Started TellTale's The Walking Dead. Currently finishing the 3rd episode. I haven't been this hooked to a game in a very, very long time.

Hey, I'm at the same part myself!  Just got back into it after a long break, but I'm hoping to wrap it up soon myself.

Friend said that Elder Titan looks like the final boss of Dota.  He kind of does.  He looks like Nature's Prophet hit the gym and swallowed an Earthshaker or two.

Maybe if I grow more legs the pretty god lady with like me more...

I will never understand why people place so much value in action figures and other kinds of con swag stuff. Honestly, if I got a Street Fighter Chess Set I'd probably just give it away to a friend. It's entirely possible that some of these writers genuinely have no interest in all this crap they're getting and they write their articles based on genuine opinions of the game.

But it's so incredibly lame to imagine that these people are the ones who are the fucking link between corporate and consumers.  I don't want these people to be numb to all of this.  Look, every PAX I get like six eyedrops from these guys who hand them out.  I'm not hype about eyedrops.  I'm not asking anyone to be hype about eyedrops.  What I am asking is that if you're going to give glowing reviews to games and tell everyone that this is one of your favorite games, I need to know why you're not hype about getting exclusive swag about this game.  I fucking love Monster Hunter.  I have a little Rathalos Hammer on my desk.  I like Monster Hunter, I like my little hammer.  When I tell people that Monster Hunter is one of my favorite games of all time, it's evident.  Literally evident, as in I have evidence.  I don't hide my shit.

Well, I did put a Mia Fey figurine I got for free away in my drawer.  But only because that shit is obscene, her tits are just ridiculous and I got a facade of normalcy to uphold. 

I also own a set of Capcom formalwear.  Have we been over this?  Bowtie and cummerbund, perfect for a wedding.  I'll never wear it.  Never, ever, ever.  But the fact that I have this is something amazing.  It's a Ying Yang blend of the ironic and genuine. 

What bothers me is when people don't give a shit about any of this.  I'm not asking you to lose your shit over every piece of plastic garbage that's passed to you, because I've tossed loads of free shit from cons that I couldn't give a shit about.  But I need to know why none of this phases them, because it makes them just sound so lame.

It's entirely possible that some of these writers genuinely have no interest in all this crap they're getting and they write their articles based on genuine opinions of the game.

I wouldn't doubt that these guys have terrible tastes that are meant to jive with the majority of readers who also have terrible tastes.  In fact, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what's going on.  Stephen Totillo genuine found the combat of Bioshock Infinite to be faithful to the other games in the series, that he found the entire experience to be absolutely amazing.  If Stephen Totillo had reviewed Bioshock Infinite in a featureless white room he'd still be just as impressed by it.

But that's another problem.  These idiots are being coddled by companies to the point where they have to either pretend to not care, or legitimately not care to seem incorruptible.  And that's where passion dies.  It's when the solution to all this isn't to deny it, it's to accept everything that comes to you and then tell everyone how little you cared about getting it.  I don't care if you admit that you don't need a free chopper ride to review Black Ops.  I don't care if you put on the sourest, most disinterested face as you were flying around Hawaii.  You're all a bunch of besties who get to go to these fantastic parties subtly disguised as game previews.  Then you come back and tell everyone how ho-hum spending a night in a luxury hotel was.  Fuck you.  You had a fucking blast.

That's a problem that any person in any business suffers - if your customers are getting crap as a result of you taking kickbacks, you're taking a big risk of losing both your customers and the vendors giving you toys.

Rather than complaining about corruption in game journalism in general (This happens in every business anyway), I'd be more interested in hearing about specific examples of games that got lots of reviews out of line with how they actually play, or reviewers (individuals or websites) that give good quality reviews that have helped you find games you enjoy.

Oh no, this helps.  If a game is given an entirely glowing review from Kotaku, I can take it that this game has had all of it's corners rounded out and probably has nothing interesting that would make it a day one buy.  If Kotaku complains about things being obtuse, or the combat system being too hard or frustrating, or that they would like X, Y, and Z to be ironed out to be better, then I know I got a hit.  Really, it's the games that get the 7's and 8's from the mainstream websites that go on to be my favorites, and it's the 9 and 10s that get bought for five dollars on Steam nine months after they come out for me to play and go 'eh, it's alright'. 

That's my ironclad system.  It's never done me wrong.

Here's Kotaku's defense on why game's journalism is the biggest piece of shit ever.

No one has to take an oath to be a reporter or a critic. Ethics standards can vary. You can set up your own rules, as we do at Kotaku, where we turn down paid travel, default to shoving the swag under our desks, and make sure we're not wearing game company shirts during interviews. Good ethics are, of course, not a perfect predictor of good journalism and therefore even the most righteous of games press might find themselves running what our publisher calls "fake news."

See, here's the problem.  There's nothing wrong with accepting this stuff, with getting excited about a game, with ENJOYING VIDEO GAMES.  If someone sent me a Monster Hunter figure, I'm keeping it.  I don't default to shoving it in a drawer where it won't tempt me.  What's even more worrying is that this both paints them as being entirely passionless AND completely drowning in corporate shit.  You fucking gave all these games good reviews, why don't you want to keep the swag?  Yeah, put the Assassins Creed flag in the drawer.  You know what that gets us from Kotaku?

It is one of the best video games of the year, one of the most daring developed by a major studio this generation, and one of the most beautiful to ever run on any machine.

SO WHAT THE FUCK!?  You like the fucking game, is it okay to take the flag out of the drawer now and maybe put it up after you've proclaimed it to be the best games EVER?  You act like this shit doesn't matter when it should, it's okay to get hype.  I get hype when I go to PAX.  I get hype as fucking shit.  But I can check my hype at the door when it's time to get down to brass tacks.  I don't care how much free shit Magic: The Gathering has given me over the years, I'm not playing that.

It just makes them seem passionless.  They get a Street Fighter Chess Set, valued at three hundred dollars, and this fucking asshole talks about how he typically throws this shit out.  Ugh, what the fuck ever!  INTO THE TRASH! 

They seem to want to maintain their professionalism by telling us that they are drowning in this shit, like victims, but they're able to tune it all out.  Sure. 

Fig. 1: The Game Journalist in its natural habitat

Fucking Kojima I knew it was you, you didn't fool me you fucking idiot.  Everyone knew it was you in a mask.  Holy shit, I hate video games.



A toast.  To the fuel that sustains us.

I've read some things about reviews being "purchased", but I never really looked into it.

Well let's dive in, shall we?  This article is all you need to know about how this shit goes down.

I'm on the eighth floor of a fancy hotel in Beverly Hills (in real life, not the game). The royal suite, I think it is called. It's huge. I'm in a long dark room, sitting in a cushioned white chair in front of a flat-screen TV that's running BioShock Infinite on a PS3.

Ding, ding, ding.  Those red flags should be going off right now.  This is not an atmosphere where an objective appraisal of art is going to occur.  You put me in a luxury hotel for a night and I'd tell you that a piece of poop you placed on a pedestal was going to be the next game changer for video games.  Like, holy shit, it seems like Stephen Totillo might've forgot to mention the prostitutes that 2k Games provided for them, but already this paints a worrying picture of how these games are presented to people.

There are a few people on the opposite side of this long room. Same deal. I think there are other rooms in this suite with people set up on 360s and PCs. There are PR folks and other minders. Folks from Irrational, the development studio… or from Take Two, the publisher, I guess (not sure, because I arrived late. Blame the traffic!).

And he's got handlers.  Like a noble show pony, he must be gently led through the crowds.  Shhhh, shhhh, Stephen Totillo, my noble steed.  Let me gently pat your snout as I lead you along through this magical journey into the land of Bioshock.  Do not buck or whinny, for I am here.

I was given a choice of which platform to play. Any console version would do, I said.

This is the person being doted over by powerful businesses, ladies and gentlemen.  The guy playing an FPS on a PS3.

Oh, before I sat in my chair I had to remove an action figure from the seat. It was new and in its box. I think it was for the game.

Sometimes I have to wonder if these guys are legitimately unfazed by the swag, or if they just have to act like they do.  Because first of all, I have a lot of free shit I got from going to cons, and it's all on my shelf, as a shrine to my perennial virginity.  But I don't know how I'd handle getting swag if it was my job to rate the things the swag was attached to.  I guess I wouldn't just move the free gift off of my seat and sit down, being all like 'oh is this a guy from the game?'  It's a gift, you git.  You proudly announce every other luxury that you were supplied with, but you can't allow yourself to get hype over a 12" poseable Elizabeth with judo-chop action?  Or Arctic Assault Booker?

There are also snacks on this table and I'm told there will be two dinners. Two! The event goes late.

Yeah man, I always eat two dinners when I'm burning the midnight oil.  The doctor says they might have to take my foot, but I'm still hobblin' out to get my Fourth Meal.

I've been eating potato chips while typing this. Chips from a bag that was in a bowl next to the TV. This means that I didn't have the bag in the bowl anymore. And apparently THAT means that the hotel staffer who asked me if I wanted a drink before (there's an open bar here, the better to preview this game, I guess) and to whom I said, "No thanks," came over to my personal snack bowl while I was typing this and put a fresh bag of chips in the bowl.

All morals are lost when the phrase 'open bar' is said.  I'd drown a bag of kittens for you if you offered me a night of free booze and video games.  I think the only way I'd rate a game more highly is if you put a gun to my head and told me to.  Shit man, three free Jack and Cokes and I'll find a number higher than ten to rate your game.  

The chip-bowl-filling hotel guy just said the buffet is now open, but I want to play more.

QUICK, GET HIM AWAY FROM THE GAME BEFORE HE REALIZES HOW BAD THE COMBAT IS.  I REPEAT, STEPHEN TOTILLO HAS ALMOST GOT A GUN IN BOOKERS HAND, GET HIM OUT OF THERE!

Aw. Game froze.

THIS IS NOT A DRILL.  WE ARE AT CODE ORANGE.  GET HIM TO THE SECOND DINNER, STAT!

I used to be worried about BioShock Infinite. Delays and news of studio departures can have that effect. Not any more.

And there you have it.  The death of criticism comes not with a bang, but with the crunch of a Cheeto.

Also, this all came on the tail end of Kotaku trying to justify themselves as real critics when that whole Doritogate thing was happening.  So, haha.    

Can you imagine what Knight Kirk's codpiece would look like

Cod pieces for Dark Souls 2, please. 

it feels like they, once upon a time, were going somewhere with that, before they chopped the game up into little pieces and glued it back together as a first person arena shmup

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WUt5dEMt_Y#t=8m

I mean, I'm sure if you don't stick up for the guy they'd notice you anyway, but at least it isn't preceded by five minutes of DONT FUCKING DO THIS BOOKER.

Also, man, all this beta footage.

Anyone notice that the enemies used to hoop and holler like Indians in every incarnation of the game we saw other than the final one? 

His final confrontation is what I'm talking about.  The area just feels nice.  It's very easy to detach everything he's done from afar when you're now standing right next to a guy who feels like a nice grandpa.  Watch out Elizabeth, he's got a tray of Weather's Originals!  You beat him to death and drown him because he was kind of grappling with Elizabeth...  It just doesn't seem like the logical conclusion.  You  should've done that when he was at his worst in the asylum, where you witness him just fucking defiling Elizabeth.  That's where beating an old man to death feels right.  Here it all just feels sort of too late.  He's beaten, he's done trying to kill you, and he seems more than willing to tell you what's going on if Elizabeth would just show Booker her fucking finger.

You don't reduce a distorted voiced maniac who kills everyone he has a close acquaintance to and wants to kill literally everyone into the Wizard of Oz in the last couple of minutes.  It's like if the Tin Man started hacking the Wizard to death shouting "WHERES MY HEART?  WHERES MY HEART?" after you pull back the curtain.

Also, did I mention that I feel like this whole game was a scrapped Wizard of Oz allegory? 

I get that sometimes.

The screenshot looks like a Playstation pre-rendered cutscene. 

That doesn't really make much sense to me. The splicers attack the player because they were crazy and because Andrew Ryan purposefully injected a pheromone into the air to control them. I don't see how that is more believable than a bunch of religious zealots going after a guy who has stolen their religious icon.

We never humanize the splicers.  We never show a splicer talking with another one about how once they clock out of being a crazed maniac they're going to go home and see if the wife wants the cuddle a bit and rent a movie.  These people are crazy, they've checked the fuck out.  We never make them seem human, and whenever we do see a splicer act human it seems entirely sad.  When you see a splicer painting, only to rip the easel down and draw a weapon and start screaming DONT LOOK AT ME, DONT LOOK AT ME you don't feel bad about shooting back.  At best a splicer can find this spot as this weird parody of humanity, like they're desperately trying to be a normal human being but seem to be so far gone that they're just fucking it up in nearly comical ways.  Like that one woman singing a lullaby to a gun in a pram in the first Bioshock.

Like, holy shit man, when Booker kills Comstock it feels like I'm murdering Santa Clause.  This isn't how you present the man who was trying to physically condition his daughter into being a mindless drone to carry on his insane religious fervor.  And yet it's framed too poorly to make Comstock seem sympathetic because we had a nice little detour in the asylum to remind us that Comstock is a maniac who shouldn't be allowed to live.

This game is dissonance'd as fuck because it's six games cobbled together.  All this sympathy you have for killing the commonfolk of Columbia seems to come from a time where this game clearly allowed you to choose more of your battles, to not have to murder anyone who had the misfortune of glimpsing you. 

I didn't know you could disable it.  I'll consider it.

I'm just kind of harping on the one instance with the lockpick being right next to the lock.  Not even the glowing shit, I just have a real problem with round peg, round hole puzzles. 

Can I ask why?

Because it's the best RPG/FPS since Morrowind.

If you found lots of things wrong with NV, why is it still your favourite game? Why do you still like it? and more to the point, why is it somehow not OK to like Binfinite despite its flaws?

I feel like hating on New Vegas is like hating on Clerks for being in black and white.  It wasn't their fault, it wasn't a conscious choice, but ironically enough it was those constraints that ended up making it something iconic.  Look at Fallout 3, which was an absolute mess in terms of mechanics and narrative.  Then Obsidian is basically tossed the keys to daddy's car and told not to scratch it, and they just peel out of the driveway never looking back.  I can ignore things like shitty textures in New Vegas, or bugs, or quirks of the design because they seem like they were desperately attempted to be glossed over by everything else.

See, I guess that's the thing.  In a work of art, does the value it presents make up for the flaws, or do the flaws corrupt whatever value it might have had.  I think that's the easiest way to explain this without just going on and on and on about this.  Seriously, I've been deleting just paragraphs and paragraphs of me just GUSHING for all your sake here.

Loot/item glint, auto aim, and dumb tutorial messages can and should be turned off - if you've ever actually played a video game before, then those things are not aimed at you. Respecting a player's intelligence and respecting a person's knowledge of game mechanics and controls are two very different things. If this were my first video game, then I'd probably want to use those things no matter how well-versed I am in turn of the century American history.

I know I always yell at people when they try to compare mediums, but I feel like this assumption is really holding back the mediums potential.  The highest forms of artforms typically do assume that the person who is going to be taking it in probably has a fair bit of knowledge about the medium.  Books that deal with mature themes are not written at a level where anyone of any skill level can read them, and we consider the very idea of that to be an absolute absurdity.  Isn't it kind of important, that for the survival of the medium as an artform that we allow for a little bit of exclusivity and elitism to keep us from having to make sure that everything isn't palatable for the riff-raff?  

Use the Konami code on the menu to unlock it. I assumed the game would be too easy on normal/hard so I just said #yolo and put it on 1999 mode to begin with. I don't regret the decision, even though 1999 mode isn't even harder than System Shock 2 was on normal. Meh.

Fucking really?

Also, I heard the mode kind of just ends up making you being strapped for cash and ammo all the time.  Which is why I'm not playing on Hard on Bioshock 2 right now.

Anyways there's very little need to have the glowly thing turned on. But I assume the reason for it is how cluttered environments are these days compared to in the past. So many props laying about that you can't use.

I don't mind SOME glowy shit.  Like, how Bioshock games always made THE goal you had to get to covered in goal and surrounded by magic twinkles.  

But when everything glows in Bioshock it's just like OH LOOK AT THIS SHIT PICK IT THE FUCK UP MASH THAT F KEY WHO CARES WHAT IT IS JUST PICK IT UP HOLY SHIT BOOKER YOU JUST ATE A WHOLE PINEAPPLE