Allegedly - I don't watch many shows or films much at all myself. Thanks for shedding some light on this issue anyway. It has been interesting.

Also can you please approve me? I've been posting considered, measured, critical comments with this account for what must be multiple months now.

Very interesting. So would you say high school is more or less idealized than in the West? If you're right to say that they're used so ubiquitously in advertising to remind people of happier days, then do people regard adulthood as objectively worse than adolescence?

They call them legwarmers in the UK and girls were wearing them for winter as far back as four years ago.

"We think robots with guns will save lives".

Blastoise is an ugly fucker though. Charizard is a freaking dragon! And none of that Dragonite bullshit either. Dragonite looks like a dragon crossed with a fairy.

Indies, vastly improved architecture over the PS3, a much improved controller (although I have to say the Xbone controller is still king based on impressions), a social networking infrastructure that won't suck dick like Microsoft's idea (although its execution remains another matter), PS+ - time and time again…

I worked in Sainsbury's full time for my gap year, about 12 hours/week on the tills. The number of couples buying the Sun and the Daily Mail was depressing. I would honestly estimate that I saw those two just as much as - if not more than - all the other papers combined. This is in a middle class dormitory town in the…

What part of the awesomeness of this genre have publishers been blind to for a decade? I just don't understand. Then again, this game would be a million times more exciting to me if it was an X Wing Alliance successor.

Sorry for the long delay. I stopped getting logged in automatically and I don't know my Burner password. This is what I had typed out though:

I think only that that's a broad statement ;)

Very interesting, but it surely doesn't matter except with facial mo-cap? This is a first person game. Can't they mo-cap a different mouth and stick it on a young guy's body for the cutscenes?

Newsflash: mainstream videogames are the furthest thing from art, regardless of how artistic their isolated components can be (i.e. beautiful art style does not turn entertainment into art).

Yeah, this worries me.

Pre-emptive counter: don't like it, don't buy it. Stop bashing your keyboards against the mainstream asking it to change.

Sooooo what happens to the communities that fell by the wayside when fibre optics came out in this digital future with no discs and no consoles?

Meh, I still have a lot of hope for a 2014 release. Valve don't need *that* long to hype this game. In fact, a short but intense hype campaign might be the only thing that can convince everyone that HL3 can deliver on the expectations.

Good sir, I have a question related to your excellent post.

Valve are smart marketers and businesspeople. That is indisputable.

The Elder Scrolls? "Lore"? Don't you know they gave up on that ten years ago?