After AC2, the entire series has been going downhill. The story became utter crap after AC2 and after AC2, the developers pretty much gave up on developing quality missions or you know... making assassinating better. Instead, they've gone ahead and built mini-games, collectibles and fetch quests. Hell, I can barely remember any of the story or characters from Brotherhood and onward. I absolutely hated AC3 outside of the ship missions. Also, the settings of each sequel don't come anywhere even remotely close to being as immersive and compelling as the first two games. The thing is that Ubisoft doesn't care. They've gone Call of Duty with mainstream success.
Even though the Desmond story-line was obviously never going to go be satisfying, the fact that they completely gave up on it in AC3 and half-assedly concocted an ending was a bit of a slap to the face. You forced us through four games of Desmond only to just say screw it and give up on it out of nowhere?
I know since gaming sites are so full of defensive gamers that I can't really convince anyone without somehow coming off as an underhanded slight against their preferred platform, but if Steam Box were to become the future, it would be a much, much, MUCH brighter future for gaming and core gamers like ourselves. Having the industry controlled by giant greedy corporations who want absolute control over the consumer obviously hasn't been too great for us. Microsoft for instance has a policy where they will not license a game for an Xbox release if the Playstation version takes advantage of superior hardware. Publishers and developers have no choice but to follow Microsoft's backwards and nefarious policies. It's even worse for indie developers. That hurts ALL gamers even though they don't even own a freaking Xbox. Imagine a world with an OPEN platform, an OPEN online network and the ability for smaller studios and indies to be as successful as the biggest AAA blockbuster games, who will be drowned with ads and pages for AAA games on closed online storefronts on consoles. Imagine a platform where most DLC is either free or extremely cheap. Imagine NEVER running out of content for your games because player communities will create new content with developer tools and share them easier than ever through Steam. Imagine a platform that blocks games that require invasive third-party platforms like Origin for most games. (You will have Uplay and Origin software on consoles and they probably won't be optional. Go ahead and ask for a refund or say something mean on the forums to watch your entire count be banned from playing EA or Ubisoft games)
We would probably go back to the days of the late 90's and early 2000's where smaller developers could thrive and succeed, bringing thousands of games that aren't just the next take on whatever franchise is popular at the time. A lot of small Japanese developers are starting to develop for the PC. Do you japanophiles want the days to come back when there were a lot of Japanese games in the market? They can't compete with the AAA hundreds of millions of dollars budget market. This would allow smaller Japanese developers to come back.
@MuffintopX It is NOT only teens. I can promise you that from playing games online and going to gaming sites for almost 20 years. In fact, teens are a minority. Even the most absurd statements may come from a 30, 40 or even 50 year old. I've seen it first hand and I know for a fact the number of ridiculous comments and online players are not mostly teenagers.
@Warpld I thought it was a bit funny that the one prime example of "misogyny" she brought up by name was "goofy new age feminists we're meant to laugh at." That's where she drew the line, huh? Every other political activist group and political party is fair game, but feminism draws the line? Women aren't allowed to be used in satire because there are some men that aren't as torn apart by the writing and her primary argument as to why is because THE MAIN CHARACTERS are deepened as characters by their flaws and that makes it clearly misogynist? The only winning situation for Rockstar here was to make a female protagonist and then make her into a Michelle Rodriguez with little female characteristics on display.
Then we have all of these sites calling every single one of us who took issue with the review to be misogynist bigots and/or solely having a problem because "they thought 9/10 wasn't a high enough score." Gamespot meanwhile praised these individuals and sites who used blanket statements and demonization that threw us under the bus with the actual bigots. I believe she let personal bias get in the way of her review. I am all for her sharing her thoughts on potential misogyny, but to make that as an actual negative against the game and one of the primary negatives? How many other reviewers out of hundreds mentioned this in their reviews? It's very similar to Adam Sessler's God of War review. He's an open far-left progressive that let his political views affect his reviews much like the joke that is film criticism.
I'm kind of disappointed in Gamespot for letting other sites throw all of the commenters under the bus with blanket statements and demonization to fit a story that's best for whatever the outlets primary coverage is. (This is the really short, non-detailed description of what happened)
As for not being embarrassed from other gamers, that's impossible. I've been playing games online and following gaming sites since the mid-90's. You play a game online; there are morons. You go to ANY gaming site or site with gaming content; there are morons. You go to a video game store; there are morons. You go to a video game related convention; there are still some morons. Literally nothing has changed in almost 20 years and we know for a fact that all of these people aren't teenagers. There are 40 and 50 year old gamers who say things that are mind boggling coming from people of their age.
The thing is... I've been around other groups from various sites and real life events and many are nowhere near as bad as gamers. Sure, no group is perfect and some groups are worse, but gamers seem to have a high ratio of bad eggs. I'm sure someone will cherry pick some group or interest, but you're fooling yourselves if you think everyone has the exact same percent of bad eggs as gaming. Let me repeat something else: These ARE NOT all 12 year olds and teenagers. In fact, I'd imagine only 1/4 of the people we're talking about are.
It looks like game criticism is on a path to become the joke that is film criticism where progressive politics heavily influences critic reactions. Hell, Adam Sessler already scored God of War a 3/5 because of a "Bro's before Ho's" trophy and that's not even mentioning Gawker Games... er, I mean Kotaku since Stephen Totilo took over and hired a gang of social justice bloggers. (Or was forced to do so by Gawker sensing an untapped frontier to move into, who knows?)
God dammit. I'm still not over it. I wish I was in a dream and tomorrow I'll wake up and everything's back to normal with Ryan Davis back at Giant Bomb.
The worst part is imaging what his wife must be going through. I couldn't even begin to imagine what it would be like to be with someone for so many years and finally after getting married to lose that person after only a few days.
I'm shocked. I sat with my mouth wide open for like three minutes after I read the news. I remember as a kid cancelling all of my game magazine subscriptions and subscribing to Gamespot Complete just to watch more subscriber-exclusive video content from the old school Gamespot crew including Ryan Davis.
I must have been 13 or so then. I'm 26 now... I probably shouldn't even go there, but I can't imagine Giant Bomb ever being the same with or without replacements. I wish Alex Navarro would consider moving back to San Francisco.
Microsoft buying more "exclusives" in addition to allegedly paying publishers to not show their games at the Sony press conference. There is no low they won't stoop to.
The sheer arrogance on display since the Xbox One was revealed is astounding. The only way they'll succeed is by throwing even more billions of dollars into over saturating the airwaves with advertising to drown out anyone else and prey upon those won't don't know any better regarding the Xbone's anti-consumer and monopolistic strategies of complete control of both consumers and all businesses surrounding their console. (And the PC is next)
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