@scottpsfan14 said:

Perfection.

That is a great example of the usually banal 'serious dude with a serious gun' done really well.

EDGE had an incredibly disparaging preview in their latest issue. They criticized pretty much everything: the AI, the stealth sections, even the facial animations they describe as "....decent, but not remarkable, and we'd expected rather more given the extent to which Ready At Dawn's technical ambition had taken prevalence over mechanical concerns"

I'll hype a 5.

It does.

This is actually what each ESRB rating is defined as:

MATURE

Content is generally suitable for ages 17 and up. May contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language.

ADULTS ONLY

Content suitable only for adults ages 18 and up. May include prolonged scenes of intense violence, graphic sexual content and/or gambling with real currency.

Based on this distinction I think the difference between GTA and Hatred is justified. In GTA, any periods of violent play are usually interspersed with any of the games other myriad mechanics. In Hatred, there is literally no downtime between killings: it's all you do.

http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp

Wouldn't the season pass include the additional monsters?

I always think this is the inherent problem in games with human enemies. Games like Uncharted, Red Dead, GTA, COD, really any shooter that just has human enemies always suffers because there is an inherent lack of variety in what you can do with human enemies. Look at how many different enemy types there are in something like Gears 2: regular bipedal enemies; short, fast, melee attackers; exploding tickers; flying types; the mounted units; the 5 different boomer types; reavers; those zombie fellas in that one chapter. Compare that to any human based shooter where the only variety is really the different armour worn by the enemies. And then, maybe this is just my own preference, but I've always felt that humans feel inherently more 'bullet-spongy' than aliens/monsters because you feel that disconnect so much more strongly when they don't go down in one or two hits.

I just think that whenever you're dealing with human aggressors you're so much more limited in what you can do as a designer and a player; because you're always half-bound to some semblance of reality, which can get really repetitive after 3 or 4 gunfights.

The game's presentation has never been questioned. This trailer merely confirms everything we already knew: that the game looks great, but that the gameplay is worrying.

Half-Life 2?

Dragon Age

Just the blandest, most unoriginal looking generic fantasy hodgepodge.

I dunno. His main issue with Galaxy was its mechanical regression - in terms of Mario's moveset - compared to the previous two games. Galaxy 2 doesn't really add anything new to that. Don't get me wrong, I think Galaxy 2 is the better game, but I can't really see Matt viewing the game as a clear superior to Galaxy. I reckon he's going to be one of those who considers Galaxy 2's iterative nature less impressive than Galaxy 1's innovation.