mikemariano

Exactly. Look at the Skyrim footage: it clearly shows updates and gameplay changes that take into account how people have played their past games. Mass Effect 2 responded to aimless Mako driving and inventory Hell, but added random features that couldn't have possibly been based on player reaction. Who wanted to planet scan? For example, this twitter post: It means what we'll get in Mass Effect 3 is totally unpredictable. That may not be a bad thing, but it definitely requires some caution.

Bioware marketing just keeps getting better! OBESnvjZGt8 This reminds me of the news broadcasts in Willy Wonka. I hope Shepard wins the golden ticket. But to kill the buzz of your expectations, Rodi, the gameplay trailer showed off at least one turret sequence, which is always lazy gameplay and is something that Mass Effect 2 did horribly (kill the monkeys on Tuchanka!). My expectations are not high for anything combat-related. I'm just hoping for more advances in conversation. Mass Effect 2 improved conversation in ways I didn't expect.

Hmmm, you are immortal for some mysterious reason...? JASON BRODY: "No, I must kill the tri-gens!" GUY: "No, Brody, you are the tri-gens." And then all the Far Cry 2 fans became zombies.

Oooh, Kinect support! M5F_5e6_pOg

WqCqVAoCA8w Now with more turret sequences!!! (I don't like turret sequences.)

I watched the video for this on Steam. I thought it was a missed opportunity that the combat doesn't seem to affect the environment at all. Sandworms burst in and out of the ground, and your characters summon meteor storms as magic, but neither of these affect the terrain that we know to be transformable. It's a neat idea and seems to offer more than Maple Story, a similar "endless JRPG". I'd actually like to see a Dwarf Fortress or Minecraft-style of world building used for a traditional RPG. Basically, the computer itself would be playing Terraria and your exploratory hero quest would take place traveling to and from these changing lands. (This would only appeal to people like me who have no creativity.)

I know this is the wrong place to say this, but Bioshock has ruined everything forever. v8otmMpaIdQ Thrill to this trailer, which once again hints at research, but only guarantees that "somehow you will get to use alien weapons". And the enemies are essentially all possessed humans! One man in the trailer even has the glowing-eye effect from Bioshock Infinite! Splicers are the worst implementation of mindless zombie enemies ever, but apparently now they need to be in every game.

Thief: Deadly Shadows is 75% off on Steam—but only for the next 13 hours! Do these sales hint at any possible upcoming announcement about the fourth game? Or does Steam just have sales to have sales? Anyway, go buy Deadly Shadows if you haven't already played it.

More Dragon Age! Wired says: Dragon Age II Coming March 2011. Which, if they hold to the same release schedule they did for the last game, means we get Mass Effect 3 two months later. Right? I guess you're forced to be human. Sorry, other races! Sorry, converging storylines! I don't see anything tantalizing about this sequel. Did anything from the expansion packs hint at this?

I can't believe she's charging for Day One Magical Ponycorn Armor DLC! Kids today grow up too jaded...

Whenever Chris Remo and Nick Breckon would get excited about a Starcraft tournament, it sounded just like this to me. S9ZI6I56604

Ha, I like how this game even has its own Otis. Hey, don't hang up on me. It's rude!

The main page says it's your birthday! Happy birthday!

confirmed. That's worth not using spoiler tags. "We have to save this dying horse! I will open a portal to the 80s!" I will never play this game but I love how much of a cracked-out mess it has the potential to be. All the goofy base jumping, turn-of-the-century xenophobia, and time travel in Bioshock Infinite doesn't make any sense at all, plus it doesn't hint at any satisfying gameplay. So for me a worthwhile spoiler would be something like .

Eh. It's just Real Genius with guns.

I wanted to let guys live! It seemed like the first guy and I were having a conversation, so I refused to thwomp him. That resulted in an immediate Game Over. I'm just not spike trap material.

IGN.com reveals major new features for this year's upcoming Madden game. Amazing! Fake computer football will never be the same. Just ignore this guy in the comments...

Every time I download a demo of the latest Madden or play it somewhere else, I'm surprised at how difficult it is to tell if you're any good at it. It's telling that so many of the hyped features are esoteric additions to the franchise mode. "It isn't fun to play football in single player. We haven't made any improvements to multiplayer. But if you like salary cap adjustments, Madden NFL 12 is for you!"

Chris Kohler's Wired review makes this seem like something I won't want to play. PRESS X TO EVIDENCE I thought this was going to be more Mass Effect-y in the "guns and conversation" genre. I don't know if I want to Professor Layton my way through the underbelly of Los Angeles.

In November, IGN tried to explain Minecraft to its readers: "You can't shoot people in the face in first person, you can't group units together and shoot people in the face in third person, and you can't race a car around a track, win first place, then get out and shoot the spectators in the face." -- IGN.com

Gamestop dropped the price of a new copy of New Vegas to $20, so I bought the game this weekend. I held out until now partially because I still had so much Fallout 3 to play. I also was put off by the Rock Paper Shotgun review, in which Quintin Smith complained about the half-hearted voice acting and world-building. And while I can understand the complaints (Sunny Smiles is distractingly bad), so far I'm enjoying the game. My favorite improvement is in enemy logic. Fallout 3 was terrible in this respect; any enemy within line of sight would chase you halfway across Maryland. But in New Vegas, single Geckos and Coyotes will leave you alone unless you approach them, and injured animals will run away. I know some people don't care about this, but dumb enemies make some games unplayable for me. I also enjoyed the first mission in Goodsprings; a sort of "round up the town and have a shootout". If the quest quality stays high, and the human enemies aren't too terrible, I think this will be a good game. I am terrible at Caravan, though.

Yeah, I was surprised that Deus Ex hacking video was showcased on the PS3. Too soon!

They will have to utterly ruin Biotic and Tech powers to make them compatible with any PvP scenario. No player will want to spend the game suspended in mid-air for half the match as they get spammed with Pull and Shockwave. How do you fix that? Make these powers useless! Anything that immobilizes you gets thrown out or made ineffective. Would Bioware really ruin the single-player experience in favor of some poorly-planned multiplayer deathmatch? As some guy on the Internet who has no evidence whatsoever, I say yes, yes they would.

Yay! Even though I'm not at all on the Walking Dead wavelength, it's always a pleasure to hear from you two. And I think I posted this in another thread, but I only played Super Mario Sunshine for the first time recently and thought those "retro" levels were horrible. I can't even stand to hear that a cappella Mario theme because I associate it with instant death. Part of the problem is I played Sunshine after Galaxy, and Galaxy fixed so many of the camera angle problems and avoided the 2-D jumps in 3-D space problems that are everywhere in those Sunshine levels. The other part of the problem is that I suck at Mario.

Thompson confirms: Portal 2 only offers seven hours of gameplay.