Dead island has also occasionally poped up for that much on newegg. If it's anything like the shogun 2 thing, it will probably pop up again there eventually
Best PC platformer in a long time. A good, classic-feeling platformer. Incredibly well designed. You can just mosey through the level, or you can be an OCD item collector, or you can beat the clock, and it plays differently and feels perfect in each mode. The physics feel great, better than classic Sonic the Hedgehog. There's speed, and precision, and things sort of flip and slip around just the right way.
And the graphics look fantastic, like an animated cartoon. Like Wind Waker, it'll still be pretty in ten years. Go here, download now. Do it.
What? Do you need more convincing? Do you need spoilers? For shame.
And there's a lava level where you play a shoot-em-up-type-thing, Kirby style. And there's an underwater area which is also a musical, and the collectibles and enemies are swimming in intertwined spiraling dance routines. And there's this huge Dune worm of an eel made of lightbulbs that you fight while riding on a mosquito, and then more worms start chasing you, and the level is moving and reshaping and crumbling as you run away and rubble and landmine fish fall in every direction.
Then, just when you least expect it, Wilhelm scream.
Bonus: After having played the demo, did you catch the
I Want To Be The Guy reference?
Also, you can play it with your friends like New Super Mario Bros Wii or something. Not that I have any friends to do that with.
Really impressed with the Rayman Origin demo. Works flawlessly on my ancient machine with no tweaking. Was figuring it was a maybe at best.
The demo works at 800x600 on my Intel GMA X3100, except from some slowdown in the battle rooms where there's all shiny purple ghost effect all over the place. It's a really optimized engine, for all the insanity it has to render.
But I already got an expensive PC, I don't want to buy a Steam console.
I've seen lots of these sorts of posts around the net already, and I think people don't understand what the Steambox would be. It's not Valve releasing a PC - they're not aiming to be a hardware manufacturer. Nor would you necessarily have to buy anything else.
Essentially, it's a revisiting of the 3DO concept, something I've always championed. The 3DO wasn't a traditional console in the literal sense, it was a spec. The idea behind the 3DO is that a bunch of game makers and hardware manufacturers would get together and create a standard for gaming, something which people could build to. That's what steambox would be.
It's valve, arguably the biggest force in pc gaming, getting together with a bunch of partners and saying, "ok, once and for all, let's define what the baseline specs for "pc gaming" will be." Then, presumably, after that, game makers would target that spec for baseline gaming. The idea isn't that valve creates the hardware - it leaves that up to alienware, dell, HP, even you yourself. If you have a steambox spec CPU, a steambox spec GPU, and steambox spec ram, then you can put it all together and download the steambox frontend (I would assume big picture mode), buy a steambox controller, and hook that bitch up to your TV, and play any game written for that standard.
The big difference between Steambox and 3DO, however, would be that Valve isn't interested in owning and licensing the specs. The 3DO failed because the 3DO company was out to make money on the standard, which greatly inflated the price of the console. By contrast, Valve's method would make the cost of PC gaming go way, way down as more and more manufacturers start releasing steambox spec gaming machines, without having to license anything.
This is something which has needed to happen to PC gaming for a long time. We live in a world today where every single game has different minimum requirements. This aims to create a world where all games have the exact same minimum requirements, where, at a bare minimum, if you buy 1 type of hardware, the games will run the same for every single user. This doesn't necessarily exclude the option of buying better CPUs, better GPUs, more RAM, etc for better performance. It's just a way for developers to know exactly what to target to allow their game to run by anybody who games on a PC.
That's why this is huge. I hope to god it is. This would be a PC gaming revolution.
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
When ze Newell says, pc-ist the master race. Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! We ist the master race.
(Thats a spin on the Donald Duck nazi episode).
I'm just going to say there's a slight difference between Valve talking about doing something and an upstart company composed of a handful of random guys nobody ever heard of who crawled out from under a rock in East Bumblefuck somewhere talking about doing it.
I'm just going to say there's a slight difference between Valve talking about doing something and an upstart company composed of a handful of random guys nobody ever heard of who crawled out from under a rock in East Bumblefuck somewhere talking about doing it.
Beyond that, the fundamental idea behind the two is different. This is a SPEC. The Phantom is a proprietary console.
Vastly different. The only similarity is the distribution method.
I am intrigued. I really hope Valve is confident that this will be successful before they commit a huge amount of resources to it. On one hand, taking huge risks results in things like Steam, and another innovation of that size would be fantastic. On the other hand, if they don't have the backing from the developers, the publishers, and the manufacturers this could be a huge failure. Of course its too soon to judge, I just hope they keep up their track record of awesome.
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minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
Who do I make a check out to? Can I they just bill my Steam Wallet? I don't care what it is; just take my money.
Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
You don't really need huge banking from anyone but consumers.
You baseline a spec, people buy it. It builds a demographic. For everyone involved, especially developers and publishers, having a known platform reduces the costs associated with development. You build with that as your target hardware and design accordingly.
It basically would help take a lot of guess work out of both buying, as a not so savvy gamer (which there are a fuck ton of) and designing.
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anoffdayTo be changed whenever Anoffday gets around to it.Registered Userregular
But I already got an expensive PC, I don't want to buy a Steam console.
I've seen lots of these sorts of posts around the net already, and I think people don't understand what the Steambox would be. It's not Valve releasing a PC - they're not aiming to be a hardware manufacturer. Nor would you necessarily have to buy anything else.
Essentially, it's a revisiting of the 3DO concept, something I've always championed. The 3DO wasn't a traditional console in the literal sense, it was a spec. The idea behind the 3DO is that a bunch of game makers and hardware manufacturers would get together and create a standard for gaming, something which people could build to. That's what steambox would be.
It's valve, arguably the biggest force in pc gaming, getting together with a bunch of partners and saying, "ok, once and for all, let's define what the baseline specs for "pc gaming" will be." Then, presumably, after that, game makers would target that spec for baseline gaming. The idea isn't that valve creates the hardware - it leaves that up to alienware, dell, HP, even you yourself. If you have a steambox spec CPU, a steambox spec GPU, and steambox spec ram, then you can put it all together and download the steambox frontend (I would assume big picture mode), buy a steambox controller, and hook that bitch up to your TV, and play any game written for that standard.
The big difference between Steambox and 3DO, however, would be that Valve isn't interested in owning and licensing the specs. The 3DO failed because the 3DO company was out to make money on the standard, which greatly inflated the price of the console. By contrast, Valve's method would make the cost of PC gaming go way, way down as more and more manufacturers start releasing steambox spec gaming machines, without having to license anything.
This is something which has needed to happen to PC gaming for a long time. We live in a world today where every single game has different minimum requirements. This aims to create a world where all games have the exact same minimum requirements, where, at a bare minimum, if you buy 1 type of hardware, the games will run the same for every single user. This doesn't necessarily exclude the option of buying better CPUs, better GPUs, more RAM, etc for better performance. It's just a way for developers to know exactly what to target to allow their game to run by anybody who games on a PC.
That's why this is huge. I hope to god it is. This would be a PC gaming revolution.
This would be huge. This is basically the number 1 reason why so many don't even bother with PC games, and understandably so. Buying a game for your PC and finding it doesn't run or runs like crap is extremely frustrating. I know we've all been there.
But I already got an expensive PC, I don't want to buy a Steam console.
I've seen lots of these sorts of posts around the net already, and I think people don't understand what the Steambox would be. It's not Valve releasing a PC - they're not aiming to be a hardware manufacturer. Nor would you necessarily have to buy anything else.
Essentially, it's a revisiting of the 3DO concept, something I've always championed. The 3DO wasn't a traditional console in the literal sense, it was a spec. The idea behind the 3DO is that a bunch of game makers and hardware manufacturers would get together and create a standard for gaming, something which people could build to. That's what steambox would be.
It's valve, arguably the biggest force in pc gaming, getting together with a bunch of partners and saying, "ok, once and for all, let's define what the baseline specs for "pc gaming" will be." Then, presumably, after that, game makers would target that spec for baseline gaming. The idea isn't that valve creates the hardware - it leaves that up to alienware, dell, HP, even you yourself. If you have a steambox spec CPU, a steambox spec GPU, and steambox spec ram, then you can put it all together and download the steambox frontend (I would assume big picture mode), buy a steambox controller, and hook that bitch up to your TV, and play any game written for that standard.
The big difference between Steambox and 3DO, however, would be that Valve isn't interested in owning and licensing the specs. The 3DO failed because the 3DO company was out to make money on the standard, which greatly inflated the price of the console. By contrast, Valve's method would make the cost of PC gaming go way, way down as more and more manufacturers start releasing steambox spec gaming machines, without having to license anything.
This is something which has needed to happen to PC gaming for a long time. We live in a world today where every single game has different minimum requirements. This aims to create a world where all games have the exact same minimum requirements, where, at a bare minimum, if you buy 1 type of hardware, the games will run the same for every single user. This doesn't necessarily exclude the option of buying better CPUs, better GPUs, more RAM, etc for better performance. It's just a way for developers to know exactly what to target to allow their game to run by anybody who games on a PC.
That's why this is huge. I hope to god it is. This would be a PC gaming revolution.
This would be huge. This is basically the number 1 reason why so many don't even bother with PC games, and understandably so. Buying a game for your PC and finding it doesn't run or runs like crap is extremely frustrating. I know we've all been there.
PC is my preferred platform, and I still get wary about each and every game's performance. The only reason I even play demos is to test how well the game runs (I wish demos on PC were more common).
But I already got an expensive PC, I don't want to buy a Steam console.
I've seen lots of these sorts of posts around the net already, and I think people don't understand what the Steambox would be. It's not Valve releasing a PC - they're not aiming to be a hardware manufacturer. Nor would you necessarily have to buy anything else.
Essentially, it's a revisiting of the 3DO concept, something I've always championed. The 3DO wasn't a traditional console in the literal sense, it was a spec. The idea behind the 3DO is that a bunch of game makers and hardware manufacturers would get together and create a standard for gaming, something which people could build to. That's what steambox would be.
It's valve, arguably the biggest force in pc gaming, getting together with a bunch of partners and saying, "ok, once and for all, let's define what the baseline specs for "pc gaming" will be." Then, presumably, after that, game makers would target that spec for baseline gaming. The idea isn't that valve creates the hardware - it leaves that up to alienware, dell, HP, even you yourself. If you have a steambox spec CPU, a steambox spec GPU, and steambox spec ram, then you can put it all together and download the steambox frontend (I would assume big picture mode), buy a steambox controller, and hook that bitch up to your TV, and play any game written for that standard.
The big difference between Steambox and 3DO, however, would be that Valve isn't interested in owning and licensing the specs. The 3DO failed because the 3DO company was out to make money on the standard, which greatly inflated the price of the console. By contrast, Valve's method would make the cost of PC gaming go way, way down as more and more manufacturers start releasing steambox spec gaming machines, without having to license anything.
This is something which has needed to happen to PC gaming for a long time. We live in a world today where every single game has different minimum requirements. This aims to create a world where all games have the exact same minimum requirements, where, at a bare minimum, if you buy 1 type of hardware, the games will run the same for every single user. This doesn't necessarily exclude the option of buying better CPUs, better GPUs, more RAM, etc for better performance. It's just a way for developers to know exactly what to target to allow their game to run by anybody who games on a PC.
That's why this is huge. I hope to god it is. This would be a PC gaming revolution.
Thank you for posting this large and detailed post.
Now whenever someone comes in and starts going "LULZ they can't compete with XBox" or similar, we can just point in the direction of this post.
And I agree, a degree of standardisation of this nature something that's been a long time coming. IF this is actually true, it's the biggest shake-up to the nature of PC gaming since the stand-alone graphics card, and how that caused a massive shift in the market between "home" PC's and "game" PC's.
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BarcardiAll the WizardsUnder A Rock: AfganistanRegistered Userregular
As someone who uses his PC (and future PC builds) for rendering/graphics work/ AND games should I be worried at all about this, or happy? I think I should be somewhat happy, right? I'm a bit confused by the potential of this.
Things you wouldn't expect on a PA game server: Getting kicked by the admin just to free up a slot for him, when you're the one with the least amount of time played on the server and almost everyone else has been there for over 2 hours.
As someone who uses his PC (and future PC builds) for rendering/graphics work/ AND games should I be worried at all about this, or happy? I think I should be somewhat happy, right? I'm a bit confused by the potential of this.
PLEASE NOTE: THE FOLLOWING IS LARGELY SPECULATION ON MY PART, BASED AROUND MY UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT THE ARTICLE IS SUGGESTING.
The regular PC isn't going to disappear. More than anything, this will be a spec that different manufacturers can build towards, and then that different developers can design their games around. Something consistent and constant.
To theorise on how this would work a little, you could have say, a machine that's rated as "Steam 2012". And that's it, when a person is buying a game, they don't need to know how fast their processor is, or how much RAM they have, whether their ATI graphics card is up to the equivalent spec of the Nvidia minimum requirement listed. The minimum spec (or at least, a rating for it, since I imagine system specs are still going to be around) for the game would be something like "Steam 2011". Your "Steam 2012" machine WILL run it, and to within certain criteria (HD graphics, playable framerate etc.). Any game that's rated as "Steam 2012" or below, you'd be able to play fine.
You can have what is effectively a "Steam" PC (if we're going to call it that) if you build it yourself. And if you need more than that, you upgrade accordingly. And I would imagine other manufacturers would be building theirs with the prospect for upgradability, as with any standard PC. Heck, I imagine a lot of them will effectively BE standard PC's, just meeting the requisite spec.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I'm making some nice progress with my Steam backlog. Finished off Bastion and Monkey Island SE.
I started up Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templar after finishing Bastion(amazing game), and geez.
Talk about obtuse puzzles.
As someone who uses his PC (and future PC builds) for rendering/graphics work/ AND games should I be worried at all about this, or happy? I think I should be somewhat happy, right? I'm a bit confused by the potential of this.
I'm excited as hell. This is essentially the creation of a license-free media standard. The implications of that are huge. As someone else said, this doesn't mean the PC will go away. It's just that developers have another box they can develop for.
An open, license-free market for gaming that has mainstream appeal is the holy grail. Imagine a world where anybody can be a game developer. Where they're not treated as second-class developers because they're not a billion dollar dev, as they are on XBLA. It sounds like heaven for those in the creative industry.
You know why there isn't a gamepad for the Ipad or iphone? Because one company will develop a pad and use it, and then another will develop a different, incompatible pad and use only that. In order for a gamepad to take off on those standards, the biggest players in the game market would need to come together and agree on a single pad that they would use, which could freely be used in any app. That is exactly what this is, except for PC gaming. That a mega-player like Valve is kickstarting it is even better, as their philosophies are extremely consumer oriented.
Hey TSR, hope you don't mind, but I cross posted your excellent post in the Industry thread. I felt a lot of people would find the explanation handy.
I wish someone would post it over on neo-gaf, because the entire thread over there is full of people who just don't get it. Page after page of "no one is going to buy an expensive PC" or "it's just a PC with steam's logo on the case" or "how is this different than a windows PC + steam at all?"
It's not. That's not what this would be. It's not a physical product. It's a concept.
Exactly. What this puts me in mind of is back when IBM first developed the PC. They didn't force it to be completely proprietary, they released standard so that anyone could make a PC, and anyone could make software for it. It's one of the reasons that for all that time, it was the PC was dominant over the Apple personal computers (and really, still is for most things).
Especially ironic considering Gabe Newell's comments about closed platforms today, and how everyone's taken PRECISELY the wrong lessons from Apple's success with the iPhone and are, once again, ALL trying to create their own freaking walled off and exclusively controlled gardens. I mean you mentioned Valve's pro-consumer attitude, and I'm thinking to myself "If anyone OTHER than Valve were making this, there is no freaking way they'd allow competing services like Origin on it".
The combat is pretty standard, but with Celerity (superspeed) it becomes waaay more fun. Being able to run circles around bullets with Level 5 Celerity generates its own fun.
Seriously, the only way to not like this rpg is to not like rpgs.
If you like rpg games this is one of the ones you get. It's on every rpg lovers "must get" list, even if they haven't heard of it.
In my experience combat is what rpg's have in order to let you put some meaning into the actual role playing bit.
It doesn't really matter that it is standard because everything else around it is so good.
I am an afficionado of top class action games. I will tolerate crappy ones, but I adore and worship and regularly play good ones.
For rpgs, I don't particularly care or think too hard about the action in them, because I'm not playing them for it.
I'm of the exact same opinion. I can forgive games like Fallout, Bloodlines, or even Alice: Madness Returns (not an RPG, but story-driven) their mediocre gameplay because that's not what I'm there for; I'm there for the story. As long as that's good, unexceptional gameplay doesn't bother me.
Posts
I don't see any clear way of telling from looking at the Amazon page.
I gifted it to somebody who had it on their wishlist when it wasn't on sale, because its that awesome.
Haha, holy shit that is amazing.
And thus did he then know that he had a problem.
edit: never mind, this is the Vox Games place (which I have heard of). So this might be legit.
"Interesting" is a great word to describe this.
It's run by the founders of Engadget. The Verge isn't some unknown site.
Well, if it becomes real anyway.
Then it's gonna be real.
Best PC platformer in a long time. A good, classic-feeling platformer. Incredibly well designed. You can just mosey through the level, or you can be an OCD item collector, or you can beat the clock, and it plays differently and feels perfect in each mode. The physics feel great, better than classic Sonic the Hedgehog. There's speed, and precision, and things sort of flip and slip around just the right way.
And the graphics look fantastic, like an animated cartoon. Like Wind Waker, it'll still be pretty in ten years.
Go here, download now. Do it.
What? Do you need more convincing? Do you need spoilers? For shame.
Then, just when you least expect it, Wilhelm scream.
Bonus: After having played the demo, did you catch the
Also, you can play it with your friends like New Super Mario Bros Wii or something. Not that I have any friends to do that with.
The demo works at 800x600 on my Intel GMA X3100, except from some slowdown in the battle rooms where there's all shiny purple ghost effect all over the place. It's a really optimized engine, for all the insanity it has to render.
I've seen lots of these sorts of posts around the net already, and I think people don't understand what the Steambox would be. It's not Valve releasing a PC - they're not aiming to be a hardware manufacturer. Nor would you necessarily have to buy anything else.
Essentially, it's a revisiting of the 3DO concept, something I've always championed. The 3DO wasn't a traditional console in the literal sense, it was a spec. The idea behind the 3DO is that a bunch of game makers and hardware manufacturers would get together and create a standard for gaming, something which people could build to. That's what steambox would be.
It's valve, arguably the biggest force in pc gaming, getting together with a bunch of partners and saying, "ok, once and for all, let's define what the baseline specs for "pc gaming" will be." Then, presumably, after that, game makers would target that spec for baseline gaming. The idea isn't that valve creates the hardware - it leaves that up to alienware, dell, HP, even you yourself. If you have a steambox spec CPU, a steambox spec GPU, and steambox spec ram, then you can put it all together and download the steambox frontend (I would assume big picture mode), buy a steambox controller, and hook that bitch up to your TV, and play any game written for that standard.
The big difference between Steambox and 3DO, however, would be that Valve isn't interested in owning and licensing the specs. The 3DO failed because the 3DO company was out to make money on the standard, which greatly inflated the price of the console. By contrast, Valve's method would make the cost of PC gaming go way, way down as more and more manufacturers start releasing steambox spec gaming machines, without having to license anything.
This is something which has needed to happen to PC gaming for a long time. We live in a world today where every single game has different minimum requirements. This aims to create a world where all games have the exact same minimum requirements, where, at a bare minimum, if you buy 1 type of hardware, the games will run the same for every single user. This doesn't necessarily exclude the option of buying better CPUs, better GPUs, more RAM, etc for better performance. It's just a way for developers to know exactly what to target to allow their game to run by anybody who games on a PC.
That's why this is huge. I hope to god it is. This would be a PC gaming revolution.
(Thats a spin on the Donald Duck nazi episode).
Steam ID: Good Life
Formed at the beginning of the year they soft-launched Vox Games (temporary name) same week as PA Report.
Editor-in-chief: Christopher Grant (Joystiq)
Managing Editor: Justin McElroy (Joystiq)
Features Editor: Russ Pitts (Escapist)
News Editor: Brian Crecente (Kotaku)
Reviews Editor: Arthur Gies (Joystiq, IGN)
Deputy News Editor: Griffin McElroy (Joystiq)
Senior Editor: Russ Frushtick (UGO)
Senior Editor: Chris Plante (UGO)
It's almost like you don't even understand the basic concepts behind this in the least.
Ah, it was joystiq, not Engadget. My bad. But my point still stands - this isn't a bunch of unknown people.
You are right about the Engadget connection, their former EiC is founder of The Verge main site.
I'm just going to say there's a slight difference between Valve talking about doing something and an upstart company composed of a handful of random guys nobody ever heard of who crawled out from under a rock in East Bumblefuck somewhere talking about doing it.
Beyond that, the fundamental idea behind the two is different. This is a SPEC. The Phantom is a proprietary console.
Vastly different. The only similarity is the distribution method.
You baseline a spec, people buy it. It builds a demographic. For everyone involved, especially developers and publishers, having a known platform reduces the costs associated with development. You build with that as your target hardware and design accordingly.
It basically would help take a lot of guess work out of both buying, as a not so savvy gamer (which there are a fuck ton of) and designing.
This would be huge. This is basically the number 1 reason why so many don't even bother with PC games, and understandably so. Buying a game for your PC and finding it doesn't run or runs like crap is extremely frustrating. I know we've all been there.
PC is my preferred platform, and I still get wary about each and every game's performance. The only reason I even play demos is to test how well the game runs (I wish demos on PC were more common).
Thank you for posting this large and detailed post.
Now whenever someone comes in and starts going "LULZ they can't compete with XBox" or similar, we can just point in the direction of this post.
And I agree, a degree of standardisation of this nature something that's been a long time coming. IF this is actually true, it's the biggest shake-up to the nature of PC gaming since the stand-alone graphics card, and how that caused a massive shift in the market between "home" PC's and "game" PC's.
PLEASE NOTE: THE FOLLOWING IS LARGELY SPECULATION ON MY PART, BASED AROUND MY UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT THE ARTICLE IS SUGGESTING.
The regular PC isn't going to disappear. More than anything, this will be a spec that different manufacturers can build towards, and then that different developers can design their games around. Something consistent and constant.
To theorise on how this would work a little, you could have say, a machine that's rated as "Steam 2012". And that's it, when a person is buying a game, they don't need to know how fast their processor is, or how much RAM they have, whether their ATI graphics card is up to the equivalent spec of the Nvidia minimum requirement listed. The minimum spec (or at least, a rating for it, since I imagine system specs are still going to be around) for the game would be something like "Steam 2011". Your "Steam 2012" machine WILL run it, and to within certain criteria (HD graphics, playable framerate etc.). Any game that's rated as "Steam 2012" or below, you'd be able to play fine.
You can have what is effectively a "Steam" PC (if we're going to call it that) if you build it yourself. And if you need more than that, you upgrade accordingly. And I would imagine other manufacturers would be building theirs with the prospect for upgradability, as with any standard PC. Heck, I imagine a lot of them will effectively BE standard PC's, just meeting the requisite spec.
I started up Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templar after finishing Bastion(amazing game), and geez.
Talk about obtuse puzzles.
Usually cyphers include a hint or two.
I'm excited as hell. This is essentially the creation of a license-free media standard. The implications of that are huge. As someone else said, this doesn't mean the PC will go away. It's just that developers have another box they can develop for.
An open, license-free market for gaming that has mainstream appeal is the holy grail. Imagine a world where anybody can be a game developer. Where they're not treated as second-class developers because they're not a billion dollar dev, as they are on XBLA. It sounds like heaven for those in the creative industry.
You know why there isn't a gamepad for the Ipad or iphone? Because one company will develop a pad and use it, and then another will develop a different, incompatible pad and use only that. In order for a gamepad to take off on those standards, the biggest players in the game market would need to come together and agree on a single pad that they would use, which could freely be used in any app. That is exactly what this is, except for PC gaming. That a mega-player like Valve is kickstarting it is even better, as their philosophies are extremely consumer oriented.
I wish someone would post it over on neo-gaf, because the entire thread over there is full of people who just don't get it. Page after page of "no one is going to buy an expensive PC" or "it's just a PC with steam's logo on the case" or "how is this different than a windows PC + steam at all?"
It's not. That's not what this would be. It's not a physical product. It's a concept.
Especially ironic considering Gabe Newell's comments about closed platforms today, and how everyone's taken PRECISELY the wrong lessons from Apple's success with the iPhone and are, once again, ALL trying to create their own freaking walled off and exclusively controlled gardens. I mean you mentioned Valve's pro-consumer attitude, and I'm thinking to myself "If anyone OTHER than Valve were making this, there is no freaking way they'd allow competing services like Origin on it".
I'm of the exact same opinion. I can forgive games like Fallout, Bloodlines, or even Alice: Madness Returns (not an RPG, but story-driven) their mediocre gameplay because that's not what I'm there for; I'm there for the story. As long as that's good, unexceptional gameplay doesn't bother me.