@Mr_BillGates What do video games have to do with reality? :-P
Their business model has worked in the long run every time. We should not be so quick to dismiss them. And Mario has always resonated with core and casual gamers alike! That's about as real as it gets!
@kiramasaki First of all, why are the core Mario games not considered "AAA"? Second, if you want to claim that gameplay in AAA titles is better than Mario I'd love to hear some examples.
The nuanced control and subtlety in every jump, every push of the analog stick is so fine tuned, the distance between every platform, placement of every enemy perfected, and without changing the core mechanic (namely jumping) Mario continues to bring us compelling new experiences time and time again. It is level design and gameplay distilled to its essence. Frankly, most AAA games (your CoDs, your ACs, your Mass effects, your GTAs) haven't changed or refined their controls at all since their inception. They don't innovate on the core mechanics like Mario does. It's all about story and realism in rendering, the gameplay receives almost no attention as these series' endlessly iterate. That's not to say they are inferior, but when it comes to gameplay and level design specifically, Mario deserves the win. And for this reason, I think Mario deserves the 'AAA' designation as well!
Big thumbs up for the old school DJ Shadow! The TC games never spoke to me personally but there's no denying the influence they have had on our world as gamers. The effort to eschew a visceral, violent experience for a more realistic and honorable one (even with its exaggerations) was and still is extremely welcome! Pourin' out a 40 for my homie!
One correction: DirectX is a full application framework with components that deal with all aspects of gaming (audio, networking, video playback, input/output, graphics, etc.). The part of it that deals with hardware accelerated 3D rendering is Direct3D.
OpenGL is a hardware accelerated graphics library only so it competes only with Direct3D, not with DirectX as a whole.
These days, *nix based machines are finding success not because more games are being written for OpenGL but more because they are either using a higher level engine like Unity that can target either system or because of things like the mono project and monogames that are able to re-interpret much of the Windows common language runtime (what is often called .net) to run natively on mac and linux. For example, FEZ was recently released on Mac and Linux as part of the Humble Bundle. All they did was pipe it through the monogame system. A little debugging and QA and the game runs smooth as butter without even re-compiling.
Technologies like this offer much more promise for the future than any one standard ever being accepted and ensure Linux is a viable gaming platform! Besides, the PS3 and PS4 don't support Direct3D either. They support OpenGL. Game companies make it work. If there's a big market to draw them there then they will come.
@SHEETBIKE Not only did you effectively refute most all of the hate, you made a clean break from it. I'm all smiles and I'm with you! Feedbackula is funny but you can lend your talents in many different ways, maybe even still by turning a mirror on the trolls.
My impression has been that the people buying the Wii U are core gamers not casual gamers. The casual crowd is content to stick with the tried and true Wii. Why then invest money in a casual game like this? And the pricing scheme seems to anticipate high demand!
That being said, the whole 'Club' aspect and online competition ... that could take off. It's risky ... and is now the right time for the Mario Factory to take risks?
@TheDonFanucci The bullets and RPGs don't care what sex or race you are, the gasoline fires burn all universally, all the road-kill pedestrians come at you so fast you couldn't cherry pick by race or sex if you wanted. Most of the depraved acts committed in this game are universally depraved. The portrayal of women is not. They are objectified, made straw and meaningless and satirized mercilessly. That's misogyny.
The other things may be in bad taste but they don't discriminate! (and they're fun ... whereas the misogyny is just kind of embarrassing)
@Shrooomie818 Sheesh! It's SHE okay. No one else has any problem with this. And she talks about it all the time because it is a systemic problem in the video game industry. I think it's also important to note the difference between general misogyny and objectification. Dragon's Crown is objectification. The key problem in GTA (not just this one but all of the recent ones) is much more complex and Caro spelled it out nicely in the review.
@Synthia @ewjiml Yes, she is. But lets not kid ourselves. They did this for both reasons: Carolyn is a GTA fan and an accomplished journalist AND the video game world (particularly GTA fans) would find cause to raise a ruckus over a woman reviewer (especially an honest one).
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