loonyboi

Not at all. The dual stick is hardly non traditional. It's an evolution of the gamepad interface. I don't care for Metroid Hunters on DS. I tried it with the most conventional control scheme they had (the d-pad + face buttons), but even with that, my hands hurt after a few minutes. I also found hitting the touch screen to change weapons counter-intuitive. I'm sort of assuming from your tone that you've dismissed me entirely, but okay. Believe it or not, I'm not alone in my dislike of touchscreen gaming. Having said that, I think gyration's technology is really cool, and I have a lot higher hopes for the revolution than I did with the DS (even if I think the lack of HD support is moronic). But I'm still very skeptical of any non-traditional control scheme, and I stick by my statement that in ten years, the primary interface for virtually all games will still be a gamepad or mouse + keyboard, because they work for the widest variety of games that people play.

That's an awfully strong statement for a game for a new console with an unproven interface. I'm very skeptical of the FPS genre's ability to thrive on the Revolution, but then I'm also very skeptical of any non-traditional interface. I do really like my DS, but I do so in spite of its touchscreen, not because of it. So far, I find the uses of the touchscreen take away from games that use it (but then I play games like Phoenix Wright, Castlevania and Advance Wars, none of which needed to use it at all). This game does sound cool, but there are a lot of potential pitfalls. I'm more interested in seeing new gameplay styles using the Revo than adaptations of existing ones that may or may not pan out. Plus that Bob Ross game. That could rock.

I'd say b/c of the action and stealth elements. Even if the stealth was really, really minimal.

Grim Fandango was *basically* a 3D point n' click game. The different control scheme really didn't add or subtract from the game.

And Grim Fandango. Or does that not count as 3D? I think it does.

There's an interview with Charles in the latest issue of Edge (latest for me anyway...a newer one might be out in the UK by now. I tend to get them late) where he talks about his decision to go the consulting route. Right now he's doing two games, BS4 and one for my company (which meant I got to meet him when he came to our office...w00p). He says he's making a better living doing that than he did before, so it seems to be working for him. But it's still sad though. Revolution was awesome.

Oh, I don't know...the docks late at night, a gun show, a Star Trek convention, a furries meetup...the possibilities are endless.

I disagree. I really enjoyed BS3. I thought it was better than BS2, if only because of the subject matter (the aztec thing didn't work as well). But the game had the humor, the characters and the feel of a BSword, even if it wasn't a point n' click. It was a bit easy, but that didn't bother me. It made me feel smart for a change.

Yeah, there is no Revolution anymore. It's just Charles working from home. :\

I gotta say, this isn't how I've always wanted to play an RTS. It's a cool idea, but not particularly practical. In order to play a game like Warcraft III, you'd have to be hunched over this thing for 10 - 12 hours of gameplay time. And that's just the single player campaign. And yeah, Chepito's right. A game like Homeworld, where the game is played on a completely 3D plane, wouldn't work at all in this setting. It needs to be top down to function properly. I think better uses for this technology are social ones, where multiple people sit around a digital table playing together. The Philips entertaible may have the worst name imaginable, but it's a better use of touchscreen technology than a traditional RTS. Instead of thinking of how cool an RTS would be, think broader. How cool would a tabletop wargame be, if there were physical pieces and a CGI board that changed as you played? Or even just a touchscreen version of Ticket to Ride?

That's admirable, but irrelevant. Whether you or I think reviews should have scores is beside the point. Buyers look at review scores. Therefore, they are extremely important to a game's retail success. For the record, I agree with you. We never had scores on loonygames.

I tried it on 360 arcade, but couldn't get into it. The gameplay mechanics were too unusual for my taste. It kinda creeped me out, too.

There you get into a tricky category. It's cool for PR people to review interviews before they go out (if they're done via e-mail), and you can be on the phone or in person during a live interview, but PR people generally do not review editorial copy before it goes to print. Doing so (and I tend to agree with this) makes it look like the publisher has approval over editorial content. Whether that's true or not, it's a slippery slope to a publisher expecting to approve review scores.

That's a good example. Despite English not being their first language, the Starbreeze guys do a great job of talking about their creation process. They're also humble, which also helps. Plus they're cool guys. I did PR on The Darkness for a couple of months, so I got to know them reasonably well.

Believe it or not, I don't disagree with you there. Unfortunately, most journalists aren't asking those questions. Most questions they get asked are fairly mundane. From a PR standpoint, we were in the unusual position of intentionally going out of our way to *push* one designer, because he: A) Gave great interviews (due to generally being a very interesting and well spoken person) and Would otherwise have been lost in the shadow of an industry legend. I'm talking about Soren Johnson, the lead designer on Civ IV. Sid Meier oversaw the game, but it was Soren who did the brunt of the work, and we intentionally promoted it that way. But it's Sid Meier who gets sales and traffic, so Sid still did a lot of interviews. But only rarely were there any articles that had just Sid, without Soren. Sid wanted it that way and so did both 2k and Firaxis.

Ah, okay. Didn't know that. Guess my sarcasm detector is on the fritz. "Oh, a sarcasm detector, that's a real useful invention." ('sploads)

Yes, that was my point.

Funny, I had the same problem with Psychonauts. It's a good game. But it was WAY, WAY, WAY overhyped. Then again, maybe I'm just not a T.S. fan. I always preferred Monkey Island to Full Throttle.

I guess I'd better speak up here, since I was a profesisonal PR monkey and all... Here's the thing most people on the outside don't get: MOST DEVELOPERS DON'T GIVE GOOD INTERVIEWS. I'm dead serious. Most developers, like most people, just aren't that interesting. Even when they're talking about things they're really passionate about. You read interviews with guys like Will Wright, David Jaffe, Harvey Smith, Todd Howard, Sid Meier and you sort of assume that all developers must be that way, but they're not. A lousy interview means the perception of the game is going to be lousy. Therefore, why would you open yourself up to that? Doesn't it make a lot more sense to choose someone who can eloquently talk about the game, than to allow every random guy to give any interview they want? Also, let's not forget how fickle the games press and public can be. You can complain that there's not enough decent press out there, but I've seen it both ways. You do none, people want more. You give them what they want, and suddenly your game is overexposed, and you get "why won't these people shut up and finish the game already?" And that, in a nutshell is what PR is. It's balancing the "shut up and finish the game" with the "OMG WE NEED TO KNOW MORE GIVE US NEW SCRENSHOTS AND MOVIES AND INTARVIEWS". If you want better articles, write better stuff. The primary problem is with the journalists in that regard. You can't blame the PR people if some hack writes a preview based on a fact sheet and two screenshots.

"Extreme"-ness aside, they're called blades because they look like them. Seriously. If that's the most marketing-heavy thing about the 360, consider yourself lucky.

Yeah, they didn't reinvent the wheel with Civ IV, but all the changes, believe it or not, are overwhelmingly positive. Once you've played IV, there's no way you're going back to 3 (trust me, I've tried...it's really hard). If nothing else (and leaving out all the changes, including a multiplayer mode that actually *works* for once), the new interface is leaps and bounds over any previous game in the series. Civ never made sense compared to other strategy games. It does now, and that's huge.

I KNEW it! There are only 10 people on this board, and they're all just pretending to be other people. This explains everything. Especially that whole yufster thing.

Due to "technical issues" Majesco has canceled their $1M Advent Rising contest. The good news is if you can wrangle up a UPC code from the game and send it in along with your Xbox Live gamertag, they'll send you a game of your choice (including Psychonauts). http://www.xbox.com/en-US/promotions/adventrising.htm I think it's safe to say this is because there weren't enough people to justify giving away that much money. Now I just need to find the copy that's floating around the office...

I actually really like the humor in the Broken Sword series. But then, I also liked the humor in The Longest Journey, and then recently I read someone complaining that the game was utterly humorless, so maybe I just find the absence of humor hilarious. ...although that sounds rather funny. (See?)

No, I have nothing personal against them, I just work for Take 2/2K Games. EA's our sworn enemy or something like that. Plus I heard they suck.