A surprise Friday update! I should say, for anyone who isn't familiar with Lethal Weapon (shame on you!) this is not meant to be a dig at the French! Some of my favorite comics are French!

The arrival of my router today meant I finally got online with my Xbox 360 and tried out the new Sonic 4. My girlfriend summed it up pretty nicely, but my paraphrasing is that no one should be ashamed of buying, playing, or enjoying this game, but Sega should be ashamed of releasing it. It's not bad, but--and I felt this same way about Metroid: Other M--there's something to be said for meeting consumer expectation. If the game is billed as being the successor of the classic 16-bit titles, the physics of Sonic's movement should not be the furthest from them they've been in any other title.

Obviously a lesson I could use myself! Many testers (sorry, available to XBLI developers only) for Astroman have criticized its difficulty, because they were really expecting something easier. My personal taste means that I made a game that's hard, and any game should still be a little taxing, but we do have to meet the audience part way if I want them to play the game at all.