PixlBit

I think this is an interesting take on it, but in the end we have to ask ourselves, what is a video game then? I have yet to play The Walking Dead, and I probably never will, but it seems unfair to remove it from the category of "video games" and establish a new form of entertainment when there's not really a clear declaration of what a video game is.

According to Wikipedia, a video game is:

"A video game is an electronic game that involves human interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device."

If we adopt that description, I think The Walking Dead definitely fits. It's not quite in the same genre or subset of genres that games usually are, but you most certainly interact with it and this generates visual feedback. The feedback may be completely canned, but in a way, so are all games, there's just more complex actions to create the canned feedback.

As for the whole business with the VGAs, The Walking Dead seems like an odd winner. Worse, the whole show seems to celebrate blockbuster games and high profile titles. Some truly fantastic games have come out this year, but they're so under the radar, most people haven't played or even heard of them.

If we compare it to the Oscars, it would be like seeing Transformers and The Expendables show up in the running for best picture. It's not that these are horrible movies, they're just not really the types of movies that film enthusiasts embrace, nor do they feature any of the subtleties that define artists of film. The VGAs are pretty ridiculous and they're certainly not indicative of what a show like that could and ultimately should be.

VGAs aside, I think I ultimately disagree with your assertion that The Walking Dead is not a game, but I do think that we need to understand as a community that such games are narratively-focused and they are inherently built to evoke emotions. If we simply judge games on their ability to evoke emotional responses, we're not fully considering the scope of what games can be. I think that's a part of what happened with The Walking Dead and probably with Journey too, but to a lesser extent.

So much for meaningful discourse. *sigh*

This is somewhat reassuring, though I have to wonder if you can have multiple NNIDs per system, or if it's just the one. I don't think it would be a big deal for me if it were just the one, but I have to imagine that in a family situation with some older kids, each one would want their own to go online with.

I guess we'll see come this weekend. Of course, we still have to verify that online play even works alright, but I'm hoping that's a given.

I felt that the game had more incremental difficulty spikes. However, each time it happens, the game informs you that the car you have is inadequate and prompts you to upgrade it or get a better one.

Furthermore, the game informs you about general areas where better cars are hidden in the environment and urges you to go get them. Generally speaking, once I was able to either retrieve a better vehicle or upgrade one of the ones I already had, the difficulty evened back out.

I'm not the greatest at racing games, but I tend to be pretty good. I was finding this one to be too easy at first and then the difficulty starting coming up to par after the first set of events. In some instances, even after the game urged me to upgrade my vehicle, I kept it the same and was still finding success in the races. I'm guessing the difficulty is going to vary from person to person depending on their experience with the genre.

Costume Quest!

"If you were a fan of the first game, Borderlands 2 is a no-brainer."

I agree. At worst, it's more Borderlands and I can definitely get behind that. I'm going to start the first DLC pack soon, so stay tuned for my next review on the extended content.

This is sounding pretty fantastic. I'm a big fan of the series, so I have high hopes that this improves the core formula and doesn't dumb it down. More information sounds like a great way to do that as long as you still have the unprecedented choice you've typically had.

As you put it Julian, it's sort of a puzzle stealth experience, where the puzzle has many solutions. Not too much longer till its release, so we shall see what comes of this.

Nintendo Arcade Compilation? That would be amazing!

I must agree, however, that it's fairly odd how Nintendo chooses to ignore its arcade heritage - even with more recent releases like the Mario Kart Arcade GP games. People have been calling for home console releases, but they just never happen. Not sure why there's such a strong division there for Nintendo, but it sure would be nice to see that change at some point in the future.

Very surprised that there's no mention of a Wii U release. I wonder if there's a version planned and they didn't want to announce it for fear that they'd canibalize the upcoming sales of 3. Logically speaking, this would've been a much better thing to release instead of just 3.

Thanks for the kind words, vudu. I'd absolutely be interested in sharing this information. Let me see if I can draft something up today and get it posted soon. As for the history behind what happened with Neal and Lauren, I'll share some of that here since I probably won't include it in the article.

Truthfully and honestly, it was just a difference in opinion. Neal and Lauren had a different vision for the site than Chessa and I - as a result things began spiraling downward pretty quickly. The break was a little messy due to some outstanding obligations left unfulfilled and some general bad blood from the conflict. But in the end, I saw Neal at the following E3 and we put the whole thing to bed and moved along amicably.

Regardless, I don't think we rank particularly high over at NWR these days, but c'est la vie. In the end, the split was in all of our best interest. Neal & Lauren moved back to NWR and he got control of the site shortly thereafter. I can only imagine that has been great for his career and under his leadership NWR has seemingly increased their readership and expanded the coverage of the site.

For Chessa and I, we've had the opportunity to build something from the ground up and that's something that we wanted to do from the beginning. Toiling in obscurity is never an easy thing - you need to be satisfied with what you create and be happy with whatever it is, solely because you love what you're doing.

If you have any more specific questions about the situation, let me know, I'll be glad to answer.