gst

Who's shooting the messenger?

And kindly point out to everyone the way in which any religion can be reduced to "wicked and hateful?"

Here's a different view: the average person is religious to some degree. The average person is also a dipshit. There is a good deal of overlap there.
Don't knock the philosophy just because (some of) it's followers use it as a pedestal to step up onto their high-horses and spread righteous douche-baggery. Would that there was no religion; would-be-zealots would find something else to justify their supposed superiority over their fellow man (like race, class, politics, need I go on?)

I'm gonna' pass on Left Behind and wait on Charlie Churchmouse: Game of the Year Edition.

Some valid inferences and predictions can be made about the control/gameplay even if the gameplay doesn't show much. Considering Team ICO's history, this game appears to use the same sort of adventure-style platforming that ICO and SotC shared to a degree. From the video, it looks like Last Guardian will be similar.

Also, keep in mind that there are those of us who will adore a game for the music, the art, the environment, the "feel" and "experience" of the game, regardless of what we can say about the gameplay. Which I think we can reasonably expect to be good anyways.

I like the style - they look a messy up close, but when you pull back, the shades meld together into a picture that looks more crisp, detailed, and recognizable than the imperfect shapes that make up the whole.

"Sexy photos of women is not advancing sexism in our culture or any of that bullshit."
Um, are you sure about that? I mean Maxim may not be the primary culprit in the ubiquity of unrealistic and insipid portrayals of sexuality in this society, but it certainly is a part of the problem.
It's easy, even reasonable, to set something like Maxim aside as minor when there are clear examples of outright misogyny elsewhere in our culture, but the case can still be made that giving a 13-year-old boy a subscription to Maxim, expecting that he will "read" it regularly, will likely skew his view of and respect for the opposite sex... well, if his view of women isn't already substantially skewed by other messages and media.

" What about men in porn, or male models? Are they pervading our culture with sexism towards men?"
Yeah. Not in the same way, but yeah. It accounts for stereotyping moreso than the serious discrimination associated with the term sexism, but I am annoyed and uncomfortable, if not insulted when someone assumes that any male in their mid-20s must be motivated solely by the desire to oggle, woo, and subsequently hump any "hot" female in sight. Again, is it a huge issue compared to the larger problems of sexism? No. But is it a contributing factor? Yes. And as such, I don't think it should be dismissed so hastily.

I guess it is sort of jumping the gun to rag on Maxim on a gaming blog, considering that the pages EGM likely had their fair share of overly-sexualized women as well.

The dialog hurts my brain. I don't know quite why in particular every spoken line made me cringe: maybe the forced, over-the-top delivery, the pointless cackle, the fact that each line seems dragged from "The Big Book of Meaningless Cliche's," or that this was all inspired by a work or poetry.
I've never read all of the Divine Comedy, but I assume "You'll never get the girl...Daunte! Bwahahahaha!" is not a direct quote.

Apart from that, (insert positive comments here).

FFVII has the same pull for me as something like Harry Potter - the characters are nothing new, the story is solid, but mostly I just like the world and the atmosphere. The primary characters aren't necessarily deep, but the large cast of supporting characters is varied, interesting, and often amusing (the same can be said for each of the primary locales in the world).

And as far as main characters go, I would rather have a quiet, brooding guy with strange hair and an existential crisis than most of the other character archetypes. Video game protagonists that I like have the wonderful quality of just not saying much (Cloud, Squall...Alucard). I consider that 1. Not to be necessarily "emo" and 2. To be better than gun-toting linebackers with an IQ of 12. Or Tidus. God I hate Tidus.

(Note: Barret doesn't count as one of the aforementioned gun-toting linebackers because he is clearly smarter than that, his gun is technically part of his arm - he can't help it, and he is likely a caricature of that archetype anyways.)

@Zapp

I just don't see that being realistic. Amazon is not going to pay up front before they know what they are getting - if the game is a blank disk/damaged, they essentially just loaned you a bunch of money interest-free for the time that it took to mail the goods and for them to check what you sent them.
Few companies would agree to pay sellers in advance purely out of good will. That is just bad business - in aggregate, a policy like that could cause them to absolutely bleed money in lost interest and investment opportunity. No way they are going to pay up front.

If they did, to make up the difference, amazon would have to charge some sort of penalty for people scamming them or for games considered damaged, which brings up the whole problem of defining a game in "good condition." They are going to have enough trouble with people mailing them bad copies, pirated or burned games, etc. If amazon did then start penalizing people who sent bad copies of games, they then risk alienating people who don't want to spend time and money shipping a bunch of games out only to have them returned as "not in good condition."

I consider most of these problems to really be based on that annoying waiting period while the games are being shipped. The point of amazon is supposed to be that it is convenient. You can buy anything and just have it shipped to you easy as pie. Sure you wait a little while, but that's fine. And you can generally trust sellers on amazon to send you something in good condition.
But, with this system, the boon of internet technology is ruined by the fact that you end up having to make a trip to post office anyways. I buy a game from amazon - takes 5 minutes and I can do it from home, then I just wait for the mail - often a better option than driving out to gamestop or something (often better prices too)
But I send a game to amazon - I have to make a trip to post office, have to pay for packaging and shipping costs (amazon isn't footing the bill for this right?), anjd then have to wait for 2 shipping periods - 1 for amazon to get the games (and verify that they are in good condition), then I get my money, then I buy what I want and wait for that to be shipped to me. That just seems like too much shipping, too much time, and too much trouble when, if I want to trade in games, I can just go to Gamestop. Sure, the trade-in values may not be great, but Amazon would have to offer substantially more value to make up for the costs inherent in their system.

And, if you are okay with having to package and ship the games and having short waiting periods for the selling and buying transactions, why not forget about gamestop and amazon and just sell the stuff on ebay?

@Zapp

I just don't see that being realistic. Amazon is not going to pay up front before they know what they are getting - if the game is a blank disk/damaged, they essentially just loaned you a bunch of money interest-free for the time that it took to mail the goods and for them to check what you sent them.
Few companies would agree to pay sellers in advance purely out of good will. That is just bad business - in aggregate, a policy like that could cause them to absolutely bleed money in lost interest and investment opportunity. No way they are going to pay up front.

If they did, to make up the difference, amazon would have to charge some sort of penalty for people scamming them or for games considered damaged, which brings up the whole problem of defining a game in "good condition." They are going to have enough trouble with people mailing them bad copies, pirated or burned games, etc. If amazon did then start penalizing people who sent bad copies of games, they then risk alienating people who don't want to spend time and money shipping a bunch of games out only to have them returned as "not in good condition."

I consider most of these problems to really be based on that annoying waiting period while the games are being shipped. The point of amazon is supposed to be that it is convenient. You can buy anything and just have it shipped to you easy as pie. Sure you wait a little while, but that's fine. And you can generally trust sellers on amazon to send you something in good condition.
But, with this system, the boon of internet technology is ruined by the fact that you end up having to make a trip to post office anyways. I buy a game from amazon - takes 5 minutes and I can do it from home, then I just wait for the mail - often a better option than driving out to gamestop or something (often better prices too)
But I send a game to amazon - I have to make a trip to post office anyways, have to pay for packaging and shipping costs (amazon isn't footing the bill for this right?), anjd then have to wait for 2 shipping periods - 1 for amazon to get the games (and verify that they are in good condition), then I get my money, then I buy what I want and wait for that to be shipped to me. That just seems like too much shipping, too much time, and too much trouble when, if I want to trade in games, I can just go to Gamestop. Sure, the trade-in values may not be great, but Amazon would have to offer substantially more value to make up for the costs inherent in their system.

And, if you are okay with having to package and ship the games and having short waiting periods for the selling and buying transactions, why not forget about gamestop and amazon and just sell the stuff on ebay?

I call it "The Futile Labyrinth"

It goes like this.

Step1: Build a horrible maze of Tesla Coils.
Step2: Watch it get nuked into oblivion.
Step3: Build another horrible maze of Tesla Coils.
(repeat ad nauseum)