Oblarg

Funny, they didn't do that for Mass Effect. Perhaps the US box is missing the "The Espionage RPG" subtitle?

If a school deems religious garb disruptive, and issues a school-wide ban on it (not just on, say, Christian icons, mind you), there's nothing anyone can do about. It might not be a smart policy, but it's a legal one.

Really, it can't only be bugs. The insanely low American reviews all call the writing stale and uninteresting, yet the European reviews almost unanimously praise the depth of the characters and the quality of the dialogue, even in the not-so-good ones. I don't see how these can be people reviewing the same game. If I were to only look at the European reviews, it would be believable, but the gap is just too ****ing big. This doesn't make any sense.

European reviewers seem to fixate less on technical issues & look more at the overall package. It was the same story with games like Risen & Divinity II. Even so, most of the impressions I've read here don't seem to think that the game is a bug-ridden disaster, or even that there are a particularly large number of bugs.

No, really, how can a game be consistently getting 8.5/10 from European reviews, and 3/10 from American ones? It just doesn't make sense - the spread of reviews is utterly absurd. Are the reviewers even playing the same game?

Because he *really* wants his opinion heard? Though I get the feeling from his reviews that he has some personal vendetta against the game rather than just a normal dislike for it.

I demand pictures. Alpha Protocol is now officially out in Europe.

I don't think anyone here disagrees with that.

Hacking minigame. You have 60 seconds to get the install playing, but if you fail armed guards burst through your windows and attack you. You might just want to wait for the unlock... Oh man, so *that's* why I shouldn't pirate games!

Seeing the vast number of European sites rating it in the mid to high 80s, I really don't put much store by Gamespot's score, especially because the rationale on the sight right now basically says "It's a great game but we don't like the graphics and animations."

Gamespot is a notoriously unreliable review source. They gave Supreme Commander 2 (awful, awful RTS) an 8.0. To their credit, though, they did rate Total Annihilation above Starcraft.

Neither. When's the last time Yahtzee reviewed a game the week after it came out?

Yatzee is usually fun but rarely insightful. When is the last time any video game review was insightful?

The only review I'm looking forward to is the Zero Punctuation review...if there even is one.

That poll isn't lopsided at all! I think it's clear which platform won.

Can't really disagree with you there. That doesn't make it a particularly smart thing to do, however, unless you're looking to be a sacrificial lamb to prove a point. Personally, I doubt the danger is that great, and the school administration is probably just being rather stupid. School administrations, unfortunately, tend to do that a lot.

No, but I did unplug that pesky 10 year old CD drive that made strange noises when it tried (and failed) to read disks. Figured that was a better place to start than the RAM, as adding it was the only recent hardware change I had made.

Game is installed, but I have no serial key. I am sad.

To be honest, it depends on if there's actually a gang that wears rosary beads as a sign of membership. If there is, this could be in the interest of his safety, as absurd as it may be. That would be a reasonably action to take. Of course, action would also have to be taken to remove the actual gang members from the school environment if they were violent enough to attack someone over rosary beads. I don't think that article gives enough information to fully condemn the actions of the school.

A bit over half downloaded, but no serial key. I guess they were contacted about their ****up before I was able to buy the game. Bleh, guess I'll be waiting for the actual release date.

It seems that he played the first mission using weapons in which he had no skill, and based the game on that experience. That's one of the least informative reviews I've ever read.

Just noticed this. ****, I caved and bought it, and now it's not there anymore.

Oh man. He can still buy you a copy of the game though, dev or not. You just need to, erm, find him. Yeah, that sucks.

Usually reviews being held until release date isn't a good sign... Not that I care all that much, I'm buying the game regardless. Still, a bit disconcerting.

I can nab my mom's cheapo geforce 9400, which should run fine with my video drivers. If it still crashes with that, then at least I'll know it's not the video card. I think it's the memory right now. I'm currently waiting for my computer to crash again so I can pull out a RAM stick and, well, wait for it to crash again.