There seems to be a general disconnect when it comes to the definition of grinding.

To me grinding is having to repetively battle foes to raise your stats/gear/money in order to progress.

Simply encountering enemies in your journey isn't grinding.

Grinding is the act of progression through repetition rather than moving through the story line.

In the early Final Fantasy games, it was more than possible to simply fight the enemies you encountered and go completly through the game, not get stuck 5 levels too low to defeat a boss, so you run around in a circle getting into random encounters.

I have been playing Final Fantasy III (VI jp) lately, and at the same time leveling a character in Rift, and I realized something.

MMOs have completly ruined RPGs.

Nowadays an rpg is sinonomous with grinding and quest hubs, whereas "back in the day" they were the best available form of narrative.

I'm hard pressed to think of a game that doesn't ask me to "Kill 10 X" or "Collect 5 Y" even outside of MMos - Dragon Age 2 is a good example, I never felt as if I wasn't on a fetch quest, just visiting a spot so I could return to my quest giver.

This makes me sad, while I enjoy MMOs (as I am currently paying a subscription for one) I'm not into the idea of making every game a series of tasks in lue of a cohesive story.

Can anyone suggest a modern RPG that hasnt't been "MMO"-isized, Resonance of Fate was good, a little too jRpg I thought.

I've seen peeps out there that buy their 9-10 year old a 360, mics, popular shooters, and let them do what they wanna do. I feel as if that's wrong, and it's the worst thing a parent can ever do to their kid.

Lucianu

Really, Malestation included?

A NES costs the same as a xBox 360 factoring in inflation.

My parents bought a NES when I was 6 years old -- and what was I doing? Stomping Goomba's of course - only now that sounds sorta anti-Italian.

It's really silly to assume that one or even a dozen games or movies are going to warp children into sociopaths...thats the kind of BS that blinds people to what really matters.

It's well unerstood that coddling children has more long term detramental effects than allowing for experience backed by responsible guidance.

I just read the official GameSpot review and then the top rated user reviews - it sounds to me like the game has been simplified to the point of insignificance.

I am comparing it to the Supreme Commander 2 reviews, because it seems like the developers, upon making a successful; original game opted to use the oppurtunity of a sequel to "simplify" the gameplay in hopes of drawing more "mass appeal" (read: casual gamers)

I have been on the fence about purchasing Dragon Age II - and this does not bode well.

What should I do?

I picked it up for the 1st and 2nd games (the true Oddworld) but trying to configure the controls for a xBox controller is confusing, since the buttons don't correspond and are even different between Oddysee and Exodus

Anyone have any tips for better controls or running in windowed mode (a 640x480 game looks terrible at 1080p)

They should really avoid stretching themselves so thing - Duke Nukem Forever must be a beast of a game now, and its gonna take alot of people to wrangle it in.

Certain games are made to run on certain systems, Fallout's roots are designed around the fact that it was built as a PC game engine.

No buddy with all the facts would choose to buy this game for a console just as no one with a choice would buy a GTA game for the PC

The problem is that you call the single player portion of an FPS the "campaign" as if it's meant to be consumed, digested and deficated out as part of our training for the drone warfare of MP.

Games like Quake I and II, Half-Life-1/2/ep1/ep2 simply don't seem to exsist anymore - FPS are specifically designed all the time to specifically function as multiplayer games so theirs really nothing about them that can't be recreated in next years shovelware.

Even Borderlands, so wildly popular is just a storyless game that only becomes "playable" once you get some buds into the arena, otherwise it's just a vacant and lonely experience.


I have high hopes for RAGE because..well, to be quite blunt, if iD Software can't save us from 10 years of playing army man, then the FPS genre as we know it is dead.

Does anyone else besides me think putting the poor console review of Fallout New Vegas on the roster for a week straight (even after the "great" 8.5 PC review appears days later) is sensationalism?

It seems to be more and more GameSpot will be hypercritical of one game and let anything go with another...Vanquish a "gleeful adventure" --seriously? it's pure visceral with little purpose except to waste a SINGLE afternoon.

I didn't buy the console version of a game thats meant to be played on PC (what am I an idiot?!) so I don't know exactly how buggy it actually is, but the 20+ hours I've spent playing Fallout New Vegas on PC (jeez, half that time I had to pee but I just held it - just until I get this quest, or find some stimpacks, or see if I can repair this shotgun with that one) convinced me that I spent my money very well.

I think because reviewers are so pushed to deliver reviews they actually begin to enjoy the more shallow experiences because it doesn't require them to put 20+ hrs into a specific game each week, sometimes it's just easier to grab a morphing gun and a "floor-centric rocket pack" and jump into some anime inspired insipid action.

I will now go out and found a game review site which publishes reviews based on:
1) Initial reactions
2)Then, mid term observations
3) and finnaly post game commentary.

Any gfx designers up for it? GameImpressions.com --well, its for sale...

That's easy the coolest controller ever was: