FraGNeM

I loved Alan Wake, and I'm definitely interested in this, but I worry about the change in tone. That was one of the first game's most appealing qualities, for me.

@Godslegion

Yeah, Blockbuster works great for me. It has its negatives such that it isn't for everyone (namely, no streaming, and no new release games), but it's a great deal for me -- I'd have to pay more for an equivalent service from Netflix / Gamefly.

@MacUser1986

As a service where you play full versions of a game via streaming, I agree, but that doesn't seem to be Gaikai's focus.

Since I've tried both services and can't stomach the idea of putting up with that entirely noticeable lag and poor video quality (compared to a game running natively on my PC), I see the opportunity for instant-demos and more compelling that full streaming games.

In summary, Gaikai != OnLive, but Gaikai.practicalityScale > OnLive.practicalityScale

@SThompson

This is now by design. Many players (myself included) weren't fans of the enemies being scaled to the player's level. It took a lot of motivation out of leveling. You could also run into problems where your character is leveled through non-combat abilities, and you're fighting enemies you now have no hope of defeating.

In Skyrim, you will find both occurrences of some enemies being a far higher level than you, and you being a far higher level than other enemies. It allows you to appreciate your character progression as you're able to easily beat enemies that once gave you serious trouble.

@jadee

There used to be, but it was pretty pointless; a significant majority of reviewers agreed on whether a game was "bad" or "good", but differed in how much they did/didn't enjoy it, so there wasn't a big spread of RT scores.

Games are different beasts than movies, and they're often judged differently. A game may get credit for being playable but not enjoyable -- movies don't have this trouble; very rarely will a movie be completely broken and unable to be viewed.

I think that, for games, the best way of making a legitimate MC score would be for a site to conform to a metacritic standard, defined scoring system. If a review didn't post this standard, the review wouldn't be attached to a given game. The metacritic standard could be something inbetween the ridiculous, fine granularity that many sites still adhere to, and a simple binary "good/bad" review. Stars are a good start; they've worked for movies for a long time. Then we wouldn't have as much of a problem with many sites treating the bottom 60% of a scale to various degrees of "bad" -- that could all be in the 1 or 2 star range.

@Slomoshun

Do you really only want one digital store? Steam's a great service, but competition is a good thing.

@twocows

Eh? Any executable can be added to your Steam library. You can't get Steam achievements for this product, but you can still use the in-game Steam overlay, and people will see what game you're playing.

@barrit

Wow, that controller looks great! Proper left joystick position, concave triggers, supports motion controls (used to be rare for 3rd party controllers) and everything!

Thanks for everyone who mentioned it.

@kcswanko

One key point that people seem to be ignoring is that the original Playstation had proper placement of the left thumb pad. Unfortunately, analog sticks were pretty new for consoles at the time, and Sony stuck with a d-pad for their standard controller.

After controller analog sticks became popular (thanks to the N64), Sony bolted some joysticks to the bottom of the controller body to avoid messing up people who still wanted to use the original layout. Due to the popularity of the controller (being the default option for games that needed analog controls), they've kept roughly the same controller body ever since.

I bet that if Sony designed an analog controller from the beginning, they would've placed the left analog stick in the place of the d-pad.

@Private Awesome

Yeah, I heard it, too. It felt awkwardly placed given the victim.