This final entry has to be my favorite. Denis talks about the one console/few publisher future and how the way the industry is going mirrors both the Hollywood system of the 20’s and 30’s and his predictions about our industry shadowing theirs. He also gets a little snippy about IP ownership and future games chat. Excellent stuff. Again Xav — bang up job.

In which Xav gently dangles Denis’ feet over the fire, and Mr. Dyack proves himself an adept firewalker.

His answer on the valkyrie thing is horseshit though. You want a penalty for death? Your armor degrades — that’s a penalty, sir.

Old friend to the site Xav de Matos recently had the chance to sit down and talk with Silicon Knights founder Denis Dyack. Joystiq will be broadcasting the interview in three parts, the first of which is up today. Thanks to the glory of the internet, you can check out an embed of the video here.

Awesome work, Xav! Looking forward to part two. The teaser at the end is my number one question for the man.

Living in the same town as Silicon Knights has it’s advantages. For example: Denis and the gang decided to do a signing at a local EB today. A short bus across our little burg and I was face to face with gaming royalty.

Not much to say really — a signing is a signing. They set up Too Human on a few TV’s and the SK team walked people through it, which was pretty cool. T-shirts, posters and tote bags were given out. And Denis Dyack? Couldn’t have been nicer (or a more likely body double for yours truly).
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I love Metacritic. Like, love love. Most people will tell you that reviews don’t matter, but as you’ve probably figured out in your short time on this planet, most people are full of shit. Obviously you can disagree with a review, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. You can say anything you want to about how only sheep follow the status quo, but it sure doesn’t hurt to see another persons opinion before you drop $70 on a game that might be crap.

That’s why I love Metacritic. One person’s opinion may not reflect the majority, but a composite score (and a list of the reviews that caused it) can give you a good idea of what a game is about. I’ll read reviews at the high end of the scale. I’ll read reviews at the low end of the scale. It helps me to have an informed opinion before dropping coin on a new product. Metacritic lets me do that all in one place.

Unfortunately Metacritic also lets people share their own opinions on a game. The flaw? People are dishonest scumbags. Too Human has a 7.1 user rating on Metacritic based on 75 reviews. The game doesn’t ship until tomorrow. These people are liars. Hating on Too Human has become something of an internet past time as of late, and I’m beyond sick of it. If Metacritic expects me to value everything it has to offer, it should at least forbid user reviews until after the game has shipped. Is that really asking so much?

As regular readers will know, I live no more than a few minutes from the offices of Silicon Knights. Usually that sentence comes for no other reason than a sense of hometown bragging rights (we’re also the home of Neil Peart, Trivial Pursuit and the zipper). Today though? It’s thanks to a little local rag called the St. Catharines Standard.

Mr. Dyack made the cover of the paper today, boasting about how — if Too Human performs as well as he expects — it’s going to turn our local economy around.

“If Too Human does what we expect it will (in the marketplace), then it can change the world for St. Catharines and Niagara.”

Big words, Mr. Dyack. Big words indeed. And you know what? I actually believe him. Dyack and friends have been in the paper a few times this year, often in relation to their attempts to turn the local economy around via tech jobs and other 21st century industries.

You can see it in it’s original form here, but the STC Standard has a habit of pulling it’s articles down after 7 days. As such I’ve posted the full article after the jump.

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Over the weekend Owen Good of Kotaku fame posted up their weekly list of upcoming releases. In the notes preceding this list he sums up the weeks releases as he always does;

Looks like we’ve cycled over to a DLC week, headlined by Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty on PlayStation Network, with Galaga Legions coming out a day earlier (but far, far overshadowed) on XBLA. After R&C, it’s a very thin week. Interesting that a downloadable title is the heavy here.

Really? A DLC title being the heavy this week? And here I thought that Microsoft’s most anticipated exclusive since Halo 3 was dropping.

He then went on and discussed one other title — the shovelware Anubis for the Wii. As one of (what I assume is still) many looking forward to the release of Too Human, I couldn’t help but feel this was a real slap in the face. Kotaku reader okenny summed up my feelings better than I could myself;

Un-fucking_believable! “Interesting that a downloadable title is the heavy here” …beginning to think Dyack really did kill someones child in the game’s journalist scene or committed some unforgivable act of murder. To seriously have a game get dissed this bad and this much when it’s not even bad makes me think something else is going on here.

So what say you? Glaring oversight on the part of Weekend Editor Owen Good, or intentional diss?

UPDATE: Reader Mookie has let us know that Owen has updated his original post and offers a full mea culpa. Score one for Owen (and two for our attentive readership!)