I guess you are right, those are certainly the games on my best ever lists...

I agree wholeheartedly. I used to expect games to get a lower score in Edge and this 8 completely sits with their score structure in isolation, but in comparison to the slew of 9's and 10's it just doesn't follow. It seems like EDGE has ended up in the same bag as a lot of others, where only the top third of the scoring system is being used. But despite the scores the reviews are as well written as ever, its just I usually expect EDGE to offer some insight that other magazines don't.

Left 4 dead 2, ODST, both reviews made the games sound worse than this and both ended in a 9. I am slowly seeing that scoring for videogames gets more and more non-sensical, especially as the values are never relative. Be a man EDGE, drop scores alltogether, or at least convert to an out of 5 system.

And how about some completion notes...

http://kotaku.com/5405800/assassins-creed-ii-review-a-season-for-masterp...

EDIT: Also if i read another review that compares the sword fighting of ACII to the fist fighting of Batman I will go mad, am I the first to suggest they might be attempting different things?

Brutal legends strength definitely lies in its storytelling. The key scene for me is just before one of the final battles, and Eddie drifts into a dream of him and ophelia on a sunset beach with "holiday" playing in the background, just before they kiss a wall of industrial metal sound hits and it jumps back to eddie, in the hellish sea of black tears, he raises his head and as he shudders his skin turns deep red and his eyes yellow as he becomes demon eddie. Thats one of the only times I can remember seeing such a synergy of visuals, emotions and licensed music in a game, and what ran through my head is "my god, look what this guy has been through" I've never felt so steeled for the final fight.

"If you’re worried about domestic militias creeping around in your back yard, playing Shadow Complex will take your fears, make them ridiculous, and purge them."

It seems a little odd to assume that playing a game that suggests conspirators against the U.S. exist would dispel conspiracy paranoia. As odd as it would be to assume that playing a modern warfare videogame that uses the current political terms like war on terror, involves Western military operations on foreign soil, and mostly ignores the concept of civilians does not encourage support for the governments operations. Some of the users commenting on this post seem to want a conspiracy theory, they should try the military entertainment complex.

The scariest thing about being brought up on war games, and spy/action films is that they justify military spending on weapons that we think are cool (mostly because we used them to kill some bad guys) operations in other countries (ever played conflict desert storm? a three word review: Iraq without Civilians) and teach us the most base level absolutist morality (the aforementioned bad guys)

This is why you won't catch me playing any game with modern warfare in its title, there's a conspiracy theory for you.