I predict a hiatus.

My bandwidth cap reset, so I used my newfound Internet freedom to resume anime watching.  In fact, partially because this semester is looking to be my busiest yet, and partially because I feel like I've let them become too central in my life, I intend to switch gears a little bit away from videogames, at least for the next few months.  I'd like to get back to my other hobbies, which also happen to be easier to engage in small chunks.

While I waited for my cap to reset, I settled into rewatching my favorite anime--Spice and Wolf--on the Blu-Ray set I bought a while back.  Just as good as I remember.

Though I have been playing games, there are very few that I feel like writing a post about.

Dead Space 2; Always on the lookout for new podcasts, I recently started listening to Rebel FM.  Going through their stuff, I ended up listening to their "Game Club" on Dead Space 2, where they basically go through the entire game from beginning to end, thoroughly discussing it on a moment-to-moment basis.  I imagine it was a rather exhaustive work, and listening to it compelled me to pick up DS2 again, like I've been meaning to.  I've already beaten the game 1.5 times (I left off my NG+ save in Chapter 6).  But I didn't want to pick up in the middle, so I started a new game.  This time though, I'm playing on Survivalist.  It's not nearly as harsh as I was anticipating, though.  I'm actually ending up with more items than I know what to do with, mainly because I don't get hit often and so far have managed to be pretty efficient with my ammo.  Maybe I should have gone for Zealot instead.  Anyway, I was entertaining the thought of doing a Hardcore run, but there's no way I'll have time for that in the near future.

Dead Space 3; Dead Space as a series seems to be suffering from the same thing Resident Evil did going into RE5, which is that everyone (Capcom notwithstanding) has their own idea of what the series should be.  Personally, I wouldn't really care that much if Dead Space went full action game.  I think the mechanics and fundamentals are in place for it to be an awesome action game with horror elements.  What matters to me is not whether the game is scary or not (I've never considered DS to be particularly scary, beyond the first 15 minutes of the original), but whether it is still Dead Space, and not trying to be something else.  Anyway, I played the demo for Dead Space 3.  It wasn't long enough for me to get a good read on what to expect from the singleplayer experience, but my impressions weren't bad, overall.  The one thing that they didn't advertise at all that surprised me was the gun customization.  With DS3, they've completely overhauled the Bench system.  Instead of having a set of available weapons like in previous games, you get materials and components, that you can use to build your own weapons.  If you want, you can build a Plasma Cutter or a Force Gun or any of those classic weapons, and they'll look and handle like you'd expect.  Or, you could build a Javelin Gun and attach a Plasma Cutter to barrel.  Or make a Line Gun with an underslung grenade launcher.  In a way, you can think of it as mixing and matching the traditional weapons' primary and secondary fires, but it's a lot more than that.  It's like they adapted Army of Two's gun customization to Dead Space, with the premise of basically sticking together a hodgepodge of tools with screws and duck tape and hoping it works out alright.

BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend; I've recently been playing a bit of this with my friends.  I still fucking hate fighting Tager.  Dude's jab range is absurd, and don't get me started on those grabs.  I remember when you used to actually fight guys!  With Tager, it's just three grabs and then the match is over.  Anyway, I've been trying to experiment with a different characters, but I was surprised to find out how difficult it is to really get behind a new character when you've been playing someone else for so long.  I have a newfound respect for people who can juggle multiple characters and be proficient with them.  It doesn't help that I find at least half the cast of the game to be fascinating from a gameplay standpoint.  Even Relius, who represents everything I don't typically want in a fighting game character, seems really fun to play as.  Back to Noel I suppose.

Strike Suit Zero; I have to admit, this game kind of felt like a love letter to a very specific kind of demographic, of which I am a part of.  The sort of fellows who thirst for an awesome mech game.  It finally came out (though I regret not partaking in the Kickstarter), and.....it's neat.  If I have time, I would like to write a full post about it.  But in short, Strike Suit Zero has a lot of potential based on its premise, but doesn't follow through on a lot of it.  Still, when its at its best SSZ is an impressive effort.

Hawken; I think I might kind of adore Hawken.  I haven't delved into the deeper systems and haven't bought anything yet...but the moment to moment gameplay is just so fun and well-executed, both in terms of gameplay and presentation.  The more I play Hawken, the more I like it.

Devil May Cry; A buddy of mine got me the DMC HD Collection for Christmas.  Finally got around to trying out the first game...and it's not what I was expecting.  It's actually incredibly reminiscent of Resident Evil in its design, all the way down to starting out in some spooky abandoned castle.  But it's also not very fun, so far.

Zone of the Enders: The Second Runner; I will say this: it is clear from the very beginning of the game that The 2nd Runner is the game Kojima wanted to make (or at the very least MUCH closer to it). It is better and more fleshed out than its predecessor in literally every way. There's more mechs, the combat is better (though also tougher), it looks better, and it's more mechanically refined. And not only do we get a protagonist who is awesome, Leo's back and he's actually grown a pair. This is how you make a comeback.

Armored Core For Answer;  Yeah, I've really been getting my fill of the mechs, lately.  Plus, I just started watching Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam.  It's awesome.  I will say however, that Armored For Answer is an absurdly complex game, and not necessarily in a bad way.  It just gives you so much control, I'm afraid to get too into it, lest I fuck up, because then I know it will be all my fault.  Also, I suck at the game.  I was able to completely rebind the controls (the default configurations are all kinds of backwards), but I still can't quite beat the AC Next in the test simulation.  But I'll keep at it!

Zone of the Enders

I finally got around to trying the Zone of the Enders HD Collection for PS3.  After watching a lengthy (but enjoyable) animated intro, I naturally chose to try the original Zone of the Enders first, before trying The 2^nd Runner.  I didn’t know what to expect from Zone of the Enders.  I knew that it had mechs in it, and that it was a Kojima joint.  That’s largely it.

Essentially, Zone of the Enders takes place in a futuristic setting where humanity has colonized other planets in the solar system, namely Mars and Jupiter.  Earthlings still reign supreme however, and the space colonies are largely subject to their rule.  Tensions continue to rise because of this, until all-out war eventually erupts between the two sides.  Though Earth has the initial advantage due to sheer numbers, the discovery of a superior energy source known as Metatron allows the space colonists (or “enders” as the Earthlings have come to call them) to develop powerful new weapons known as Orbital Frames.  Orbital Frames are—you guessed it—giant humanoid mechs.  The colonists create two particularly powerful Orbital Frames, called Jehuty and Anubis, but the Earth forces steal them.

Note that almost none of what I just explained is really touched on in the game.  Zone of the Enders doesn’t really do much in terms of world-building.  Rather, this is a classic game in that you’ll learn a lot more about the setting and backstory reading the manual than you will playing through the story.

Zone of the Enders begins just as the space colonists are invading the colony that Jehuty and Anubis are being stored in, in an attempt to take them back.  In the process, they basically raze everything to the ground, terrorizing the population.  Though the colonists manage to retrieve Anubis, one little boy named Leo stumbles upon Jehuty and, hoping to hide from the invasion and chaos, clambers into its cockpit.  He accidentally activates the mech and soon enough finds himself thrust into a mission beyond his understanding.

Anyone who’s seen a Japanese mecha anime will be amazed by how closely this setup mirrors that of shows like Mobile Suit Gundam; particularly SEED and 0079.  A war between the spacenoids and Earth; a super-special set of mobile suits designed to give one side an edge; and most of all, an insufferable boy protagonist who ends up with one of said super-special mobile suits.

There are some interesting things to Zone of the Ender’s plot, though.  Though the space colonists are portrayed as an entirely villainous lot in the game, by and large they’re the underdogs here.  Furthermore, Jehuty and Anubis share a fun dynamic, always ending up on opposite sides of the conflict, and seemingly fated to fight each other, despite being developed for the same purpose.

None of this is to Zone of the Ender’s credit though, because none of it is explored in the actual game.  The classic red vs. blue rivalry between Jehuty and Anubis is only hinted at right at the end of the game, and as mentioned previously, everything about the setting and premise was derived from the manual, not the game.

Instead, during the actual game you get a much more focused plot that has Leo being tasked with delivering Jehuty to the transport vessel Atlantis in one piece, encountering plenty of obstacles along the way.  Such obstacles include a large microwave barrier, an army of remote-controlled Orbital Frames, and a snooty ace pilot who is also one of only perhaps two worthwhile characters in the game; the other being Leo.  ZoE’s cast is already quite small, but most of the few characters introduced ultimately play little or no role, such as Leo’s childhood friend Celvice, and the big boss of the space colonists and eventual pilot of Anubis, Nohman.

So not only do we have a cookie-cutter plot mostly populated with empty characters, but we also have a cookie-cutter plot that ends rather abruptly.  After a little over five hours, Zone of the Enders throws you against a final boss that is unbeatable by design, and then it ends.

Zone of the Ender’s primary saving grace is its combat, which is not only fun, but at times nothing short of riveting.  The controls are a bit odd and took some getting used to for me, but at its heart ZoE is a hack and slash affair.

Each of the handful of environments in the game are patrolled by squads of enemies.  Get too close and they’ll attack on sight, and battle begins.  Jehuty has two combat modes that it automatically switches between depending on how close you are to the opponent you’re locked onto.  At melee range it uses its fold out blade for hacking away at enemies.  Backing into longer range causes it to switch to its wrist-mounted blaster.  In addition to regular attacks, you have burst and dash attacks, each with melee and long-range variants.  Burst attacks—consisting of a Spirit Bomb-like orb of energy at long range and a spinning slash at close range—take a moment to charge up, but are unblockable and do more damage.  Dash attacks—an extremely quick side swipe in melee and a burst of homing lasers at range—are quick and keep battles moving at a swift pace.  Jehuty can also guard and grab enemies, and the two abilities share the same dynamic you’d expect: guarding blocks most attacks but is vulnerable to grabs.

In addition to its standard moveset, Jehuty can also equip a variety of sub-weapons found throughout the game.  These have limited ammo, but give you a bit more versatility.  For example, Phalanx is a short-range bullet sprayer with a wide spread.  Halberd is a sustained beam attack that cuts through enemies easily, but is slow and unwieldy.  Geyser throws out a set of pods that emit lasers upwards, setting up a trap.  There are about a dozen different sub-weapons to find and pick up, some of which are integral to progression, like the Decoy ability that allows you to avoid getting killed in one shot by one of the later bosses.

Bosses aside, there are only three types of enemies in the game.  But with one exception, these enemies have a similar moveset to your own (particularly at higher levels), being capable of guarding, grabbing, and burst and dash attacks.  Initially, enemies use only basic attacks and simple strategies, but as you progress through the game, both the AI and its repertoire of attacks and strategies expand, offering more challenge.  By the end of the game, nearly every enemy encounter can feel like a dance with death, forcing you to constantly stay on the move and use each ability at your disposal to avoid being surrounded or otherwise outmaneuvered.  Zone of the Enders teases you with the prospect of exciting one on one boss battles with rival Orbital Frame pilots, but in reality this only happens three times, and only one of them is a battle in the traditional sense.

With only a few exceptions, all of the environments in Zone of the Enders look bland.  The CG cutscenes are also pretty bad, and while it’s not fair to judge them by today’s standard, I do wonder if Konami (or High Voltage, who developed the port) couldn’t have done a better touch up job.  The one facet that stands above what is mostly a visually mediocre game is the mecha design, which is interesting.  Unfortunately, as very few Orbital Frames aside from the enemy grunts show up in the game, once more I can’t give Zone of the Enders a lot of credit for it.

Overall, Zone of the Enders feels like a low key game.  I understand now why people often see it as a tech demo.  The combat is great, but outside of that there’s just not much to it.

Hitman: Absolution

I’m pretty new to Hitman.  A long time ago, I saw a lengthy gameplay walkthrough for Absolution, which honestly made the game look pretty damn rad.  So, partially out of interest in the series and partly out of interest in Absolution, I picked up Blood Money during Steam’s Summer Sale.  It’s a great game, though flawed in minor ways.  There’s something really satisfying about the open nature of Blood Money, where you’re spawned in a level and asked to seek out and kill one or more NPCs however you see fit and make it out alive.  Hitman games challenge you to be more than a simple mercenary though, gunning your way to your query.  They encourage subtlety, making your kills discreet or even look like complete accidents.  As they describe the game’s highest score ranking, Silent Assassin, the best Hitman is one who leaves no effect on the world around him.

Hitman: Absolution is not like Blood Money.  And from what I’ve seen of previous Hitman games, it’s not like Hitman in general.

Just as in all previous games, in Absolution you play as Agent 47, a top tier hitman employed with The Agency, some sort of paramilitary organization that contracts hits on the scum of the world.  47’s been tasked with killing Diana Burnwood, who has betrayed the Agency by making off with one of the organization’s vital assets: a young girl.  The problem is that Diana was 47’s former handler, and the closest thing to a friend he’s ever had.  As someone who was also raised in a lab, the normally all-business hitman takes pity on the girl.  Swayed by Diana’s attempt to save the girl from a similar upbringing, 47 goes rogue, taking her with him to safeguard her from the Agency.  Seeking to find out precisely what it is that makes the girl so important, he soon finds himself in trouble with the law and chased by a sinister industry magnate who also wants her.  What results is essentially an international manhunt, where everybody wants both the girl and 47’s head.

But let’s face it: the plot of Absolution isn’t really that good or interesting.  It does a great job stringing together gameplay segments, but you’ll never find yourself expecting much more than that.  Instead, Absolution’s narrative strength resides in its presentation.  The game takes place in a serious world filled with dark themes, touching on corruption of the law, drugs, and the seedy underbelly of industries and corporations.  This is not a cheerful setting in the slightest, and yet there is an element of mature humor that constantly permeates the game experience.  You meet a corrupt sheriff who spends his free time on the receiving end of a whip from his dominatrix, for example.  One of your targets—due to an unfortunate childhood experience—hates pigs, and has taken to doing his job testing landmines by releasing a herd of pigs to run across a fake setup and get blown to bits.

This humor is more evident than ever in the many NPC conversations you’ll overhear.  The very first one you hear is from a guard talking on the phone, overjoyed to hear from his doctor that he does not in fact have prostate cancer.  He happily claims that nothing can ruin this day before you pull him out of a window, sending him careening into the rocks below.  While on the lam, you might overhear a cop making a vain attempt to question a mentally retarded hobo about your whereabouts.  Midway through the game you’ll encounter a wrestler who fervently believes that his stuffed teddy bear is a lucky charm, and will whine and complain to his coach and managers if you steal it.

Absolution’s presentation extends to its visuals, which are phenomenal.  There is an ever so slight filter applied to the graphics that gives the world a constant and subtly oppressive look.  On PC, the game does lighting and depth of field like no other game I’ve ever seen.  When you open a door from a deserted alley and find yourself facing a hugely crowded plaza, it feels just like it would to have all this new information suddenly flooding your eyes.  There is a moment midway through the game where you find yourself emerging from a desert cave in broad daylight, and as you pass through the cave’s mouth, you’re temporarily blinded by all the light hitting your face.  Textures are also detailed and the modeling work is very good.  The only facet that is weak in comparison is the animation, which is good but not exceptional like the lighting.  It is overall a very good looking game, however.

The core of Absolution—the gameplay—doesn’t shine as brightly as its exterior elements, however.  To begin with, Absolution is structured differently from its predecessors.  Whereas in past entries you had the entire level open to you, and your only goal was to accomplish your objective and take the designated exit before moving on to the next level, Absolution is generally more linear.  Levels are fragmented, and there are plenty of gameplay segments where your objective is simply to get to the end of the level alive (and ideally without being seen).  Furthermore, levels vary wildly in their construction.  There are some levels that could have been plucked right out of Blood Money, so similar are they in structure to Absolution’s predecessors.  Some gameplay segments task you with killing someone, but many do not.  In many segments you’re simply passing by, or trying to accomplish something else, like disabling security measures or evading law officers.  This gives the game a feeling of inconsistency; like they knew what direction they wanted to go in with the series but didn’t go all the way through it.  It should be noted that I’m not really saying that the levels themselves are bad.  In fact there are some that are downright brilliant, such as one that has you hunting three targets across an entire neighborhood, or another that has you stalking targets in tall corn fields under a clear starry night.  It’s the overall structure of the game that comes off as feeling slapdash to me, not its components.

This issue is nonexistent in the game’s Contracts mode, however.  Separate from the main campaign, in Contracts all of the game’s environments and scenarios are available to play through individually.  The difference is that here you can play through them however you like.  You kill whoever you want, using whatever tools and disguises you want.  These parameters (who you killed, what you used to kill them, etc.) are then used to set up a custom mission, or contract that other players can then go through, attempting to one-up your score in the process.  It’s basically a combination of a level editor and H-O-R-S-E.  Not only is Contracts a brilliant twist on the concept of creating and sharing your own levels, by focusing on individual levels it escapes the inconsistency present in the story mode.

The game’s structure isn’t the only thing that’s changed.  The core gameplay has been refined in some ways and revamped in others.  For the most part, I like what they’ve done.  Absolution controls better than any other Hitman, for one thing.  The series has always had trouble wrapping its gameplay mechanics around a decent control map, but I think with Absolution they’ve managed to change that, and largely without relying on QTEs, which is admirable.

Furthermore, as a stealth game Absolution does a good job of keeping you informed about your situation.  UI elements like an arrow indicating NPCs that are onto you are standard, but you also have a minimap that color codes each NPC by their level of suspicion, so you know at a glance how information about you might be spreading.  You’re able to summon tooltips telling you things like the current capacity of storage containers (they’re able to hold two bodies now), the access level for areas you’re looking at (in case you’re about to cross an invisible line), and even what a disguise is, before putting it on.  The new Instinct mode—not unlike Detective Vision in the recent Batman games—allows you to see enemies through walls, and will even trace the path an NPC is walking, allowing you to immediately predict their route.  The Instinct mode also allows you to use Point Shooting, which is a feature lifted straight out of games like Splinter Cell Conviction and Red Dead Redemption, allowing you to mark and execute targets with increased precision.  Finally, Instinct mode makes you immune to having your disguise detected; causing 47 to discreetly pull down his hat or hunch his shoulders, deflecting suspicion.  This last bit is pushing suspension of belief, but alas, videogames.

Instinct mode sounds like and often is a crutch, but its use is limited.  How limited depends on what difficulty you’re playing on, but in general you’ll find the ability to use Point Shooting and hide your disguise limited by a meter, which depletes during use and is regenerated mainly by accomplishing objectives.  However, the higher you go in difficulty, the more restrictions you’ll find placed on not only Instinct mode, but the play experience in general.  The highest difficulty—Purist—does away with both Instinct mode and the UI (only the crosshair is spared), in addition to boasting the most enemies and the fastest detection rates.

Hitman has always been about a different sort of stealth than most in the genre.  Whereas series such as Metal Gear and Splinter Cell required you to hide in the shadows and duck behind walls and around corners to stay undetected, Hitman’s is more of a social brand of stealth; being invisible in plain sight.  To this end, disguises have always been an integral part of gameplay.  In past games it was pretty difficult to get far without a disguise of some sort.

The disguise system has been changed in Absolution.  You can still knock out dudes and take their clothes, letting you pose as them, but rules governing how NPCs detect you are different.  Now, only NPCs wearing the same clothes (and thus likely of the same profession) will be able to see through your disguise.  All others will be none the wiser.  As GameTrailers’ review succinctly puts it, it makes sense…except for when it doesn’t.  For example, it makes sense that, while infiltrating a laboratory using a scientist disguise, only fellow scientists would be able to see through my disguise.  It doesn’t make sense however, that a street vendor would be able to see through a street vendor disguise, does it?  Especially not when his stall is on the opposite side of a crowded plaza from my stall.  Furthermore, NPCs are able to see through your disguise from unbelievable distances.  Essentially, establishing line of sight tends to be all you need to be in danger of having your cover blown, even if someone is standing on the other side of a street.  I found that all of these changes discouraged me from using the disguise system at all.  It doesn’t help that it’s not often you encounter an area where it’s particularly difficult to just sneak through the old fashioned way.

Ultimately, I found it difficult to play Hitman: Absolution entirely like a Hitman game.  The moment I stopped trying to use disguises and just played Absolution like a straightforward stealth game was when I immediately found the game to be more enjoyable.  And frankly, as a straightforward stealth game it’s pretty great.  But the problem is that’s not how you should have to play a Hitman game.

I wish I could make a separate page just for blog posts.

This sounds silly, but I don't really like doing a whole bunch of what are essentially diary entries in between actual game posts.  But I also don't like there being whole months where I don't post anything.

This wasn't an issue when I was back in high school and had all the time in the world to sit around playing games and writing, but that's not how it is any more; it's tough to dedicate an entire evening to sitting down and writing a decent post.  Moreover, part of why I made this blog was to express thoughts on games and the industry as they came to me, which is more difficult when I'm limiting myself to big writeups.

So in short, everything is 'effed I guess.

Anyway.  Due to bandwidth constraints I'm abstaining from anime until early next year.  I'm finished with Nichijou and Amagami, just about done with Hyouka, and powering through Star Driver when I can.  They're all great shows.

Nichijou is not only just simply entertaining, but it's well-produced.  The animation is great, the music is generally good, and the voice acting really delivers.  I suppose it's a good example of where the resources can go when they're not being put towards making any sort of long-running narrative (though the anime is an adaptation, so that might be a moot point anyway).

Solid gold, baby!

Amagami SS+ is more Amagami.  I really really enjoyed Amagami SS, and Amagami+ is basically an epilogue for each route.  Since they've already established a relationship between Junichi and the girl, there's no pressure to have any development and they can instead just focus on how their relationship has panned out.  I'm undecided on who had the best story.  It was great to see Rihoko finally get her due, since she got the short end of the stick in by a long shot in the main series (she's the only one who fails to end up going steady with Junichi by the end of her arc).  There's also another Miya arc, but it's not so much a Miya arc as it is a girls-only fanservice episode.  But yeah, Amagami SS+ is great if you're down for more Amagami.  I really wish they had released Amagami (the visual novel) on PC.  I would have thought having two anime series would have gotten them enough publicity to consider re-releasing the game (as VNs get re-released quite often, especially higher profile ones), but alas the game remains PS2-only.  I don't even need it to get translated; I'd be willing to work through it as an exercise in polishing my Japanese.  But currently the only way to play it for me is to emulate the PS2 version, which seems like jumping through a lot of hoops.

Best girl.

Hyouka is...weird.  If nothing else, it's incredibly well-produced, like Nichijou (Kyoto Animation really does seem to take pride in their releases).  It's extremely well animated, with surprisingly good cinematography for an animated TV show and expressive movement.  The dialogue is consistently engaging and the show is decently paced, which is more than I can say for most anime that I've seen in the past couple years.  It's a textbook example of how to make an anime that just glimmers with production value.

The odd thing though is that it's not some sort of high-action plot.  It's basically a slice of life show with a bit of light mystery here and there.  Almost none of the mysteries are really that compelling, but I sometimes wonder if that's the point.  The mysteries are usually very mundane in nature, typically based off of everyday mysteries that we all encounter and typically dismiss.  Like one mystery is why some library book has, over the past five consecutive weeks, been checked out on Friday but promptly returned by the end of the day.  Another one has the main character theorizing on the story behind an announcement made over the intercom at school summoning someone to the principal's office.  It's a peculiar show that would not have worked if it wasn't so well executed.  But it's interesting to watch, nonetheless.

Anyone whose seen Star Driver would understand when I say that there's really only one word to describe it, and that is "fabulous."  The show is just....so silly, yet it takes itself just seriously enough to make you wonder if it isn't somehow a commentary on the medium.  I don't think I'm going to give it that much credit, but it is a very interesting show.  The reason why I find this show so...curious, begins with its protagonist Takuto, otherwise known as the "Ginga Bishounen"......or "Galactic Pretty Boy."  Yes, that is what they call him.  Let that sink in for a moment.

There's just so much about this show that is just so odd and wacky, but at the same time, not only do they take it seriously, but they use this backdrop as a vehicle for some legitimate themes, like cheating in relationships and family strife.  And it doesn't hurt that the actual mech battles are usually fantastic, albeit brief.  Like Gurren Lagann, Star Driver kind of feels like a super robot show for the modern era.

So that's what I've been watching.  I've already got my next shows lined up.  I'm gonna see about starting MS Gundam Zeta (either that Victory), and I'm also probably going to blow through Gunsmith Cats and Ano Natsu de Matteru.  For romance, probably Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate.  It looks mediocre to be totally honest, but I'll give it a shot.  The real star for me though, will be Binbougami Ga!  Fuck, that show looks hilarious.  I can't wait.  If it's as awesome as it looks, hell I'll start reading the manga.

I was actually going to talk about what games I've been playing, but then this turned into a huge anime post.  Oh well.

There's a review for Hitman Absolution coming...sometime later.

New Rating System.

I mentioned implementing a new rating system a while back.  Well, it's partially in effect now, starting with the XCOM review.

I don't like using a 10 scale very much, because it's heavily weighted towards the upper 5 points.  After all, when games are coming out with a typical MSRP of $60, who cares whether a game gets a 2 or a 4?  Ultimately, they both spell the same message:  Don't buy the game.

So, because I think the lower half is unnecessary, I decided to remove it and just go from 10 to 4.5.  Let's be clear: this is basically the upper half a 10-point scale cut down a few notches.  So, 6 stars is a 10.  5 stars is a 9.  3.5 stars is a 7.5.

What this means is that unless a game gets 1 star or less, I expect there will always be plenty of people out there who love the game regardless of what I score.  After all, you see plenty of games with 6.5's garner cult followings.

So, the Rating Scale has been updated.  The next step is to adapt the Ratings Index.  I haven't decided if I'm going to go back and retroactively convert each review score though.