Alphathon

@KeenCommander Which is why they are good - they aren't rammed down your throat. Ads that are so obvious and in-your-face make me want to buy the product less since they are annoying, so in my case at least don't even work (I'm sure I'm not alone, but unfortunately in the minority). The ones in Burnout at best subtly condition you to like Slingbox or Burger King (or make somebody think "I could really do with a burger right now), but I doubt they make anybody actively hate the brand they are advertising, so they are arguably more effective.

As far as I'm concerned there is nothing wrong with ads in games IN PRINCIPLE. The way it is done in Burnout Paradise for example is fine; there are passive billboards strewn throughout the world as they would be in real life, which are unobtrusive and can be mostly ignored (and to a certain degree increases immersion by making it seem more like the real world).

Things like this however, not so much; it reduces immersion and, for me at least, will put me off buying the game.

Other bad examples include Wipeout HD which added ads during random loading screens. It's not THAT bad, but the fact they were added retro-actively pissed me off - if they had been there from the start I may have resisted buying it (held off until a sale or something). If I wanted advertising I'd go on the 360...yeah, I went there. No Xbox hate intended, but I really dislike MS forcing me to see their ads whenever I power on. I really don't care what game you want to sell me.

/rant
...man am I glad I live in the UK with the lovely ad-free BBC :).

And that was a reply to myself. Seriously, WTF?! (I bet this ends up as a reply to some other random post)

WTF, why can't I reply to anyone anymore - that was supposed to be a reply to philmcfail further up - stupid comment system!

Part of the problem was that it was significantly dumbed down. In DE you had a much more robust system for...well just about everything. You had a proper inventory, weapons had their own ammo types (one of my biggest problems with DE:IW was that every weapon used the same generic ammo. That's right, the flamethrower used the same ammo as the pistol) biomods were actually useful etc. Not to mention IW didn't have nearly the same atmosphere as DE (through visuals, audio or actual environments) It was all too shiny and perfect, and didn't have much character.

@TheRagingBull I feel for ya. I don't think any version of the game was without game-breaking bugs. The PC version (the one I played and am still playing) crashes to desktop so often I took to quick-saving after every encounter or every 5 minutes, whichever came sooner. Often it would be triggered by going inside/outside/between rooms, which crapped up the auto-saves.

I've heard that the PS3 version was the worst of the three though (bugs that stopped you completing quests etc)

@Wesscoast Seriously? You think the 360 is slim at the moment, and the PS3 is monstrous? Just for a moment let's look at the differences. The current 360 is 292mm × 257mm × 80mm. The fatty PS3 is 325mm × 272mm × 92mm. I would hardly call 33mm, 15mm and 12mm the difference between slim and monstrous. If you want it in ye olde/American units, that's roughly 1.3 inches, 0.6 inches and 0.45 inches. The slim PS3 is 290mm × 290mm × 65mm, so -2mm, +33mm and -20mm (-0.08in, +1.3in and -0.8in). Also, considering that the shape of the consoles, I would say the actual volume is roughly the same; the PS3s shape makes it take up a lot less actual space than its dimensions would suggest, although that doesn't effect the footprint.

Besides, neither of them is particularly slim. Just look at the last gen consoles. While the Xbox was a beast (it was basically just a PC after all) the PS2 (both versions) and the GameCube were significantly smaller than either the 360 or the PS3 (the original PS2 not quite so much, but still quite a bit smaller). Then of course there's the Wii, which is also much smaller.

@phoenx97 It looked dated when they used it for Fallout 3, and wasn't even fantastic when they used it for Oblivion, so yeah, it's pretty dated looking. That said, I really don't think it matters that much (like BrianH said), and I'd rather they use that than the horribly overused Unreal engine; at least we get AA in gamebryo. Maybe they could've used the Rage engine; it looks pretty good and they do own id now (although they were probably working on New Vegas before Zenimax bought id, and I don't know if the engine is finalised yet anyway)

P.S. sorry for the double post - apparently the new Joystiq hates replies even more than it used to.

@phoenx97 It looked dated when they used it for Fallout 3, and wasn't even fantastic when they used it for Oblivion, so yeah, it's pretty dated looking. That said, I really don't think it matters that much (like BrianH said), and I'd rather they use that than the horribly overused Unreal engine; at least we get AA in gamebryo. Maybe they could've used the Rage engine; it looks pretty good and they do own id now (although they were probably working on New Vegas before Zenimax bought id, and I don't know if the engine is finalised yet anyway)

...and it would seem that the page two replies link thing actually takes you to the homepage.