For the record, I played most of Jade Empire. It was my way of getting to know BioWare games before Mass Effect came out, because I hadn't played any of their games before.
I just didn't sign up for this MIA because I had a lot of projects in the air, but I'm much happier with a community member working on this one. Great job!
I can't attest to SSX or Medal of Honor, but Bulletstorm is great! Another sales failure, but again, I'm glad that they took a chance on it for sure.
We actually posited on an episode of Nerds Without Pants that Rovio will be one of the "evil empires" of the future. I see their beginnings and rise to parallel the way Activision came up in the industry, actually.
While I loved a lot of what Peter Moore said in his "We can do better" press release, I thought it was a little crappy to use the LGBT angle, for exactly the reason you said. It's like them saying "we love kittens and feature kittens in all of our games. You don't hate kittens, do you??"
I thank you for your moderate tone. Really, I don't see people defending the "big guys" all that much. What I object to is this notion that EA (or Ubisoft, or Capcom...) has somehow personally affronted you (let's call him Gamer X). I just can't get that riled up. If I don't like something, I don't buy it. I was interested in SimCity, but when I found out that it didn't have a dedicated single player mode and the city sizes were rather small I lost interest, and that was before the server problems.
I've seen people say that they'll never buy an EA game ever again because they didn't like the ending of Mass Effect 3. That type of sentiment doesn't make sense to me, and it actually really bothers me.
You mention stuff like the EULAs and DRM, but these are problems that I believe are systemic with any company that deals with digital content, and it's only going to get worse. It's very likely that I'll be getting out of gaming as a major hobby once the shift is made towards a completely digital model.
And as far as customer service, I wonder how many of these complaints are legitimate, and how many stem from people's anger over changes made to the games they love. Because if we're talking about poor customer service in the gaming space I'd put Square Enix at the top of the list. They make simply using their content a chore, and if your account gets hacked or shut down for their online servers, good luck getting that cleared up in less than a week.
I like that the game is skill based. Honestly, my time with Demon's Souls (maybe 15 hours?) wasn't as punishing as I thought it would be. It's just methodical and I like that. Daunted at playing a 50+ hour game at the moment though.
There's a difference between sequelitis and trading in on nostalgia, though. What I'm talking about is I can almost hear Nintendo saying "hey, remember this?" as it nudges my elbow over and over. And that's not a bad thing at all, especially for a company with so many beloved characters. But we get Mario and Link and Samus so often that I'm ready for a new set of Nintendo characters to love and get excited for.
Making sure you have a copy for the future? Well played!
Right? I feel like I got a life achievement for that one. If I hadn't been sick I probably would have done a happy little jig once the credits started to roll.
Out of curiosity, how many hours have you put into Dark Souls? I still have a sealed copy that I sometimes want to rip into and play, but I haven't had a lot of time lately. I may have totally overextended myself, actually.
