Chris

I was expecting something more heart-wrenching and gameplay affecting. I thought maybe once you discovered he had the nuke as a plot point, you'd then have to change your gameplay tactics to find a way to disarm him while still keeping him from crashing. The climax of the game would be the horror as you realized your only option would be to dismantle your friend, as the nuke that made him so dangerous was also the power source that kept him alive.

Otherwise the gameplay itself looks fun, I just thought the nuke would be more pertinent to the narrative and the friendship, and less of a "if you lose everyone dies" game over screen.

My heart truly goes out to those who are affected by this and cannot find a fix. I must have put at least one hundred hours into Mass Effects 1 and 2, and if I couldn't import *my* Shepard I would be.... deflated.

Of course, you can always download a mass effect save file for PC that matches your playthrough and edit the name of it, then import it to the xbox using conversion software. :-)

Is there a lot of hype for this game? Do people still like Resident Evil? I know the recent 3ds release was widely praised, but that's not much of an indication of hype for this game.

I personally quite enjoyed Resident Evils one, two, four, and five quite a bit, (I did not play three). Four and Five definitely got away from the "aboogaboogaboo!" scares of the earlier titles, which I'm still... conflicted about. The thing I miss about games like Alone in the Dark and Fatal Frame and Silent Hill 2, Eternal Darkness, and the earlier Resident Evil games was the mystery element, and the psychological scares. I liked getting sucked into a scary story, with weird unnerving paranormal stuff going on.

Alan Wake did a wonderful job with the spooky story and atmosphere, but it was so light on the scares and frights that I wouldn't really call it a scary game. I miss the tense "Oh God! AHH WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN I AM SCARED GUHHHH" moments of earlier games when you just *knew* something was going to jump out at you.... Haven't seen that in a game in a while (though Amnesia did a pretty good job).

I'll have to read some reviews of this when it's out. I really didn't mind the action emphasis of four and five, I just get a bit nostalgic for the old days.

@plbelanger Just a few quick Google searches and a calculator :-)

I personally don't own any PSP games any more except those I bought digitally; which I am very much looking forward to re-playing.
I feel for those who already own a UMD collection, or who were looking forward to cheaply getting into PSP titles on their vita by buying them used, but I understand Sony's position. I think most of our complaints come from the fact that this is the direct successor to the psp and we expect backwards compatibility.
When Nintendo started selling virtual console titles from the NES and SNES and N64 on the Wii, I didn't really expect them to do a 'cartridge passport' either. However, if they'd made me re-buy my gamecube games, I might be peeved. Maybe.

I guess my perspective boils down to this: Just because I already own a game in one format doesn't mean I have the right to play it on another format for free or discounted. I already own Alan Wake on the 360, but I don't feel entitled to a free or discounted PC copy...

Just my two cents.

I keep having an issue in the PC version where the pre-rendered cutscenes are out of sync with the audio; it's like the video moves slightly too fast, and the audio has to skip sometimes to catch up. Has anyone else had this issue?

@Omenege

I agree. 500,000 is a pretty low number. There are at 3,500 Gamestops, 1,200 Best Buys, 4,000 wal marts, 1700 Target's, and 1,300 k-marts in the us. That's roughly 12,000 stores you can buy a Vita, not including online stores like Amazon (which I'm sure a significant portion of Vita buyers will use); if each of those retailers sold just 14 units a week, Sony would meet that mark easily.

Having played one in a gamestop for a half hour or so, I was pretty impressed. The analog sticks were a bit small for my thumbs and their range felt slightly limited, but they seemed plenty good enough to get the job done. I'm very much considering picking one up :-)

@Basevi

It's true, I own both soundtracks and routinely play them at parties or get-togethers. It's a common question "oh wow, who is this? I am really grooving out to the hip beats that are flowing from your speakers!" and the answer usually get's me puzzled looks. Jet Grind Radio, and it's sequel are two of my favorite games ever released, and most of that is due to the soundtrack.

This will be a day one purchase for me :-) I hope it encourages them to consider a sequel!

Test: my comments aren't showing up..

I wonder how many of the "imprecise controls" issues mentioned in the review are due to software programming (and could be addressed in a patch) and how many of them are due to the vita hardware itself.

I see three options.
1. The developers simply didn't have a good enough handle on how to use the vita's hardware, and could improve it with more time.
2. The vita's hardware is deficient in some way and provided an insurmountable technological limitation (it's just not sensitive enough)
3. The developers didn't believe there was a problem, and saw no reason to tweak anything because in their testing they never had the same issues. (i.e. JC Fletcher is not as good at Escape Plan as they were, and this could have been seen with more play testing.)

I have a feeling it was a combination of the three. You must never judge launch titles on the same level as games released later on, as the development kits change numerous times during the far shorter-than-usual development cycle.

That having been said, you never know. It could be that they hate the vita's hardware and were wrestling with it the whole time and this was the best they could ever conceivably do. It could be they think their game is perfect and everyone who has issues is just 'doing it wrong'. And it could be that they just didn't know how to use the hardware, and with more time they might have learned how to use it better and produced a better product.

I'd be interested in seeing what the developer has to say regarding the criticisms of control precision.