What? I had to read this two or three times, it boggled my mind so. It sounds like you have a serious case of mistaken expectations.

It's a doujin game in the style of a 16-bit console JRPG. There is no reason whatsoever to even expect to click to move. Would you really want to play the action portion with click to move? Really? Now that would be awkward.

Anyway, pretty much all doujin games that I've played used the keyboard as the sole control mechanism. Just because a game has an overhead perspective doesn't mean it's Diablo. You have to adjust your expectations to the genre or style of game you're playing.

Do you expect to be able to play Street Fighter 4 on PC with a mouse? Left-click to move, right-click to attack? No, you play it with the keyboard or use a controller or arcade stick which is obviously what it was designed for.

The loss of backward compatibility with PS2 games bothers me far more than the "Other OS" option. Before someone chimes in with the ever-present "duh just buy a PS2 they're cheap", I already have one--I just don't have room for 4 consoles under my main TV downstairs, so my PS2 is on my other TV. It would be really nice to be able to play my PS2 games--all 40ish of them--on my main TV downstairs with the nice stereo and all that.

I do agree that removing the "Other OS" option is lame--it's just that removal of backward compatibility, which was another promised feature, affects me far more.

I was talking about piracy, which your long, rambling, straw-man conspiracy theory-laden rant didn't address.

The creators of games, movies, music, books, etc deserve to be compensated for their work and investment. People who leech off of someone else's work without their permission and without compensating them for it are without ethics.

Since you seem to like straw-man arguments and ranting against exaggerated evils in your mind, let me respond in kind. People like you have a disgusting sense of entitlement where you think you're entitled to the work of others for free. You're leeches on both people who create things, and people who legitimately buy them, because without those people buying the products, they would cease to exist for the most part. If it wasn't for people like me, leeches like you would have nothing to pirate. You have this anti-corporate mentality, yet without corporations, all the things you think you're entitled to would disappear. I don't know if you actually fit into what I'm ranting against, but you didn't care, so why should I? Wheeee!

There would still be independent games made by people for fun, but the games that people actually pirate--modern, popular, big-budget games with voice-acting, fancy graphics, sound design, and all that, will cease to exist because no one will spend tens of millions of dollars to make them.

That was fun. I see why people like you do that all the time. It's fun to rant about imaginary evils and then call people who are so obviously dumber than you (ie: disagree) sheep.

I can do anecdotal evidence too!

I have turned my 360 on about 2-3 times after I bought my PS3 which was at least a year ago and since then it's gotten a fine layer of dust from disuse. In fact, I sold all but 2 or 3 of my Xbox games and am strongly considering selling them all plus the console itself. My PS3 sees use virtually every day. I admit to not being your typical American gamer, (I got bored of FPSes about 10 years ago) but IMO, the PS3 and its games are better in virtually every way, and having to enter serial codes (if this is true) won't affect me in the least, since I almost never buy anything used if it's available new.

I'm strongly anti-piracy (no, I have no vested interest--I just have something called ethics), and if this helps stop piracy on the PS3, I'm okay with it.

Please tell me you're joking.

The Xbox 360 controller is garbage for anything other than first/third-person shooters and certain other games. The d-pad might as well not exist, since it's so imprecise and useless for anything requiring digital directional input input. All the time, I hit "right" and end up going up/right, or down/right. It's useless for fighting games, it's useless for 2D platformers, and it's useless for emulating 8 and 16-bit consoles.

I do use my 360 controller on my PC and every time I do, I think to myself, "I need to go buy a better controller--this thing is garbage". I heard they've made an new version with a usable d-pad, but I'm not going to spend $50 on another controller for a console that's got a layer of dust from disuese when there are better PC controllers out there.

You're aware that the Kinect is not a standalone console, right?

It's an add-on peripheral for the XBOX 360.

It's very easy (and very common) to finish all the content available in a traditional MMO. Many people then grind end-game content over and over, to increase numbers and acquire better database entries, or they do it all over again with a new character.

The point he's making is that EVE doesn't follow that formula. It's impossible to finish all the content, because it doesn't have theme-park style content. It has no end-game. It's rare for two players to play the game exactly the same way. The free expansions add new gameplay rather than new areas with more theme-park attractions to go through and five more levels to grind through.

I could not agree more. Big budgets are the problem. Big budget games take no risks--they can't offend or annoy or frustrate or be to hard for anyone because they have to appeal to everyone to make money, with tens of millions sunk into their development.

Most of the games I've been playing lately are indie games, old games, and also Japanese games. The Japanese game industry is very focused on portable systems right now, for a variety of reasons, and games for the DS and PSP take a tiny fraction of the budget required for current-gen HD AAA games in the west, so they tend to do some original things or at least be more quirky and fun than the "super-epic movie experience" that big-budget western games strive for.

I disagree that having a story is bad, but I do agree that trying to emulate movies is often bad. Games are inherently interactive and can do things that movies cannot. I don't think developers should try to emulate movies. The western game industry is very fixated on recreating the "movie experience". The Japanese industry is less focused on this, which is one reason why most of the games I've been playing lately are Japanese (or western indie games).

That said, not all games need stories. Those without stories that are pure gameplay are "games" in the truest sense of the word. I really we need a new word for interactive entertainment that are mostly about adventures with storylines, etc--"game" is not really a very fitting word.

But yeah, the current batch of AAA western games hold no interest for me with a very few exceptions.

The thing is that at its core it's really *not* virtual Legos. It's a survival game, however much of the gameplay is currently missing. It's eventually going to have a win condition.

It was never intended to be a virtual Lego playland--it was originally intended to be similar to Dwarf Fortress. The developer has said he'd rather it be too hard than too easy. The first versions had no gameplay while he was working on the mining and building engine and people fixated on that and started representing it as a pure building sandbox, when it's really not.

It's really about collecting resources, building a shelter, avoiding or fighting monsters that want to kill you, etc. I agree that if it was just about building, it would get boring fast.

The problem for me is usually time. I do usually finish story-based games, but it takes a while and I have a huge backlog of games still waiting to be played. Basically, I have more money to buy games than time to play them. This is exactly the opposite situation from when I was a kid.

I don't mind games being short for this reason. I'd rather play a short but sweet game rather than one that takes 100 hours but has lots of "filler" to artificially extend playtime. When I say "finish" I generally mean finishing a playthrough of the story, not getting all the achievements or unlocks or seeing every ending. I think those are a good way to extend playtime for those who want to get every cent's worth of gameplay without making the story too long.

For reference, I play mostly (J)RPGs, survival horror, turn-based strategy/sim games, etc. Mainstream AAA games have really not held much interest for me lately, but that's another discussion for another time.

I did too. I think most of the people that "don't like it" probably didn't play it for more than a few hours, if at all.

It's linear, yes, but citing that as a criticism in a JRPG is akin to citing "too much punching and kicking" as bad in a fighting game. It really boggles my mind that people are saying a JRPG is bad because it's too linear. JRPGs are, by and large, very linear. In fact, I would say extreme linearity is a defining characteristic of a traditional JRPG. Most admittedly have more of a perception of openness than FF13 did, but that doesn't change how linear they actually are. To me, being able to walk around and explore a static world and find optional treasures and do some mini-games doesn't make a game less linear, it just means it has distractions from how linear it is. That said, the game opens up a lot later on. Gran Pulse is a huge open area with all sorts of side-things to do, most of which I didn't bother with when I played it.

Another thing is that FF games have changed drastically in every incarnation. Some people seem to want FF7 over and over again for some reason.

I played through FF13 when it came out and enjoyed every minute of it, and I should point out that I've been playing JRPGs since Dragon Warrior/Quest 1 and FF1, lest I be accused of being a neophyte. I very much liked the story, the characters, and the battle system, and to me, those are the things that make a JRPG, not mini-games, optional dungeons, and getting lost in a static, mostly empty world full of random encounters.

In short, I think many people went in with a preconceived idea of it being bad rather than just playing it and enjoying it for what it is. FF13's existence doesn't nullify FF7 or whichever installment you prefer. If you want that experience, go back and play that game. FF13 is something different (like each game is), and it's a perfectly good game for it.

The super muscular body-building look being seen as "gay" isn't that bizarre to me. I certainly don't see it as a ideal of masculinity.

Piracy is never one's "only choice". One can always do without the product, and that's what I do when I can't afford a game I want. No one is entitled to games, whether they can afford it or not.

...and not all games are designed for everyone. If you don't like the top-down view, there are hundreds of FPS games out there for you. Play one of them instead of trying to turn Alien Swarm into something it's not.