Yes, 3 save slots.

And FF8 was an abomination. Gunswords? I ROFL'd, then I stopped playing.

6 > 4 > 7 > 1 = 2 = 3 = 5 > 12 > 10 > 9 > 8

(No "11" because I never played it)

I really, really, really hope they maintained the poor translation which resulted in your username. It's a key part of FF4, if you ask me.

Protip: "intuitive" does not mean "simplistic"

A control scheme should not be an obstacle to overcome, period.

I might crack open some old Wii games I haven't gotten around to. That list includes Zack and Wiki, Metroid Prime 3, and Fire Emblem - among others.

I can has old Kotaku pleez?

Just leave him to his angst-filled existence, writing crappy poetry and feeling superior to the rest of the world - you know, just like all of us did when we were 13.

I'd like to know that answer as well. I don't want to hear "Well, you can use your Rock Band drums up to Hard difficulty, but after that you've gotta pay for the fifth input". At the same time I can't imagine the developers making duplicate drum tracks, one with 4 inputs and one with 5 (not counting bass pedal) so I'd love to hear specifically how they'll let my Rock Band drums work with GH:WT.

Howzabout a developer interview, Kotaku? "Justify your Compatibility" maybe? :)

Oh well.

McWhertor more-or-less just did that for us. It could be that it's still a good game, but from the problems described it just sounds like another same-y DMC clone with an awkward control scheme and bad camera angles.

Also, the "no penalty for death" has me very, very concerned. Does the fighting stop, the angel descends, and suddenly you're alive again and back in the fight? Where's the fun in that?

As for the article you linked, I admittedly didn't read the whole paper but from the synopsis given I find flaw with the researcher's methods. They gave the students pro- or anti-catharsis "media reports" (an appeal to authority) to influence their opinion on catharsis, then they tested hostility towards an inanimate object. Then, immediately after that, they tested how loud a sound they would make to people who insulted them.

A person were given the pro-catharsis "report" would respond to each situation in the same manner - they would express their frustration to the greatest degree, because they had just been told by an authority (the news report) that expressing their frustration was a healthy thing to do. Just because that feeling extends beyond the initial "punch this inanimate object" test does not mean that catharsis is not a valid feeling. It's just the Milgram Experiment all over again.

All this report does is say: "If you think expressing your feelings and feeling cathartic helps you to calm down, you will express your feelings and feel cathartic." Sorry, I don't buy it. Show me a study where they asked these people how they felt after punching the inanimate object. That's the study of the cathartic effect of punching an inanimate object.

I can counter that argument in three words:

Rayman Raving Rabbids

Impulse buys, mostly. Walking around a Best Buy and seeing something like this - bright colors and games from childhood - and (if Ubisoft are smart) a price under $20 and suddenly it's in her hands.

Never underestimate the power of a low price tag.

Screw up the controls and it won't be worth the DVD it's printed on.

Sorry, that's the Fark meme.

Combat is the easiest thing to model because it's all very rigid and mathematical. In combat there's not a whole lot for the DM to do besides describing the action and rolling dice. That makes it very good for use in a computer or video game.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, if you prefer) it will probably never be possible for a computer game to give you the flexibility and adaptability that a real life DM can give in the actual role-playing aspect of a pen and paper RPG. No developer could ever account for every action a PC might take in an adventure of any length. And because of that there will always be some kind of railroading.

Face hurts.
Jaw hurts.
Lungs hurt.
Brain hurts.

It's amazingly rare that anything online gets a chuckle out of me, much less a laugh. This has me rolling.

Thank you Kotaku! Thank you Owen!

- Traps
- Skill Challenges
- Charts for on-the-fly damage appropriate to level
- Aquatic, Mounted, Flying combat rules
- Poisons
- Diseases
- How to make Encounters that are standard level for the party
- Treasure guidelines to keep the PCs power level appropriate
- How to create custom monsters and add traits (like Lich) to existing ones
- A complete ready-built city called Fallcrest.

But yeah, you're right, besides that there's nothing in the DMG.

Did you ever play a Fighter in 3.X? I could've used a tape recorder and it would've been the same - "I full attack." Meanwhile the Wizard gets to play God with all of his abilities and I'm the big dumb guy with the sword.

As for the infinite amount of characters that you enjoyed making - you can't do that with just the PHB from 3.X. You needed splatbooks and other sources to get beyond the standard archetypes. So it is with 4e. Next year we'll have Bards, Barbarians, Psionicists, and probably a few more Paragon Paths to take for every class. There are three books in 4e right now. 3.X has around a hundred. There's no way you can genuinely compare the options of the two.

Gnomes are in the Monster Manual and have rules included there for making them PCs. +2 INT, +2 CHA, low-light vision, Small size, +2 Arcana/Stealth, and once per encounter when you take damage you can turn invisible using the "Fade Away" ability. The only thing lost by using that method is that there are no Gnome-only feats for a Gnome PC to take. But I think you'll agree a Gnome Rogue would be a force to be reckoned with.

Tieflings are half-demons - horns, tails, and all. They come from the Fall of the previous Empire where some nations' nobles made pacts with dark powers to keep hold of their power.

That's exactly right. One of the design principles of D&D 4e was to move away from the pure simulationist kind of play (because other games already do that, and much better) and move towards a gamist or "have fun" style of play. Sure there are sacrifices - for people who thought HP represented cuts and scrapes, the idea of "Healing Surges" and non-divine healing is absurd. But if you acknowledge that HP is a gamist representation of "how much fight is left in you" then it flows.

Lastly, I know there are some people who will hate 4e no matter what. That's understandable. For some people all of the quirks, the imbalances, and the ability to create massively overpowered players was the "flavor" of D&D. I suggest they continue to play whatever makes them happy.

The new default world is called the "Points of Light" concept. Imagine a world after the fall of a great empire, where darkness and wilderness have claimed all but the most robust centers of civilization. Newer villages and communities are slowly building themselves up, but they are like points of light in an otherwise dark world. Lots of ruins, lots of wilderness, travel is best done in an armed caravan, etc.

For those who bemoan a lack of players, there are still RPG geeks out there. In the past 2 months or so I've put together a group of players from my area using the web (meetup.com and enworld.org mostly) and we're preparing for our first game next Friday. It takes effort and work to assemble a team from nothing, but there are dozens of games out there that are just looking for another player. And with the release of 4e, that will probably bring more people into the fold.

I haven't played in over 10 years, and I'm very very excited about 4e.

Oh, I completely agree - this isn't just an MGS4 phenomena. Halo 3 was just as bad if not worse. Assassin's Creed also fell into this trap, as did Devil May Cry 4.

But to my knowledge none of those games' producers actively tried to influence reviews by placing NDAs on some of the largest (potential) criticisms of the game like H3's length or AC's controls.

Prevent spoilers? Sure. Don't talk about install times, product placement, the fact that you're watching a movie instead of playing a game? That's something I'd like to know as a consumer.

Kojima prevents journalists from discussing potentially negative aspects of their product, and the fanboys defend them for it - what's more, they don't even think they're being unreasonable for defending them.

Cutscene length is a spoiler? Installation times are spoilers? The number of areas is a spoiler? Product placement is a spoiler?

And it's just a coincidence that those items are exactly what gamers are railing against in this generation?

If I have to use my Mountain Dew Blaster combined with the Marlboro Cigarettes in my inventory to beat a boss in MGS4, I think they've got bigger problems than "product placement spoilers".

I respect your comments but I doubt your objectivity in this matter - you obviously love MGS4 and I respect that. But you have to admit it is at least a little bit shady that the kind of things covered by this NDA are just the kind of things that gamers dislike these days.

You call that an explanation? "We're afraid gamers will know that a cutscene will go for X minutes, and that's therefore a spoiler"? Right, because (a) reviewers are going to memorize the length of every cutscene, (b) gamers are going to memorize every review, and (c) it's not painfully obvious when a cutscene is going to end.

Of those 6 items, only two of them seem to be "spoiler" territory (Opening movie and the story-specific items). The rest honestly sound like "These are going to be the criticisms reviewers are going to level, so let's put them under an NDA."

Sorry Kojima, I'm not buying it. You tried to sneak something under the radar and it failed beautifully.

Wait, did I say fantastic? I meant disgusting.

Truly a great week in geek history.

I'm going to wait for reviews and a userbase first, then I might dive in.

I've been a Jacket fan since their inaugural season in 2000-2001. Rick Nash is the future of the franchise and, despite the fact that we've never been in the playoffs, I still love 'em.

And I'm extremely happy that people have already shown the goal of the year. I remember watching that a dozen times on my TiVo the night it happened. I couldn't believe it.

Seriously amazing. The creator gets infinity internets.

Now THERE's a man who follows the scene :D

And yes, I crack games I own for laptop play. I don't want to drag my Diablo II disks with me when I go on a business trip, so one visit to Google later I've got a version (installed from the original CDs) that I can play anywhere I want without a CD check.

Ethically I see nothing wrong with bypassing copy protection on games I own.

Really? "Young people" are headed there? What about those of us who were "young people" 25 years ago when Nintendo first walked onto the stage and have grown up playing video games? Doesn't it look like you've got a pretty good sample group from which to observe the long-term effects of electronic stimulus on human development?

No, of course not, because you're trying to sell a pseudo-science book blaming video games for the world's ills. And if you used actual science you wouldn't be able to hawk your book in tabloids and on Oprah by decrying the destruction of youth.

And this mother, aside from buying a DS and R4 from Hong Kong, needs to learn that video games are not babysitters and if your children are misbehaving, then it's not the game's fault.

I don't blame Kotaku for reporting this. I blame IGN for creating the sensation in the first place.