Credit where it's due, great answer!
That's pretty terrible, at least papers like the Guardian make an effort. Their gaming blog has at times been responsible for some truly awful journalism. But Charlie Brooker was allowed to write about games recently and they're planning to add games reviews to G2 in the New Year, hopefully they'll be responsible about it and actually play the bloody games.
Considering the way the economy has been, things could have been far worse this year. Smaller games, new IPs and less well received games might have struggled, but sales records have been smashed by games like MW2 and Fifa over here was the fastest selling sports title ever.
Err, Apple could afford EA, they did pretty well throughout the recession because of things like the iPhone, whilst EA felt the pinch. A takeover was rumoured in May of this year, although obviously it didn't come to fruition (there's a terrible pun in there somewhere...).
Yeah, the problem is having a game revered and loved by a fanbase, from a business perspective at least, isn't as important as it selling extremely well. Games that sell well are the games that most companies strive to make and that other companies will copy.
I mean look at MW2 and the new look Medal of Honor, which has miraculously decided to move the franchise into Modern times.
I'd personally rather see the SOTC and Icos (and Uncharted 2's) of the world sell like...
Hey well, he had to say something to rile up the 360 owners after annoying PS3 users earlier..
Either that or he's an impartial industry analyst.. but somehow i doubt anyone is gonna buy that..
I don't think Pachter is saying 1 million sales is bad, just that given how well the game was critically received he'd expect better. Uncharted 2 got pretty much the highest scores out of any game this year and will garner all sorts of awards and sit at the top of most end of year lists. But it sales whilst very good, they are not amazing and are perhaps below what you might expect from such a well liked game.
Oh dear, read a little about this last week, but had no idea as to the extent of the time wasted on these human rights studies. And even after all their time spent doing research, they then make terrible mistakes like mistaking an internet walkthrough for official content.
I unashamedly love Bloodlines, so quite looking forward to anything Brian Mitsoda creates, espcially outside the confines of a big studio.
I quite liked Tomb Raider: Legend but between the first two and Anniversary the games just got shockingly bad and kinda ruined the franchises credibility. The stories were always pretty bad, but the first one had a really good atmosphere.
I find it difficult to be cynical after some of the experiences I've had when playing this with 3 mates. When the stars align and AI director is on form and realism mode is switched on, it's f*cking intense!
The most obvious counterpoint to the arguement in the articles is the armour female characters in games are often found wearing. IE chainmail bikinis which look good and show off curves, but obviously offer little to no protection.
Also, Power Armour grants a +2 STR boost, which is an obvious advantage!
I guess im kinda lucky in that me and my friends regularly have evenings where we get together and have local mp game sessions, tournaments and the like.
Looking forward to the PC beta, for some 32 player goodness.
The hype seemed to work for Activision this time around in general, despite calls for boycotts nearly everyone I know has bought the game.
I never pay much attention to hype personally, prefer to - as DemonStration said above - judge a game on it's merits rather than sales or fanfare. Judging MW2 on it's merits, says it's a pretty good fps with a fantastic multiplayer component, but the PC version seriously needs some love and attention.
Ahh, when smashable windows made their entrance into gaming it was a good day. Ever played Die Hard trilogy on the PS1? Used to smash all the windows in both Die Hard 1 and 2 games, unfortunately Die Hard with a vengeance was car based :(
Flies in the face of common sense this does, hopefully it will get shot down in parliament.
Acheivements have completely passed me by. I have a mate though who is obsessed with them, if I'm playing an online game with him co-op he'll often go off the beaten path or repeatedly perform some arbitrary and repetitive task in pursuit of a little message that pops up on his screen and sits on his profile (that no-one else except for him will read ever).
The latest example was L4D2 where he tried to do the gnome one, but he died at the finale as I escaped to safety, completel...
They only semi-work for me as my eyes aren't perfectly aligned. Problem being that it hurts like hell after a while.
The last couple of paragraphs got me thinking about where the lines for censorship should be drawn and reminded me of the furore over Super Columbine Massacre RPG.
On paper it sounds like a cynical glamourisation of a horrific event designed to cause offence and controversy (and thereby boost media coverage). But it actually turned out to be quite subtle and well drawn, sparking debate and opening a dialogue over the events that occured in Columbine.
It's not quite...