@jokingjoey14: A) I don't even know who total biscuit is.
B) It might surprise you but some people actually express opinions using language beyond the usual cynic-driven childish negativity prevalent on gaming article comments.
C) No attempt was made to seem more intelligent than anyone else. If you feel insecure reading comments on the internet I suggest cooling off and re-evaluating just what brings about such pointless aggression in you.
@madmonk: I did not bash it and am not protecting the first one, that is your perception of the situation. What I did do was point out the obvious fallacy in the first question that was clearly stated as a rhetorical question but in this context has an answer which disproves the point.
There was a time when Rovio was producing amazing games for the Symbian OS phones, games like the Darkest Fear series and 3D Need for Speed games for hardware dating back to the pre-smartphone era (c. 2005). The company had a diverse portfolio with superb games running on almost unbelievable technology (that NFS game's 3D for example). Since Angry Birds hit the scene I was initially hoping for them to scale up and bring over those greats to better platforms but instead they just threw themselves bodily into the hype train (successfully for quite some time I might add). Now the price of stagnation is coming to them. Maybe some day it will return to its glory days when it was a great game developer, Angry Birds is casual fun but it can't feed a full studio indefinitely.
So long as they don't dump hundreds of people across dozens of studios working inhumanly year after year to push out yearly titles with decreasing customer satisfaction (or alternate good releases with wasted ones in the middle) instead of focusing efforts on making worthwhile heavy hitters maybe they're on to something. EA has the money and looks like they're getting the people. If they follow the Ubisoft method though, after a few stellar releases it'll be off to unfortunately mediocre rehash land. The excellent bits will be washed away in a sea of tired mechanics and copy paste level design by exhausted designers and teams overall just to pad playtime and fill the map. Not everything needs to be open world although a well made open world game is definitely fun to play.
On a completely unrelated note, having the like buttons back on the commenting system is great but given this is the GameSpot comments section we are talking about (which at one time warranted a full 10-minute weekly video program lampooning the worst comments) having a dislike button would be useful to clean up the potential issues with the threads.
One aspect nobody seems to be talking about (the focus seems to be on his age/fitness for the perceived Bond image) is what goes into making these movies. The crew literally has no life outside of making the movie, it's work work work all the time every day for several years. The director of the recent movies even talked about it being a "lifestyle" kind of movie. If it's anything like the shoots for Lord of the Rings this means waking up at 5 AM, workout, makeup, quick last minute notes on the day's shots, hours upon hours of physically and emotionally demanding work from everyone involved then going to see the rushes, plan the next day, revise lines and going to sleep late at night. Time for friends and family almost nil, pressure enormous, demands constantly escalating - a very hard life where only the finished product and glittering news coverage is visible for the public to criticise and critique.
chronocommander's comments