Purkake

@Malcador: Yup, if you have good ideas and make good games you will eventually get that luxury.

If you need examples of polish, look at Valve and Blizzard. Awesome polish out the door and long-term support after that.

Color me surprised, I certainly didn't know if it was. Good opportunity to play Mask of the Betrayer for all the dirty heathens who still haven't...

Ice burn?

Oh please, like he isn't patronizing MMOs(which he is not in fact making) with his kill x monsters spiel.

Douchy as ever. Never change, Vince.

Wuss Also, try playing evil if you haven't yet, it's awesome.

Wow, you can get Red Faction: Guerrilla for 2.50€ and Flatout 2 for 1€. Plain destructive fun. Also, DA pack is half off, Arkham Asylum is 75% off and Hitman: Blood Money is 5€.

Yup, 1.04 should be good. Also, good luck

Oh crap, you got me.

Yeah, but that doesn't mean they're not fun. Did I say anything of the sort? This thread is about what games you are getting in 2011, all this is my personal preference, not the one universal truth.

...that are buggy and unpolished. To each their own, I guess.

Considering the developer's track record, I will steer clear unless proved otherwise.

I dare you to finish it. There are some mind-numbingly long dungeons and the whole game took me ~70h to finish the first time(I was like 10 then, though). Otherwise it's a pretty nice western-developed JRPG. Plus the was pretty cool as well. Oh, and make sure it's patched up, there's a nasty bug that will force you to restart about halfway through otherwise.

Diablo III and Portal 2.

I'm sure there's a TV trope for each of those and it would make some more sense as well.

So Avatar wasn't driven by technology? When it's not "hip" or "cool" anymore.

What about games that are not driven by technology(Minecraft, Gravity Bone) and movies that are(Avatar, Transformers)?

The Narrative Mechanics one was pretty interesting.

Nothing is becoming lost. I guess we'll just have to reach the graphics plateau. A lot of games are already going with a distinct art style instead of focusing on more realistic graphics and if this console generation continues for a year or so, there is no other direction to go anyway. The budgets will either implode or someone will realize that it is not a sustainable business model at some point.

We didn't, nobody cared.

There's a bit of a difference between "from the makers of Mass Effect" and "from Bioware", goes back to my franchise theory. Bet they would have loved to call it Mass Effect: Dragon Age It may not be about what the audience wants, but they are the ones buying it, often instead of another competing product. I think we need more niche-ization(yes, I just made up a word), where you market certain products at a certain segment of the market. This is happening a little, but because of the videogames' problem of needing an ever-bigger budget and thus even more sales to make a profit, everyone aims to make a blockbuster.

The name makes sense after you play and finish it. So it's about a demon who has a bunch of souls(that are not its)? Those crafty Japanese!

Judging from the huge advertisement campaign made for both DA and ME I think that they have broke some ground when it comes to reaching an audience. Plus there is a flood of people on the Bioboards that came after these two games. I would risk to say that most gamers look to the hype and publicity of AAA games before buying, since none of us want to make the mistake of buying a crappy game. Selling the brand name (dev's team name) as an assurance of the product has become something of a practice. Don't we see a lot of "from the makers of" when it comes to launching new IPs? The advertising campaign was for DA and ME respectively, not for Bioware itself. Another question is, would that audience actually want anything more artsy or different instead of more of the same?

Really? Do you think that Joe at the gamestop knows who Bioware or Cliffy B are? You are giving them way too much credit, most of the gamers probably don't go on gaming boards and buy games by the franchise(and marketing).