I aim to misbehave

Mass Effect 2. Good game that suffered toward the end due to predictable, repeating level design. Good, but not great. Mostly enjoyable. Don’t tell the four guys who played it four times through. There may be violence.

Reader Jonath makes an astute observation: Which game has better cutscenes—Super Smash Bros. Brawl or Metroid Other M?

And remember, Smash Bros. Brawl really doesn’t any voice acting to speak of, pun intended.

Smooth Harold knocks one out of the ballpark.

Rather than blame the safe creative bets, bloated budgets, and $10 HD surcharge (yes, many games carry an MSRP of $60 these days) for the decline, developers set their sites on used game sales.

Project Ten Dollar. Bitching about used games. Single use unlock codes. None of this benefits the consumer, and yet the executives tell us this is exactly what they’re meant to do.

Is the era of the bloated, self-absorbed $100 million blockbuster game over? Not entirely, but it’s certainly waning. Great news.

The line about big budgets and 90% review scores is kind of baffling/telling though.

Scott Pilgrim Versus the World, which is not technically a video game movie, may very well be the best video game movie ever released in a theater.

Since most movies based on games suck, this isn’t saying much, so I’ll add that, by itself, the movie is actually quite good.

“Mental maps” were a huge reason why Metroid and Super Metroid were so well-received. I hope Team Ninja was taking notes, else I’m still fairly certain Other M will end up more like the subject line of this post than fans would like to believe.

Why are there not more video games journalists like Rob Fahey over at GamesIndustry.biz? Is it a British thing?

When you try and sell an FPS in an already oversaturated FPS market on a system that doesn’t exactly have the best track record for selling FPS games, this happens.

As much as I like the look of Starcraft 2, several reviews have dinged this otherwise exemplary title for bad dialog and a contrived story.

Leads me to ask the obvious: Why haven’t video game developers figured out how to make a well-acted video game yet?

The venerable Syndicate franchise seems imminently poised for a remake, courtesy EA.

Why do I have the sinking suspicion that it will be a first or third-person shooter, and not the squad management 3/4 overhead view game it deserves to be?