Please keep in mind that board moderators have political concerns. If they do not like your opinion, they will delete your reviews -- without consideration that your opinions are earnestly felt and honestly stated. Game moderators here tend to have an unethical approach: they censor because they fear honesty and they fear people will refuse to buy stupidly made games. This puts the stupid designers out of business -- and in the long run could put stupid moderators out of a job.

That aside...

I can see that most game designers think that their game designs are cute, silly, or even funny at the expense of mature, intelligent, and professional design. I'm afraid I end up disliking games such as Persona 4, Elder Scrolls, Final Fantasy XII, City of Heroes, Star Wars: Galaxies, Warcraft, Fallout & Fallout 2, Diablo, and other disgusting trope that are obviously meant to be a poor game experience. These games insinuate that we are all stupid. I don't like that. I do not like stupid retro games. I do like intelligent games even if they're retro.

I do like games such as Temple of Elemental Evil, Vampire: the Masquerade Bloodlines, King of Dragon Pass, Republic: the Revolution, Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble, Civilization 2 & 3, Final Fantasy 7 & 8, Final Fantasy Tactics, Zork I-III, Colossal Cave Adventure, Nethack, Omega (the rogue-like), The Prisoner, Ultima VII, and other games where the technology was used well, where intellect is more important than vomiting on someone's brain. Of course just because I like a game doesn't mean I'll give it a good score. One must be honest to quality concerns. If you make a lousy game that's kinda fun, I might like it but then again, I have no compunctions against applauding when you're starving and begging for spare change. Of course, high cost development doesn't impress me.

I do not like when someone trashes a license for a perfectly good RPG like Microsoft's Shadowrun, D&D Online: Stormreach,
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, Star Wars: Galaxies, Neverwinter Nights... all of these games are dissapointing if you love the licenses they're from.

Finally, I have no sympathy for game designers who trash a perfectly good game that I've seen in development. How did Baldur's Gate become a storyline game rather than a really well sculpted AD&D simulation? For heaven's sake, the NPCs could have reacted to game state changes rather than have pre-scripted conversations largely absent of game state change! I saw the design change from genius into junior high school level cretinism. Other games are much like this: through several stages of development these games are beautiful, but someone trashes it before it reaches final stages.