@GIJames248 I think you hit the point well. Who is to say that a videogame (whether it is free to play or not) is not as meaningful as a 130 year old novel? Especially considering the generation gap of the "classic" books to the young people of today, it comes down to what story arc or plot twist or whatever rings true with the user. It might seem silly that a free-to-play game can mean something to someone, but the instant we place importance on something (in this case, putting money into a "free" game), the meaning will be missed by anyone else who dismisses such behavior.
Everything about this game screams mediocrity. It's like they focused solely on changing game mechanics (by "changing", I mean dumbing down), and when they got that down, they had like a month to put the setting in, so just recycled 80% of previous diablo games. Oh, you're bringing back the Butcher? Ok. Act 1 is in New Tristram, and I get to go through a cathedral again? Act 2 is in a desert, and I get to go through the sewers again? Act 3 is just a combo of acts 4 and 5 from D2, and the last act is basically the "heaven" version of act 4 from D2. They even brought back Izual, and Diablo's attacks are all the same (bone cages, fireballs, fire/lightning stream). The only thing that is different is there's no jungle to fight through.
Downloadable games means less of a supply issue (except where the bandwidth is concerned, and space on your console), which forces companies to include swag. Except, the people preordering 7 months in advance aren't your regular customer, they are the fanboys of that game. They want to feel elitist, and thus preorder. I imagine a time in the near future where a fanboy will preorder a game, and play it earlier, as well. How would that make a fanboy feel?
As much as I want to rage about the overpricing/hyping/DLCing of "mainstream" games (read: games which received at least a somewhat positive response, and thus need to be milked by sequels), I offer an alternate view: Collector's editions are not about the content, they are about feeling superior to your fellow gamer because you had the money to shell out for the CE. Not all CEs are created the same, but lets look at a test case for the growing trend of charging more for fluff. MW2's CE had functioning night vision goggles. Not virtual ones, but the real thing. Black Ops' CE had an RC car with video camera and microphone. Also, a real thing. Now we come to MW3's CE. Aside from the usual stuff that the others included (art books, meaningless online material), the big sell was a 1-year membership to "Call of Duty Elite", which, among other things, lets you download and own DLC, with the promise of 20 DLCs in the first 9 months. At a base price of $50, getting 20 pieces of DLC would be quite the bargain ($5-10 each). But don't be fooled.... this is all virtual stuff, and counting the DLC as worth $100-200 would suggest all of it is worth it. How many map-packs have you DL'd and played it multiple times? In summary, I find that CEs are moving from receiving interesting/useful products to distinguishing oneself online as someone who has money. It's nothing short of a virtual scam that plays on our instincts to look better than others, but offers nothing concrete.
@spKeeper20 The way it works now is that stores aren't supposed to sell M-rated games to minors, but there is very little in the way of punishment. If a store was particularly abusive, then the video game distributors (Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony) might have to comply with no longer supplying that store. The ratings board for games, the ESRB, basically is an agreed upon entity to rate games, and if a game is too over-the-top, it gets an adults only rating, and game distributors and stores are not allowed to sell it at all. In all other cases, however, it's just a rating to give parents an idea of what's in the game, and stores probably can choose to abide by it or not. What this law does is to hold stores accountable for who they are selling to, which doesn't sound terrible, but it's worded in such a vague fashion that even a T-rated game might cause infractions. Like most laws, it's dressed to look legitimate, but the actual law has too much leeway and can be abused.
Psychological science is probably the last thing we should be using to determine what is law. Any conclusion that is drawn can only be true for only some individuals, as in violent video games do cause violent behavior in some people, and violent video games reduce violent behavior in others. Either way, you can't possibly write a law based on probabilities. On a side note, maybe a much better way to measure how video games affect people is to have them play driving games like GT, then have them actually drive, and see how playing the video game affects their driving. Driving aggression and competence is much more easily measured than violent tendencies.
Still... these people get paid to review games... not exactly the crappiest job in all the world. I don't feel too sorry for you guys. Dealing with the gosh-darn customers is par for the course.
I don't know why people have to blame one thing... it's not just the hackers' faults, or just Sony's fault... it's both. If I put my money in a bank, but they don't lock it up, then there's a lot of blame to go around when it gets stolen (and yes, it is just a matter of time). The PR by Sony has been almost comical, if not for the real danger of millions of people having their identities stolen. Exactly what part of the earthquake and tsunami has anything to do with the PSN hacking? It's called misdirection, and I think it's very telling of what Sony thinks of its customers when they believe we would be duped into feeling sympathy for their self-created plight.
Most of the halo 3 pics look slightly better... how long has Reach been in development? You'd think that with optimizations and hardware upgrades, it would look significantly better than halo 3.
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