DRM is par for the course on consoles. I do not want it on the PC.

I can't say I'd be too bothered by this. Besides, what about a game that represents a real life ad? For instance, the Firestone tyre arch at Laguna Seca. I'd expect a racing game to reproduce the track, ads and all. Will you throw Gran Turismo 5 out the window because there's ads on the track?

These stand to reason.

There is a fine line here, between engaging with a topic and propaganda. Game developers should not restrict themselves to not discussing such issues. Final Fantasy VII has a strong environmentalist message, and a mixed one about terrorism. Final Fantasy X is noticeably anti-religion, as is Breath Of Fire II. Final Fantasy IX could be interpreted as anti-war - heck, it even has a line in which the phrase 'weapons of mass destruction' is mentioned.

I don't have a problem with slightly silly plots. What matters to me is that the plot should feel reasonably important, and be well-developed.

I think perfect balance would be boring. If some classes are more useful than others that's not a problem. Some classes might only be useful in conjunction with others. However, no class should be useless, or totally bettered by another. It should not be possible for the unsuspecting player to pick a class that they cannot complete the game with - but it's fine if some classes will merely take a bit longer.

Do you refer to realism, or internal consistency? Take the Kingdom Hearts series as an example. There is no way the game is remotely realistic, both in terms of plot and also physics (just look at the way Sora jumps into the air and hammers stuff with the Keyblade, someone ignored Newton's Third Law there). Yet over the four games so far they have created a generally coherent Kingdom Hearts Universe, and one that is distinct from both Disney's films and the Final Fantasy games.

How about take a supernova explosion to the face and survive? (Final Fantasy VII, Safer Sephiroth's attack). Or cause an explosion half the radius of the galaxy that somehow leaves the building you're fighting in unscathed. (Final Fantasy VIII, Eden Summon)

@ distributing money among other departments.

Theoretically, all the design of the game is done up front and put in a design document. In a perfect world, the game projects would follow the initial design completely.

However, often a level can't be properly designed until the mechanics are developed which need to first be designed which may be affected by technical limitations. Not to mention, you have to make the graphics work for how optimized the code is and what the target system is. Getting the game to run smoothly and look beautiful on 80% of the target hardware can be a difficult task. Especially if you demand a lot from your AI. FPSes have to utilize a ton of tricks just to get all that to work.

[ RANT ]

Really though, I blame our society for the cause of the "throw away" game. With shorter and shorter attention spans and broadening the target audience to include anybody that uses a cell phone, games will become more of a 3 feature event where it has a story, 1 quirky game mechanic, and lasts as long as your attention span. And digital piracy only fuels this idea.

I don't think a disproportionate amount of money is going into graphics. But games are probably going to see a bigger budget cut just so they will sell at the $30 price. Just so you know... EA games can and do end up in the bargain bin with in a few months. Mirrors Edge did this.

The bigger thing to complain about is not the amount of crappy games, but the amount of games that are forced to be released at $60 on the PS3/XBox ($50 on Wii) just to see if there are enough people foolish enough to buy at that price before the real price is decided... and or keeping them at full price, regardless of sales, because they know it will hit "greatest hits" status eventually.

Stop buying on their schedule. Buy when the price is right for the game.

Copies of the games will always be around to be purchased. I highly doubt that new and recently released games will be "collectibles" in the future. Our society isn't built that way. And if (S)NES and other consoles have shown us, these games will be around for ever in the digital realm. I lost it somewhere... ohwell.

Well, if I don't notice the ads, (which in Gran Turismo I definitely don't, I watch the road ... but if they put one right there in front of me on the road that distracts my attention and makes me run off the track ... I chunk it ! ... this has yet to happen, but it could). One where it really pissed me off was Splinter Cell, they even advertised in-game for another Ubisoft title ... just ridiculous, that one I threw out at that point, it's just shameless advertising.

The words "WMD" and "terrorist" will result in an instant toss into the garbage of the DVD or Bluray. If it has pro-war propaganda, and it's mild, I maybe can bear it for a while.

Try Valkyria Chronciles to see what I'm talking about plot elements, examples (spoilers)

*SPOILERS HERE*


People getting shot for no reason in an attempt to squeeze tears from the audience.

People committing suicide for no apparent reason or any good reason, probably for the same purpose.

No sane person would react the way they do in this game. Whoever wrote the scripts was smoking something strange ...

Plot is unrealistic, braindamaged, nonsensical, and is not in touch with reality ... schizophrenic.


*END SPOILERS*

Although I played the game through, I stopped watching the cutscenes.

When I say balance I mean:

1) All classes must be useful, even if only in a reduced number of situations.
2) No one class should be greatly superior to another, except in a reduced number of situations.
3) If there are two sides, one side should be just as powerful as the other, except in a reduced number of situations, these situations having to do with battle strategy and tactics, and less with the overall power of the side. For example C&C usually balanced very different teams very well ... the least balanced was Generals, but it was still balanced according to me.

I'd prefer that games mostly stick to obeying the laws of physics, except for maybe a short time and key points in the plot ... where a bad guy must be defeated using a special technique or something. Or if you do have extra superpowers they must be compensated by extra weaknesses. Superman doesn't work well as a game unless there's cryptonite in there somewhere to provide some challenge and bring him back down to earth.

That's one reason I never like the Final Fantasy series, it just crazy, they're smoking something ...

So you're basically saying you won't play any game that depicts modern conflict in any way? (Since any reasonable depiction of such conflict must surely make reference to such things.) I'm sure you wouldn't apply the same demand to books or movies.

Restricting games to reality would of course limit them. I think games should have physics that the player does not scream out "that's wrong". The physics in KH isn't realistic, but it's reliable and predictable, and works well in a game that is not in general realistic. Similar physics in something like Bushido Blade (a realistic samurai game) would have been noticed as 'wrong'. The longstanding practice of 'aftertouch' in soccer games is another thing that is flagrantly wrong physics, but used because it makes sense to the players. (I don't know if soccer games still use it, but it was certainly near-universal for at least a decade.)
And of course games with sci-fi or fantasy settings cannot obey the laws of physics. (That doesn't mean they should wantonly ignore them)

If it depicts it accurately, then I won't chunk the disk ... but this does not happen. It's always depicted in the politically correct way ... and thus the realistically incorrect way. Oh, and I apply the same demand of any media ... movies, shows, books, everything, even people. If someone just starts blabbering about this nonsense I will refuse to pay attention and ignore them.

As soon as I hear the words "global warming", "terrorist", "WMD", "space time continuum", "quantum physics", and many other terms on TV ... it's time to change the channel or go play some video games without these terms. That's why I don't really watch much TV anymore.

Look, it's just my personal bias I guess, but I can't stand this propaganda campaign. You have no idea how huge it is, how pervasive and omnipresent, how complete and brainwashing it is. I have to try to save myself, I have to try not to let them corrupt my mind. If they keep telling you something over and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over ... you will believe it or go mad, even if what they are saying is complete BS.

Well, again, they can bend the rules, but with restrictions. I don't like things that are too sci-fi too detached from reality.

I hate DRM.
LOL me to
I actually like bugs -- they give a chalenge.
I like a balence between da two.
Hate propaganda.
WTF does that mean?
Again WTF does that mean?
LOL

Well, you know plot ... like a story, a storyline if that's what you wanna call it. Something obviously always happens in any movie or game, and that's the plot. There's almost always taking and intrigue and backstabbing. But, sometimes, it's just random violence with no real plot, that's fine too, but if it does have a plot it must make some sense.

Classes exist in many games, I mean you can have a Medic, an Engineer, a Soldier, a Grenadier, a Sniper, a Demolition expert, a Covert Ops / Spy, a Tank, and so on. You can also have sides: the Aliens, the Allies, the Axis, the Rebels, the Brotherhood of Nod, the GDI, the GLA, the Chinese, the Russians, the Soviets ... and so on.

Do you play many games ?

Older games only when i am not on LQ.ORG and not writing my OS.
The new games don't have any new material.

I always liked Neocron because it had ads for in-game stuff. They never changed, so it got old, but the idea was cool initially.

Furthermore - They should ditch the idea of restricting the player to classes. Also, they should branch away from the military aspect of it all..

I'd like a game in the future to have a civilian atmosphere with the variety and availability of firepower, hand tools, vehicles, etc. that we have now. From that, I would like an open ended control/strategy game in the first person, that would adopt a concept from a line in Dragon Age that unfortunately did not have any bearing on the game, and that is..

CONSCRIPTION! Don't do it like that, of course, but be able to build a social network of combatants or whatever. Perhaps there's an alien invasion, but the aliens aren't like anything we've ever seen, and they don't act like we expect them to act, or in the worst case, similar to how we expect them to act.

A game that could go anywhere.. really fucking weird stuff.

When deciding to buy a new game i usually read a few reviews and watch some gameplay on youtube. With new games out just about every week i dont play many games twice anymore, only use them for online multiplayer. Anyway just my opinion.

The Alienware ads in there seem actually quite fitting imo, for the environment.

Me, I spend a heck of a lot of time gaming, probably far too much...

only criterias I have are:
is it reasonable priced? if not, wait a while.
Will it provide fun time? look at screenies, watch youtube gameplay, read reviews, ask friends if they have the game in question.

Play across different game genres, be it MMOs (SWG/Neocron2), FPS (last purchases Left 4 Dead 2 + Frontlines:Fuels of War (can't go wrong for 3.5£ for the latter) ), Strategy (Empire: Total War, Hearts of Iron, etc.), Simulations (Silent Hunter, etc), RPGs (Jade Empire,...) and whatever else floats my boat...

And silly storylines can be fun too, just look at old school games such as Monkey Island, Sam&Max, Days of the Tentacle... (mean the old ones, not the new stuff, havn't looked at those yet)

Hehe, you guys are bashing the heck out of EA. Fine by me. It's your opinion, and everyone is entitled. No problems there.

I must interject, though, and let you guys know that there's a game called Burnout Paradise for the PS3. I bought it about 2 years ago when it first came out, for the full $60 price (it's only $17.99 now), after playing the demo, right along with an offroad racing game called Motor Storm. Burnout is based more in the city, and is more onroad based, and I was really more interested in the offroad stuff.

I played Burnout for only a few times before moving over to Motor Storm and playing that for about a year. Burnout wasn't played again until my son put it back in one day. I watched him and helped him. Got to like the game, etc. And wondered why I hadn't continued playing before.

In the case of Burnout, EA, along with Criterion Games, had done something right. The online experience in Burnout is different than any other game I've found so far, much more involving. So I definitely give them a thumbs up. Some of the games still put out are really good, if you allow them the chance. I'd pay full price for another Burnout game again, if the company put the game out again in a different city, and with different cars, as long as the online experience is as good. Thus far, I've logged probably more than 1500 hrs on this game. Well worth the price of admission.

P.S. I'm not trying to tout for any companies, or get you to buy the game. I'm just providing my opinion here.

Interesting that you mention Burnout. I actually did play Burnout Revenge on the Xbox 360 ... now that is truly a game I won't forget. This is one game where after playing for about 15-20 min, I took the game out of the Xbox and was very very close to snapping the disk in half and throwing it in the trash ... but I was stopped and reminded that I could still get back some money on it if I sold it back. Or I could find someone to trade me some other game.

Ah yes, a most wonderful game, if you even need to feel really angry, or have low blood pressure and need a boost, play this game.

Hrmm, as I said before ... To each his own. But Burnout Paradise is completely revamped. Nothing like Revenge, or its other predecessors.

in statustics, a lot of work starts with kicking out lover 20% and higher 20%, and only using middle %60. without extremes, solutions turns out better. but statustics is ugliest thing ever, anyone can lie with it.

and defenetely stay away from press reviews. they tent to get distracted by graphics and non-linear looking linear game play (anyone remember The Thing, gaming press loved it).