I think it's important to remember that, while there is a very vocal and frequently offensive minority who enjoy blasting these big titles - particularly if they can fit some bigotry into their criticisms - there is a vast but silent majority out there who are buying, playing and enjoying the games. I love Mass Effect but if some inadequate moron starts railing against it on the internet, I don't feel the need to get into a confrontation about it (although I might if homophobia reared it's ugly head). Look at Call of Duty - it gets absolutely slated online, with loads of negative reviews on sites like Amazon...yet every installment is a multi-million seller. I don't think developers worry too much about the extremist comments, because they know millions of players are still quietly enjoying their games. The sad thing is, as Kevin points out, people who feel they have genuine and reasonable issues with such games are drowned out by the poisonous, infantile hate of others. You can't expect developers to listen or even acknowledge your complaints if you can't address them in a proper manner - i.e. not " **** you" or "I'm gonna kill you", etc.
@buccomatic Homosexuality is "not realistic behaviour"??? Are you serious??? So are you saying homosexuals aren't real? Did I dream up the gay people I know, then? Good grief, I fear for the future when I read comments like yours.
@cutmasterfrost I disagree with you that Bioware are 'shoving it in people's faces' - it' just an option, you have to go out of your way to get a romance going so only those who want it are going to see it. It isn't 'forcing your sexuality on others' to just be true to yourself and act the way that comes naturally to you. I'm sure your straight friends don't worry whether they're forcing their sexuality on you, so why should you worry about it either? @smurfa1 about a person's environment affecting their sexuality - I don't think there is a definite answer to that one, all I would say is I don't believe for a second that environment can turn a straight person gay it just isn't feasible. That's not to say it doesn't have any effect at all, but I'm sure it can't produce a complete change like that. My point really was, at the end of the day, whatever the cause is, it ceratinly isn't self-determined.
Interesting piece, but I dread these kind of articles because of the ignorant responses that they inevitably provoke, it's very depressing... Just to correct a few of the idiotic responses so far - being gay in real life is NOT a choice, that's ridiculous - you are born gay or straight or somewhere in between. The term 'normal' has no meaning in this discussion, its totally subjective. There is no 'political agenda' here, Bioware are simply recognising that there are gay gamers out there who might want to play a romance that reflets their own experiences in ME3 - its giving players another option in the game, always a good thing surely? Most people won't pick that option and so this will make absolutely no difference to their game. I think it's great to see this trend continuing and I've no doubt more games will offer such options in the future.
I use Metacritic all the time, its very handy for getting an overall critical consensus, but I wish they would remove their user reviews. About 80% of them are complete extremes of either 10 or 0, followed by an illiterate rant (positive or negative as the case may be) with little or no reference to the game in question.
Great article and very true! I guess I'm just a sucker for early adoption. So I have my shiny 3DS - and there's nothing to play on it. Still, it will come into its own eventually I'm sure - and aren't launch line-ups usually pretty poor? Okay, this one is especially weak, but there's rarely more than a couple of great titles for brand new systems.
People keep saying 'the price is justified because of blu-ray'... well a lot of us DON'T WANT blu-ray, we want a games console, and a large proportion of the general public probably don't even know what blu-ray is yet. I'm not replacing all my DVDs for what, the experts say, is a relatively minor increase in picture and sound quality compared to the change between VHS and DVD. I will probably try to find the money for the PS3 when it comes out, but it's still a disgusting price. If the Wii launches for about
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