I'm pretty sure, at this point, Michael Pachter's analysis involves getting fall-down drunk, talking to a cat for an hour, and then writing down the results and reading them when he sobers up.
But if it's not a trick, why are they purposefully mislabelling things?
Pre-release Duke Nukem 3D review predictions:
3/10 - Sexist character design. Did this really take 15 years to make?
None. Stupid list. Sorry, but I feel like you've failed to capture the majority of gamers I know.
I'm going to call this "contained excitement." If we hear an announce from WB, it will expand beyond that.
Carmack said years ago, though not in these terms, that he'd decided it was time to stop fighting consoles. It's not surprising that he would then go on to not complain if it was middle-end (especially since it will let him work with x86 code, which means PCs get to take full advantage) because I think in his mind, consoles will always be and have always been middle-end. But his insistence on fighting them, he regrets, says it was a bad choice. So he wouldn't bring it up.
I'm a big believer that games should evoke strong emotional reactions from players.
Most game designers and writers are not capable of making happy, emotionally effecting stories. If they could, then sure.
They confirmed this, but they also said that the game contained server-side calculations which needed to be performed so intensively that your computer cannot perform them without the internet.
So I mean, yeah. I agree, sorta, but at the same time the lie is in the form of talking out of both sides of your mouth.
Note: Hardcore mode did not and does not make Fallout harder.
It just adds a food/drink component, which I guess you could say is harder, but it's not in the same "dimension" as the main game. It doesn't make gunplay scarier, or anything--it just means you need to be cognizant of your inventory.
Assassin's Creed 4: Better than Assassin's Creed 3 because it doesn't exist to be bad yet.
@sjaakiejj - But there ARE built-in features to play on private servers, and that means there are server files, even if they're only available through select distributors.
From there, it's no less trivial than any other cracking to acquire those files, modify them to allow unsigned access, and then block license checks to EA's servers and tell people to connect to cracked servers. Similar to what has been done with CoD4 private servers, for instance.
It's possible that it got much better in 2 and 3, but I thought it felt like a cop-out to skip the first game in the series, and when I played that, it was incredibly predictable and paced like they thought I wanted to ride a roller coaster instead. I frankly couldn't finish it because it was a weak story packed into a game I wasn't really enjoying.
I'm sure some people like that, but I think the Michael Bay approach is hurting gaming--not helping.
If the other half think that EA will put out an offline version in the next 6 months then my guess is they've got another thing coming. Considering that private servers are already possible, I can't imagine a crack coming out AFTER an official offline mode.
You think people would accept stupidly draconian DRM if there wasn't some hand-waved excuse?
I don't want to sound like a total nutcase, but it's damage control 101 to say that people need to have the thing they don't want to get the thing they do, even if it's not entirely true.
Maybe this time is the exception and it's just a weird coincidence that their real, totally honest reasons sound like a con. But why should I give EA the bene...
There have been 2 Always-Online games, with incredibly negative fan reactions. How does that equal a move towards always-online gaming? MMOs do not count.
Some games are good enough to overlook how bad they are? That's a bit of a puzzling statement to make.
I mean, "some games have more good qualities than bad qualities," sure. But "some games have good qualities that make their bad qualities not matter" is a slippery slope.
Maybe for consoles that's the case. More and more I've been thinking that consoles being a closed market is what makes their games suffer. A lot of smaller studios making games like Scratches, Amnesia, and Slender (to name the first 3 that pop into my head) can't really afford 10,000 for a dev console when it's not going to add that much to their revenue without being able to advertise.
I wouldn't say that single player is dying out, per se. I think that the suits have noticed that you can make more money from games with multiplayer, but that doesn't seem to matter all that much to the smaller devs like Double Fine and Obsidian, never minding indie devs.
You wouldn't rip out a beating human heart!
@irepbtown - This is what you've been waiting for for, what, a year? TWO FUCKING YEARS it's been since the last title update was supposed to be the best new thing since sliced bread, took 3-5 years to make this great new engine, etc etc.
Now it's 'oh we're doing semi-yearly title updates and each one is just as big a jump as the huge jump we bragged about for months.'