Mike Schramm

@Frostfell And indeed, it was.

@arucious This picture is totally the (uncredited, no less) work of one Ludwig Kietzmann. I pass on all kudos to him without reservation.

@RickGhastly And Heroes and Killzone 3 and about a million other things. Your point?

@MarkezJM I think that was GDC, not DICE. At any rate, the Garriott talk is probably the best. All of these talks are more theoretical than about specific games, but Garriott's an interesting dude and is very excited about space in general.

You're a winner!

@Iamdude On my playthrough (like an hour 30), it did not. It wasn't my computer, though, and it was a section they chose for me. So who knows?

This one just slipped by multiple eyes multiple times -- changed now. Sorry for the confusion.

@WiNGSPANTT from TopTierTacticsco You can't. But I didn't miss it as I played -- the info field in top center shows the health bars and name of whatever you happen to be hitting as you're hitting it, and it's pretty intuitive. If you want to seek out bad guys super early, you might not be able to that, but I was never confused or surprised when I rolled up on a named baddie.

@doubleyewdee You make good points in that I shouldn't rely on the Final Fantasy name (though to be honest, I kind of did -- having not played an FF game since X, I couldn't wait to play XIII). But I do think we just fundamentally disagree on the quest system. I don't really mind MMO quests -- go here, kill this, go here kill this. The linear part didn't really bother me as much as it seems to have you.

My main complaint with that early part of the game was just that the "learning" period on the battle system was way too slow. Once it finally opened up to the full system (after every conceivable combination of characters in weak pairs), I actually liked it. I probably spent most of my time in the game running the Cie'th Stone missions, just because I didn't mind grinding around looking for my target.

I agree it's not a great game, but it stands out when I look back at the year and what I played. I felt it had to be mentioned by somebody.

And yes, my only real issue with our top ten list this year is that Enslaved is not in it. But that's democracy for you.

I'm hearing that there were a few weird changes, but generally those are just due to quirks in the system. Officially, Apple shut everything down until today. I'm not sure of all the mechanics, and obviously I didn't watch the store closely all weekend. But generally, Apple's intent was to lock things down as well as they could.