...it went to the employees as bonuses. Ie: hey, you’ve been here 10 years, here is a $x payout as a reward for being awesome and staying with us—if you keep working in the future, we’ll also do similar things

Thanks? Bungie was incorporated, and did indeed have investors and shares.

I can’t disagree harder with this. At the risk of making a straw-man argument, the complaint here is that the relationship is shallow, and you can’t get a happy ending, which is what you really want but...that is largely the point. This is a game world where the most in-depth relationship are the ones you form over a…

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.

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.

I think this is such a great example of how Bethesda works. They are obviously putting in a lot of work, but it feels like doing more work for the sake of doing more work, not of making it better. This is why Morrowind was the absolute pinnacle of their games, because all of those systems in conversation with each…