Critics talk about the meaning the film holds because they have an extremely deep appreciation for films. Like Roger Ebert talking about how Scorsese used slow motion to portray heightened awareness in Taxi Driver and how the steam rising up from the street was to symbolize hell. If you don't appreciate the sort of depth film critics talk about you probably don't appreciate films that much either. Good film critics and smart film lovers crave intelligence from films. And to say critics focus on some one thing is completely untrue, they appreciate every aspect of a movie. You're the ones whose focus is limited. Read Ebert's review of any Scorsese movie and you'll see he talks about the music, cinematography, editing, angles, effects, acting, story, characters, meaning etc.

Considering the state of American public schools as opposed to private schools, I think comparing education to healthcare serves as an argument for the other side.fidosim

[QUOTE="WhiteWorld"][QUOTE="Treflis"]Basically, which is better. Oranges, Apples or banana? All three are grand in each their respective major Category Valve = First Person Shooter Bioware = RPG Blizzard = StrategyAnthrax88

Are you talking about the grindfest of WoW? Which is nowhere near any on Biowares RPGs?
WoW is more a social community with leveling abillity than an RPG.

And Diablo 1&2 are not RPG's they're hack & slash games.

Bioware's RPGs have none of the things I want from an RPG except for a passable story. They don't have passable voice acting, environments, itemization, combat, characters (story wise, in terms of the writing), character development (skills, stats and so on), controls, immersion, believability or polish. I will never buy another Bioware product ever and I know I won't be missing out because their entire approach to video gaming is as far away from what I want as they could get.

The RPGs and strategy games are being dumbed down and made more actiony and the stories are worse. I want to be able to take the stories seriously. Take Red Alert 3. Do these people really think a whole f___ing game that's a parody of its predecessors is interesting? What a bunch of idiots. Red Alert 3 is the video game equivalent to Disaster Movie.

The biggest strategy games these days are 100% action. I like action when it's done well but once upon a time there was such a thing as base building (beyond randomly plopping down generic, ugly buildings around your HQ) and collecting resources and planning ahead (beyond planning what units to clump up into a blob and take to the enemy). I remember an episode of Futurama that had a robot TV executive who was programmed to underestimate the viewers' intelligence. I think he's running the video game industry today. I want tactics, strategy, seriousness, interesting characters etc. I want there to be depth everywhere. I don't want one aspect of the game to be great and another horrible, I'd prefer everything to be good over that. Crysis had great gameplay and action but an atrocious story and despicably bad acting. I'd have given up the superpowers for a great story.

Is a good story I can take seriously too much to ask? Someone needs to shake up video game writing and these companies need to start hiring professional writers to write their stories. Hire screenwriters or novelists or something.

Making the next game just one city would be a huge mistake. I want at least three cities but one of them could be a Vice City type of city. There could be a large chunk of land on one side of the map and on the other a big ocean with an island somewhere where we can put a city. And I think going back in time now would feel like downgrading so make it modern or a little bit in the future so we can have some fictional, Rockstar-esque futuristic cars or weapons or things to do in missions.

Just wondering if theres any laid back gamers out there who don't feel the need to beat a game on extreme or very hard just to brag?JmanRBS

- The gunplay is unsatisfying. It feels like you're firing plastic pellets at a moving steel block. To know what I mean by satisfying look at the Call of Duty or Half-Life games. That's satisfying gunplay. You feel the weapons' power both as you fire it and as it hits the enemy.

- A lot of the biotic powers were similar and they also looked very similar.

- The plot was ok but good God were the characters bad. I had no emotional connection to any of them. Every snippet of dialogue in this messy, slow-moving story was 100% expositional.

- The acting was flat. Look at BioShock. That's a game that's got good voice acting. The actors there had high energy and they were working with interesting characters and well written dialogue. In Mass Effect the actors seemed flat out bored. It was more like reading than acting. I'm astonished how someone could call this "AAA" acting. This moron must never have seen good acting in his life. Good acting gives the characters some life and a personality. These characters would've had the same emotional impact on me if they had been voiced by Stephen Hawking's computer.

- The models looked great but this is probably the ugliest 2007 game I played. Where to even start? The planets for example. All 100% identical with the exception of color. The buildings were all grey and most of them had that same boxy architecture. The uniforms were all the exact same with, again, the exception of their colors. The same thing with all the weapons beyond the differences between pistols, rifles, snipers and shotguns. Drab, boring and uninspired are the three words that summarize this game's graphics.

- The interface was extremely ugly and clunky and it was tedious to use.

- When you improved your stats you couldn't notice any difference. It didn't seem to make one at all. Not to mention the fact that the stats were all very uninteresting and boring to allocate. When I used to play Diablo II and World of Warcraft I was excited when I levelled up because it was so exciting to choose your new stats and skills and talents and even in WoW when the stats were chosen for you, you still felt stronger and you were satisfied by the increase because you knew the stats mattered and had a large impact on your playing. Not so with Mass Effect.

- It wasn't really about space. You couldn't use futuristic weaponry, you couldn't pilot a spaceship, you didn't encounter any interesting space phenomena, the Mako was nothing but an APC with some launchers underneath.

- There was nothing to do in this "open world". You had freedom to go to this limited number of planets and places but there was nothing interesting there and in addition, the controls and options your characters had were lackluster. If I'm in an open world I want to be able to do something interesting and I want my character to control better. I want to be able to jump, duck, crawl, sprint (for more than three seconds), roll, swim, use different vehicles and so on. What does BioWare think? What do they think the fun of an open world is? That there's a place there that you can walk around in as you please? Take a look at any good open world game and you'll see it's a GOOD open world game because it opens things up for the player and gives him possibilities to be creative. Infamous, though I haven't played it, gives your character interesting superpowers and maneuverability. GTA gives your character a huge amount of guns and vehicles, a good physics engine, a living world, a polished combat system and maneuverability. Crysis gives you superpowers, a first person perspective, destructibility, an even greater selection of different weapons and maneuverability. What do these three have in common? Maneuverability. BioWare could start there. I feel like I'm controlling a tank in a narrow hallway.

I'm going to avoid BioWare's amateurish efforts from now on. They make messy and mediocre products. I saw that in Jade Empire as well and I am 95% certain Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2 will be just as bad. They will have bad graphics (like Mass Effect they will think murkiness, insipidity and colorlessness is how you create an atmosphere); unsatisfying combat; flat voice acting; bad characters; unengaging storyline; unsatisfying, boring, insipid stat and skill systems and ugly environments. Most of all though they're gonna be boring. BioWare is never criticized by its fans so their games are going to stay the same and never improve.

She's just lonely because she ruined her life by having kids. Just talk to her. You did **** everything up for her after all.

The Departed, The Aviator, No Country for Old Men, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation., Little Miss Sunshine, The Savages, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Sideways, In the Bedroom, The Lives of Others and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.