That money went to the investors/owners of Bungie, and is gone. These are the people who bought it out from Microsoft. When Sony bought the company, in addition to taking ownership of the physical stuff, they paid the money to the investors that ponied up in the first place. Essentially, all of that money disappeared.…

It shows full frontal nudity (penises and vulvas), as well as various thrusting, etc. actions. There is no penetration of genitals, and it’s all under the M rating and not really pornographic, but I was legit a little surprised it was as frank as it was.

I mean, you can always count on weird ultra-conservative nonsense getting mad, but Hot Coffee was far less explicit than BG3 (which are cutscenes, and not a mini-game, to be fair). 

It was and it wasn’t. It WAS in the game, made by the developers, but it wasn’t accessible without modding. 

1) changing cultural mores. Things in the past are certainly different from now. You might also remember western games getting pilloried for sexual content—for instance the now infamous GTA San Andreas hot coffee mod kerfuffle.

I mean, yeah, but that IS the loot.

It’s a shame that this doesn’t even mention Hunt: Showdown, which is easily the best extraction shooter I’ve played (including DMZ, Tarkov, The Cycle, Marauders, Dark and Darker, and others. I think Deep Rock Galactic is sort of an extraction shooter? I haven’t played that though, so if it’s better, don’t mind me) AND…

Yup. I mean, partly 4k streaming is worse than regular 1080p bluray disks, due to bitrate restrictions, and 4k blurays are just legions better, but more importantly, companies are just terrible at dealing with their digital libraries. I’ve been swooping in on essentially every cheap 4k sale to make sure I’m not losing…

Great list, but I was genuinely surprised to see Dead Space 2 there. I liked it as a game, but I tend to see it as a slight step downward from the original, and also partly blame it for the mediocrity of the third.

Good news: The output should be more cohesive, with interesting takes on the lore.

I mean, you’re absolutely not wrong, but I think I would have put it right before the final Dark Place exhibition videos with the reveals that had.

I cannot stress enough that people should not watch this unless they have no interest at all in the game, but are curious what this thing is.

I’ve made this comparison a number of times now, but it feels about as different as a director’s cut. Some things are different, but mostly it’s exactly the same, but looks/feels better. It was a great game, and they made it even better, but without changing any of the fundamental things of how the game plays or…

I’m saying that the director’s cut shouldn’t be nominated for the Oscar. This is the best version of RE4, but it’s really the same game, with some small tweaks. Hell, even the other RE Remakes are more significant changes, and more like a “different” game. The new Deadspace remake is more significantly changed (and…

Yeah. I have slightly different feelings about the other remakes (which, just subjectively, I don’t even like as much as games), but this one just feels like a polish--they changed things, for sure, but of all of them, it feels least like a new game, and more like a director’s cut.

That’s a very reasonable point, and you’re absolutely right that some remakes/remasters manage to somehow mess that up. I disagree with RE4 specifically, but I get where you’re coming from. 

Look, I don’t want to be annoying about it, but RE4 has no business being up for game of the year. It’s a fantastic facelife, but it isn’t a new game. The same goes for Deadspace (which, FWIW, I think was always a more interesting action horror game than RE4), and I’m glad that one didn’t get nominated.

Please, please, please, please do NOT tell us, or heavily imply, that any of the Carryx or nameless other aliens are the ones that we don’t see, but know about in The Expanse. Keep the universes entirely separate. I know that it’s trendy for everyone to link everything together, but it’s almost always just bad.

I don’t at all believe that the show will be revisited, because no Amazon executive has that much capacity to remember (and they would be more likey to try and reboot it from S1), but GOD would I love it if this happened.

I agree. Literally all of the Kyoshi warriors look like they have the same wig on, all with brand-new costumes to boot. The result, just as you say, is that it doesn’t feel like a group of people all in uniform, where their individuality is pressed into similarity, but rather it has the cosplay artificiality of…