YOU said you haven’t played it. You said so, in a previous post. I don’t have to make anything up.

Oh, so I can judge a game without playing it? So if I said that the original Devil May Cry sucked just based on images and trailers, you would take my evaluation as an opinion as solid as someone who spent hours hands-on with it?

If you can’t afford to rent or play a game, then you have the OPTION to excuse yourself from criticism of the game.

You are absolutely free to say that the game appears to suck, but spending time with a game is the only way you can properly criticize a game. If a games journalist criticized video games like you want to criticize a game, you would rain hell down on him/her, and so would all of us. Your evaluation of the game is superficial.

There are people who have played this game and either hate or love it. Some of those people had different feelings before playing it. THAT is why evaluating things second-hand does not equal valid criticism.

The demo is free. $0. Go play that, and give me a review of the demo.

You wont waste your time on the game, but you certainly will spend a lot of time speaking out against a game you’ve never played. Like I said, the demo is free, and it doesn’t take much time to play. Your time is your own. Spend it as you wish.

I am nothing but logical. I’m not the one who has a mad-on for a game he hasn’t even played.

If you played the demo, and, as you say, your mind will never be changed even if you play it, then wouldn’t coming back with a negative reaction to the demo shut me up? Or is it that you fear that you might enjoy playing it on some level?

As you pointed out at some point in this massive thread about how much you hate a game you will never play, some commenter here quoted review scores on Metacritic about previous Devil May Cry titles.

According to Metacritic, which you have exhibited some level of respect for, DmC has an aggregated score somewhere in the 80s. Good critical reception, no? Don’t we want a game that’s respected by fans and critics alike? It’s a thin tightrope to walk, to try and please audiences, while also impressing the critics for positive word of mouth.

They might loose people along the way, but to just continue to appease the loudest voices in the crowd is NEVER the way to go as a storyteller.

I will move out of the way for a second, and quote some random DMC fan about why DMC made way for DmC:

“Then in 2008 Capcom released Devil May Cry 4. While the game is technically sound with tight gameplay and gorgeous graphics and despite it being the best selling game in the series it still did not go over well with the fans. The reason being is Nero. Capcom read the Devil May Cry fanbase wrong again. While the fanbase demanded new ideas with each game a level of attachment to Dante also grew. So, when Capcom tried something new by creating Nero and his Devil Bringer arm, doing what it thought would please the fans, it backfired again.

Quite simply, the reboot is the easy way out.”

Hey, maybe the fans gave up even before DmC was even a germ of an idea. Just because DMC 4 had historic sales for the series, doesn’t mean that everyone who purchased it liked it. Hey, I liked it. It was a lot of fun, but I still think that 3 was the best since 1.

So to reboot may have made you fly into an immature rage that you still haven’t come down, but this is an industry, not a circle of friends playing tabletop RPGs. There’s money and consumers and all sorts of aspects involved in what direction a long-lived series should go. We can’t see into alternate universes, so we have no concrete answer as to how a DMC 5 would be received by fans– fans like you.

So you can go on deviant art or whatever social site you go to and continue this pointlessness about a moment in time that’s already set in stone, or you can be positive, and be thankful that we got as many DMC games as we got. You can also be thankful that this group didn’t just continue with a DMC 5, because not only would you not like it, but it would be canon in the series. We would not even be having this discussion, because you would be in a coma from the shock.

I think that this team showed a lot of respect to you, and all of the haters, by creating this alternate universe that does not tread on the original series in any way.

I wont speak anymore about DmC. Like I said, that’s done. I’ll speak, instead, about criticism.

Yes, there have been critics who are accused and there are even documented examples of untrustworthy gaming outlets. However, when you are able to read many reviews on the same game, and they make the same points independent of one another, then there is much less chance that they are on the take.

Saying that people are corrupt feels to me, usually, that people just don’t want to believe that a very high profile series could actually be of high quality.

Yes, the modern warfare style games are being spit out every two years or so to make money for big corporations. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t well made. There are very talented developers working on them. I’ve played some of these games, and they’re fun to play. The storytelling is another story; some of those stories are crap.

No, appeasing the loudest voices in the crowd is not how things work. If you did, you wouldn’t be just listening to your consumers, but also some people who just like to talk shit, but don’t follow up with purchasing your products/services. People (especially on the internet) like to talk a lot of garbage, to cry and whine and claim that certain decisions stink. The bottom line is who buys and who doesn’t. Just because someone voices their disapproval of a product doesn’t make them a customer.

Yes, people want their products to sell well. That’s the most basic point of business. What if you want to sell more than 2+ mil per game, though? Wouldn’t you have to tweak the formula in hopes to sell more copies? You never want to sell less, but you, don’t want to have a flatline on your graph, either.

I find you to be the epitome of the overly emotional fan. Also, calling me “insane” is hilarious. I guess you were just searching for negative words to say. No one would carry on a discussion with an insane person. You avoid them.

Now I’m passing off lies. How have I now become a propagandist to you? You know, we can disagree on things, but I wonder if you treat everyone who likes what you don’t (or just defends it) as a “liar,” or you act like they’re a brainwashed tool of a corporation.

1. When it comes to just basic mechanics of gaming, a game like MW3 or the like, they are competently made. I’m not going to argue with you on that, because I think that’s not as much up for debate as how much you actually enjoy the game. If a game is broken, bug-filled, or unplayable, then I’d understand you saying Modern Warfare 3′s a poorly made game. It’s just not. Have you played these games? I’ve played a few over the years, and there is a difference in quality between the big games, and the games that weren’t made competently enough to catch on.

2. Yes, I agree. There’s not too much difference from one modern shooter game to the next, but that’s what you get when companies like EA try to make these games an annual thing. There’s no time to breathe and maybe bring in new innovations.

3. So you compare the MW games and Pokemon? I don’t see a lot of difference when it comes to spitting out iterations. I think there’s more care taken to Pokemon, a bit more love, but these are two massive money-making franchises that add on more shiny things for people to want. For the warfare games, it’s fresh online competition, new modes, and new gadgets/weapons. For Pokemon, it’s new Pokemon, new opponents, etc. I remember when 151 Pokemon was all there was, don’t you?

4. I’m mixed on the issue of Mass Effect 3′s ending. I know people didn’t like that ending, but I think that if these writers sat down and made what people thought was an unsatisfying product, but they thought they wrote a good ending, they shouldn’t have caved to what the fans said.

Still, this is gaming, and not film, so you can do something like introduce DLC stories, so you can try to win people back to your side. Wait, though: so to get the ending you want, you have to spend more money? Plus, why do you want the guys who wrote a poor ending to write more for you? Why do you think they’re capable of writing anything better? I heard that the person who wrote for the previous games left, so that is how the writing dropped off.

So would you like, for example, developers of a rebooted franchise, to introduce DLC which resembles the original game? Even if you thought that these developers aren’t worthy of the franchise to begin with?

I guess that’s how you decided to end it; still taking jabs. I apologize for being born with a face which displeases you. If I could, I’d go back in time and rearrange my DNA to create a more attractive avatar for you.

I wondered if I should come back and say one more thing, but I figured that we were done, so I thought it best to just forget it.

Today, when I read the first part of your message, I thought “Oh, this dude’s cool. Maybe I should mention how Capcom might be turning things in his favor because of disappointing sales figures.”

Instead, I’ll just say adios.