Aimless

As it's just a rumour I'll consign it to here for now, but I thought it warranted mentioning that allegedly CD Projekt are going to be announcing a PS3 version of The Witcher 2 this week; they've a conference on the 5th. Perhaps nothing will come of it, but if it is announced the game comes thoroughly recommended.

The Ys games are £7.99 a piece, so I guess €9.99? I haven't picked up Escape Plan because I heard a few complaints about the controls, but it would appear it's receiving both a patch and free content next week so I may yet be swayed.

Tonally and somewhat aesthetically, yes, but it is more of a cover-based third-person shooter than Vanquish. It does have a scoring mechanic of sorts — you earn credits for killing enemies, with bonuses for special methods or multi-kills — but you won't be powersliding through levels. The cover system and core gunplay works more or less as you'd expect — you can swap between cover, blindfire, etc — but the game surrounds those fundamentals with its own flavour. The enemies make up the meat of this, as your robotic adversaries come in numerous shapes and sizes, including the odd ridiculous boss, and all take a fair but of dismantling before going down; they'll crawl or hop towards you if you go for the legs, or attack their own kind if you take off their head. Luckily they don't feel like bullet sponges, though, as your successful shots still have a good effect and feel powerful. Another crease is the reputation system. Throughout the game you have opportunities to respond to your squad mates — either using voice or via a controller menu — with what you choose to say either boosting or lowering their opinion of you; playing well also boosts your reputation, or vice versa. Reputation affects your companions' eagerness to follow orders or help you when downed, although I'm not sure you'd really notice this unless you're an arsehole. More demonstrable is how your standing can tie into how certain scenes throughout the story play out, especially towards the end, and you also get to choose who to take with you at certain points which will naturally change conversations. Honestly it's a pretty hokey system, but it still adds a pleasant extra layer to proceedings. You also have the credits and upgrade systems. As I mentioned earlier you earn cash by defeating enemies and throughout the world you'll come across terminals where you purchase upgrades for your team's signature weapons, new weapons or equipment for your character, and upgrades for your characters themselves. You can swap the latter around whenever you want, with each upgrade having a clear effect — say, a 10% damage reduction — and a specific shape. The shape is important as rather than simple slots you have to fit upgrades into a 6x2 grid, and you can't rotate the 'pieces' so you'll need to pick and choose to get the most out of the skills you have available. Overall I just think it's a really well paced game with a ton of variety to its scenarios, bosses and locations, which I've made a point of not mentioning. It doesn't have the polish of Gears 3, but for my tastes Binary Domain was a more enjoyable, less po-faced experience. Obviously your mileage may vary, but any shooter fan would be doing themselves a disservice by overlooking it.

That meshes with what I've read from former store managers. Apparently GameStations tended to be on shorter leases — a holdover from when they were a separate business, presumably — making them a more desirable choice for the chopping block. My local GS has closed, but GAME is still open. It's a shame as the staff in the former were nice enough and tended to avoid going through the upsell rigmarole, so I'd rather their store had stuck around, faux 'alternative' branding and all. It'll be interesting to see whether the OpCapita deal brings real change along with it or if they're just going to limp along with the current business model for as long as possible.

The Hut's entertainment warehouses are in Guernsey, far as I know. And in this particular instance ShopTo are price-matching Zavvi for Binary Domain, I just went with the former as they offer considerably faster delivery, partly because their stock isn't coming from the Channel Islands. In a token attempt to steer things back on track: Binary Domain features a French robot, complete with comedy accent.

On a general note, I'd be wary of relying on cheap prices once we enter April. The Jersey VAT loophole is getting sewn up, which is bound to impact the likes of Play, Zavvi and even Amazon.

That's Sega for you. Despite putting out a lot of great games this generation they seem very reluctant to actually market any of them.

Okay, this is currently £14.86 at ShopTo on PS3 and 360. Now will you take a chance on it? The game's also getting a PC release in April through Steam.

Cing is no more and the original game was a flop; these events might not be entirely unrelated. The only reason this version exists is because Konami made the approach and licensed the IP, Marvelous weren't even shopping it around. If you don't like the look of the series' future then that's fair enough, but without this game there wasn't one in the first place. No matter what additions and changes Konami make to this title, the Wii game remains the same. If you'd like to see more games like it then this is your best shot, and if it's not to your liking you can simply opt to ignore where they take things; you aren't losing anything.

What do you have to gain from that, exactly?

Likewise I can certainly see why you're concerned about the economic ramifications of purchasable items — you seem pretty invested in Blue Burst, the one version of the game I've never played — but I think it's too early to judge; we don't even know if there will be Section IDs, etc. I believe the April Beta grants users a set amount of 'real' currency to test the paid systems, so if the are doing anything egregious hopefully they'll be picked up on it before the game's even out. It's certainly possible to screw up free-to-play — and Japanese games tend to have what many would consider a warped view of paid DLC — but the model has improved so much over the last few years one would hope Sega have been paying attention. If they haven't I'm sure fans will let them know.

You could be talking about Japanese games in general. The game's out in Japan today, so here's a launch trailer:

As this is turning into yet another tiring war of attrition, I'm out.

So if I get a lucky drop due to putting in hours of grinding that's fine, but if I happened upon the same item due to buying a randomised item pack then that's horrible? What about if I pay someone in China to do the grinding for me, is that okay? On the face of it consumers paying up front might seem more sensible, but the success of free-to-play is well documented. Here's a few examples from a quick Google: Champion's Online, LotRO, DC Universe and even TF2. Like I said, this isn't uncharted territory. Hell, free-to-play is going to be bigger than ever this year, with games like Tribes, MechWarrior and Dust 514. As for my not being aware of the games having an economy, obviously I knew there was item trading as I did it myself the ghetto way back on the Dreamcast. However, that was never a big part of the game for me or anyone I played with and the game systems themselves didn't place much emphasis on such activities; it's not exactly EVE. The fact that past games were enjoyed by many despite rife item duping is pretty telling.

To be fair, a Renegade mentality doesn't really mesh with being on a diplomatic mission. At least in ME3 you aren't locked into the one path thanks to the neutral Reputation Points, so you're actually free play by ear rather than subscribing to a particular path from the get go.

I suppose what it comes down to is that I don't care if someone can pay money to be 'better' than me. For one thing it's co-op, so I've little reason to get annoyed at someone for having good equipment, but more importantly there are always going to be people that outclass me anyway, whether it's due to luck, skill or time invested. Any pride I have in my characters exists in a vacuum: I was really stoked when I stumbled across a genuine Spread Needle in the original PSO, even though there were a lot of people out there with +99 hacked versions. Personally I see paid items being more of the novelty or expediting variety: Mags in the shape of KFC meals, ways to dress up as Sonic's shitty friends, items that boost experience gain for a set amount of time, that kind of thing. Were they going to sell weapons I think it would be more sensible to make it a lucky dip, with gradations of loot boxes available that have different chances of containing items of a particular star level. That further retains the 'purity' of the economy, plus the booster pack model is a proven money spinner; EA's rolling in it thanks to FIFA's Ultimate Team packs.

It just seems to me you're being overly concerned about something we know very little about. If we assume for a moment that they are going to sell practical items, such as specific weapons, all they'd need to do is have those be bound to your account upon purchase and they've solved your problem in one fell swoop. This isn't exactly uncharted territory and I'm sure Sega have been taking notes.

None of the other games have an economy to speak of, do they? Granted the bulk of my experience is from the days that trades consisted of dropping items at 20 paces, but as far as I know none of the newer entries have formalised auction houses either. As for free-to-play being a more successful business model than a subscription — or, by extension, a one-off purchase — there's many examples of this being the case; I'm sure SOE would love to bend your ear as to the success they've had with making the switch.

I don't really see the problem with being able to pay for items. If other people want to invest money rather than time then that's their prerogative, but for me a large part of the appeal of PSO was finding loot. Paying for items is missing the point, like someone going to a casino and paying for a huge stack of chips rather than actually sitting down at any of the tables. Announcing that the game was subscription based would have been far worse.

You just download whatever Vita content you want via the PS3's Store, then hook up your Vita via USB and use the Content Manager to move items back and forth.

Perhaps being aliens will explain why their parlance is still stuck in the late '80s: their planet is so far away our broadcasts are on a time delay of 20-odd years. I suspect I've already put too much thought into this, though. Honestly I don't really care what they do, it's going to be a feature length toy advert regardless.

Have you and your friends never had a terrible idea but ended up egging each other on regardless? I'd guess Hudson and Walters were both really enthusiastic about the 'speculation' such a 'memorable' ending would generate, and without that outside perspective to bring them down to Earth they simply couldn't see their patent lack of judgement. That doesn't make them terrible people, or even bad writers necessarily, but hopefully the backlash will ensure they don't make the same mistake twice. (Although a lot of people hated the ending to DA2, which Mac Walters also wrote, so...)

I suspect that might tie into this article, which does a good job of outlining why the original lack of focus on the female Shepard was probably a good thing. If you don't have the time for that, this image might suffice.

Confirmation bias is largely to blame, people only looking for evidence that fits the theory. I'm not entirely sure what you mean about the Illusive Man scene, as during that Shepard is explicitly indoctrinated. By your second point I assume you're referring to Casper's voice being backed by Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale, to which I suspect the boring answer is that they have those two actors on retainer so it made sense to use them to give the ol' deus ex machina a greater sense of otherness. As for Arrival, I suspect the blackout was a pacing and plot issue: they needed to ratchet up the tension by not having long left on the countdown clock, plus if you still had several days before the Reaper arrival there's no reason you couldn't have warned the nearby Batarian colonies to evacuate; the DLC very specifically doesn't allow you to get through to them, even if you try.