P4: Gritty Reboot

... What if the default graphics settings cause your computer to crash the game at launch? That's terrible. They're seriously not going to put up much of a fight against COD with implementation like that, no matter how good the game is.

If it's a troll it's done really well...

Ah yes, Rainbow Six. Played that on both platforms.

Off the top of my head, Command & Conquer, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D all came out for N64.

Link! Link! Link! Link!

Trouble is, he wasn't just whisteblowing and releasing pertinent info from the sites, but uploading entire internal conversations. If the company had been, say, accepting money to write good reviews, I think that might be different, but we're talking more about perceived incompetence than diabolic schemes here.

So I'm in the process of writing a detailed history of Call of Duty for my site. A couple interesting/funny observations as I'm about halfway done: The games' system requirements have been about the same since Call of Duty 4. To write the release month for each game, I just have to change the year for the most part. The series is very inconsistent with itself, due to different developers. Whether it goes to PC, Wii, Mac, DS, very erratic. Zombie mode, no zombie mode, what kind of multiplayer features, how the campaign is, all dependent on developer Modern Warfare 2 is the highest rated of the series on Xbox 360 (actually tied with COD4), though it's 10 points lower for PC version (according to Metacritic.) The series has consistently good ports for lower specced systems (Wii, DS, etc.) In watching developer interviews, it's pretty bizarre sometimes, the ways they describe their games:this is more just my feel sort of thing, but especially with Treyarch, they rarely talk about design decisions. They talk about how big and loud the next game's going to be, how "cool" the guns are, etc. Critics have complained of stale gameplay since Call of Duty 2's reviews, but the Metacritic scores have not been affected. COD2 was the first console game. COD3 is the only one not to hit the PC. (EDIT: Besides spinoffs and such)

Just finished A Clash of Kings. It's as good as A Game of Thrones; I didn't see a huge leap or slide in quality. Can't wait to pick up ASoS and get crackin'.

Gonna move this to multi-platform.

I wrote with Joe at DeltaGamer, as well as a few of the other VGC guys. Not really gonna comment on the whole debate, other than to say it may be tough to get work in the media field after leaking presumably confidential emails out to Game Journos.

I think the whole "paid editorial" thing is much rarer than many commenters suggest. It just doesn't happen where journalists meet devs or publishers in dark alleys and do secret transactions and laugh evilly. That said, I can see where pubs & devs can sway journalists without outright paying for content. Swag, publisher events, free games, a good personal relationship, etc., can all affect editorial content. I gotta admit it's hard sometimes to give a bad review on a product when a dev has been nothing but kind to you. I do it anyway, but I can definitely see where that temptation comes in. I got a free pass to CODXP and a free copy of the Hardened Edition of the game just for writing about the event: can that affect my eventual review of MW3? I won't let it, but hopefully that gives some perspective on where we get that paid advertorial feel. In Joel's case, I think he just got really hyped over a product without thinking through the issues.

Limericks preferably.

I know I've told you via chat, but I love the double review. Works very well. Hope to see/do more in the future for other co-op games.

There is no need to reply. They are unanswerable and unassailable! Muahahaha. Seriously though, the Half-Life thread works beautifully.

I don't know if any of you Brits play baseball, but "random" factors like wind, sun position, and especially what field you're playing on is extremely influential towards the outcome of the game. I'm sure cricket is similar. Knowing where the warning track starts and ends, knowing the height and makeup of the walls, knowing the type of dirt and grass are all essential to winning the game. Stealing opponents' signs, watching the pitcher for tells, even trying to catch mouthed words on the mound in a pitcher-catcher meeting on the mound are "exploits", but they're part of the game. You use them or you lose. A fascinating case study in this was hitter Will Clark, who read the lips of the pitcher in an important championship game. Don't know if I'm on-topic still, but I love that story. Carry on.