100 percent. I will make it clearer in the OP.

Yea, look at the famous losers who play video games and don't become like them! Garry Kasparov, for example, played Elite in the 1980s and proved to be a loser by... winning the World Chess Championship, founding a company that now is the biggest in its sector (ChessBase), getting millions of dollars... Wait, maybe he wasn't a loser.

But look at the pilots. Now THEY are losers! Playing video games ("flight simulator training") and then they need to travel from one end of the earth to the other, twice a day. Yea, those are los... wait, look at their income after 30 years of work!

Ok, but here are losers. U.S. soldiers. They must play America's Army 3, and if that doesn't make them loser enough, they also go to Iraq/Afghanistan/Wherever and get their lives bombed out to defend freedom after believing propaganda stuff of honor, blahblahblah, you do it for your country. Yes, they are losers, but it's not their fault. But your ex-girlfriend never talked about fault. So, yes, let's agree with her!

And now let me get back to being a loser. Better than being a loser who doesn't play video games. :-)

(No offense intended, take the bits you don't like satirical. After all I don't know her and maybe she has a career and whatever and is a loser just for being unable to have children until she is too old. Or she has no career and has children and is a loser for being not a top-income lady. Or maybe she makes parties and has five boyfriends already by the age of 16 and is totally not a loser for being only good enough to everyone for one thing and never being able to get a stable relation except with you. Or maybe she really is a nice girl but has only a strange point of view and is otherwise okay. As I said, I don't know her.)

New game + is a feature of many indie games, a selling point even. It feels to me like the problem is you being a competionist, and resenting having to work for it. So either stop trying to get everything, or accept that for some people replayability is a draw, as is finding stuff while exploring.

As for 1 to 3, I generally agree, although 3 highly depends on you. If you're very good, complaining that only the highest level is a challenge doesn't mean much, because to many other people the lower levels are a challenge.

(I didn't read the entire thread, just noticed it now and replied to the OP, so if I retread old ground I apologise for that.)

I have nothing against New Game +, but why do it so that you HAVE to do multiple playhtroughs that are essentially the same thing again? The worst offender: unlockable difficulty settings. Honestly? Why do I need to finish a game on Normal before I can play it on Hard?

Sure, if you have really different character classes, I won't complain. Finishing Diablo 2 with all characters - fine for me! Finishing an adventure twice (Droggeljug, anyone?) - not!

This makes sense if the locked difficulty takes advantage of in-game experience (like items) that is needed to continue. If that's not the case then I agree.

Anyone remember Call of Duty Finest Hour? The game that had unlockable "cheats" by beating the game multiple times on newly unlocked difficulty settings, it was something like that.

*inserts random picture of famous losers who play video games as a cautionary example for the kids* ;)

That works for most games, but some devs want a difficult game or a more casual game. And I don't see an issue with them making those types of games.

Also, that wouldn't work well for puzzle games.

I can understand him. Multiple playthroughs can be very boring, especially if the number of differences between the playthroughs is small then we talk about a lot of repetition going on and not everyone likes a lot of repetition. On the other hand missing out content because you don't want to make all the playthroughs is bad for the player who is not willing to do the repeated playthroughs.

It's a matter of taste and the initial list is by no means general, but I can largely agree. I think the feature of multiple playthroughs is kind of overrated.

I agree, but to a certain extent I also understand the way Protoss feels. For me it depends on what kind of content I'm missing and why. I'm kind of a completionist myself, but the New Game+ options (probably inspired by Diablo?) hardly ever bother me, if they just unlock new difficulties, items, scores and whatnot, because in most cases that''s stuff I don't care about. If I've seen everything I was interested in and still don't get a 100% completion rate, I just shrug and move on since it's just a number.

What I don't like though is missing story content, and while I do like exploring a lot, I'd agree that some games handle this better than others. I didn't take issues with the Bioshock games so far, because from what I've seen if you explore the levels you will automatically come across the story collectibles. But I'd agree that SpecOps: The Line did a bad job in this regard, because I got the feeling that they explicitly hid the story collectible, and in rather empty areas that you wouldn't have any reason to explore otherwise. And then you can only search for them during the short breaks between scripted combats while your companions press on, so that exploring for collectibles really feels out of place in the game. On top of that the areas are very small and restricted and you can never return to them if you continue with the story so you're not really free to explore at will anyway and every collectible you overlook on the first occasion is a collectible lost in your playthrough. This is a game that forces you to explore in order to see all of the story content, without bothering to make sure the exploration does actually work and is enjoyable. I assume it won't be much fun to replay the game for most players either, because the story is more or less the only thing it really has going for it and it depends on the players going in blindly.

I miss the days when a new game came with a big 200 page manual with lots of backstory and useful information and stats and lore etc. I kick myself for throwing away my big Baldur's Gate manual that was great to read. I guess it's good for the environment but I still miss my paper manuals.

This is a bit console exclusive a pest, but I despise when devs use the under analog stick buttons. It wears out the sticks, the button is always cheap it seems (only exception being Dualshock 2), and some games have you hold it down and move the stick. Just frustrating and one more reason FPSs are better on anything but a PS3/360 (having enjoyed both consoles for these kinds of games, this is especially annoying). Doesn't bother me in PS2 games where the function was rarely used on anything prevalent, but anymore it's used too often.
I know exactly what you mean. Even PC games get wimpy, uninteresting manuals these days, and let's not even start on what they're like for consoles.

IF they get a manual at all... I bought many boxed games that came with only a printed paper. Front page was nohting but a big epilepsy warning, back page explained how to install the game, and how to use wasd+mouse.
This was the "manual".

Thankfully the opposite still exists as well. Dragon Age came with a beautiful manual ^.^ I don't like reading manuals, because I prefer finding out everything on my own, but that manual was not only 44 pages long, but also quite beautiful to the eye, it was printed onto expensive paper and it.... smelled good *_* However it only explained the "basics" of the game, no lore, or stuff like that.

I also got a boxed copy of Haegemonia. The manual is 64 pages long, and around 1/3 of it is lore and backstory^^

I personally think that the reason games no longer have 200 pages long manuals, "only" around 50 it's because 200 pages would not fit into the disc case.

Not to sound too elderly here, but I remember back when manuals were actually the size of a book, in the Gold Edition of the original Age of Empire for instance there was extensive information on each of the nations involved but that was the Gold Edition. I always did appreciate it when manuals were in rich color, like the original PS2 version of Red Faction, it was printed in full color and contained nearly all the backstory the game had.

I completely disagree on 5, in fact from my point of view 5 is something that we once had in gaming that is now being lost. Gone are the days of Morrowind when joining one guild would cut off your access to another competing guild, now we have Skyrim which lets you join every guild.

It's odd that deus ex 3 gets a mention yet deus ex 1 did the same things and it doesn't get a mention. There were different ways to go about the levels, you could miss things or not spec into a build that would lock you off from certain things later in the game.

IMO the modern gamer mentality of wanting everything in one play through is one of the pests of modern gaming.