owl_of_minerva

From what I've seen of the game the story looks absolutely abysmal and the campaign looks even more stripped down than Crysis 2's. I didn't like Crysis 2 so won't bother with this. Also, as has been pointed out, 70s range in the gaming press means the game is shit. As much as one wants to decry the rating scale every major site starts at 7, it's their way of telling you the game isn't good without appearing to be overly negative (EA is too big to annoy without repercussions).

Aliens: Colonial Marines is a terrible game. However, the criticisms levelled at A:CM should also be levelled at many other poor to mediocre AAA titles that are given a free pass; to that extent the "mob-mentality lynching" comment is justified. The Aliens game is just a convenient scapegoat so that vg journalists will acquire a semblance of integrity before resuming business as usual.

It would be nice if we weren't continually subjected to threads like this (ie. lame pseudo-sociological observations). But since somehow it's led to decent discussion, my view is that the rage is largely justified. Publishers and concomitantly devs want to see players on console for a number of reasons, and will make up any number of rationalisations as to why PC gaming should no longer exist. For those that are committed to playing games on the PC it's irritating white noise.

It makes me twitch when people complain about graphics/rebindable controls/difficulty. SS2 is one of the best games for the PC and absolutely should be played. Some minor annoyances aside it has great atmosphere, sharp writing and setting, and it hybridises action and rpg elements well, thus adding depth and replayability. Although it might not fit into how you want to play I would advise levelling hacking and standard weapons.

In terms of SS2 relates to Bioshock, Bio is quite similar but it strips down the RPG elements and makes many things too easy (respawning doesn't have a resource cost, security cameras with lights showing you where they're looking, less atmosphere, over-plentiful resources, etc.).

Binary Domain all day, it is better from a gameplay perspective and has a lot more personality to it. Spec Ops is tedious and depressing and contradictory. It wants to demonstrate the horror of war yet mechanically it reproduces all of the sins of the modern military shooter.

And as to whether they'll go into Spec Ops during GOTY, I doubt either of these games will be discussed at length if at all.

There is also a bug where the % shows up as different depending on how you select the target, in some cases the chance will appear better or worse (like shots at close range appearing to be 20% when I moused over them).

Depth of mechanics and a healthy plurality of genres.

@Hailinel: To be fair most of those games have been on licensed engines and it's the publisher who determines when the game gets released. Publishers also have their own QA department. Given these are year-long projects usually I don't see it as Obsidian's sole responsibility to fix engines that are not theirs and do QA as well.

@Freshbandito: False analogy. In any case, I've given my reasons for talking about the larger developers and if since I was talking only about those developers - and they are the most significant, let's get that right - and if you don't want to accept that delimitation of my argument we have nothing to discuss. The fact remain that the number of good indie titles and middle-scale publishers do not do much to counteract the glut of action titles, there's still not that much that is good (or even competent necessarily if indie) being released. I am well aware that there is much more that exists than the mainstream releases, certainly enough to stay occupied with, but they don't change the general market trends and direction. The fact remains that many genres are on life support, and wouldn't exist AT ALL if there hadn't been a resurgence of indies and midtier publishers or for regions such as Japan and Europe.

@believer258: Except for Portal, every game you listed there is an action game (or action-focused hybrid). Market direction has to do with the variety of genres because if a genre isn't profitable it effectively ceases to exist: as I mentioned the RPG, adventure, and TB strategy genres are some examples.

@Freshbandito: Since my argument hinges on referring to a specific subset of the games industry, the most advanced and well-funded part of it, and I gave my reasons for doing so, then how exactly does the existence of other kinds of developers contradict my argument?

@legendlexicon: The polish in BF3 is undoubtedly impressive, but I wasn't impressed with the mechanics and design choices. However, I would argue that yes, while difference in taste is all well and good, I'm not talking about taste per se. I would make the argument that the deeper and more layered a game is, whatever the type of game is, the more rewarding it is to play :. the better it is. The depth and possibility for reward based on well-constructed challenge is the most important goal for good game design. Is it the only thing games can or should be? No, of course not, in some cases games may require a lower degree of challenge because they prioritise something else, such as narrative delivery, but not all games should be considered equal just because people happen to enjoy them. Enjoyment =/= thinking something is the greatest thing ever, if one is being critical.