I remember the original Unreal Tournament had an... option? mod? that increased or decreased the fatness of a player's model depending on how well they were doing. So players doing well would be fat and easier to hit, while players doing poorly were skinny and harder to hit. I always thought that was really clever.…

This looks promising. I had a hankering for some space 4x action a while back and bought Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion on sale, but it's really just the same as the last iteration with a few fairly minor additions. The genre needs a fresh entrant, and this looks promising.

"Big gathering of Jump characters!"

I'm actually confused as to why she even thought this was noteworthy. People read porn on the train all the time in Japan. Seen it many times.

I did a complete replay a few months ago (on PC, maxed settings, but obviously not the new BFG edition). I was surprised at how well it held up. Sure, the humans look awkward (this has always been id's weak spot), but they're only around for the first few minutes anyway. The monsters, however, look great. The…

I actually thought Okami had a really clever system; text with nonsense sounds being voiced. That way you got a sense of the tone of the dialog and the "voice" of each character but just read the text for meaning. Maybe that's the compromise.

Violates the contract, of course, but totally cool in my moral universe. The important thing is that the people who made the game get money for it. How the bits actually get on your hard drive is just distribution.

Amazing... turtlenecks.

Sure, lots of games retread tired old plots and themes. But the solution is to inject games with "relevant" social issues? CNN, the game? Really, that's where you find "meaning"? In the latest political fad? If that's really how the "next generation" finds meaning in life, I find that pretty sad.

Western games have ramped up graphics to cover for mediocre narratives and recycled gameplay. Japanese games... haven't ramped up the graphics as much.

I know how you feel. It has happened to me a few times, most notably with FFVIII. At some point I realized I was going to have to go back and spend a few hours leveling up some skills in order to advance, and I realized "meh, I don't care enough about this story to invest that kind of time into finding out what…

I actually just finally played Chrono Cross last year. I really liked it. It was beautifully done, the mood was amazing, and the story was interesting.

Yep, that's me. The current emphasis on multiplayer actually annoys me. It seems like it is a way for developers to add play time to their games without investing the time and expense to develop campaign assets. It's essentially user generated content; other players make the same tired old maps endlessly…

Yeah, I never got the hate for FFXIII. I actually thought it was one of the best RPGs out there. The characters were much more interesting than the usual RPG cast, and they were really well developed, with a lot of psychological depth. The story was compelling. The world was fascinating. Sure, it was linear, but…

I haven't bought a PS3 yet. I'll probably skip this generation. I consider myself a hardcore gamer, but there just hasn't been enough reason to buy the PS3. I want to play the uncharted games and MGS4, but enough to buy a whole console?

Augh, I always read these too late to get in on the conversation, but here's my two cents anyway:

To the article's detractors:

To the article's detractors:

To the article's detractors: