Recent content by Pyrrian

April is a fantastic female game character. She definitely felt a lot more... right, I guess, than other female leads in games. I think she benefits from a lot of care in design and crafting of the story and world she's in. Even the minor female characters leave an impression in your mind...

China, particularly Shanghai. Or maybe Nanjing or Chengdu. At any rate, China is just a lot of fun, and if I had to leave the US, that'd be the first place I'd choose to go. A close second goes to Australia.

I'm with you guys, I'd really like to see a remake of 8 over anything else. It's the only one other than Tactics that I've wanted to replay (and have replayed several times). Oddly, I really don't like Squall at all (he annoys me just as much as Cloud), but the rest of the cast is a lot of...

I totally agree. April was fantastic. She seemed like a reasonable person as opposed to a plot tool. It was enjoyable to have her as the main character. It just felt right. Zoe from Dreamfall was also a really good female lead.

What you should have said is that "men are gross, in general, and we're just lucky that some women forgive us for that long enough to continue our species." Then you'd have won points with lesbians and feminists, all while demonstrating that you have no interest in kissing men.

Who do I have to punch to get them to make a last minute decision to patch out this heat sink crap?

There are a lot of fantastic games that forego the whole scripted story aspect. I mean, take the shmup genre. These games often have little or no story, but they're challenging and evocative - and pure fun. Sometimes you'll get a few blips of text between levels, but this really doesn't add to...

Are you using the mic slot or a differeng line-in? At any rate, try opening up a sound recording program. Even something as simple as that Windows sound recorder should help. Check to make sure the line-in isn't muted, and see if you can get a reaction out of the recording mechanism (try...

Unless your sound card has a line-in slot, you might be out of luck with just a pair of USB headphones. Personally, I use the optical out to run to my speaker system. You need to by the extra cable (optical cables aren't very expensive, though), and that assumes your speakers have optical-in...

I've always liked the Madden series. There's not really much reason to buy it every single year, but I do pick up a copy every 2-3 years, depending on how things look. It's just good, clean, over-the-top fun to give the computer team a good smashing. I always have a good time making an insane...

The race for a better visual presentation will be there for years to come. All this uncanny valley talk is nonsense, at least with respect to today's games. Nothing in a game looks so real, in the first place. Second, even when that becomes a legitimate concern, companies will need to develop...

I like that console makers are trying hard this generation. It's particularly promising how Microsoft seems to be subsidizing at least some amount of development for a variety of game genres just to expand the library on the console. As a result, some fantastic shmups have come out on 360 -...

Jedi Knight games. The second one, especially, was fantastic. The combat and force powers, coupled with cool looking lightsaber battles, made the game a lot more involved than games like KOTOR, which, despite being a lot of fun, felt far too wooden and detached for my tastes. D20 games like...

Game companies employ people who make a living through investment and game sales. Pirated games are not sales. Piracy is, at best, useless to companies and developers, and it is, at worst, directly detrimental. Think of it as a value calculation. If you distribute 1000 copies for $10,000, the...

I'd choose two different game stories for two different reasons. Ace Combat 4 had a great little story. It was simple, which is good in a game story. It also chose just the right perspective for the events of a game - a child from an occupied territory. The narrative only deals with your...