Everyone says they hate objective reviews until a review tackles a touchy topic.

Oh noes, people expect others to express growth and development in their self-comportment, when conducting themselves in a social setting, where their actions influence and affect others! People hold artists to standards and don't just unreflectively wolf down everything they do, because "it's just art, man." It…

Attempting to not be an uneducated racist bigot isn't self-censorship, it's trying to do your part to be have a place in civilized society.

"Okay, you're offended. Can you connect that with any right you have to shut me up?"

It's the same old song and dance: a bunch of folks who have never had to live under any kind of oppression telling everybody else how they should feel about the world they live in. Discompassionate snotnosed shits like you just don't care that shitty behavior never stops at least until someone calls it out as shitty,…

Thankfully thinking has progressed in a lot of ways throughout history. Otherwise we would still be trying to enslave people with different color skin than us.

A) That's ironic, considering that Stephen Fry later got very outspoken about how "offended" he was by Russia's LGBT policy.

The awesome thing about the internet is that I've learned anyone with the word 'Shadow' in their username anywhere is a reliable signpost that you'll soon be approaching nonsense.

Nah. That actually sounds like a testament to him. He was a hardy guy. He survived a lot of hell, even after the war, and died at an age that would make many jealous. The AK was a good reflection of Mikhail as a person.

Device 6 was a really novel approach to the gamebook (which have seen something of an explosion on iOS this year) and I'm glad it's made a few people's "Best of 2013" lists around the web.

I still occasionally fire up Papers, Please to get my dose of entertaining Soviet oppression. I really want a GLORY TO ARSTOTZKA shirt, but I would only buy it if it was being sold for zero profit. Because Kolechian capitalist scum must not prosper!

Seconded. No Yakuza or Valkyria Chronicles in the west, instead we get more and more fucking Sonic.

I think the issue continues to be Sega of America. (And possibly Europe, but I don't follow that arm of the company at all.) They've always had a really shaky notion of just what in the hell to do with themselves going way, way back.

The continued absence of Yakuza 5 in the West - in addition to Sega's seeming abandonment of the franchise outside of Japan - really should be a part of this list.

I had a blast with the world of the game, but — in terms of the writing, I definitely felt like GTA's particular brand of 'social satire' showed its age with this one.
It was all a little too on-the-nose, too obvious. Not enough grace and wit.

Yeah, I think Clem is supposed to be black/Asian, but I don't remember.

I bet that card filled in fast today.

Why Gone Home should be Game of the Year: So many games are forgettable. Think back to all the games you’ve played, the thousands upon thousands of hours you’ve spent, and think of how much of that actually stuck with you. For me, the details of most games are murky pastiches, vague snippets of copy-pasted plots and…