There should be no censorship. None at all. The governements have no right to decide what we are allowed to see and play. It is not their role. The only restriction they should be allowed to make, and even then I find it ridiculous, is to decide what content could be viewed by minors (I find this ridiculous as it is the parent's job, but what can you do...). And secondly, it is high time people stop seeing sex and nudity as worse than death, murder, beheading and so on. If those are allowed, sex and nudity are no big deal and the ratings should not be influenced more by the presence of any nudity than by the presence of violence. A nipple is not more damaging than a beheading. The worse a nipple can do is provide an akward situation when the parents catched the child alone in his room a few minutes later. This is nothing compared to what a sick mind can do after seeing death (in any medium, art, movies and games) even though blaming video games is more of an excuse than anything else. Sick minds do sick things, they don't need a video game to start killing.
Geez... I thought this was going to be about the evolution of female roles inrecent productions. But this is just a speech for feminism. Games are aimed at target audiences. Some are aimed at young people, some at older people, some at men, some at women, some even targets the country you live in. Violent games tend be in the men's category, and as such they get a male character. And most games tend to have a violent background. What's with that last line anyway? Women have to fight for their videoludics rights to play women -_- ? Are we out of causes to fight? Is playing a male that bad? I play a female character in a lot of the games I play sometimes because I have no choice like in the latest Legend of heroes, sometimes because the voice over is better like in ME. Not to mention most occidental RPGs and action game offer a character personalisation with a sex option, or a pair of character to play, one of which is a woman... I mean seriously... Almost all occidental RPGs get a male/female option. All MMOs do, all fighting games have male and female characters, a lot of action/adventure games offer two characters M/F, strategy games offer males and females units, you can't blame simulations when it's about M/M fighting since it's real life regulations of the sport being simulated (but I guess when it's female/female fights, it's sexist). Anyway, female get plenty of choices to play as their gender recently.
This is an april fool's joke? I don't see a joke anywhere, and I fully agree with what was said there. My guess is that it's a frustrated member of GS that used April's fool as a way to get his real opinion out on the website. Since it seems GS is feeding us with cr*p on a 100$ worth system sold for 250$. The 3DS is an overpriced system, that had no decent game released on day one, and has tons of sheeps buying it. This article is a nice sumary of this.
@frazzle00 -2 waves is the standard in DA2 I never said there were only 2. There are 4 waves, yes, and it is even worse and idiotic than 2 waves IMO. It's not really a positive point to mention. Sure there are times when it is "ok". But systematically? Archers that fall from the sky on an desert? Yeah right... - Sorry you had no control over your characters in DA: O. I had. And it was great. The AI was better in DA2. But that doesn't make the game more strategic. What does, are the spells. And they do not allow for strategy as much as DA: O. And the length of the mobs lives, with the waves, removes any need for strategy. You just smoke every waves and start on the next one. No need to place the ennemies since you'll just get the few of them that are actually "there" by placing the spell, and that's basically useless because they would have died just as fast the normal way, and you can't get them all, since the next wave is coming. -I know freezing and shatering can be done in DA2. It's a sub talent of Cone of ice. But as I said, it is not useful enough to bother with them, even in hard. Ps: I played DA:O on normal, hard and nightmare. I played DA2 in hard mode (once is enough for this game, it was hard staying involved long enough to finish it just once... So I didn't bother doing it in nightmare). Oh and btw, we won't find an agreement on this it seemst, you are convinced this inferior game is superior to the first one. And I am convinced otherwise. There is no middle ground to be found. So I won't continue this discussion further than this ^^.
@frazzle00 Yes it is. It's not the most strategic ever, but it is more strategic than DA2. I don't know in what difficulty you played. But in Origin I had to place my mages and warrior so that my ice cone wouldn't hit my characters and still freeze a lot of mobs. Then I would do whirlwind and shatter the most I could. I would have my mage Cage the most powerful ennemies so they would not be able to attack while I killed the trash. I had my mage take advantage of all kind of afflictions on ennemies to shater them. In the end it was strategic to a decent level. This really isn't the case in DA2. Fights are quick even if some of those spells are still there, you have no real reason to use complicated mix of spells, and the 2 waves thing is ridiculous. It means that you can place your characters as well as you want for your skills but there is still a new wave of mobs coming, with full life rendering what you did before useless and leaving you with unusable skills with long refresh already spent on the previous wave.
@punksterdaddy Did you play Dragon age origins? Or any bioware RPGs before? If you have no special expectations of this game you might enjoy DA2. But it is at best a decent game. Gamespot gives it a 8.5/10 but in all honesty, it deserves something around 6.5/10 or 7/10 top. It is just an average game that will never make you say "wow". There are no great musics, no great dialogues, no great environements and despite their mediocrity they are still recycled heavily. Now if you played Bioware games before, you will be expecting quality out of this. So you will most likely be thouroughly disapointed when playing DA2, even more disapointed if you played DA: O. Characters are boring, the graphics are "improved" but the world is ugly, quest are always the same, all the depths of fighting has been taken away in exchange for speed and accessibility, the fact that almost all fights have "2 waves" of ennemies, the second waves being ennemies that appear out of thin air is just ridiculous and kills every last shred of strategy you could still experience. Choices are also ridiculous, they usually only affect dialogues, and the few that "affect the world" will basically offer one quest later on instead of another, or one character will survivre instead of dying with no real effect on the world, because the only change you'll perceive is a letter by that character telling "hey thanks for saving me" and you'll never see him again.
So they refuse to acknowledge the fact that the games recieved a 4.5 average by players on metacritic? It seems for the devs DA2 is perfect, and is better than DA: O. Which is just a lie they are telling themselves. The question is, is the lie something they believe? Or is it something they are saying to keep face while the game is still being sold? If it's the former then Dragon Age saga is dead for me, and probably most futur RPGs by Bioware as all their game will be casualised as much as this one. If it's the latter, maybe there is some hope, because this is clearly a game that didn't get as much attention as it should have, all crap casualised aside, the obvious recycling of all areas without even bothering to update the map is proof.
@stratfender89 The components are already existing ones that were made by contracters before 2007, some date back to 2004. They should not cost much, as they have been used in other devices, like the GPU. So their R&D has already been paid back, and the factories to build them already exist. Their cost should be very low. The only "new" expensive component are the 2 screens making up the 3D screen, which isn't built by Nintendo, so they have no R&D cost (for Ninty), and they are already about to be used in many other devices so their prices shouldn't be too high (the more you make, the cheaper it is for each unit) The 3DS shouldn't cost more than 120-150$ to manufacture. Nintendo admited themselves that the current price of the portable is because they think "even at this price it will sell".
Hope the 3DS fail at launch, so that Nintendo quickly changes it's pricing policy, and get back on track like they should. They are selling the portable a LOT more than they should. They could still sell the 3DS for 170$ and still make a profit out of it since most component are already existing components for a few years now and their R&D has already been compensated (at the exception of the screens). For this price, the battery should last longer, the screens should be bigger, and the cpu/gpu more powerful...
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