Shurs said:
Listening to the DLC discussion on the Day 2 podcast, it's really odd to hear Jeff so down on Bioshock 2 after he gave the game 4 stars while praising its gameplay when he reviewed it.
I feel like that's kind of the norm though, in the games industry, reviews are seen as more an objective evaluation of a product, as if "well the story isn't as good, but the gameplay is better, so you can score it in a range of 8 to 9", if it didn't resonate at all with him, if this industry was as mature as film or novels or music or theatre or television, he could say outright pan it regardless of it's technical or design merits.
That's why it's always fun to read discussion of games more than a year after they shipped because people can be completely honest. It's not even exclusive to the press, on GAF you can't really bag on a new hyped title in it's OT, you get ripped apart, give it a year and no one gives a shit what you say.
EDIT: Listened to the podcast now. Although I think SE abuse the Final Fantasy branding, I certainly don't think it should be going on a break. Versus is the most exciting FF project since X, and although they appear to whore it out, we're only on FF14, and 10 was 2001. 3 official titles in 9 years is nothing compared to something like CoD which is garbage and didn't even get a mention in the conversation.
There are three FFXIIIs (not five as Jeff stated), and although FFXIII isn't amazing, that's really not a reflection of the quality of the other two, and more importantly, people want them to slow down their FF numbered output, and this is how they want to do that, by making more than one game under the numbered banners.
I fully agree if they didn't make all the Crystal Chronicles trash, didn't stick FF on every vaguely connected product they have, the brand would be more meaningful, but the last thing the series needs is a rest, it needs a high quality entry and it looks like it's going to have two of those in the next year or so. This is when people should actually be excited for the franchise.
I agree RDR was the best ending of the year, if not of all of gaming, although I would probably favor Braid in that discussion.
I was surprised Yakuza 3 didn't enter into the best PS3 discussion, I would think it was obtuse and bizarre enough to get some admiration for the group.
) will also probably be the other top contenders.