Wiper

Oh god yes, I totally agree on the aggressive gaming 'personality' front, I've no urge for Edge to move in that direction. Equally, I've no problem with them having a strong house style that their writers follow - Edge having a distinct voice is something I enjoy. But they could do all of that while allowing their reviewers to be named, which for me would give the same benefit that knowing whether Jaz was the writer did for you back in the day.

That actually flags up one thing that I do disagree with re: Edge's reviews, as it's both something which feeds the treatment of reviews as objective, and makes gauging the relevancy of their reviews to the individual more difficult: their presentation of each review as "by Edge" rather than a specific, named reviewer. I can understand the appeal of giving Edge a sort of mystique, feeling like an unknowable cabal rather than a group of individuals, but I'm still not fond of it (and not just because it's kind of pretentious). Knowing who is reviewing a game makes understanding where it's coming from, how likely the opinions within are to be applicable to me personally, much easier. By anonymising their reviews they both seem to suggest that there is a complete Edge-wide consensus, and make it far harder to gauge what the reviewer's general preferences are, which really isn't helpful and just helps fuel the idea that there is only one perspective to review games from, and any deviation from that is simply wrong rather than different. Which is doubly frustrating given Edge's penchant for otherwise doing a good job of going exactly against that and being willing to publish reviews that go against the grain on occasion.

I look forward to the day when massive game discussion communities like resetera are comfortable enough with their medium and their preferences that outrage arises against the tendency for near-complete consensus amongst critics on high profile blockbuster games, rather than against the rare outlet that does buck a trend. You know, like every other medium, where critic preference and aesthetic sensibilities are seen as valid sources of variation in reception, as opposed to treating reviews like some sort of Which? guide to the best washing machine where a checklist would do as good a job.

I'm a fan, if by fan you mean 'having palpitations just thinking about Project Zero on Xbox'. I thought it was really well designed, but also utterly unplayable due to said design making it entirely terrifying. I just never could cope with the series - much as Alien Isolation remains beyond my ability to enjoy.

Nah, they're just a bit gross as a company. On Twitter they were supporters of Gamergate, whipped up a fake controversy about Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 being 'banned' in the West due to 'censorship' as a way to drive sales, and when people pointed out that the game wasn't actually banned (you know, rather that it was simply not published in the West) they branded said people SJW's and sicced their followers on them. Unpleasant, in short.

I sincerely hope you were barred from the quiz for cheating and/or being a bellend

Well, having rolled my character for my first D&D campaign next weekend (a peppy forest gnome UA Revised Ranger) and just having started to prep myself for that, I ended up throwing myself into my first game of D&D on zero notice today, as an old work friend was running a one-shot this evening and they had a free slot. So having spent my time learning to appreciate the ways of the jolly gnome ranger, I naturally found myself playing a bitter war-hero half-elf rogue. Which actually reasonably pretty well - rolled well in combat and generally for stealthy/acrobaticness, so I got to do my whole backstabbing wall-climbing ninja shtick a fair bit. Less so in investigations, though, where a series of natural 1s ensured that my character consistently snuck into important locations only to make such wise observations as "I'm in a house!", or find themselves utterly trusting the most shady, unbelievable characters. This, combined with a pyromaniac bard, a dramatically unlucky... wizard? Spellcaster of some description, plus some bad team decisions meant that we reached the end of the night's adventure in entirely the wrong town, having lost every thread of the plot, leaving us to take a long, expensive journey back upriver to try and actually resolve the mystery that started the night. Great fun, would do again.

What a bump! The game is worth it though - still my favourite of the series (indeed, the only one I would happily refer to as 'great'), it has a character and scale that I love. I'm not sure I'd bother with the backward compatible version when the PC edition is leaps and bounds ahead, even before mods come into it. Still, nice to see the game getting remembered a bit more again, and having this slice of forum history pushed back up! Alas, I fear the very first thread was probably in an earlier incarnation, and never made it across

Thanks for posting this; I'm playing my first D&D 5e game in a few weekends (my first tabletop RPG of any kind in a decade), and had been planning to play an animal companion focussed ranger... and so was a bit discouraged when I read the handbook and saw the whole 'animal takes an action or ranger takes an action' design, which seemed insane. The UA version seems to fix that entirely; I'll chat with my DM and see if they're happy for me to use that ruleset.

I don't know why we're arguing such minor details as whether BOTW really deserved to be number 1 here, when the real crime is that the Yakuzas woz robbed.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I have to say that the Dreamcast is my favourite console of all time, and when I talked about being happy at it approaching obsolescence I didn't mean to denigrate it or its library - I'm just genuinely glad that a good portion of its best games have found their way to other platforms (in a way that, say, the Saturn's haven't). I never expect to sell my Dreamcast as I love the machine (and its controllers, for their flaws), but the more opportunities people have to play its games (or, even better, to play improved versions of them - VR Rez; portable, HD, twin-stick Jet Set Radio) without needing to buy a second-hand machine and games the better!

I trust you're planning to go back to Yokosuka and experience it anew with the official Shenmue Sacred Spot Guide!

And thus, not obsolete! Sadly It's also still the only place to play big screen Power Stone (I genuinely can't believe that was only ever ported to the PSP, of all fucking things), and remains the only place to play the best semi-realistic racing game of all time (Metropolis Street Racer, obviously), not to mention the wonderful, utterly forgotten Toy Commander. I also have an unrepentant love for Tech Romancer, but I appreciate that's probably just me. But yes, the number of DC-only (or DC-superior) greats is finally approaching zero, which is a good thing.

The MD is a beautiful thing. I would say that the SNES benefits from miniaturisation in a way the MD doesn't though; the former's cute, curvy simplicity shrinks nicely, where the MD's faux turntable looks suit being at larger scale. A mini DC would be the cutest thing of all, of course.

Good news about the controls, at least: