Honestly, outside of the Maria subplot, Gears had pretty decent writing. It was exactly what it wanted to be. The characters didn't sound overeducated for their station, the plot wasn't overly complicated, and the dialogue fit the absurdity of the situation the characters were thrust into.

Minus the Maria subplot, I liked the Gears story for what it was. It was fairly obvious that they wanted a plot that matched their heavy, footslogging gameplay, and I think they succeeded pretty admirably. I'm not sure why the story producer on Dead Space is slamming another writer - Dead Space isn't exactly a…

Sherlock manages to keep my full attention for 90 minutes as a single episode. I'm beyond comfortable with the notion of 90-minute TV shows that have a full plot arc, and would totally agree with ya - it's a swell idea.

I learned something here. Hot girls are just like me. They can't sing and they have little grasp on rhythm. Whew. Thought I was alone there for a second.

Yell at them to smash the select button or throw up a MAV. I don't play Recon very seriously, and I still manage to light up the whole map with spots.

I bought Civ 5 on release day off of Steam, so excited to try out all the great features I'd heard about.

Invoking an emotion by itself doesn't qualify for a memorable character.

This part of the reason why most video games are just plain awful when it comes to building complex, non-static characters. Lying, deception, betrayal - these things get telegraphed early and often. If you suspect something's going wrong and you want to uncover the deceit early, fat chance. The devs wrote the story…

That 25th Century B.C. shit is so O.P.

Hmm... Customizable tea-bagging messages. That's the dudebro dream.

Yeah - but loin cloth customization. I mean, there's the real selling point right there.

Holding out for Call of Duty: Post-Apocalyptia with real stick-on-stone action, a stunning flattened wasteland lovingly rendered in full 1080p, dynamic player-killing environments interacting through a 60 fps frame rate, and fully customizable loin cloths. Paint your favorite stone red to throw faster, or sharpen your…

I think - I'm not 100% positive on the math of this - that you can get a suppression assist (50), kill assist (depends, but usually over 50), spot assist (10), and motion sensor assist (20, I think) in the same kill. Pretty funny to get more points off the kill than the guy who actually landed the killing blow.

I'd have to say that it's pretty reasonable to argue that difference. I mean, the parent-child relationship is there (given that the translator is usually given credits like "trans. XXXXX" or there's some notation about the original author) and that complicates the reading, but I'd say that it's perfectly fair to…

I get the feeling that touch-screen gaming's going to breathe a pretty hefty second wind into point-and-click, and, honestly, I'm glad. I get the appeal of point-and-click adventure/puzzle games, but the controls have always seemed like they should just be overhauled for touch-screens. Clicking takes away a certain…

I use Battlefield 1943 basically as a trainer if I feel like I'm missing too many shots in BF3. Go back to the basics, learn to aim, then get back into BF3. It doesn't work amazingly for sniper rifles, because bullet drop is such an issue in the bigger BF3 maps, but it has really improved my assault rifle aim when I…

I actually had a linguistics professor who interviewed with the OED folks once upon a time in his younger days. He did a pretty great job explaining the process of building a dictionary, but the job itself sounds horrifyingly precise. The amount of information you have to break down into a tiny, few phrases definition…

As much as I eventually got burnt out on the WWII titles, those bolt-action rifles were like butter when you had a really great round. No worrying about the muzzle kicking up or anything - just needing to hit the target and maybe lead 'em a little. The fear of one-center-of-mass-or-head-one-kill shooting added a lot…

When I play with my friends from college, we get on the headsets, and I play UAV (MAV in BF3) support from the skies pretty often. They know exactly who's coming for them, when they're coming for them, and exactly where they are and in what direction they're facing. It's not a perfect system - a lot of BF3 players are…

I've actually taken the habit of joining big ticket servers on Grand Bazaar and some of those tighter maps, hanging around mid-range in the high-frequency hallways, &c., and using a sniper rifle with just the iron sights. The new suppression mechanic (which is really a little drastic, to be honest) makes it…