@AllHailTheSith @echolimaromeo Can you both please not respond to my comment with transphobic remarks? I mean, the review is awful and every article Carolyn writes about gender issues in gaming is biased, reactionary nonsense ... but attack the words and not the person.
Make no mistake, I'm sure Gone Home was given a high score here on Gamespot solely because it appeals to Carolyn's tastes and satiates her "everything is wrong with gaming because it doesn't deal with issues I care about" need. Which is ridiculous. Honestly, I can't think of a more ridiculous reason to give a game a 9.5. However, even though her personal life is affecting how she reviews games in her professional life, that's no reason to go attacking the personal one.
Sorry but where Carolyn sees "one of the most captivating story-driven games in the medium's history", I see "schmaltzy teenage twaddle". Just a very immature romance that's dressed up as being more than it is (which I guess is the point but it certainly makes Sam and Lonnie seem more bratty than romantic). I was never really given a reason to care about either of them.
This hour-long "game" isn't worth 9.5, nor is it worth the exorbitant $17.99 that's being charged for it. It feels to me like the scores Carolyn gave for this and the 100+ hours Disgaea 4 should be reversed.
@Sidrat2012 Easy. I watched some cutscenes. A ton of smug little Hollywood-esque lines that are supposed to be funny but aren't really funny because they actually only serve to make the player say "omg hes sooooo badass" but they don't, because he's just an ass.
I was actually interested in buying SRIV but not anymore. You're telling me that DLC that was being worked on for the LAST Saint's Row game can't be implemented into the new one for free?
I'm so sick of developer greed getting ahead of delivering a complete game. I saw a tweet recently that said something like "last generation was about giving you free extra games within the game you just bought. This generation is about giving you incomplete games".
It didn't buck that many trends. It was still a zombie apocalypse game, bear in mind, and a AAA one at that. It still utilised a cover systems (albeit a very good one). And when "mainstream" gamers were buying it, I don't really think they were considering "Naughty Dog is forcing us to confront our own morality in this game by eschewing the developmental philosophy that the character you're playing as is overmatched. I'll buy it!"
The Last Of Us impressed me but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Ultimate Warrior also made an appearance in Legends Of Wrestlemania a few years ago. With the EXACT same character model, I might add.
I know this isn't 2K Games' fault (or even THQ's). The pressures of releasing a new game every year means they can't implement anywhere near as many changes as they need to in order to keep the series feeling fresh. It's been even worse this year, with THQ's bankruptcy. I've often thought they should go down the Call Of Duty route; two different developers, alternating between releasing a new WWE game every two years.
Just a distribution company? I've been hoping for Amiga remakes for years.
Ah well. As long as they improve the loading times -- until recently, I didn't realise how long it took to actually start playing an Amiga game -- this is good news.
Uh ... there are two mandatory female deaths in the game -- Tess and Marlene -- and one optional minor enemy (a surgeon) at the very end of the game (not counting zombies). Meanwhile, what about Henry? What about Sam? What about the all-male group of cannibals who Joel tortures and kills while they're helpless? No mention at all in this article, so if you haven't played The Last Of Us, your view is being tainted.
Carolyn, this is why the majority of feminists aren't taken seriously when talking about video games. Your examples are cherry-picked and you refuse to look at the game except through the biased lenses of how it affects women. You say "simply presenting women as people is hardly something that should be considered incredibly praiseworthy" but that's more than most of the male characters in The Last Of Us get. Amongst the female characters, however, even the villain is given sympathetic reasons for being evil! Much more than David the pedophilic cannibal gets or the group that decides to fake injuries in the hope that sympathetic travellers will stop so they can mug and kill them.
It seems like there's no way to win with Carolyn Petit. The Aliens: Colonial Marines developers added female multiplayer characters late in development? Well they weren't in there from the start, so it's sexist. The Last Of Us focuses on a strong female character? Well a white guy still stars in it, so it's sexist. Ryan Creighton, a designer on Spellirium, decides to play it safe and leave out female and non-white characters for fear of being called sexist? Well there are no female characters in it, so Carolyn calls him sexist.
If anyone from Gamespot is reading this, could you please actually acknowledge the flaws in Carolyn Petit's articles for once? Would it kill you to actually pay attention to the fact that these biased articles actually hurt your credibility? Hell, this is a long shot but maybe you could actually have Carolyn debate some of these points with someone. Nitpicking over things like this is exactly WHY people like Ryan Creighton leave out non-white non-male characters; Carolyn Petit is so busy creating a no-win situation -- biting the hand of the gaming industry that feeds her, essentially -- that she's just going to turn people off to female characters on the whole.
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