PixlBit

This bums me out. Amy looked interesting in trailers. I don't know the pedigree of the studio, but it sounds like they took on too much.

I know people get up in arms over this cross promotion stuff, but I love it. When I popped in Dragon Age 2, I had a ton of awesome gear because I played Mass Effect, Dead Space 2, and Dragon Age Legends. Plus, can't wait to try Amalur!

Hopefully that means that the rumors of the original voice acting being in the collection are true.

Great read! I always find discussion on the actual life of gamers in Japan very interesting. To answer your Xbox Live question, you can purchase a membership card much in the same way you would buy a Microsoft Points card. Once your time is up, you simply can't get on Live to play games until you purchase another card, or move over to a credit card (which, of course, is what they want).

"Silent Hill 4 is not a good game."

-Rob Ottone, PixlTalk Episode 48, 1:02:00.

The soundtrack is a sweet bonus for sure. I'll stick to my ridiculously expensive Scorpion and Sub Zero bookends, though.

Wow, I thought I knew what this game is, and I was wrong. I thought it was a single button game where the V key does everything, and it was more of a reactionary game. Interesting, but I have a ton of games I purchased from Steam last year that have gone unplayed.

OMG, it was Rob! IT WAS ROB!!!

Seriously, it was. But I agreed with him.

I can totally understand your affection for The Room, especially if it was your intro into Silent Hill. The game felt off for me the entire time I played it, and when I later learned that the game began life as a new IP that later got shoehorned into the SH series everything clicked.

My problems with The Room are twofold. The first has to do with the ghosts. While the idea of an unkillable enemy is terrifying in concept, in execution (at least here) it just makes for an annoying combat experience. I wasn't scared of the enemies more than I was pissed off that they were keeping me from exploring or advancing the plot.

The second problem I have is the fact that you can return to your apartment for healing and to take a breather. It ruins any tension the game has. While I think the bits in the apartment are also the scariest, I think simply not letting the player return until the level is complete would have been much more effective. Now, I realize that you can get to a point where the apartment is no longer a safe haven, but that can also lead to a fail state, as I experienced. I didn't finish The Room because I had no more healing items, the enemies don't die, and I couldn't go home to rest up. I could have restarted, but I was close to the end and quite frankly had no desire to play any of that game again.

I don't believe so. Blizzard gets a cut, but that cut comes after the sale. That may have changed since I first read about it though.

I understand what you say about choice, but in most games I've played where you can see the enemies before you engage, that choice is an illusion. Lunar, Xenosaga, FF XII and XIII all let you see your encounters before they happen, but rarely do you have the ability to avoid them. In XIII I found myself in battle just as often, if not moreso, than games with random battles.

Of course, part of it depends on how the battles are handled. If you fight enemies in the same field as you walk around, I'd prefer to have them shown on the screen. If you transistion to another fight screen, I'm totally fine with random battles. But all RPGs should allow you ways to lessen encounter rates if you are just trying to get from point A to point B.