Ea is Rubbish, they killed so many brands and good games its sad.
Its a monster in the [censored] games roll out.
I fear for Shogun 2, i fear that its been rushed out.
Blizzard is failing too, SC2 was ok but looks like an expansion pack SC with new units, same 2 floor limit, and with the RTS failure by overuse world wide, reactivation is failing near 75% world wide. Like the rest of the world, after completing the campaign me and all my friend caged it. If D3 fails as much as SC2 is failing, it will be hung by WOW.
If Diablo 3 doesn t bring something really new, itwill fall the same way but slower, because it has better replayability.
Military FPS and Simulations are in Eastern hands, Russians do the best sims, RoF (WW1), IL2 (WW2), Lock on: Flaming Cliff for survey and DCS for study sims. Same for realistic FPS shooters no quake like with nice grafics, ARMA is hand down the best when you discard kido games. By the way you find no almost no kids there they can t coordinate themselves suficiently to act as a somewhat squad, all rambo like. Even the succefull Stalker is Russian.

In RPG there few too, Bethesda mainly the last hope for sandboxes and maybe the Witcher. I didnt like the corridor feeling and combat style boring after sometime. I hope they do better in Witcher 2.

yep pretty much. Mass Effect is barely even an RPG

Honestly I don't know why this is even a concern for some people. They have been developing Skyrim since Oblvion was released so I don't think taking 5 years to develop a game falls into the rushed category.

That is not just evil, its illegal.
If I were that guy Id contact a lawyer. To deny people access to a game they payed for is.. evil and illegal.
Boy, am I glad Bethesda is more human and less totalitarian.

edit: I guess this is exactly why things like steam and other online activation requirements to play an offline game is the worst idea since a chocolate kettle.

I don't know about these things, but it sounded pretty illegal to me. And frankly, all he said was something similar to "So Bioware have sold their souls to the EA devil". What? I've seen people frequently post horrible homophobic/racist comments on the bioware forums and not get banned despite the devs being actively in the discussions.

Oh, let's not all jump on the I-hate-EA bandwagon. Just because there are instances of bad employees, illegal activity (I don't exactly believe this one quite yet), and "bad" games (I liked Mass Effect 2 and The Sims games, honestly) does not mean they are ZOMG EBIL! Obviously when a few people who have major problems with their games start riling people up and saying EA is evil and an awful company, those with minor problems that they wouldn't even think to voice so loudly are deluded into thinking that every problem with their game is the product of some awful, evil conspiracy by EA to create the worst games possible. Thus, it's all psychological and it has to do with following a crowd and not stopping to think for a moment.

As for Bethesda, I love them and will always hold them in much higher regard than companies like EA who churn out various games every year. Do I hate EA, though? Nah. I just like the almost perfect (to me, at least) products that Bethesda creates and the deep personal level in which they put themselves into them.

Serously what the hell is wrong with EA? why must they ruin such good quality titles?

with that said thankfully there are still companies like bethesda making good quality games and even going as far as helping other studios (zenimax buying id, Cant wait for doom 4).
Also i must point out ive always thought Valve made steam completely for the purpose of not worying about finacials so they could focus on making quality games.

Well I doubt Bethesda could match the crap job storyline in FO3 so Skyrim could be better (at least in that regard)

Here take this. You're going to need a one. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NostalgiaFilter

I don't buy EA, Ubisoft, or Activision PC games anymore. Not because of the drm implemented onto the games, but their products don't interest me or are a poorly (no polish/optimizing) console port to PC.

Not to mention EA devours smaller quality companies and churns out inferior crap games under said franchise.

Command & Conquer, The Sims, Sim City franchises

All diminished due to Command & Conquer 4, Sims 3, SimCity Societies

And then EA and Ubisoft's horrendous DRM crap on the PC games.

Very good.
In general this post topic is the most import thing on my mind ' from a gaming perspective'.

I'm currently forcing my way through DA2 .. and cannot express my utter disappointment of how rushed and dumbed down the game feels.
The relative disappointments in DA2 are numerous and I will not go into detail here ...But, in general, the elegance of DAO is gone as well as the feeling of depth within the world that is presented.
Sadly, I don’t know how Bioware will pull the pieces back together on this one.
DA2 is a shell of DAO.

With that being said – Bethesda has always delivered on the Elder Scrolls titles. Regardless of game play mechanics. The level of environmental immersion (which is plausible reality) as well as story has never been questioned.

You're not alone - http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dragon-age-ii/user-reviews?sort-by=date&num_items=100

Thanks for that... rough.. O_o And I thought I was upset..

That is a very good point.
When I had a NES 8 bit I made a point of not buying a game unless the store had either a return policy or let me try it out there.
I think I tried or returned possibly 4/5 and only actually bought one in five.
It is these games that I ended up with and replayed a few years ago, leading me to the conclusion that they still are very good games. Interesting, often fiendishly difficult, and addictive.
Things like the zelda series or a few D&D games. The mario and megaman series. Castlevania.

Its not the 80% of rejects that influence my opinion, they are forgotten.
Ok. So 80% of games have always been crap, and its not something of the new generation.

But lets talk about the 20%.
Still, I feel that there are some differences with todays games that stand out. I still think that the lack of graphics, sounds and other bells and whistles forced developers to actually produce a good game.
Take a game like Fable 1. It was the best in its series, it had some interesting features.
But, ultimately it was a too short, and broken game. When I got out of prison I seriously expected to be about at the halfway point. Instead the game was practically over.
The gameworld was tiny. It is absolutely not what I expect of an RPG to have an area map wherein I can only walk a very narrow pre-set path, and all the rest is just decor.
That is mario 1 mechanics, only with better graphics.
The morality system was broken. You had to constantly kill villagers to actually be evil, as progressing to the game automatically meant amassing a lot of 'good' points because of all the monsters that gave them when dying.
The character progression customization was broken. Dont eat a pie, youll get fat. Every high level character looks like the hulk.
And then came 2 and 3 and instead of fixing what was broken, they decided to 'streamline' and we all know how that ended up.
That is what I dont like about modern games and that is what I mean when I say bells and whistles have replaced actual gameplay. I honestly dont care about graphics or audio. Possibly this is because Ive seen so much of the improvements to them in my lifetime that I still think Morrowind graphics are amazing.

That is also my fear for Skyrim.
That they will take out options and customisations and 'superflousness' in order to 'streamline' the game and make it
'mass accessible'.
The rumour about spellmaking seems to hint at that. Removal of spellmaking in favour of cool graphic effects is in no way shape or form a good thing. It removes actual content and replayability and replaces it with bells and whistles.

Someone hasn't played past Gen I and/or II, or has never done competitive Pokemon battling.

With Todd "The Hatchet" Howard in charge, you have nothing to worry about. Superfluous feature will be chopped, like he has said many times.

Seriously, though, I could tell DA2 was going to svck (relatively) from their previews. Skyrim info actually sounds better than Oblivion and better than Fallout 3. I think it will continue the trend of inclining quality that FO3 started after Oblivion. Hopefully by TESVII, we'll have a totally awesome RPG that blows all those old games out of the water.

On the pokemon issue: there's some crazy competitive metagame about it. Certainly more complex than DAO, or even Baldur's Gate.

I think if you're looking for someone who takes their time to develop games, you're right with Bethesda. If you're looking for someone who won't sacrifice stuff just because some people are too stupid to get it, you might be wrong though.


Still don't get why everybody is so upset about DA2. Yeah, its lack of polish shows from time to time, but it's a nice adventure of the kind where you don't save the world from Dreadlord Stereos of Typos and his Minions of Doom. Nothing is really cut, it's just presented differently from the predecessor - gameplay-wise.

You will learn very quickly that according to the internet, change is horrible. Presenting something differently is horrible. Yet the internet cries out in unison for something different. It's like a paradox.

I think it's truly astonishing that the length of time each Bethesda title has taken to be developed since Morrowind has actually increased, by a matter of months for MW to OB and OB to F3, and by more than a year from F3 to Skyrim! And thats with the size of their development team increasing by 30+ with each game! In an industry where publishers increasingly equate less development time with faster payoff, it's really great that a company like Bethesda can still exist. As long as Bethesda's still around to give me lovingly crafted worlds I can spend hundreds, even thousands of hours exploring and modding, I'll still have faith in games.

Oh, it's always been like that. Pa told stories of RP in the 70's, I've seen this ever since the times of BBS... Yeah, that's just people being people.

Aye, Beth have found their favourite customers on the PC, adopting the casually hardcoe fanbase (few titles, but huge playtime on them) while at the same time streamlining games for consoles. And they have some of the best PR in the industry - they could even sell a game despite shouts about it having little improvement players care about, looking virtually the same and being made by a company with an astonishing record of screwed up releases.

I loved Arena, Daggerfall, and Morrowind. I liked FO3 and I liked FO:NV a lot (I'm one of those that thought NV was the better game). Before major mods like FCOM I hated Oblivion...I thought it was a little step forward in gameplay fluidity and a huge step back in depth, art style, fun factor, originality, RPG mechanics (OMG the level and loot scaling practically ruined the game for me single-handedly), characters, story, etc. For me, Skyrim is going to have to fix a lot of Oblivion's mistakes for it to be a shining example of game design, development, and polish.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKkPFDEiC6Q

I loved Arena, Dagerfall and Morrowind, But Oblivion was different, I feel that I was playing more an adventure game than a Role-Playing one, not like that was a bad thing, but the dumbed down mechanics was a great letdown to me,

I dont know about Skyrim, Im gonna buy it regardless of the reviews, (I honestly never cared about what they have to say about games, hence, why I dont regret buying DA2), Im gonna play it, then If I like it fine, if I dont like it, fine too

FACT: SKYRIM will NOT be perfect people will complain about this or that and find problems in the game. In the end it just matters what YOU think of the game.

This