gst

Edit: Or Protoman looks disturbingly like Lord Zedd and his cape looks only barely like Zero's blonde hair.

Zero looks disturbingly like Lord Zedd.

Seriously?
This is possibly the most pathetic attempt to draw a link between video games and real-life violent behavior I have seen.

I feel like even ridiculous anti-gaming zealots would read that article and think it was stupid. They can't even call out a video game that depicts realistic violence or a shooter...or I don't know, pick on GTA or something easy like that. No, they call out WoW, say you play a "fantasy warrior from the Middle Ages" and then connect that to "Many young people end up finding it difficult to tell the difference between dream and reality."
Yes, because the boy bringing a shotgun to school was clearly deluded into thinking he should kill his teachers for all the experience and mad lootz he would get.

Even within the realm of crappy anti-gaming journalism this is just lazy. Let's take any old story about a violent kid and tack video games onto it. Doesn't even need to be about kids:
"Thousands of people killed by drunk gamers every year"
"Senator exposed for taking bribes: Sources tell us he plays Tetris sometimes"
"Study finds video game playing is correlated with being a teenager which is correlated with underage drinking"

Murdoch, I'll send you my resume.

Yeah, like my dad has this old thing I think it's a console called NES. It's like super old and it doesn't even have any M-rated games on it. I tried playing one of the games...Contra or something. It had shooting in it, but the enemies just blew up and disappeared instead of bleeding and grunting. I feel really sad for people who had to play games back then when there was nothing mature to play and the all the games sucked.

So colleges turn condescending, self-righteous religious kids into condescending, self-righteous atheist kids. Great - what an improvement.
Either way you are left with a bunch of bellicose zealots who seem to equate "I believe x" with "I am f'ing certain of x and everyone who disagrees is blind/weak/and idiot."

I'm not convinced that a college experience opens a closed mind so much as it opens one mental door and closes another. (And that is not to fault higher education for not forcibly prying closed minds open; garbage in ,garbage out.)

BTW: I personally would feel better if you revealed that you have dual doctorates in Philosophy and Theology.
And if so, you should post a link to your theses. That would be kind of cool.

And then I remember this is a gaming blog...

Agreed. But I think it is mostly due to them not going for uber-realism and using bright primary colors in some of the character designs. Every time I see design like that my brain creates an immediate connection to either WoW or TF2.

It might be that some of the character models or textures aren't polished yet , or my eyes are just tricking me because I think "WoW" when I see War. And I got sad when War threw a car at an enemy and it appeared to turn to dust and/or disappear.

But the animations are great, some of those large enemies look awesome, and that horse is dead sexy.

I never played the first either, and I probably should given my love for Bioware, but watching that has me a little confused.
I realize that it is generally classified as action/RPG or something of the sort, but what I saw looked like FPS/TPS-style point and shoot...just slower. Then again, a video of something like Oblivion would look like an FPS w/ swords and bows; videos of action/RPGs can be very deceiving.

What is the gameplay in Mass Effect most comparable to?

I'm really liking the vitamin analogy - first because the mental image of a kid crawling on the floor voraciously lapping up mouthfuls of Flinstones vitamins will make me chuckle sporadically for the rest of the day, and second, because it is a good one.

Especially if you are talking about them newfangled gummy vitamins - an aberration that steps over that line between "just palatable enough that you can stand to eat one" and "I know eating the whole bottle might be severely toxic, but who can resist gummies?" I'm sorry, this is a complete non sequitur... and yet I will still post it.

Great article.

@jimmy

some Rules of the Internet:

1.Flame first; ask the person to clarify what they said later.

2.Whether or not someone has already been called out several times already for the same comment, they will be ripped on again for it.

3.And never start a sentence with "as a ____ major."
Okay, so that's not really a rule of the internet so much as a general opinion of mine; it just seems like a good way to get in trouble with all the anonymous doctors, lawyers, PhDs, scientists, registered nurses, American Politics 101 TAs, etc who may be lurking.

Zombie Bobslead Team = Impossible Magic?