There's a whole lot of fantastic indie games out there, but I still find that the large majority of my playing time is spent on AAA games.

I think with indies, too many of them are one-trick ponies and are shorter experiences. Which is fine, there's nothing wrong with that necessarily as the game prices do tend to reflect that so its fair, but it also means that I usually end up playing one, typically having a good time with it, but then I'm ready to move on and play a larger-scale game again.

First person shooters certainly have come a long ways.

In the beginning, it was all just mainly PC corridor FPS's. Games like Half Life, Deux Ex, Far Cry 2, Borderlands and Battlefield games took things in entirely new, great directions. None of these are anything like the original PC shooters.

I think its a well-thought out article that I disagree with completely.

He admits off-the-bat that FPS's don't interest him much in the first place. You could argue that its a chicken'n'egg situation and that the state of FPS's is what causes this, but I don't think so. He says that what immerses him most in a game is story, so right there, he's downplaying the effect of a 1st-person perspective in immersion, which is really one of the key ways of achieving this. But that's fine, that's his preference and I don't have a problem with that.

But I have to say, I will rarely agree on matters of video games with people who value story highly. Mainly because video game stories are cliche'd, badly written and just plain dumb overall. There's a few above average ones, which I would ironically say are games like Halo and Half Life, both FPS's, but its mostly B-tier narratives at best, and this goes for role playing games, third person shooters, visual novels, whatever. So when they say they value story in games more than anything, its telling me that they fundamentally see video games completely differently than I do and play them for different reasons.

I think the FPS genre has become fairly diverse lately and you are hardly limited to the stereotypical military, dudebro shooter if you are willing to take the time to look. I'm currently playing Dishonored and its been a huge surprise how great and fresh it feels. But if the article writer values story, then they're not going to like it, no matter how awesome the gameplay is, cuz the narrative is drivel.

Its pretty clear the person simply doesn't like FPS's in general and there's not going to be anything that changes their mind. Which, again, is fine, but I'd hardly say its a fair perspective of the state of FPS's today.

Yea, PS3 version looks awful by comparison. And amazing how many of the textures and assets are completely new/redone, not just a higher resolution version. This is a far greater effort than The Last of Us remaster.

I already bought you a present, though. :(

I think if you played it right after Fallout 3, you might have been experiencing a bit of burn-out.

It was based on the implications of your post.

I didn't originally accuse you of anything. Just made a general point.

Woah, that's really soon.

I need to check my bank balance....

You said that the person who wouldn't buy it for full price 'has standards', while everybody else doesn't. Which is nonsense. People who buy it for $60 don't 'lack standards', they just have a different, *personal* appraisal of the value offered. This is an entirely subjective thing. So Rockstar don't have anybody by the short curlies. Every person is free to wait if they like. Or free to not buy it at all. But if people do want to buy it for full price, then there's nothing wrong with that. That's their choice and they shouldn't have to deal with people implying that they lack standards or are doing something wrong.