Again I like Cal fine and he did grow on me but I do wish the model was closer to Naughty Dog quality.  The cut scenes were great but the in game character model lost something of its soul in the face - hard to pin it down.

I like the performance a lot but yes it was hard to latch on to Cal for some reason. I liked all the characters but strangely only really LOVED Trilla and Merrin. BD-1 did grow on me a lot too.

It’s a great game but the combat is something less than satisfying and it rides the line of being just too punishing. I’ve no trouble putting in the time to learn but I’m very very good at combat in games like Arkham and Spider Man and there was never an “a ha” moment where I felt like I got the flow or anything…

I’ve played every game in the series so have been accustomed to them changing things with almost every release. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not.

Westeros is not Europe, the Mediterranean or other far off lands we know and have familiarity with, or even on Earth.

I know the internet dogpile has its ridiculous aspects to it but sooner or later EA is going to have to own up to its crazy mismanagement and the lack of prescience and perspective among its leadership. Driven only by competitors revenue statements, biased focus groups and fiscal calendars is going to take anyone into…

The basic heart of this essay is super important. Game companies are actively hurting their business by putting out unfinished, unpolished games (not to mention the title in question).

The Congressional Reps for Orange County should haul Kotick and his new CFO into hearings to explain themselves. You cannot have an investor call and talk about your record earnings and mint a new CFO with a $15MM BONUS at the same time you put almost 1000 of your employees out the street without consequences.

The mishandling of the Amy Hennig-led game was absurd. We’ve all read about the ambitious scope and challenges the design had in it but making an Uncharted-style Star Wars game should not be viewed as risk not worth taking, which EA plainly did. It’s always easier said than done but these folks have/had the resources,…

EA have been just awful stewards for the license and can’t even take proper care of the franchises they themselves own (Mass Effect). The first Battlefront had the polish of what should be the default quality of a SW game but little to no actual gameplay and everything since (released or not) has been a complete and…

Now Blizzard needs to do the same. Jason would love for you to report a little more on the exodus of basically all of the primary/original Blizzard Senior and Creative talent over the past 2 years.  It seems hard to believe Activision’s hand didn’t play a part given these developments.

It’s stories like this that make one pine for a compulsory military draft or some kind of mandated farm or other labor. A generation+ of boys without any semblance of or hope of achieving something resembling manhood, not a one made to sweat on purpose outside of a gym, if ever even that.

I didn’t play 1 but the hype for 2 got to me and I bought it. I found it painfully, PAINFULLY boring and derivative, almost criminally designed to never satisfy. From a story standpoint it was obtuse almost to parody, despite being advertised as some kind of entry point.

Jason thank you for your continued attention to this issue and great reporting. I’m simply a gamer and longtime game fan that has been playing since the days of the Atari 2600 but have spent my career working in entertainment so I understand the landscape. However, between this sort of thing and the general toxicity…

I have played all of the AC games to completion and have been looking forward to this one of course but let me say, AC or not, that is one of the best pieces of writing about any video game I’ve come across in a long time.

They are within their rights but this stuff only emerges because it is probably the most neglected and badly managed IP in all of Hollywood. What’s worse is that they are probably now going to scramble to farm out some half assed VR version that approximates the vision of this idea themselves - and it will be cheap,…

This is just disgusting. The government should sue the executives of this company for all of the assistance benefits they will be paying to this staff + a stiff penalty to execs or board members that are able to walk away from this without the collateral damage to their lives endured by these employees.

This is dumb, but so is the notion of taking Kylo Ren’s manipulation of Rey at face value. I never understood why people flew off the deep end over this, other than that there is a class of fan that demanded this movie give them the answer and then spun into rage when they didn’t get it or it was treated in an…

It’s almost like toxicity in gaming and in the communities of games such as LoL comes from somewhere...

I never understand game fans railing against Nintendo on stuff like this. Not every gamer is an adult male. For a lot of people, especially kids, the 3DS is “their” system. Maybe you don’t have children but if/when you do and they like video games you might find yourself faced with the notion of wanting them to have…