It's a useful tag for things like, say, "RPGMaker" or "You Need a Budget", since those are legitimately not games.

It is not a useful tag for things that people just like to call "not a game" because they don't involve shooting brown people.

Yeah, the "totally different" thing has me a little worried, but...I'll take any new Ace Attorney, really (or even old, if Capcom would ever bring over AAI 2). Also, the involvement of Takumi has me extra optimistic.

Er...what? I'm not sure where you're getting literally any of that from.

(And whether or not it's "correct" is...well, questionable. See, for instance, the wisdom of two straight guys doing an entire episode about how the word "fag" is totally okay and gay people should just get over it.)

Whether South Park is "clever satire" varies tremendously from episode to episode.

Sometimes it's clever; sometimes it's lazy, self-impressed, and full of false equivalency bullshit.

My problem with South Park is when they attempt ass-backwards, false-equivalency-style "social commentary".

Bonus points if they have their viewpoints about a minority group coming out of the mouth of a minority character despite being a pair of rich white guys.

For a while (maybe a month ago?) the entire rest of the game was only a dollar or two. I picked it up at that price despite owning the DS version, because seriously, why not?

Man, I'm still not clear on what additional promotion you expect. They've done a ton of trailers. They've had a ton of people in for previews. What else should they be doing?

As for "most major AAA games" having reviews out 2-3 weeks in advance...Really? In my experience, that's hardly the norm. You MIGHT get something…

Both of which, I'd argue, owe some influence to the Thief series.

(Well, moreso Dark Messiah, maybe, even though that was a lot more fight-y.)

Still, saying that Thief is a rip-off of Dishonored is sort of like saying that the next Gears of War game is a rip-off of that other recent cover-based shooter.

Huh, was there? It's been long enough that I've forgotten most of the stuff about that game except for the addition of climbing and the Shalebridge Cradle.

Garrett has always been kind of a noir antihero type. He's not a -good- guy, but the people he's up against (often through circumstances not of his choosing) just tend to be worse.

I know I'm repeating myself, but Deus Ex: HR made some deviations from Deus Ex, and it was an unbelievably good Deus Ex game anyway.

This is the same studio.

So yes, I share your overall optimism.

That seems eminently reasonable.

Eh, I just have a thing against people posting personal info. Obviously, though, if I really were concerned about keeping it secret, I wouldn't have my name associated with (for instance) my Twitter account (which I rarely use anyway). So fair enough.

They have invited a bunch of prominent video game outlets to preview…

Leaving aside the trollishness of posting personal info (no matter how easily available) as part of a discussion:

What would you expect them to do differently? They've been putting out trailers regularly. They held E3 previews with anyone who would listen. They've given various media outlets access to preview builds of…

Oh, hey, you can use Google to find out personal information.

What exactly was the point of that?

(And again, that's completely irrelevant to the question, which is: what additional advertising would you have EXPECTED? What else should they be doing, precisely?)

I'd say "Like LA Noire meets Ghost Trick", but that's mostly just because Ghost Trick was fantastic.

The launch date has been set since sometime around the middle of last year, and a cursory search of Youtube turns up at least 6 different trailers that have been released for the game.

Pretty much.

It seems like the initial reaction of the online gaming community to anything having to do with a beloved older franchise is "OMG! They changed (minor element X)! This is a total sell-out cash-in failure!", even when they're operating from extremely limited information.

Original Thief had exploding arrows for a mission. In other missions you could not get them for a reason of game design and level design.

Really? Because, granted, it's been a while, but I remember finding them in more than one mission. Even if that's true, what about Thief 2? 3?

From the trailer. You are a hero. You…

Yeah, that's kind of what I'm thinking.

I mean, the stories about its troubled development don't help, but..."troubled development" can mean a lot of things. I'll take a game that went through several iterations as they experimented with new things over another annualized, barely-iterative sequel any day.