Hi Synapticus,

I personally didn't sticky your question (not sure who did), but I think this is a very important point to raise since GameSpot should be helping to support hearing-impaired users. Most of the time, the text of video reviews follows the text of the written review, but I understand your concern there is a lot of purely video-based content which has no text alternative. I presume GameSpot do produce scripts for these segments, so a text alternative should theoretically be possible.

I will leave your question stickied; hopefully it will draw the eye of an Admin. If we get nothing I shall PM a Community Manager for you. :)

Mass Effect isn't really a shooter and you definitely don't play it for the shooting. It's much more an RPG adventure, and if you're not interested in that at all I agree there's little point in continuing (although that is infinitely saddening because Mass Effect is a superb game). If you're looking for a game with shooting and space, Dead Space certainly fits the bill better.

Sorry I haven't been around much; work has been inordinately busy and then I got ill, so both combined to not much GameSpot activity. :(

Yeah, I saw TB's video of this and I have to disagree with him. I love Dear Esther. I know it gets a lot of flack but I can't help loving it, despite it's total lack of interactivity and player freedom. It is resoundingly linear and barely interactive, but it is still a game. True, I do not have "fun" playing Dear Esther, but I do get something which is an emotional resonance. I think that any game which can give you an emotional response is worthy of being called a game. The same can be said for Gone Home. All you do in Gone Home is walk around and look at stuff, but it's still a game. And I'm not really having "fun" when I'm doing that either. Frankly I think the whole "fun" criterion to entry is problematic. I didn't read Cormac McCarthy's The Road because I thought it would be fun. Similarly, I don't play some games for fun, I play them because they are entertaining in one way or another.

Also, if anyone's watched his video on The Stanley Parable I find it slightly disingenuous that he considers The Stanley Parable is fine to be called a game, but Dear Esther isn't. True The Stanley Parable contains more "gameplay" and more "choices" but if there's anything The Stanley Parable teaches us it's that the whole idea of player choice is a false choice, because the designer has planned for all eventualities.

Not really. They can only keep doing "more Batman" before it becomes rote, and it's reached it this time. Maybe it should be less a 6 and more a 7 but I'll reserve my proper judgement until I actually play it.

The 1 cent piece, definitely. It is monetarily worthless and costs more to manufacture than it's physically worth. It actually devalues the economy.

More importantly the US should eliminate the $1 bill, and replace it with the coin. Being British I find it so weird to have to rifle through a stack of notes, all of which are green and the same size, to find the correct change. We abolished the £1 note in 1988. I see no reason why the US can't get rid of the $1 bill besides nostalgia.

I had no idea that the Hardware Forum had been recreated. It's a shame that all the historical information is still merged into the PC Forum. I will see if this can be demerged.

This is also the Hardware forum for the time being; it was merged with PC & Mac Games and A/V Discussion. Feel free to discuss hardware as much as you like here. I am currently investigating possible de-mergers in future, but I cannot promise anything. Please be patient.

Hi everyone,

From what I can gather, any posts you made in the Unions or User-Created Boards didn't feed over to the new GameSpot, and therefore everyone's post counts will be lower as a result. Regional boards and other boards may have also been left behind, which may also also be attributable to a loss of posts.

With regards to user levels, I believe these may be approximately over 1 month old as the beta site used data from August 2013. I do not know whether these will be updated.

I am sorry for the lack of information; if I hear anything I'll let you know.

It appears three forums have been mashed together and I confess I was not aware this was going to happen. I will endeavour to raise all community questions and comments with staff when possible, but please be patient as they are dealing with a lot of queries at the moment. Rest assured I will try to fight for our case. :)