It was excellent - I finished it just a few days ago. On PC graphics were great and framerate very, very smooth. When I played PS3 demo I wasn't very impressed but on PC it worked well and wasn't too difficult on normal setting. Story was good, jokes funny, voice acting appropriate and it's a fairly long game by today's standards. Oh, and PC version is rather cheap at CDN $35 too.

A generic JRPG? From gameplay videos it looks like anything but. Even if that's all that is, the quality of cutscenes was like nothing I've seen short of Square Enix. If "even Japan didn't like it" is true, this can only be good news - they like their stuff generic, so if this one wasn't... Anyway very little has trickled here about the game so far, except for that one mediocre impression from some snotty website.

Yes, it's the bad writer woman. I've been gaming since 1984 and Heavenly Sword was the first game I ever stopped playing due to atrociously bad story. In fact I did a point of looking up her name to make sure I NEVER buy any game she had any hand in. I.e. Mirror's Edge. Predictably, the reviews panned that aspect of it. And from little snippets I can see above, she really does represent the worst in the modern gaming industry. Too much dialogue would distract from gameplay. Riight. That's why Mass Effect suffered so badly (/sarcasm).

Internet needs a break from her, huh? I'd say go away and don't let the door hit you on your way out. There's too few studios left standing to have incompetent people writing stories - especially since the stories are already cut to the bone thanks to the sensibilities of today's 18-24 demographics. God forbid someone makes a modern game with a good story that takes more than 6-8 hours to finish for your $70 worth.

Deus Ex is on my top 10 of all time list (and I've been gaming since 1984). And yeah, nothing like that came out since. Those were the days of Thiefs and System Shocks and small, independent studios pushing the envelope. Today's games are getting more and more shallow, even the highly decorated ones like BioShock don't come close.

How about a WARNING when you post an external link to Gamespot? Some of us have REALLY sworn off that site, you know? Or did you already forgot?

I used to read GameSpot every day and rely on it as my primary source of games info. I stopped visiting it at the time of the scandal - and I'm proud to say I haven't been there since (apart from a very occasional visit through a linked news, and even that only as an accident). That's one resolution I didn't have trouble keeping, though it does hurt a lot to not have a comprehensive site one can depend on. RIP.

I have a friend who is abstaining from buying a Xbox 360 for EXACTLY the same reasons as you. I can't see how can he be so patient, either.

Agreed, Mass Effect is my pick for GOTY too. A friend who came over was hooked on it before we even landed on the Eden Prime. Now he's trying hard to justify not buying a Xbox360 :).

I like your list, fairly well politically balanced, as it would be from a major publication. Not that I fully agree with it - Portal should have probably been included somewhere (even though I haven't played it, the amount of praise is staggering). Probably as "big sleeper hit" category winner. Also I'd personally award the "Adventure" genre to Uncharted as AC just didn't grab me. BioShock licensed old songs rocked, too.

360 was indeed the best this year, I fully agree.