fnordbot

That's 'defuse' the situation, not 'diffuse'.

M

"extra duckets"

Surely you mean "ducats"?

:-)

M

I have to agree. Also - they're soldiers, in the midst of battle. Are they expected to be composing free verse? Of course they'll state the obvious; their minds are on more important things, like trying to stay alive, win the battle etc.
I think we all get a little too caught up in 'innovation'. Most people don't like innovation, or at best just a smidge of it. We like the familiar with a new face, just enough to give something its own unique identity but not so much that it puts us outside our comfort zone.
For the record, I've played CoD, Halo, Resistance, Gears et al and KZ2 stacks up well against any of them. All these games have their own quirks and (minor) innovations, and enough story to drive the action along (though CoD4's storytelling was superb - far better than Bioshock's, for starters, though that's a topic for another day...).
KZ2 feels visceral and intense, the gameplay tweaks (cover system, sniping) work well and it looks and sounds great.
I haven't tried the multiplayer yet (no matches to be found) but I'm hoping it'll be the game that finally gets me to play on PSN regularly. MGO and R2 were both good, but Xbox Live is so much better overall - plus it has L4D. But KZ2 at least promises to deliver something pretty distinctive. Fingers crossed.

I totally agree - I think quality blog sites (like Joystiq) provide a hugely useful service.
What bugs me is when blog sites get all sniffy about the print magazines and news based sites that originate the stories they aggregate; don't they realise that if all those sources went out of business, they would too?

I'm not suggesting they directly plagarise, but you see plenty of stories that start with "[other publication] reports that...", "according to a story in [other publication]..." etc.

I'm not trolling here, because Joystiq is pretty good in this regard, but it always bothers me when I read smug comments from bloggers about how well they do by ripping content off from print publications. Biting the hand that feeds? Without those magazines the bloggers would be working twice as hard (how many stories on game blog sites are lifted from news sites that do their own research and leg-work?).
On another note, what's wrong with this industry when in a time of blockbuster, record-breaking sales, publications (both online and print) are going out of business because they can't generate enough ad revenue. Where are the publishers spending their money? Are they advertising in mainstream media publications? Have they decided that the enthusiasts are interested anyway, so they don't need to spend ad dollars reaching them? Again, it seems like that feeding hand is getting bitten...