LOPcagney

Wait. Am I correct in my understanding that the RTS gameplay the main focus of the story mode? Doesn't that sort of undermine the badass-ness of it? Doesn't that make the demo kind of insincere? Is it awesome anyway? Tell me when you find out.

Hahaha. BioWare. They got the sex scene into the last game, saw how everyone praised them for advancing video games as a mature art form, took that praise, and went in the totally wrong direction with it. Now their attempts at "adult content" look even more juvenile. (Though I agree with ThunderPeel2001 that they could have made her more conventionally sexual.) Or maybe they know exactly what they're doing, and are just going to make more money this way. Either way, they've lost some respect here. Did anyone else pick up on how they changed "wrath" to "anger". That change pretty much says all there is to say about what they're doing to the Divine Comedy: dumbing it down and, in the process, cheapening it and making it less powerful. There's so much more potential in the idea of Dante's inferno than a God of War clone.

Yup.

My opinion falls somewhere between vimes and syntheticgerbil: I want it to be good so badly but I've developed such a cynical view about how Disney opperates that what initially appealed to me about the screenshots was that it looked as though it didn't twist the Disney metaverse but the Disney merchandise. Disney has too much to lose. I doubt they'll let this game be any more subversive than Mary Poppins. I'd love to see a game set in a crumbling Disney theme-park, and all the crazy escapism/commercialism/decadence/waste etc. associated with it. That's far more interesting to me than "Mickey Mouse, but, like, cooler."

Speaking of 2D, the one problem I had with the game was the animated cut scenes. Seeing how beautiful the game was in-engine, it seemed like a cheap cop-out to use shoddy animation as opposed to simply making a few quick 3D sets.

Me too. To be honest, Mirror's Edge was one of only 3 or 4 games that came out within the past year that I was just blown away by. It gets a lot of bad press, but I was so in love with the style of the game that none of the rest of it really bothered me.

I don't want to risk wasting the money... There's a disclaimer on the Mirror's Edge DLC page saying it is only compatible with the EA online and CD versions of the game. No such disclaimer is attached to Mass Effect's DLC. Has anyone heard of anyone getting it to work?

I don't know if you've trying putting it on easy yet, but it's one of those rare games that gets better the easier it is. Once you can take out cops with 2 kicks, you stop feeling restricted by the fighting sections and start feeling more like a badass, which is what the game was going for all along. Also, I bought the game off Steam, so apparently, I can't get the DLC. Ugh.

I feel like explanatory sci-fi is almost it's own genre. Lost, and to a lesser extent Battlestar, thrive on mysteries which are so enigmatic and immediately relevant that a lot of the thrill comes in seeing them answered. However, in situations where the mystery isn't the point of the show, it often serves the atmosphere to keep it mysterious.

I'm with Westle on this one. I loved District 9, but I didn't realize I was loving it the first time through. Right as it ended I realized how much I had enjoyed it, because it ends the same way it begins: Small. It looked like it was going to lead up to this epic climax, but besides the , which were heroic and epic, but on a relatively small scale, the narrative dodges the more cliched and unnecessarily explanatory paths it could have taken in favor of giving us what I felt was a very understated (albeit not very subtle) ending. The sniper being such a cliche badass was kind of lame. That was my main gripe with the story, along with the father-in-law being a pretty obvious villain. The visuals and the intelligent use of CG more than made up for any narrative shortcomings in my mind: As simple as the story was, the direction made it feel like a fully realized and believable world.

Just tried it. Fantastic. I like the idea of being able to attach things to the outside of your character. And of course, it's beautifully designed. I think I'm sold. The only thing that doesn't sit well with me is the length (only 30 or so scenes).

I want it to be good so badly... But come on. I feel like they're trying to hard. I know I said this earlier, but I really think this is interesting enough without all the cartoonishness. In theory though, the game sounds fantastic and I'm going to remain pessimistically hopeful.

Having watched that video, the thought that this might never be ported to PC becomes almost physically painful.

Grim Fandango definitely is up there. Deus Ex was memorable in that the endings, despite being relatively short, were all open-ended and morally ambiguous, and all ended by flashing up a relevant historical quote. Wasn't thrilled about BGE's ending, even though the game as a whole was one of the best I've played in a while. And HL2 Episode 2. Oh man. One of the more satisfying cliffhangers in games and movies. It didn't feel rushed or forced, just sort of natural.

This sounds like the place to put this. Hopefully I'm not the only one who makes up alternate rules to existing games and we can all share some stories. A blog I used as a sort of diary of the various games we came up with. My favorite is still ClueChess, but I'm also interested in the idea of bringing in strategy to games (like Candyland) which have virtually no strategy in their original forms.

How could I forget. Been playing D20, Gurps, and various home-brewed systems for the past 2 years. I love it.

I just use the freeware version. And sadly, I think it's only 1 v 1, but beyond that, it doesn't restrict you as far as how you play the game, it only gives you tools to keep track of what Magic-esque things are happening on the board (blocking creatures, dealing damage, etc.) so I don't see why you couldn't play 1 v 1 EDH.

If you've played The Path, that's the example that most readily comes to mind of another game that uses contrast subtly as a result of conscious artistic direction. It was fantastic. I'm not saying that contrast is a tool that needs to be turned up to 11 all the time. With Fallout 3, however, my personal opinion, and clearly I'm not alone in this, is that the decision to create such a bleak, desolate place was a little boring, especially when you think of how many time's we've seen bleak, desolate post-apocalyptic landscapes. We can argue about whether contrast was used "subtly" or not in the game, but either way, it's the artistic direction, whether or not it was well-executed, that turned me off from the game. I think that's perfectly valid.

Magic will always have a special place in my heart. I've been playing on and off since Ice Age when I was in middle school. If you, or anyone else, has Magic Workstation and wants to play, we should.

Catan was my freshman year hall bonding activity. I love the game. Munchkin I got for my brother and enjoyed. I've heard great things about Diplomacy but haven't gotten to playing it yet.

Pacing is a different issue. I'll admit that it was a slow movie, but visually, it was beautifully stylized, with the pristine which cushioned corridors and Hal's single red "eye". The visuals allowed me to love the film despite it's turtle's pace.

Well, it was meant as a criticism, but one that reflected only my personal taste. I had a hard time with Morrowind too, even though from what I've heard it was a fantastic game. I'm easily turned off from games by little things (or big things, depending on how you look at it) like specific artistic choices and my impression was that Bethesda would build these incredible systems which allow you to play in an entirely open-ended world, which is commendable in it's own right, and then by spreading out the experience they would tend to lose the focused attention to detail of some other games. I can't quite articulate exactly what it is about Bethesda's Fallout that I find lacking, but even though Rage might not turn out to be a "better" game, per se, it looks like they're taking more creative liberties with the post-apocalypse cliche.

I don't see the comparisons between Rage and Fallout 3. The theme is similar but the flavor is entirely different. I see two unrelated games that just happen to have been released in relatively quick succession. That's maybe why I'm looking forward to it so much. Whereas Fallout's drab uniformity turned me off, the sort of crazy carnival aesthetic of Rage looks much more interesting.

I'm really looking forward to this. Reminds me of the worlds of Koji Morimoto's art and the animated Metropolis.

The tests definitely look fantastic, but the only part that I don't get (I'm probably over-simplifying the process in my mind) is that if the texturing is just a 3D projection of a 2D image, wouldn't any slight camera movement show untextured surfaces. I assume they just paint around the edges of objects to give a little elbow room there.