almost makes me want to give the game a try![]()
almost makes me want to give the game a try![]()
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Physics engine needs a little tweaking.
Just a tiny bit, mind.
Fallout is free from GOG.com for the next ~48 hours.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Finally reserved my copy of Diablo III. After the discount from using my Target card and the discount for it being an item on my wedding registry, it came to only $86 after tax for the collector's edition.![]()
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Just finished Mass Effect 3. I'm not sure why everyone was so pissed about the ending. I would have liked more of an epilogue, but it certainly isn't inspiring internet rage in me.
Last edited by Wraith; 04-09-2012 at 05:17 AM.
To be perfectly honest I don't recall many games endings, I certainly never played a game because of its ending. Once its over, its over. Frequently its just credits and I quit.
Ending that probably most made me smile was IIRC Warcraft III. I believe from memory there was a series of "outtakes" from the various characters while the credits rolled.
Bought a PS3 and Red Dead Redemption, because NHL 2012 wasn't available. Red dead Redemption does ruleth though!
I could have had class. I could have been a contender.
I could have been somebody. Instead of a bum
Which is what I am
I aim at the stars
But sometimes I hit London
So, in about 10 minutes I'll see if Legend of Grimrock actually harkens back to the old Dungeon Master times of yore.
God, did the mummies frighten me.
*thump, thump*
*Thump, Thump*
*THUMP, THUMP*
*RRARGH!*
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Draw something
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
Meh, wait a year. Well, anyway, that's my plan. Not really looking to repeat the ME2 experience I had where playing the DLCs involved replaying most of the game. (And honestly, for how story-based the game was, I found it to be more of a chore than anything else... not to mention all the fucking QTEs.)
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.
Charlie Brooker on those conservative idiots in the US who kicked up a fuss about gayness in Star Wars: The Old Republic
Some people are gay in space. Get over it
It must be awful, being a homophobe. Having to spend all that time obsessing about what gay people might be doing with their genitals. Seeing it in your mind, over and over again, in high-definition close-up. Bravely you masturbate, to make the pictures go away, but to no avail. They're seared onto your mental membranes. Every time you close your eyes, an imaginary gay man's imaginary penis rises from the murk, bowing ominously in your direction, sensing your discomfort. Laughing. Mocking. Possibly even winking. How dare they, this man and his penis? How dare they do this to you?
Obviously you can't fight the big gay penis in your head. It has no physical form, so you can't get a grip on it, much as you'd like to. You'd love to grab it and throttle it until it splutters its last. That might bring you closure. But no. So you do the next best thing. You condemn homosexuals in the real world. Maybe if they could just stop all this "being gay" business for 10 minutes, you'd get some respite from that scary headcock. It might shrivel away completely, leaving nothing behind. Except maybe a nice bit of bum.
No, dammit! Forget I said that! No bum either!
Of course sometimes the act of condemning homosexuals in the real world overlaps with the imaginary realm. Over the past few weeks, games company Electronic Arts has been subjected to a letter-writing campaign from idiots outraged by its decision to allow players to define their characters as gay in a Star Wars game. The Florida Family Association says, "children and teens, who never thought any way but heterosexual, are now given a choice to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender" – adding that even if they chose to be straight, they would still "be forced to deal with lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender characters chosen by other players". Personal choice and co-operation: two appalling threats to our youth.
They also claim "there were no LGBT characters in any of the Star Wars movies". I don't know which wacky re-cut version of Star Wars they've been watching, but I saw the original when I was about six years old and even then I was struck by how outrageously camp C3PO is. He was a gilded John Inman in space. And what about Luke Skywalker? Apart from briefly kissing his own sister, he shows no interest in women whatsoever. The first film is a tender gay parable in which Luke falls in love with Alec Guinness and gradually "comes out" as a Jedi. The final scene oozes symbolism: having penetrated the Death Star's trench in his phallic spacecraft, he closes his eyes, submits to his true inner instinct and triumphantly blasts his X-Wing's seed into an anus-like aperture, causing an orgasmic eruption that changes his universe for ever. It's hard to see how they could make Star Wars any gayer, unless they gave the Millennium Falcon a handlebar moustache.
But hang on, some of you are saying, this is a video game we're talking about. Isn't this gay content a bit shoehorned in? Sonic the Hedgehog never agonised over his sexual identity. He was too busy sprinting through a rainbow-coloured landscape leaping at rings. True, but that was in 1991 – which in "technology years" was about nine millennia ago. It's like comparing a cave painting with a surround-sound 3D movie. EA's Star Wars title in question is an MMORPG or massively multiplayer online role-playing game with more than a million subscribers: real people playing and interacting with each other in real-time, and hey, statistically, at least three of those people are going to be gay. The least you can do is let them reflect that in the characters they pick.
But wait: there's even more gay content in another EA space epic, Mass Effect 3, which to the uninitiated is a bit like playing through an entire Star Trek boxset. It's bold space hokum and it's great fun – and just like Star Trek, it includes a range of potential love interests for the main character. Previous Mass Effect titles have let you play as a woman and – gasp – seduce other women: this final instalment is the first to give players the option playing a man who woos men. Play your cards right (or play your dialogue tree options right) throughout hours of gameplay and you'll be rewarded with a short, chaste love scene in which two bare-chested men kiss and cuddle in bed.
Players have complained bitterly about the ending of Mass Effect 3 – not because of the potential for homosexual love, but because they found the narrative underwhelming. The game has a variety of different endings, depending on your decisions: some have moaned that none of the possible endings are happy or satisfying enough. In fact, they've moaned so much, EA has hastily released an additional ending free-of-charge, so these players can experience "further closure".
I can't work out if that's depressing or sweet. On the one hand, they're spoiled little emperors with a mind-boggling sense of entitlement: it's one thing to be disappointed by the end of a story, but another to demand the author sits down and writes you a new one RIGHT NOW. You need "further closure"? What's wrong with you? But on the other hand, it's a sign that players sometimes invest so much of themselves into the characters they play, they care about them to a degree that should make any author jealous. Sneerers will doubtless leave comments about "saddoes" and "shut-ins", oblivious that by doing so, they too are playing a character in an immense MMORPG called the internet. Face it: you've even chosen a nickname and an avatar just to join in.
Allowing players to identify their characters as homosexual isn't, as the anti-gay campaigners claim, a tokenistic novelty, but an unavoidable consequence of the fascinating evolution of video games. Not that there's much point explaining that to them. They don't believe in evolution either. And they wouldn't hear you anyway over the thunderous roar of dicks screaming for ever in their frightened mind's ear.
Its been suspected that EA manufactured, or at least played up, most of the antigay hate. To distract from winning worst company from consumerist and the stock taking a hard hit. There was a journalist that stepped forward a couple of days before the antigay stuff hit the news and predicted exactly how it was all going to happen, and EA has been "caught" stuffing sites with bots.
warning/prediction:
bots:
Last edited by Ominous Gamer; 04-17-2012 at 11:39 AM.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Normally I'd call this ridiculous conspiracy-mongering but since I'm left completely baffled as to what possible "gay" content people might be protesting in SWTOR *I haven't seen any on my main character or the alts* I'm left wondering if there might be a grain of truth in it.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Thank you EA for standing up and defending the rights of gay people. We are here to support you!
I could have had class. I could have been a contender.
I could have been somebody. Instead of a bum
Which is what I am
I aim at the stars
But sometimes I hit London
It's the Family Research Council who are kicking up the fuss. Their diatribe, copied below, is all over the web.
"In a new Star Wars game, the biggest threat to the empire may be homosexual activists! Hello, I’m Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. In a galaxy not so far far away, Star Wars gamers have already gone to the dark side. The new video game, Star Wars: The Old Republic, has added a special feature: gay relationships. Bioware, the company that developed the game, said it’s launching a same-sex romance component to satisfy some complaints. That surprised a lot of gamers, since Bioware had made it clear in 2009 that “gay” and “lesbian” don’t exist in the Star Wars universe. Since the announcement, homosexuals have been celebrating the news, but parents sure aren’t. On the game’s website, there are more than 300 pages of comments–a lot of them expressing anger that their kids will be exposed to this Star Warped way of thinking. You can join them by logging on and speaking up. It’s time to show companies who the Force is really with!"
EA may have played this up to distract from other news, but it certainly wasn't 'manufactured' by them.
It doesn't exist yet. All of this discussion is about a new component to be added in the near future.
TBH, when I first came across the gay character in ME3 (get your mind OUT of the gutter), I almost fell off my couch. When his story kept coming up throughout the game, I was pleasantly surprised. When my version of Shepard was allowed to do friendly flirting I was really surprised at how 'mature' ME had become.
Brevior saltare cum deformibus viris est vita
I wonder if anyone has told these homophobes that you can marry your own sex, and also outside your race, in Skyrim? OH NOES THE END OF THE WORLD BECAUSE OF VIDEO GAMES.......![]()
Nightfall![]()
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
man-on-gungan?
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."