So Joby asked that I cross post here so I figured I would. One of the things I started doing on my blog, when I first started doing the blog, was rather extensive reviews of videogames, while hopefully being fun enough to read. It is an ongoing process for me and it is something I enjoy doing. I also do podcast and YouTube channel reviews off to the side now. You can access all these reviews I've done from the categories I've setup :).
www.kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com (http://www.kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com)
I just published my review of Deus Ex: Human Revolution here: http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/my-review-deus-ex-human-revolution/ (http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/my-review-deus-ex-human-revolution/) tl;dr: I very much enjoyed this game.
I hope you guys enjoy. :) I may post some highlights in my archive from time to time as well.
King
I really enjoyed this game as well...as a long time Shadowrun player (the tabletop not the crappy videogame) this really fits in with my sci-fi vision. I do agree with you about the bosses, but there are a couple tricks to get by them easier. I also played through not killling anyone for the achievement and MAN that's tough.
Quote from: Chris-El on July 21, 2012, 05:26:55 AM
I really enjoyed this game as well...as a long time Shadowrun player (the tabletop not the crappy videogame) this really fits in with my sci-fi vision. I do agree with you about the bosses, but there are a couple tricks to get by them easier. I also played through not killling anyone for the achievement and MAN that's tough.
Yeah, the first run through I played more stealth, but sometimes I would kill ppl if they were too annoying to deal with. When I replay it, I'll be going for max stealth and no killing.
While this isn't a videogame review persay, this is an update about my new Avatar :)
http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/07/22/update-my-new-avatar/ (http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/07/22/update-my-new-avatar/)
It'll be showing up here soon.
Nice review! The new Deus Ex is on my pile of games that I need to play...I bought it when it came out and played the first two hours and put it aside when Skyrim came out and it's still sitting on my shelf basically unplayed. It's just my kind of game though and I plan on finishing it. I have great memories of the of the original game, played for hours and it was actually one of the few PC games I played to completion on my antiquated hardware back in the day.
Thanks, glad you enjoyed. If I had more time, I'd be replaying this game to see how it turned out with different style of playthroughs. Alas, I have a list of games. :)
Two new Broken Reviews. These are reviews where I don't finish the game for one reason or another. These games thus get a shorter review, talking about what attracted me to these games and why I ultimately didn't like or couldn't complete the games. That doesn't always make them a bad game, it just means I just didn't like them, but you might find them interesting.
Review of Psychonauts: http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/broken-review-pyschonauts/ (http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/broken-review-pyschonauts/)
Review of SpaceChem: http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/broken-review-spacechem/ (http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/broken-review-spacechem/)
Enjoy!
I published my latest videogame review on Legend of Grimrock, the RPG dungeon crawler here:
http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/my-review-legend-of-grimrock/ (http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/my-review-legend-of-grimrock/)
I would appreciate feedback on this as it features a different setup than my reviews have had in the past. Good/bad, doesn't matter. Hope you enjoy reading!
King
Very nice and detailed review Tim. I might have to give this game a try. Looks like my kind of old school dungeon crawler.
Quote from: Rico on August 23, 2012, 04:56:53 PM
Very nice and detailed review Tim. I might have to give this game a try. Looks like my kind of old school dungeon crawler.
Thanks Rico, yeah, it definitely has a lot of old school sense to it :).
My reviewing never ends, I'm here with another review of "Breath of Death VII: The Beginning". Its a parody retro-RPG game that came out last year and I got the chance to review it this week. Enjoy!
http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/09/15/my-review-breath-of-death-vii-the-beginning/ (http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/09/15/my-review-breath-of-death-vii-the-beginning/)
King's Shortened Review of Shank:
http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/kings-shortened-review-shank/ (http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/kings-shortened-review-shank/)
A 2D side-scrolling brawler with an interesting graphic style. Bit of an old game yes but a game I had been wanting to finish my thoughts on in a better format. The shortened review series is that better format.
King's Personal Musing 12/5/12: Finals are Over, Christmas Wishlist, Many PC games released lately and more...
This one explains how my finals went and what my plans are for this coming month. It also explains why I've been fairly quiet on the TSF forum for the past month.
http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/kings-personal-musing-12512-finals-are-over-and-christmas-wishlist-many-pc-game-releases-and-more/ (http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/kings-personal-musing-12512-finals-are-over-and-christmas-wishlist-many-pc-game-releases-and-more/)
Enjoy!
King's Videogame Review: FTL: Faster Than Light...
http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/12/09/kings-videogame-review-ftl-faster-than-light/ (http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/12/09/kings-videogame-review-ftl-faster-than-light/)
An extensive look at the Indie title by Subset Games. Hope you guys enjoy!
Wow epic review! I will give FTL another try. I bought it but didn't understand the tutorial and kept dying horribly in a few turns. I'll give it another go. Thanks for taking the time to write that!
Quote from: Jobydrone on December 09, 2012, 04:11:45 PM
Wow epic review! I will give FTL another try. I bought it but didn't understand the tutorial and kept dying horribly in a few turns. I'll give it another go. Thanks for taking the time to write that!
Its a difficult game and I recommend playing at "easy" difficulty if you aren't already. Glad you enjoyed the review! :)
This isn't so much a review but rather my thoughts on Steam Greenlight's latest batch of games approved. Its an...experimental Musing series I've been doing. Not sure if I'm going to keep doing it or not but I enjoy it right now so that's all that matters for me ;).
http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/kings-musing-about-steam-greenlights-third-batch-of-greenlit-games/ (http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/kings-musing-about-steam-greenlights-third-batch-of-greenlit-games/)
Enjoy!
I'm back with another review on the multi-platform game: Waking Mars. An exploration adventure 2D game for Desktop and mobile devices. Check it out:
http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/kings-videogame-review-waking-mars/ (http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/kings-videogame-review-waking-mars/)
Enjoy!
I wrote up my Top most Disappointing and Dishonorable games of 2012 post down there. The Top 10 Games of 2012 is coming tomorrow which I'll post here when it is up.
http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/kings-top-disappointing-and-dishonorable-games-of-2012/ (http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/kings-top-disappointing-and-dishonorable-games-of-2012/)
Enjoy! Would like to hear what people thought :).
I have to ask, Tim, how many of the games you listed as your biggest diappointments of the year did you actually play?
Based on what you wrote about Mass Effect 3, it seems you only watched the ending on You Tube. There's alot more to ME3 than just the ending. There's 20-30 hours of content that comes before that, including the best combat engine and AI of the entire series, as well as a brand new, very fun co-op multiplayer mode that still has people addicted almost a year later.
It's fine to be convinced of something based on other people's opinions, but I don't understand how you can state that the game is your biggest diappointment of the year if you haven't even tried it.
Wow, I couldn't disagree with you more on any level. The extra character in ME 3 did absolutely nothing wrong. It did not change the game in any way. You were not required to buy it, but if you did, you got some additional information. Information that had nothing at all to do with the current story and more to the backstory.
Every one of your issues seems to be wrapped in the fact that game companies want to make money.
ME3 was a complete game without the addition of the additional character. Adding the character created added value and the story of that character is the reason that I paid for it.
The ending of ME3 was great, but you only get that if you actually played the game and understood the core of the character. Just like in life, there isn't always a happy ending, but if your ending can save the universe, how is that bad?
I personally don't see how you can review something that you have not invested time into or has yet to come out.
I have friends that are on ME3 almost every time I see them and that says something about the quality of the game.
No offense, but if you are going to review something, the rules of journalism strongly suggest that you experience it, or otherwise it's just libel.
Quote from: X on December 20, 2012, 09:12:03 AM
Every one of your issues seems to be wrapped in the fact that game companies want to make money.
Quote
It's his cause celebre.
*sighs*. First off, this is a list, it is not a review of the game. It is not remotely a review, it is my opinion of which games I considered the worst games of 2012 as far as politics of the company go, how bad the development of the game was and whether I considered their business practices fair or not.
As far as Mass Effect 3 goes, it had day one DLC which I saw as nothing but a greedy move to capitalize on players. The DLC had important story information. As such, EA clearly cut the character from the game to make extra money, making you buy the Collector's Edition. I'd like to point out that they did NOT do this in Mass Effect 2 so I don't see why they had to do it in Mass Effect 3. They also forced everyone to download Origin software (even if you had originally started out the series of games on Steam or other services) which is a very shady piece of software that scans your entire computer without your permission. I was not going to be forced to download a piece of software to play a game that I didn't want scanning my computer. I also watched the entire story of the game on YouTube, not just the ending and I have a fairly good idea of what the combat is like. Its an improvement, yes, but it felt like a lot of it was slugging it out on tanked up guys that got old as the game progressed.
The ending was pretty much universally panned by gamers and critics of Mass Effect 3. It was so bad that Bioware went back and fixed the ending in order to address complaints via a free DLC. A company does not do that if it was a "good ending". Otherwise, its seen as a loss of faith in their writers.
I have no problems with companies making money. It is how they make money that I sometimes take great issue with. Cutting out pieces of your game while it is in development to sell as DAY ONE DLC sets an incredibly bad precedent for the future of gaming if we simply tolerate it is as "fact". What if Bioware had cut out half of the game's character lineup and sold them for $20 each on the First Day and the main game for $60? Would you still be fine with that? I sure wouldn't be. But I have little doubt that is what EA tried to test here and we happily accepted it. Except for people like myself.
As far as journalism is concerned, well, I have a set of morals to follow. I cannot simply ignore my morals even for the blog. So I gather my opinions from a variety of trusted sources. Its the best I can do. But as I said above, this is not a review of Mass Effect 3. I never pretend that it is. It is simply my opinion on which games I considered the worst of the year. And yes, Mass Effect 3 is most definitely my least liked game of 2012. I do not simply ignore how a company operates because I want to play the game. That is not who I am.
Also, none of that post is "Libel". I straight up said that I have not personally played these games except for two of them. It is also an opinion piece on an opinion blog.
"A libel is a malicious, false statement in written media, a broadcast, or otherwise published words."
Which is nothing that was written in this blog post.
You say universally panned, but I see more of a vocal minority. As for them fixing the ending, if you had played it, You'll see that it ends pretty much the same except you get someone to voice over and tell you what has happened since some people didn't seem to get that. It's your opinion, but I don't see how you can form a valid opinion on something based on the opinions of others, trusted or not.
It's like deciding turkey pizza is your all time favorite food because people you trust say it's great and you have yet to try it.
Quote from: X on December 20, 2012, 09:52:27 AM
You say universally panned, but I see more of a vocal minority. As for them fixing the ending, if you had played it, You'll see that it ends pretty much the same except you get someone to voice over and tell you what has happened since some people didn't seem to get that. It's your opinion, but I don't see how you can form a valid opinion on something based on the opinions of others, trusted or not.
It's like deciding turkey pizza is your all time favorite food because people you trust say it's great and you have yet to try it.
Big companies don't listen to vocal minorities often. Certainly not EA and Bioware at any rate so I think the amount of people that were complaining about the ending is a lot more than you think. And yeah, the ending is generally the same which I don't deny. And I still think its a bad ending personally, not because of Sheppard's fate but because they basically ignore a lot of the decisions and choices you make throughout the game. What was the point of gathering all of those people and forces from the beginning of the game to the end if they have no visible impact on the ending of the game?
Also, food has no application to any of this. I do not let people decide for me what I think is good to eat or not. I've stated in the past that gaming is my battleground and I expect companies to treat their customers fairly. EA and Bioware spectacularly failed at that just like Ubisoft did a while back with their overly punishing DRM systems. And guess what? Ubisoft is backing down on their DRM because they found out they were losing sales due to less people buying their DRM-filled games. So its entirely possible for companies to treat their customers better and that is what I am simply expecting. It's not difficult.
Keep in mind, all EA had to do for me was avoid selling day-one DLC and avoid forcing Origin down my throat. All I am asking is that customers be allowed to choose how they want to
buy the game and be treated fairly for it. Sure, I would have griped about the ending, no doubt about it, but EA could have avoided a lot of my wrath on this had they not restricted customer choice and cut up the game for later DLC.
Tim, perhaps to save time in your next "2012....whatever" review, you should just write the following:
"Hi, everything that attempts to make money is greedy and screwing over people. Period."
Dude, I know that I pan things from time to time, but really? HOW can your form an educated opinion if you've NOT EXPERIENCED THE THING?! Truly...X is right. And as for your defense against libel...uh, nope. You're incorrect. YOU CAN be sued. QUITE a bit of what you said about ME3 alone can be defined as libel..."...Especially if it has questionable hard-drive scanning software within it..." "...other shady practices..." "...it also showed that EA probably forced them to cut corners in order to end the development..." "Between the company politics and a publisher seemingly bent on greed" just to call out a few. Remember, libel, as defined by you above, "A libel is a malicious, false statement in written media, a broadcast, or otherwise published words." published in the digital blogging world is defined as a post that at least ONE other person has read! ONLY ONE. By making this post you had several of us read your blog...so, yeah, it constitutes as a published word. Yep. YOU can be held libel...so yep, YOU should hold yourself accoutable to journalistic standards if you're going to post to the WORLD any opinion that has ANY negative spin at all.
But Tim...they didn't FORCE you to buy that add-on! GET THAT THROUGH YOUR HEAD! YOU decided to buy it. YOU YOU YOU!!!
I just enjoy the colorful language like "battlefield" and "wrath" used when discusiing one persons opinion...about a game.
This is not a review of Mass Effect 3 how many times do I need to say this.
And I chose not to buy the game because of the Day One DLC. I chose not to buy the game because they didn't give people the choice to buy the game from where they wanted.
These are the games that I considered the most dishonorable games because they were either poorly developed or it had a developer pulling very anti-consumer behavior. I said all of this in the very first paragraph of that blog post. That right there should have clued you guys in that this is not a list of the most terrible games of 2012. I can certainly go back to that blog post and clarify my position because everyone seems to have missed the point.
Just out of curiousity, because I really don't care much about any of this, but why should you be able to buy a product from where you want? What does that even mean?
Quote from: Bryancd on December 20, 2012, 11:13:32 AM
Just out of curiousity, because I really don't care much about any of this, but why should you be able to buy a product from where you want? What does that even mean?
Different services offer different features. If the game was sold from Steam, it would mean that no company could scan my machine without my expressed permission, that I can buy the game and all its DLC directly from Steam without opening an account for Origin and that the game might have certain Steam features that Origin does not provide.
I want this to be clear:
I clearly stated that these are, in my opinion, the most disappointing games of 2012. Not that they are the worst games of 2012 in terms of the game, its gameplay, its balance or similar for that matter. Its clear to me that this is where the confusion lies. If this were a top 10 worst games of 2012, Mass Effect 3 would not be on this list. I've played some pretty dang terrible games this year and Mass Effect 3 is no where near them. However, that was not the point of this blog post.
It was to point out which games I considered to be the most disappointing because the company didn't try harder. Not because the games were awful. I mentioned that several times how disappointed I was that the game in question didn't reach its potential. Especially Skydrift which I saw had the most potential to be an awesome game and it fell flat on its face.
Doesn't matter WHAT you call it Tim, Review, Opinion, a recipe for you favorite Christmas cookie, the bottom line is that is IS published therefore COULD be a case for a libel suit.
Bryan, Tim actually means get it without paying from whatever bit torrent he deems acceptable to HIM. This is and has been (for as long as I've been on this forum) your story Tim. If you think a company wants to make a profit then you believe they're dishonorable. Period. And yes, you DID give YOUR uneducated review of ME3
Quote from: KingIsaacLinksr on December 20, 2012, 11:32:34 AM
I want this to be clear:
I clearly stated that these are, in my opinion, the most disappointing games of 2012. Not that they are the worst games of 2012 in terms of the game, its gameplay, its balance or similar for that matter. Its clear to me that this is where the confusion lies. If this were a top 10 worst games of 2012, Mass Effect 3 would not be on this list. I've played some pretty dang terrible games this year and Mass Effect 3 is no where near them. However, that was not the point of this blog post.
It was to point out which games I considered to be the most disappointing because the company didn't try harder. Not because the games were awful. I mentioned that several times how disappointed I was that the game in question didn't reach its potential. Especially Skydrift which I saw had the most potential to be an awesome game and it fell flat on its face.
Quote from: KingIsaacLinksr on December 20, 2012, 11:32:34 AM
I want this to be clear:
I clearly stated that these are, in my opinion, the most disappointing games of 2012. Not that they are the worst games of 2012 in terms of the game, its gameplay, its balance or similar for that matter. Its clear to me that this is where the confusion lies. If this were a top 10 worst games of 2012, Mass Effect 3 would not be on this list. I've played some pretty dang terrible games this year and Mass Effect 3 is no where near them. However, that was not the point of this blog post.
It was to point out which games I considered to be the most disappointing because the company didn't try harder. Not because the games were awful. I mentioned that several times how disappointed I was that the game in question didn't reach its potential. Especially Skydrift which I saw had the most potential to be an awesome game and it fell flat on its face.
Quote from: KingIsaacLinksr on December 20, 2012, 11:32:34 AM
I want this to be clear:
I clearly stated that these are, in my opinion, the most disappointing games of 2012. Not that they are the worst games of 2012 in terms of the game, its gameplay, its balance or similar for that matter. Its clear to me that this is where the confusion lies. If this were a top 10 worst games of 2012, Mass Effect 3 would not be on this list. I've played some pretty dang terrible games this year and Mass Effect 3 is no where near them. However, that was not the point of this blog post.
It was to point out which games I considered to be the most disappointing because the company didn't try harder. Not because the games were awful. I mentioned that several times how disappointed I was that the game in question didn't reach its potential. Especially Skydrift which I saw had the most potential to be an awesome game and it fell flat on its face.
And really had they "tried harder" you'd have complained they took too long to release..
Quote from: QuadShot on December 20, 2012, 11:34:26 AM
Doesn't matter WHAT you call it Tim, Review, Opinion, a recipe for you favorite Christmas cookie, the bottom line is that is IS published therefore COULD be a case for a libel suit.
Bryan, Tim actually means get it without paying from whatever bit torrent he deems acceptable to HIM. This is and has been (for as long as I've been on this forum) your story Tim. If you think a company wants to make a profit then you believe they're dishonorable. Period. And yes, you DID give YOUR uneducated review of ME3
I boycotted Mass Effect 3. Made that public knowledge too. Dunno how you managed to twist that into piracy, but you did. Wow. Thanks for trying to discredit me.
You know what Quadshot? I'm done listening to you twist and pervert my words EVERY TIME you disagree with my opinion. You just cannot stand that someone doesn't like what you like or disagrees with you. You have made it, for whatever reason, to make sure that I am discredited. I can't imagine it was because it of the Twitter incident but its the only thing I can think of. I do not pirate my games and you check my Steam profile. http://steamcommunity.com/id/KingIsaacLinksr/ (http://steamcommunity.com/id/KingIsaacLinksr/) I own 193 games and you CANNOT pirate your way into hacking Steam's profile. I buy my games. Period.
I'm done. I'm out, I've had enough of being accused a liar, a libel, a con, and a pirate multiple times on this forum. I am a personal of morals. And if you don't accept that, that's your own damn problem but don't accuse me of something that you have no proof of. Yeah, I once pirated a game. Who the hell doesn't do something like that once in their lifetime? And I haven't since. I did not pirate ME3. I BOYCOTTED Mass effect 3 and its entire company. If you don't believe me....I give up then.
Done with this forum. Done with being called a liar. This hurts so f)(*&% deep you have no idea.
-King.
Tim you're a person who (seems) to be disappointed with EVERYTHING. Stating that should never be confused with morals. Period. And I'm not out to discredit you - you pretty much accomplish that for yourself by admitting that you're giving your opinion on a game (a HIGHLY negative one at that) then admit you never played it. It's like me saying a movie sucks, but I haven't seen it. And for the record dude, don't compliment yourself so much, I honestly could give a rats buttocks that you unfollowed me on Twitter...wow, talk about EGO! And, as you ask..."who the hell doesn't pirate a game"...uh, me. See, I have morals, I don't steal.
I love the fact that you think you OPINION of Tim's OPINION carries any more weight than the original OPINION. :D (Sorry, couldn't resist the capitals :))
MAN I write a post and go to a staff meeting and I come back to THIS!?!?!?!? Tim, I certainly didn't mean for anything to get taken to this level of personal attacks or the villification of your morals or values.
TIM please don't leave the forums over this, I for one VALUE your opinion, I love your writing and reviews, and have had a lot of fun debating with you about games, movies and all other topics. Take some time and cool off and you'll be fine. You shouldn't let one person's opinion of you (someone who doesn't even know you at all) bother you to the point that you let it get you down so badly.
GUYS, chill out, please! This is a young man who is taking time to write about a topic he loves, for no personal gain other than to derive some enjoyment out of writing and sharing his opinions. It's fine to be critical, ask questions and debate, but whatever your opinion is on the subjects he chooses to write about, there's no reason for personal attacks, meanness or cruelty.
Quote from: Jobydrone on December 20, 2012, 01:27:08 PM
MAN I write a post and go to a staff meeting and I come back to THIS!?!?!?!? Tim, I certainly didn't mean for anything to get taken to this level of personal attacks or the villification of your morals or values.
TIM please don't leave the forums over this, I for one VALUE your opinion, I love your writing and reviews, and have had a lot of fun debating with you about games, movies and all other topics. Take some time and cool off and you'll be fine. You shouldn't let one person's opinion of you (someone who doesn't even know you at all) bother you to the point that you let it get you down so badly.
GUYS, chill out, please! This is a young man who is taking time to write about a topic he loves, for no personal gain other than to derive some enjoyment out of writing and sharing his opinions. It's fine to be critical, ask questions and debate, but whatever your opinion is on the subjects he chooses to write about, there's no reason for personal attacks, meanness or cruelty.
100% agreed
Quote from: KingIsaacLinksr on December 19, 2012, 09:24:23 PM
Would like to hear what people thought :).
Just saying. ;)
I have mentioned to you before, you remind me of my younger brother. You two are the same age, love and are knowledgable about technology in general and games in particular. You also curiously both have the same sort of open source, egalitarian view about it. Likely because you grew up in a world immersed in both tech and the internet which is the ultimate egalitarian technology. Because so much of what is done online or digitally is done with almost no barriers of cost of entry to the user, it's easy to get sucked into a world view that most things in life should be incredibly cheap or free, that we should be able to have everything we want the way we want it when we want and in the format we want. It's a very interesting phenomenon which has become prevalent in a generation that never a knew a world without such remarkable access to content, media, information, ect. It seems you are taking issue with BioWare's efforts to control the distribution and content of their material in a manner they see appropriate for protecting their intellectual property and to generate the most revenue they can from that IP. Companies have been forced into what you consider unfair or consumer unfriendly practices (in your opinion) because people will steal and even copy and distribute their games and justify it because it has DRM or whatever equivocation they might use. I find it that to be an arrogant and almost narcissistic attitude towards what is ultimately nothing more then a company selling a product. The idea that they must deliver it so it's the way YOU (not you per se, but all the people who feel entitled to have everything their own way) is absurd and unworkable as there's no consensus. All BioWare can do is deliver a quality product via the distribution channels they deem appropriate, charge what they feel the market will support, and defend their copyrights. I can't speak to you, but I know my brother downloads movies, TV, games, software for free all the time because he feels he's entitled to if it costs more ten what HE thinks it should cost or had DRM, or whatever. I yell at him all the times about it....but I still love him. :)'
See what i did there? ;)
Wow, I go to world and the end of the Mayan Long count seems to have happened.
Tim, I'm sorry that you are hurt by all of this, but you did ask for opinions on what you wrote. My intention was not to call you out or make you think that I was calling you a liar, but to give you honest feed back. You gave an opinion that you based on secondhand opinions. You didn't know how the DLC applied to the game because you didn't play the game.
I'm old school when it comes to putting things in print and calling people out. Maybe it's the old journalism thing, but you need to have facts and have those fact verified by other sources. If you use other sources in composing a piece, you cite those sources.
Now here is the thing about OpEd or blogs, you can say what ever you want to say, but you can't expect everyone to agree with you. Hell, when you freely admit that you have no hands on with many of the things that you are talking about, it might annoy those people that actually did have hands on experience. Then when you ask for those opinions, expect to not be agreed with.
Ours is a great country that allows for freedom of speech. However, that only means that you can say what's on your mind, not that you are protected from people responding to what you have said.
People can get harsh when it comes to their opinions and regardless if you are directing it at some big company or a guy that wrote something negative about said big company, at the end of the day, we get out what we put into the world.
When we put out negative energy and negative thoughts, we often receive them back. It's hard has hell to get beat up for having positive feelings about something.
As many people have said before, it's hard to see someone so young so jaded about the way the world works. When my generation didn't agree with something, we used positive actions to yield positive results. Roswell, farscape, and Star Trek weren't renewed because we attacked the network's decisions, it was because we showed them that we still wanted the product in positive ways.
Don't take this the wrong way, but it seems that people in your generation seem to have an Eeyore outlook of the universe where as most of the older generations still try to believe in the magic of a little Pooh bear.
Now, there is a rumbly in my tumbly and I need to eat dinner.
At the end of the day everyone is entitled to an opinion wether you agree with it or not. The rule of intelligence is that your opinion is based on your own experiences. I would never give you my opinion on a film if I've not seen it. Also don't fall into fanboy blindness, take Star Wars we all know a bad film when you see one but to give a honest opinion who have to remove the love of a franchise and look closely at the film (phantom menace here). But if you honestly believe that the story is solid and Jar Jar is as good as Orson Welles after viewing the film then your opinion matters and you stick by it. If you say of course that say The Phantom Menace is "amazing and I don't need to see it because the box office proves its good" then frankly you're an idiot.
Always base opinions on your own experiences that way people can disagree but can't prove you wrong.
I posted tis on your FaceBook page as well, but the part where your comments could be libel are when you say that there may be HD scanning software secretly installed in the game and that their business practices are "shady", your words. That's where your "opinion" becomes more of an accusation of something potentially illegal. Libel.
Joking aside, those are the bits that made me wince too. With no evidence to back up either statement you're potentially on thin ice. An argument over whether those words could be interpreted as 'malicious' or not sounds like a very grey area of law to me.
At the very least you may get a 'take down' request.
Hello all, yeah, I'm back. But only for a short time to wrap things up and then I'll be taking a Christmas vacation from the forum to think over things that happened here. I apologize for letting things go too far. I should have realized that Al was basically trolling me. But I didn't because I let my guard down when I come to TSF. I have done that since I came to the forum all those years ago, for better or for worse. The reason I'm back here is due to Joby and Bryan wanting me back. I'm not saying I'm back for good but I need time to think it over.
I will concede to the point that the line about other shady practices was far too vague and without even a decent amount of proof. It has been changed to be phrased better (aka: "other practices"). I have also updated the bit about HD scanning software to link to the article that goes into better detail about the Origin EULA and the potential for your system to be scanned. I have sources cited in one of the three blog posts that talk about the hardrive scanning but I should have provided the link in main post straight away. So that would be my bad on that. I still hold fast to my opinion about Mass Effect 3 being, for me, the most disappointing game of 2012. At the end of the day, I really did want to enjoy Mass Effect 3 and it really should have been the grand finale to one of my favorite RPG/FPS story game series. Instead, other things interfered. If you disagree that I shouldn't allow (for lack of a better term) "company politics" to get in the way of enjoying a game, I am happy to have a debate about that. But let's keep the libel accusations down. http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/kings-top-disappointing-and-dishonorable-games-of-2012/ (http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/kings-top-disappointing-and-dishonorable-games-of-2012/)
I do not expect people to agree with me. Heck, I can't even get my own family and close friends to agree with me all the time. I don't see how I could possibly expect an entire Internet of people to agree with me. My issue came with Al twisting my words against me more than anything and that's why I left for 24 hours. I'm all for having a debate but it got personal and I just couldn't take that sort of attack.
@bryan As far as the Open Source thing and piracy, that is an entirely separate debate. I don't accept your brother's way of thinking though. My issue with DRM in particular is when it makes the experience worse for the person that bought it rather than the person that pirated the game. DRM that I find acceptable includes: Apple's iOS DRM, Netflix's DRM, Valve's Steam DRM and those are just the ones that come to mind. I have no problem with companies protecting their IP but it is how they protect that I can take great issue with. And that tends to lead me to not bothering with the game at all. Ubisoft and Blizzard's Diablo 3 DRM are perfect examples where pirates had a much better experience than the customers who bought it legally because the pirates didn't have to deal with crashing servers, lag and other issues. Those who are of the Open Source way of thinking tend to be more generous to those that are more mainstream I might add. The Humble Indie Bundle proves that time and time again.
I might as well post that my Top 10 Favorite and Honorable Games of 2012 as that was published last night. http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/kings-top-10-favorite-and-honorable-games-of-2012/ (http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/kings-top-10-favorite-and-honorable-games-of-2012/) This will likely be my last gaming-related post of 2012 as I'm also taking a short break from the blog. It was going to happen anyway as I had planned on doing so even before the recent drama cropped up. I'll be open to answering questions for a couple more days before I leave for a while.
So a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you guys and...we'll see what 2013 has in store for A Paladin Without A Crusade...
-King
OK, but if you come back and you are a pain in the ass, nobody blame me! ;)
And since this is part and parcell of this thread, I would like to add I asked Al to come back as well. I understand you are upset with Al but I think your characterizations of him are off base and unfair. If he is gone for good, and based on my chats with him he is, it's our loss. I would appreciate if you edited out some of the vitriol in your comment.
I'm sorry that it seems sometimes people just can't seem to agree to disagree. Nothing personal should come of differences of opinion. Thanks to those that tried to help to resolve some of what happened here. I will say both Tim and Al are both welcome here. But I suggest perhaps you guys maybe do a little chatting via email (if you are inclined to do so) to maybe work some things out. In any case, I'm going to close this thread down for now.