I don’t disagree with your overall argument. My point was that it was pretty Scrooge-like for Bethesda to hold Obsidian to the 85 percent requirement when the final number was 84.

“As of May 9, Prey has an 80 on Metacritic. Although that number may jump up and down a bit before it settles, it is not considered fantastic. (From what I’ve heard anecdotally, most publishers’ Metacritic bonuses require games to hit an 85 or 90. I don’t know if Prey has any such bonus.) This Metascore is based…

The voice acting in the original Two Worlds is astonishingly bad, particularly for a game that otherwise is pretty good for its time. My girlfriend still plays it sometimes and we go Mystery Science Theater 3000 on the game together. Great fun at times.

This reminds me of my first playthrough of Bioshock 2. I wanted to get the “savior” achievement, which requires rescuing all of the Little Sisters *and* showing mercy to three key NPCs in the game. I saved everyone except for Gilbert Alexander, a scientist who has been turn into a giant, immobilized monster due to his…

I am apparently the odd man out in that Bioshock II is my favorite game in the series. Admittedly, it is not a creative breakthrough. It merely recycles the world and gameplay created in the original with a more standard “save the heroine” plot. Nor is it as intellectually adventurous as Bioshock Infinite, which…