I’m astonished that you found that possible!

I’m not even talking about the official merchandising and commercial arrangements, I’m talking about an endless array of stories like this one.

You know, I honestly do quite like Star Wars. But am I the only one who is sick of the bombardment of SW news, features and...well...pretty much anything that has even the slightest connection with it - even before VII has arrived?

I do hope I’ve never been *that* customer. Whenever I visit the US with work, I’m often on my own and I love being able to sit at the bar, chat with the staff and ask them for recommendations. You just don’t get that in the UK.

I agree with a lot of what you say in this piece and I hope 343i take it on board, but I’m bothered by the repeated statement “for some reason” when in actual fact a lot of those reasons are explained perfectly well from in-game lore (not the EU).

Err...what?

I feel like a lot of gamers defending this mission as “a choice in morality” are scratching the dirt looking for justifications as to why CoD should be considered a thinking man’s game. When it's not.

I didn’t get bored of it :’(

Great. Now explain this:

US only, I presume.

US only, I presume.

Sure, welcome aboard.

Looks like Indycar to me. They’re definitely not F1 cars in that top video.

I’m actually a little bit creeped out by his sideways walking. There’s an element of uncanny valley about it.

I just feel like you’re trying hard to find specific issues with a series that actually does a lot of stuff right, in that respect. As I said before, being more progressive than many other games.

But back on the subject of the lore, the women aren’t be badly treated because, you know, they’re women and deserve it, or whatever. The dudes are forced to take up arms and go to war, but you wouldn’t say that the men are specifically being treated like shit.

Having read all the books, I still stand by my opinion. They’re equally badass in those, too. This specific example is part of a theme of desperation in the face of near extinction, that runs through the entire lore.

I kinda don’t see how the women are treated like shit in Gears. They’re largely on a level-pegging, actually: given the same equipment, the same chance to fight for humanity as the guys, they get chainsawed in half like the guys, and they deal out plenty of banter. In fact, Gears 3 in particular is pretty progressive…

I’m quite happy for my single player games to require a bit of online, but not everyone is. You’ll incur the wrath of people claiming “it’s unfair to service personnel” [spoiler: they don't know any, or really care, but if it means attacking Microsoft, they're all in]

This is a multiplayer feature, so is no different than any other multiplayer game’s servers being pulled.

Two things. Firstly, being able to level the city would probably play havoc with mission objectives. Secondly, if you limited the SP to online-online you’re going to incur a decent amount of vitriol.