Tale

I find Amazon's reviews to be very biased. Almost every game I look at on Amazon.com has an average rating of 4-4 1/2 with the rare dip to 3 1/2.

I just generally disagree with the concept presented in games that all girls exist merely to flirt with you and try to get in your pants. I think it socializes us gamers very poorly. I enjoy my games with a tad bit more realism over ego stroking fantasy. Heck, both KOTOR games featured girls that would change their entire personality and loyalties depending on how badly they wanted to sleep with you. Is it really so far fetched that a group of 9 people can co-exist for a month without love triangles and jumping into each other's pants? Do we seek that from our games to fulfill fantasy or to reinforce faulty media fed beliefs about how the real world is? As a guy who was very poorly socialized growing up to begin with, I know well of how games and TV engineer our expectations. I was drastically dissapointed when I started making friends and wasn't the constant center of all attention like TV and video games led me to believe I would be. And the fact that not every girl I interacted with on a more than passing basis did not fawn at my every act simply because I said something nice once in passing was shattering, indeed. At the very least it needs to be more subtle, dramatic, and most importantly of all appropriate. Leia wasn't jumping into Han's bunk at the end of the first movie. Nor the second. In fact, we never see them jump into bunks at all. Black screen moments have always struck me as wholely gratuitous. All this is not to say that I dislike the concept of relationship metagames within a video or computer game. My currently played game is rife with relationship metagames and I absolutely love it. All this is to say that I dislike the High School romance metagames that reinforce bad relationship stereotypes, which from Baldur's Gate II on to NWN2 is all I've seen. They consist of little more than noticing an attractive avatar, making a few choice responses you think sound good to that avatar, to the ultimate goal of doing the horizontal polka. A serious and mature relationship metagame should include all forms of relationships, friendships and romances, including same sex friendships (same sex romances depending on comftorability of developers/publishers with releasing a game containing such concepts) and *gasp* opposite sex friendships which should serve as the basis of romance metagames, not sex and attraction serving as the basis.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...d=moreheadlines Read more at the link. The implications of this are astounding should they hold up to repeated testing. It's always interesting to learn more about memory formation and information processing. Most especially when it relates to seeming flaws in these processes that can result in faulty recall. And it invites some particular new questions. Obviously it needs to be tested to see in what situations it is true. States of arousal, repeated exposure, etc. Though, I think it's kind of shoddy that the article turns around to 9/11 and Iraq. Sure, those are hot button examples to throw around, but surely they could have come up with something a little less politically charged.

Welcome to the FarCry haters club. *hi-five* Now join me in deliciously blind bashing of Crysis!

I love it. So many delicious quotes from my favorite movies. There were at least two Aliens quotes in there, so someone's passion bodes hopeful for their Aliens game. Also, Fifth Element references boost game reviews by 50%, for the record.

Ahh, grats on getting married then.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDGE So, I was at Target buying a new pillow and set of sheets. What do I see? The Brain Age 2 DS bundle that I've been anticipating. I hold myself back, thinking... no, I've got 3 games that are supposed to arrive from Amazon.com today, I can wait a little bit. Then I remembered how much I want to play the Phoenix Wright games. I end up going by Circuit City, buying the bundle + the latest Phoenix Wright game. Also, Jagged Alliance 2 arrived in the mail (lol, PEGI, but I don't care). Still waiting on Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past GBA and Katamari Damacy.

Which one? All of them?

Today's been a lazy day for me. I think I may be done here. I've been working to make up a backlog going back to february/march left behind by the person previously doing it, did it in a month or two plus the new stuff that's been coming in. And I thought I was a cyberslacker. Now there's nothing for me to do!

Palpatine never fully adopted his Sith name. He was still publicly Palpatine even as Emperor. We didn't even know his Sith name until Phantom Menace.

But a review is more than an opinion.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to retcon. Obsidian's done a terrific job of it, though. Makes it quite interesting. I imagine it's so well done because of how shallow Bioware presented it (leaving it easy to retcon over) and how terrific some of the writing staff is at Obsidian. But some of it gets so complicated and contorted that it makes heads spin.

The way it is presented, the explanation for that, and the detail given. Reviews are a necessity because there needs to be a place that people can go to get a general idea of what a product is like before purchase and scouring random forum posts in vague parts of the web trying to weed out the ones that constitute "I hate " or "it sucks because of belts and zippers" is ridiculously silly. Reviews: 1) Give a general opinion of the game. 2) Qualify that opinion. 3) Describe the game. All 3 of which can be used to aid an intelligent choice of whether or not to purchase beyond "****sux." And reviews usually have far more information than just the stated opinion. Maybe I'll revisit this later and give you an analysis of a randomly selected review from gamespy to help illustrate my point.

I Y Dark Messiah of Might and Magic

At first based on your blurb from it I thought this might be a patent vampire. But reading the actual article sounds like they may have an actual invention and products!

I've had investigative ambitions since 2000. So, yeah I'll be going with detective ambitions. What I came to this thread to post was one thing I have to give Wal-Mart credit for. I found a pair of boots there like 4 or 5 years ago that I really liked. They still have them. I've been rebuying the same pair of boots for several years. If you go to Target, you can't find these boots, and if you did there'd be no assurance that they'd be there next time you go shopping.

A modded Xbox still wouldn't work. A modded Xbox won't play mods of any complexity. For the last time, you cannot legally mod X-boxes... Not that long ago I would have disagreed with you. But I've heard nasty things about the DMC. It may depend on country, but the legal climate in the US in regards to it still seems to be up in the air. However, FUD is most definitely erring on your side of that argument.

That is so last week. The dog is selling Metroid Prime 3, now.

I wouldn't call it interesting, I'd call it uninspired. You want it to be interesting? Have him actually do stuff. Then he can pawn off the stuff he doesn't have time for on you. Make him an actual participant in the world. Martin: "I'm going to this cave to retrieve the ancient relics of my ancestors. While I'm gone, I need you to go to these zombie infested fields, grab some 'magical' beans, roast them, grind them, and brew me a cup for when I get back. One lump, non-dairy cream." I don't mean quite like that, but at least make it look like the supposed chosen one is unique in the world. As it stood, they could have just as easily made it my character that turned out to be a Septim. Actually that would have been easier! Then I wouldn't have had that crappy escort quest at the end.

I would have been able to appreciate it if it hadn't been done quite so half-arsedly. Sure, you're not the chosen one, that's someone else, but that someone else doesn't do anything. Your character is single handendly overcoming great trials and tribulations while he sits around a warm fire telling you what to do. If they had actually wanted to do it right, they simply should have avoided the chosen one cliche altogether. You should go with the fugly orc. My experience says that stealth gets the shaft with their system. It doesn't train the combat attributes that you need nearly as well as standard combat does.

I think this is pretty much understood, but sometimes things fall through the cracks because of: a) Crackpot reviewers who just want to bash a game. b) Genre overload like what mkreku is talking about. Anytime you see a good review for a WWII shooter, you can probably guess the reviewers are abiding by that. Because 90% of the population has to be sick and tired of those games by now. They've got to be purposefully selecting a reviewer in that 10%.

I'm officially getting pissed at Persona 3. I can spend an hour or so in the dungeon, get up to level 52, then on my way out, I'll get hit with a chain of attacks from an otherwise weak enemy that just ruin my day and cause me to have to restart an hour back... Oh, and it's apparently quite a long game. I'm 63 hours in.

Because a game is either scary or boring, amirite?