Putting a key developer's photo on the back of a box would be a HUGE step forward for the games industry- it's easier for the general public to think of games as art if we think of game-makers as artists. What's the difference between a film snob and a game snob, other than the choice of medium? A game snob rarely watches the credits.

ComputHer? I barely even know her.

Naw, my biggest pet peeve is cutscenes that are TOO easy to skip over. I never got a chance to see the cinema scene in Prince of Persia: sands of time where the whole story up until that point is (SPOILER) revealed to be flashback or whatever because I assumed after saving and quitting that it'd pick up right where I left off, i.e. the cutscene that followed entering that save point. But no, I turned the game on the next time and found myself dropped right into the final boss fight with farah alive and no idea why I was there or why I was dressed differently or anything. And I've never seen that cinematic, only piecing together the biggest twist of the game from the end credits. (watches on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlEfcKDsp5o&feature=related) okay, that makes things make much more sense. Wish I hadn't missed that at the time though. Other offenders: Guitar Hero III, Re5 (though the latter's scenes aren't as disappointing to miss...)

The angriest I've been in recent memory has got to be Wesker in RE5. Oh, a QTE is the only way to finish him off, you say? Shooting that big pulsating weakspot on his chest and back won't be enough? Even though he screams in pain every time you do it? Oh, so you can't unload a small army's worth of ammo into said weakspot until you are left with only a knife to finish the job? So you can't keep knifing him in the back as he hopelessly fails to do even an iota of damage to you or your partner?

NO. You can shoot him three times with an upgraded pistol and then press a bunch of button prompts to stab him in the chest with the same knife you were just stabbing him in the chest with. Fuck you and your rocket launcher. I spent two hours in an endless knife fight with Wesker only to let myself die, restart and take him down in one and a half minutes. And then I got to see the stupid-as-all-hell ending cutscene to top it off. I'm still not quite over that.

You know, I kind of got the feeling that when Valve was making the original L4D, it was just a way to blow off steam in between Half-life episodes, you know? Like, "well, we've got this huge, sweeping epic on our hands, but fuck it, let's just have a stupid good time killing some zombies too, because we can." Valve is clever-- they presented the original L4D as a self-aware, tongue-in-cheek jab at the zombie genre, heavy on action and light on everything else. And the original L4D is just that--stupid giddy fun, not to be taken as anything deeper than perhaps a loving homage to pulp fiction.

So... when they start treating L4D as a headlining franchise, releasing a me-too sequel before making the next Half-life episode, I get a weeeeee bit nervous. Surely a sequel for a series as well-known as Half-Life has got to be a reasonable financial bet, right? No need to play it safe with low-cost sequels just yet, right? Now, I know developers work on multiple games at a time, so if they're working on another Half Life episode and don't want to show it yet at E3, then I'm okay with that. I'm also okay with the idea that L4D2 is a way of making some easy money to put towards HL3. Okay, cool. I'm on board.

Valve's got a good track record for delivering the good stuff in time, so I think it's too early to be calling them names. Still, in light of the 2009 E3 philosophy of "moar big sequels plz," it's easy to understand why Valve fans like myself aren't totally ecstatic about L4D2.