P4: Gritty Reboot

X-Men: First Class. Just the right amount of cheese, perfect '60s atmosphere, great performances all around.

This is all I need to point to in order to show how dumb (and dumber!) Metacritic is.

I for one am excited to see this move. I'll be trying it with the wife this weekend (I already own it, but she didn't have it yet.)

Coughed this up http://www.pressxordie.com/2011/06/22/the-addictive-nature-of-angry-birds/

Deathtoll's collection consists of various editions of FFVII, and not much else XD

Agh really tempted to pick this up when I've got the funds. Been wanting a good local co-op since we beat Jamestown.

Yup. Games are simply engaging; in my personal opinion, they are more compelling than film or television a lot of the time. Though for some reason they seem to evoke a response more often or more commonly in males, there is no reason a woman can't be engaged by a game just as much as a man can. My wife, for instance, never played many games aside from the occasional casual PC game and some old NES titles, yet for some reason Twilight Princess dragged her in and she beat the thing a couple times before I ever got around to it. Similarly, she reluctantly tried Left 4 Dead splitscreen on my PC at my beseeching, and now she's got more Steam hours logged in it than I do. There are certain games that just push certain people's emotional triggers, no matter their gender.

Yeah, I think that's what I meant. Games with good micro are games that you can't put down, that are so friggin' addictive that you find yourself saying "one more turn/level/mission" until the wee hours of the morning. If they have good macro--which comes in lots of different flavors, level design, a meta-game, structure, etc.-- then all the better. But if a game has poor micro but great macro, it's one of those titles you push through to the end in spite of its flaws, whatever those are perceived to be. If we can turn this into a fun exercise: come up with four examples of each combination of good/bad micro/macro design. Good Micro/Good Macro: Counter-Strike. Solid shooting and movement mechanics, higher level of squad tactics, plus the economy/buying structure that forced you to plan out ahead. Good Micro/Poor Macro: Brink, from the sound of it. Poor Micro/Good Macro: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Twitchy combat, awkward character movement and animation, but the open world exploration and character building was awesome. Poor Micro/Poor Macro: Red Steel: flawed controls, uninteresting shooting and combat and swordplay, in addition to archaic level design and lack of any compelling macro to keep it interesting. Of course there are varying degrees of good/bad design, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Dean posted this on Twitter: Magicka for $3.48 http://www.greenmangaming.com/promp/magicka-new/

In all seriousness, though, it's possible that's what they were going for, but just because the women aren't scantily clad doesn't mean their inclusion wasn't targeted at attracting more guys. The general aesthetic and costume design really wouldn't mesh well with chicks in metal bikinis running around on the battlefield, so the more conservative dress style makes sense. Then again, this is Epic Games we're talking about here.

The female market? I'd tap that.

Welcome, deathtoll.

Yet another reason this whole closed console business needs to die a slow quick, painful death.

I think the "macro" thing can be on different scales too though; it's not necessarily limited to sandbox-type games. For instance, in Resident Evil 4, the overarching goal you're working towards within an area, or even the higher-level tactics in maneuvering away from the zombies might fall into that category. Take that first town you have to go into: you can approach it in a few ways, even though the story itself is linear. The way the zombies react to you, the house you decide to hole up in, the paths you run away from them on, is all tactics but different than an immediate sense of "shoot this guy in the head." In other words, it's engaging, but on a slightly more abstract level. The same could be said of the combat in Halo:CE, taking an objective in Battlefield 1942 (or 2 or 3 or whatever the kids are playing these days), or perhaps even the sensation of taking part in a larger story in something linear like Half-Life. I'm making this up as I go, so it certainly will take some finagling to try to classify every element of every game out there.

I didn't spend a lot of time with IV because it ran like crap on my PC; I suppose I was referring more to III-San Andreas.

Nintendo has a direct connection to my heart strings, and, as a result, my purse strings. Must... not... buy... 3DS...

Added, my good man. Quite so.

This has been bouncing around in my head for a while. Games are good or bad on two levels: a small-scale level, what I have been calling micro-mechanics, and a larger-scale level, what I dub macro-mechanics. Micro-mechanics are essentially the feel of the game, the way the guns shoot, the way the cars drive, the weight the player has in the game world (I've heard the controversial Tim Rogers call this friction, but I don't know that I like that term.) The 3D GTA titles have terrible micro-mechanics most of the time, with the possible exception of the cars' handling: the shooting is bad, the mini-games are bad, the flying sections are bad. Even the running feels off. But these games are highly regarded, and I think that's because they have good abstract gameplay, or macro-mechanics. The macro side is the larger scope of the game: just the idea of having a whole city to tool around with, your own personal sandbox, is enough to push some of the modern GTA titles to greatness, depending on how fully realized that vision was in each game. I think a lot of criticism directed toward games ought to be identified better as fitting in one of these categories, or a different element completely (presentation, technicalities, interface, etc.) Obviously, a game's reliance on one side or the other and how much of the game the player spends pouring into each side are factors in how well it will be received. Anyway, I'm sure students of game design already know this, maybe under more widely accepted labels, but it's still something to think about when evaluating games or thinking about your reasons for liking or disliking them.

I love '90s games' CGI boxart.