critics.

I first witnessed this with Journey which was hailed as one of the most profound games of this generation. Any criticism was likely to be met with shock outrage and this continued with Telltale's The Walking Dead. But the two most extreme examples have been Bioshock Infinite and The Last of Us.

What's more intriguing is that I'm not seeing much variation in reviews from the major review websites. Considering Assassin's Creed got anything between 6-10 from a variety of websites, I am surprised that more and more games have started getting perfect or near perfect scores in nearly ALL reviews. This further creates an atmosphere in which the hype has convinced buyers of these titles that these are indeed the best games they have ever played. And this zealotry is the reason for the intolerance to views to the contrary.

I know the Amazon review system is exploited on a routine basis (one just needs to check the Dance with Dragons' (book) fabulous one line 5 star reviews) but the hate that 3 star reviews get for the recent games and even 4 star reviews in some cases is astounding.

Are review sites doing this in tandem with publishers to give a push to game sales regardless of system or game? It is in their interest that games sell well so that the 'industry survives' but it is creating an atmosphere of militant fanboy-ism that used to be a thing around 06-07.

No more Lex Luthor. What will that be? 5 Lex Luthors in 6 movies? Give it a rest.

Kingdoms of Amalur and El Shaddai bored me from the first moment I played them. Terrible waste of my time and I even tried plugging away at KoA for a good 10 hours or so. Not fun at all.

Demon's Souls was ok for a while before I got to the Poison Swamp and said, "fuck this".

Interesting. Makes sense too. And there's a chance employees themselves don't know that they work for a studio owned theater.

Slip in some clever statistics about theaters getting back a low percentage of ticket sales and garner sympathy. Works for the used games argument.