Purkake

Portal was a nice short and self-contained game, the gameplay and story were nicely connected, GLaDOS was a multi-dimensional character, and it had some nice subtext about games in general. Plus it did some not in-your-face humor which is pretty rare in games these days. A gimmick is something that's added for the sake of it or not fully utilized. Portal was built around the portal gun and well... portals. I think it explored the possibilities pretty thoroughly.

How so? I'm going to use an example : the rocket launcher turret thingies. There were like.. two in the whole game? There could have been potentially tons of puzzle using them (of course, making the game too long would have been a mistake too, but Portal could have easily lasted at least one hour or two more without hurting the game IMHO). I don't remember any rocket launcher turrets in the campaign. Padding it out with a bunch more puzzles would have taken away from short, focused style they were going for. Also, it was released as a $20 game.

Aahahahahah. This industry is a ****ing joke.

How so?

It feels kind of weird to not have the ironsights view in HL2, that's pretty much a standard now and also seeing your body to get away from the "you're just a floating camera" feel.

It's cool that Gamebanshee is still up and kicking. I remember going there back when the Gamegossip Alien forum was still active and Gamefaqs didn't suck.

It was kind of nice that you could do all the places at your own pace and the way you wanted to. Also, it amplified the feeling of isolation, for a while it was just you and your car against the world.

I call Stockholm syndrome.

Smear campaign? It's probably the same reviewers who got bribed to hate Alpha Protocol...

Now there's a game that does open world well! And it has some of the prettiest environments with a full day/night cycle, snowy mountains, deserts and jungles.

Well, if there's a jpeg... The amount of analysis written about Portal is quite staggering, now that I look into it.

GTA IV's reviews were an absolute riot with quotes like:

I just remembered that there was a great essay about Portal being being the "feminist FPS". Also there's that weird GLaDOS bondage thing, I don't know if anyone has figured that out yet...

I care...damnit...I care... You'll need to start buying a lot more copies for it to matter. Well given that I think they'll find this policy won't lead to a big bump in their sales, maybe that will learn them. Or I could be wrong and everyone will just go with it and one day in the future you won't be able to play a game unless you bought it new. And if you buy it new and don't like it your only option is to add it to your stack of worthless discs that you use as a coaster. As long as it won't lead to a big decline, the extra income will lead to a nice bump in the profits.

Because people will pay for it and not care. You'll need more than a bunch of whining on the internet to get a message across to a game publisher.

She didn't even get all the words right So, the real question is, how does Portal represent socialism's eternal struggle against the imperialist hordes in a post-modern society?

Well, apparently the open world stuff is really lacking. It's basically a linear progression of missions with lots of driving in between.

I wish all games had as good art direction as Shank

RUSE single player demo is out

What? They sell other products than booze and cigarettes in Estonia? Why was I not told You'd probably be unhappily surprised by all the stuff you can get from Estonia you can't get from Finland. I know I've been You have Mountain Dew, so we're even

But it does! In collectible form, even.

Awesome! I look forward to the inevitably horrible cover art @entrerix: Maybe American Gods by Neil Gaiman? Or Altered Carbon by Richard K Morgan for some grittier modern neo noire cyberpunk? Or Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss for some non-standard fantasy?