Tried the demo and it's actually pretty surreal being able to play a game like that in a web browser. I hope the technology improves further as time passes. One issue is that it cannot capture the mouse in fullscreen meaning you have to click in order to turn the camera. This would be a big problem playing windowed of course but in full screen, it's more intuitive just to move the mouse to turn around (like every FPS has implemented).

They really over-did it with Ezio. He was cool at first but didn't need three entire games dedicated to him. I too felt like Revelations was just a re-hash of Brotherhood.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon on the other hand looks nothing like Far Cry 3 other than the name. It seems like a completely different game running off the same engine and that's it.

They were still working on adding in that last bit before release.

So here is my take on the matter. I fully understand that numerous websites such as Destructoid provide a lot of free (quality) content to viewers yet their servers come with increasing operation costs and therefore, ad revenue is a necessity to keep the site running without demanding a premium charge first. The same goes for several other websites. The problem is that I have encountered way too many highly abusive ads that I came to the point where I didn't WANT to shut adblock off nor do I want to go fishing through each site I visit and only enable adblock manually when they go overboard. I would rather preventative measures instead.

Point in case. I was at my brother's place and he needed help installing a Minecraft mod. I went to its download page and was bombarded with at least 5 gigantic download buttons and guess what? All of them were fake and were placed as a trap in order to get a free ad click from anyone who just wanted to download the mod. That is deceptive! Needless to say, I became very frustrated from being sent all over the place so installed Adblock on his machine soon after. After returning to the page, I eventually found the REAL download link "tucked away" BUT you had to give them a facebook like, tweet, etc just to view it. Don't believe me? See it for yourself and you'll know what I mean: http://www.minecraftmine.org/minecraft-1-0-0-modloader-1-0-0-mod/

THIS is the kind of crap that I couldn't stand prior to installing Adblock on my own machine. I've also come across ads that would slow down my machine (due to being a poorly coded flash banner), play obnoxious music, spawn a popup that abuses the unLoadEvent function thereby displaying a dialog box before it will close, or even attempt a browser hijack to change my default search provider or a drive by malware installation. Then there are the video streaming sites like Youtube which throw in half a minute commercials not just at the beginning but sometimes in the MIDDLE of a video as well which ends up being extremely loud compared to the video itself and therefore hurts my ears (I use headphones and yes I know that only partner videos have ads but hopefully you get the point I am making). I am sorry but enough is enough!

It's really nice that Destructoid heavily monitors what advertisers' banners appear but some sites just let it go way out of control and I have no way of knowing this until I hit the site. Therefore, to save myself a LOT of frustration, Adblock is going to have to stay on until the worst of ads are abolished (which does not seem very likely unfortunately). Text ads like what Google uses I could tolerate as well as small non-intrusive banners. In fact, Adblock HAS an option to allow "non-intrusive" ads and this is ON by default. Perhaps more sites should work towards only displaying those and perhaps less ads will be blocked. Only the REAL ad loathers would enable that options as well. Also, there are sites that just flat-out refuse Adblock users by inserting a script to halt all traffic that has it installed. If they really get desperate, they could do that too although I find this approach to be quite hostile.

To me, Internet capable TV's are kind of redundant. I think it's safe to say that most people who own a TV also have a computer or tablet they can use to browse the Internet.

If you want to push the silliness even further, I used to have a Samsung 27" T27A950 which is a computer monitor that also happens to be "connected" as well. So my first question is why you would use the monitor to access the Internet rather than the computer it is connected to. Granted it can be used as a regular TV as well (even had a port for a coaxial cable) but that is beside the point.

"Titan Quest - Immortal Throne" also feels more like a true spiritual successor to "Diablo II" as well. No "online only" requirement in single player, auction house, RIDICULOUS difficulty curve, or other needless mechanic that degrades the overall experience. I will have to check out "Path of Exile" sometime as well. I stopped playing Diablo III once I got to the "hell" difficulty and never went back again.

I should hopefully be good to go too. Haven't pirated it and not going to but if it can max out my system, then that's a pretty nuts games:

i7 2600k @4.2Ghz
EVGA GTX 680
16GB DDR3 RAM @1866Mhz

I actually didn't even realize the magazine subscription still existed (I stopped caring about it long ago). Anyway, as my title states, I am not surprised by this. With the widespread wealth of information the Internet provides, having a magazine to advertise upcoming games is just redundant. All the latest information can be posted and archived online anyway where is it accessible without any special subscription. Same goes with game hints and tips.

Back in the late 80's and early 90's, this was an awesome magazine to have when Internet access was not so widely available like it is today. Otherwise you and friends were left to your own devices to figure out secrets and getting a new game was a leap of faith so to speak unless you could read up on it first. On the other hand, since when would Nintendo Power say "don't buy this game, it sucks" so yes, biased indeed.

On a side note, I wonder how long before auctions start popping up which include a literally "complete" collection of Nintendo power from the first issue to the last.

I have to agree with your mini-review more than the article. Also, the gold coin fire flower is awesome as it literally hits every coin block in its area of effect as well as producing a coin out of every brick it strikes. That hasn't been seen in any previous Mario title to date. Neither has the coin block helmet (not sure what its official name is). I also find it funny how the game randomly sticks one at the beginning of a level for you or how the first stage in the game has about 5 of these things.

"I think I've made my decision.".

Yes, the kind of decision a game developer just in it for the money and nothing else would make. However, those who make games not only for a living but for the satisfaction of knowing people are going to enjoy it for many years to come and talented artists and programmers out there in the community can and will do what they can to increase the longevity of the title WILL find value in creating mod tools. Look at how well Bethesda PC games have done some of which are being re-lived using updated engines (e.g. Playing Morrowind in Oblivion's engine and SkyOblivion is already in development as well).

It's like those music artists that bicker about piracy and treat their fans like criminals all the time rather than realizing that their music is reaching a wider and wider audience thereby growing their fanbase.

To be fair, Winamp at lets you cut out pretty much all the bloat during the install process (most of which is related to the media library). Not only that but the Pro features are redundant. You can rip CD's using the disk writer plugin (assuming you have the proper codec) and play all types of videos through Directshow (again, assuming you have the codec installed).

uTorrent 3.0 unfortunately does not let you skip installing all the uneeded extras although you can hide most of them once in the application.

I have to agree that while rTorrent does seem quite nice, it also has an overly complex setup even on windows. With uTorrent, you double click the exe, run the quick installer and you're good to go. With ruTorrent, you need to first install Cygwin, libsigc++, libTorrent, and of course rTorrent itself. Add all that up, and it's likely to be even more bloated than the ad-supported uTorrent itself. One thing I've always liked about Windows applications is that they often don't need several extras to be installed first such as the above nor do you have to worry about so many dependencies and how they may even clash at times.

Now if someone can suggest an alternate Torrent client that isn't geared towards Linux and therefore doesn't require a bunch of extra libraries to be installed first, that would be wonderful.

I think it's safe to say that the Wii not getting significantly better hardware when compared to the Gamecube is probably part of the reason why it got emulated so quickly. On a very positive note, it also had full backwards compatibility with Gamecube titles and some Wii games even allowed usage of the original controller (e.g. Mario Kart Wii, Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Colors, Smash Brothers Brawl, etc).

In the PS2's case, it was quite a while before it got emulated while the PSX was easily emulated even on mid-range PC's by the time the PS2 came out.

I agree with the other replies. If you just want to play the games as they were on the original hardware, then there is no reason to use a PC emulator. Likewise, this is only for those with REALLY fast PC's because let's face it, mid-range specs aren't going to cut it if you want full speed all the time. I have seen countless posts on the official forums from people with dual or quad core 2.66Ghz PC's and the reply is always the same: "Your CPU is too weak".

However, for those that don't have the special hardware used in your setup (such as myself) and/or have a very capable PC and want the boosted internal resolution, emulators are the way to go. I have to say from personal experience using PCSX2 that the difference is like night and day and I'd rather play on the emulator than the original hardware if I can. It REALLY gets highlighted in games like Dragon Quest VIII where FMV's actually use the in-game graphics so it often goes from fuzzy and jagged to crystal clear all of a sudden. Xenosaga does the same thing and probably many other titles. Right now I am playing through Shining Force EXA and having a blast.

The same thing can be applied to Gamecube and Wii emulation (just wish their audio HLE was better but I am sure it will come all in due time). Sonic Colors looks just as lush and detailed as Sonic Generations when I play it on Dolphin but really ugly on the original hardware.

You're right. I always found it weird how Paper Mario 2 and Super Paper Mario ran almost graphics glitch free while the N64 Paper Mario was plagued with them regardless of which plugin you use.

It also helps that Dolphin is open source while Project64 is using a very dated development model and progress has been painfully slow because of it. The author just does not want to release it for everyone to work on and instead requires a pretty hefty donation of $20 for you to access the newest version (1.7 Beta). 1964 on the other hand is open source and hopefully it catches up eventually.