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...it's actually one game that actually blends in the story pretty well and it lacks spherical boobs and shit blowing up for no reason.

That's probably why it won't do that well. I predict a repeat of the Beyond Good and Evil situation.

I maintain that platform games rule, though, as does the GTA series.

In fact, to be perfectly honest, Schafer knowing when to leave graphic adventures behind makes me respect him and his vision more then most of the other ex-Lucasarts people, who don't seem to know how to move on.

I love the old graphic adventures, but it's a limited genre and it died for a good reason. What people should be doing is finding ways to take the best aspects of the genre and to evolve them in a way that keeps them fresh and cutting edge. Knocking out games in the vintage graphic adventure formula like it's still 1993 can be fun, but I think its silly to sneer at the rest of the world for not being so nostalgic.

I and II are all you'll ever need. And all there should ever have been. But I don't want to get into all that again.

Does anyone have any bets on whether Psychonauts will be successful or not? I suspect it won't, but I really hope it does well enough to keep Schafer and his company afloat.

It seems the 10% thing is a popular myth based on some old, misguided research. I think the recent researsh suggests the average figure for people who are exclusively homosexual is closer to 1% or 2%.

That shouldn't really change anything, though.

Glad you didn't take it personally, Flippy (looking back I came across as a bit blunt), and I wouldn't worry too much. See I'm just coming to the end of a film degree at uni, so this is kind of my area. Doesn't make me an authority or anything, but it does mean I'm pretty familiar with a lot of the dos and don'ts of your average film essay (though I think I really blew my last one).

Are you sure publicly posting an essay on the internet before you hand it in is really a good idea?

I know you didn't want to debate, but I can't resist posting my thoughts anyway. I'm a self indulgent bastard.

It strikes me that a lot of this essay is just you stating your personal opinions on various films and filmmakers, without explaining them or backing them up significantly beyond your general personal impressions.

You ignore The Man Who Wasn't There, which came after O Brother and I think is up there with the Coens' best. If you disagree with me there, you should explain why. But don't just pretend it doesn't exist for the purposes of your argument.

And say what you will about George Lucas, but he's been almost entirely independent from Hollywood for over 25 years. Any creative decline on his part is down to him and him alone. He can afford to do almost anything he wants with his films.

The conclusion in the last paragraph starts to make an interesting point, but I'm not convinced that point is solidly backed up by the rest of your essay. And the stuff immediately before that conclusion strikes me as being hypothetical in the extreme.

Personally if I was writing that essay I'd try to make things a little more objective by spending more time comparing and contrasting Hollywood with the film industries of other countries, as well as American independent film industry. E.g. I might point out that Hollywood has the benefits of the highest budgets, but has the consequences of the desire to make films more crowd-pleasing in order to increase the chances of making back those high investments. Independent and foreign films, on the other hand, often have smaller budgets and more creative freedom, but with the consequences of a necessarily smaller scope, and possibly a lower overall level of production quality.

Gosh, don't you just hate it when people criticise the stuff you do?

Homophobia really is one of the most miserable ideologies ever - I mean, is there really any point to it beyond making other people's lives more difficult, lonely or generally unpleasant?

I'd say one of the main reasons necrophilia isn't allowed is because it's non-consentual - forgetting about whether the body is living or dead, you're basically raping it. And in our society dead people still have certain rights - I mean you're not allowed to dig up corpses and do whatever you want with them as far as I'm aware.

But what if you leave a clause in your will that says you're okay with the idea of people screwing your corpse? Probably still illegal, but SHOULD IT BE!?!? I say no!

Farlander:

My point was: just because accepting both would involve a change to marriage laws, doesn't mean that homosexuality must automatically be equal to bestiality (or even polygamy) - it seems to me that that's the implication when people shout "what next?!". Just because homosexuality, bestiality, necrophelia, pedophilia etc are all condemned by Christianity and/or society doesn't stop them all from being very different things that bring up very different issues.

I do understand the worry that "if you change one thing, then anything could be changed", but I'd be more inclined to take it seriously if it wasn't for the fact that inter-racial marriage was widely banned and morally condemned until relatively recently. The people who were against that were probably felt just as objectively morally correct and heaven-bound as the people who fight against gay marriage today, but how many will admit to being against inter-racial marriage in this day and age? Like it or not, everything has always been changing.

My basic view on gay marriage is: If you're defining marriage in non-religious terms, then homosexuals should be perfectly welcome to the benefits of the institution. If you're defining marriage purely in religious terms, then the government shouldn't have any involvement with it - marriage should be a purely private institution, and if necessary, the government should set up a secular alternative.

Maybe I’m being idealistic, but I just don't think governments should be in the business of discrimination.

As for the inevitable "next thing you know people will want to make marrying goats legal!!" reaction, if these people would use their heads before jerking their knees, they might notice that there is a key difference in that, unlike homosexuality, bestiality is a non-consensual act (with the possible exception of consensual dolphin sex - in which case I say knock yourselves out!).

Trespasser was an interesting game in that it looked towards where games were inevitably heading, and then made a spectacularly misguided attempt to get there ten years early.

Some interesting ideas (and on some rare occasions the physics system could do some amazingly realistic things), but it felt like it'd been designed by people who'd never played games before and only had a vague idea of how they worked. I can't believe no one on the production team realised how specactuarly stupid a lot of their ideas were.

As for the thread topic... this complaint mainly applies to AGS games, but I'm totally sick of characters breaking the fourth wall and chatting directly to the audience - especially when they only do this to say stuff like "Ho ho, this background isn't drawn very well is it?". A high percentage of AGS game seems to do this and it always strikes me as extremely lazy writing that usually just ruins any suspension of disbelief you might have in the game's story.

Some good points above.

When I play through BS2, I'm always surprised at how just many of my favourite Broken Sword bits crop in that game. But when I think back to it afterwards it just doesn't 'stick' somehow. It's like a lot of entertaining stand alone episodes tied together, but without anything solid to tie everything together into a satisfying whole.

Oh, and if there's one thing Revolution definately can't handle (in either game), it's romance. For BS1 I get the feeling they were going for 'subtle sexual tension' and repressed desires and so on. But if they were aiming for that, they blew it, and instead their falling in love just seemed to come completely out of the blue. And in BS2 I just didn't buy the idea they were really lovers for a second.

Picard is best. Sure, he didn't screw people all day like Kirk, but you just know all he had to do was say the word and he could've had anyone on the crew. Even Data.

I wish they'd let Star Trek take a rest for a while, though, instead of dragging it out and  turning it into a miserable joke. I mean, what the hell were they thinking with those last two movies?

But as far as i'm concerned, the original series, Next Generation and DS9 will always be some of the best TV shows ever.

Voyager = meh. Enterprise = pfft.

I'd say the general gameplay (puzzles, locations, dialogue etc) of BS2 is as good as the original, if not better, but the overall storyline didn't strike me as anywhere near as memorable or well thought out as the whole Templars thing in BS1. Haven't played III as yet.

I feel a bit bad criticising such an ambitious and generally well-crafted game (and such a celebration of the delights of promiscuous bisexuality to boot), but the more I play this the more I think it's pretty deeply flawed. Basically, it's way too easy, and the further you get into it, the more repetitive and boring it gets.

The thing is, half the fun in The Sims comes from you fighting to give your characters happy, balanced lifestyles in the face of increasing job requirements and awkward working hours.

In this game, your job status has no effect on the gameplay whatsoever, beyond having to walk a little more or less to get to your new jobclocker. Once you've found a good routine, you're basically set for the entire game (and it's a LONG game), after that there's little reason to want to keep playing for all of those endless months.

The game is a lot of fun when you're just getting to grips with it, building your character and choosing your friends and so on, but it's just too easy to be a faceless, perfect automaton who's best friends with everyone.

I really think the game needs to be developed a bit more before it's released. As it is, I'd say it's a nice try, but I think Yahtzee's reach has exceeded his grasp this time around.

Personally, I find that full-left/full-right separation *can* work really well, just so long as the overall mix is balanced. The band King Crimson often had these complex, interlocked duel-guitar lines; each guitar is hard panned on opposite ends of the mix, and it creates a really cool, disorientating effect.

Also, having hard-left/hard-right panning, you can make songs interactive! The first Ramones album has the guitar in one ear and the bass in the other, so if you want you can shift your stereo balance to make the entire album either guitar-only or bass-only. Oh what fun!!!

Good game - it's definately has the Sims' "got to do just one more day" addictiveness, and it's good to see AGS being stretched in interesting ways.

But there are a few too few options when it comes to books and presents, and the general setup is a bit too routine and predictable - it's quite easy to 'cheat' your way through, and you don't really get many rewards for your achievements.

Right now my bloke rarely sleeps, only breaking five hour shifts in order to pump himself full of high-energy meals and to keep my numerous lovers sweet with presents. By any realistic standard my character would seem to be having some kind of severe physical and mental break down, but the game's rewarding me for it.

There should definately be some health consequences or something for eating the energy meals, because at the moment they're just too useful.

Really nice game, though, on the whole.

^^^ don't worry man, I'm not easily offended, and if I ever come across as a bit confrontational it's usually because I'm trying to provoke people into giving out some interesting thoughts, and those were interesting thoughts. I just wish some of that kind of character-driven stuff had actually made it into the game.

Scummbuddy: That is not true. A recent interview stated that George basically gives the final go ahead on all games. They present them to him, but basically at that stage, if it gets to him, the president of LucasArts has already said yes, and George would go with that decision.

I get the impression that Lucas has about the same level of input in the games as he has with all of those Star Wars spin-off books - he's has final say on what is released, but has little to no serious creative input.

All I really meant is that when it comes to criticising Lucasarts I don't think George Lucas is really the right person to target, with him being at such a disconnected executive level. I might be wrong, but I doubt he's really personally responsable for the company's big achievements, just as I doubt he's really personally responsable for it's failures.

"Guybrush 3", fits more in the image I had of the enamoured "Guybrush 1" than the Guybrush in LeChuck's revenge

Guybrush was different in LeChunk's Revenge because his character developed a bit over the course of the first two games, as fictional characters tend to do.

Saying MI3 is consistent is a little like saying Godfather 3 would be perfectly consistent if Michael Corleone spontaneously reverted back to being the character he was at the beginning of Godfather 1, as if nothing had ever happened.

And how do you explain Marley suddenly becoming madly in love with Guybrush, entirely without warning? Wally turning from secure nerdy guy who accepts his pirate status without a seconds thought, to insecure nerdy guy who's desperately trying to convince himself he's a pirate? Even Stan turning from fast-talking, franticly-gesturing guy, into a laconic slow-talking guy who slowly sways his hands from side to side for no clear reason?

I probably sound like I take this all more seriously then I actually do, but I just don't like it when people excuse designer laziness.

"Monkey Island 3 couldn't have been continued better."

I'm not sure how even fans of the game can really say that - my other complaints might only be my opinions, but it's pretty much an objective fact that several of the characterisations are dramatically at odds with those of the first two games.