PixlBit

With the Xbox One announcement, Microsoft has finally closed the deal with me.

I'm getting a PS4!

At this moment I am leaning heavily towards the PS4. The Xbox One did not impress me in the least, and I've pretty much abandoned my 360 over the past 3 years to focus on PS3, so Sony has the momentum in that regard.

A box of dog turds is just as stackable. :)

I'm taking the Xbox conference with a grain of salt myself, Brian. I'm already leaning more towards the PS4, but who knows. Maybe MS will have some kind of hidden surprise.

I am also looking forward to this summer of games. Tales of Xillia and Dragon's Crown are at the top of my personal list of must-haves.

Can't wait for the first REAL new GG in 10 years.

As others have said, I have a huge library of games. I have over 200 games I have yet to complete. It doesn't bother me, because I have forever to play them in, LOL, and if the PS4 and Xbox WhateverTheHellThey'reCallingIt turn out to shitty pieces of fuck, I have my retro-gaming bunker stockpiled to keep me through a gaming nuclear winter. :) Also, a lot of my games are rare gems, like Panzer Dragoon Saga, Suikoden, and the Lunar games, and I'm going to part with them when they're pried from my dead hands. :)

I am glad to see the Online Pass gone. Although I'm still not a fan of EA's portfolio and am not inclined to buy from them, given the company's size and influence, I hope this discourages companies whose products I do like from going with online passes. Still, the cynic in me wonders if the online pass is being replaced with the terrible always-online that SimCity was saddled with.

Three solutions:

1. Make the hand-holding optional - give the player the option to turn it on or off at the beginning, and give them the opportunity to turn it on and off throughout the game in the options menu.

2. Keep the tutorial level as a separate level selectable from the main menu instead of inserting it into the main game. Tutorials bore the shit out of me, and I don't really want to be forced to wade through the tutorial at the beginning of every game. I want to be in the thick of things at the get-go.

3. Start printing manuals again. The shitty pamphlets are useless, and I'd rather read a manual than look at some in-game database, which breaks immersion and stops the action.

Our legal system does this all the time. Defense attorneys have no compunction about using a complaintant's sex life to discredit their testimony even if the defendant is guilty as fuck, while prosecutors use it to make the accused seem even worse than they are in hopes of getting them a longer sentence. It seems to be a tactic that's especially effective in deeply religious societies like the US and the Muslim countries.

El-Shaddai is a great game. I got the PS3 version of it.