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What does the L4D intro movie teach us?There's something about Left 4 Dead's brilliant intro movie that's always bothered me: Who sets the Witch off? Louis. Who runs away from the group after the chopper flies overhead? Loiuis. Who subsequently gets jumped by a hunter? Louis. Who succeds in shooting the hunter in the head only to have it fall on a car and set off the alarm? Louis Who screams indecisivley in a little voice "Run or shoot? Run or shoot!?!?! Louis Who naivley believes that after reaching the safety of the roof that "We made it. I can't believe we actually made it!" only to be immortally rebutted by the veteran, Bill "Son, we just crossed the street... let's not throw a party until we're out of the city, ok?" Errrmmm.... Louis And as a side note... who's the real hero of the intro movie? Who saves Bill from the Smoker AND casually despatches two infected while helping him back onto his feet? Who faces off to a Tank? "C'mon... C'MON!" Who saves Zoe by grabbing her hand and helping her up on to the roof? Vince, the leather clad tatooed biker. I mean it's pretty obvious Valve is filled with white supremist, gay bear loving, misogynists. And I LOVE Valve... wonder what that makes me....? ]:8Z Is our world a Madworld?Been staying away from Madworld simply because I don't find this kind of violence personally entertaining but I just had to post on this article...
"If us brainysphere/ludodecahedron types are going to think deeply about the games we play, then we have to judge everything we play. If a game that lets us take a little kid’s hand or shoot a flower petal over a lawn makes us feel extra-good, shouldn’t Madworld do the opposite? Because these are our actions, not just our experiences. And the minute we get past the tutorial, we implictly agree with every single horror that happens afterwards."
TrueachievementsI just laid in a new link in my Playtime box to my page on the Trueachievements.com website. It's a new fun service that tries to recalculate an Xbox360 gamerscore based on how hard the actual won achievements are. "We believe the harder an achievement is to obtain, the more points should be received. Here's a link to their website, you have to sign up if you want to use them and it can take a day for them to read in all your achievements. The state of play 6/2-09I've been having a lot of connection problems with my 360 lately. So many that on most fight nights I have had to defer the hosting to someone else in the gang. If it hasn't been games crashing it's been people not being able to join...
But something good came out of it. We suspected that maybe Gears 2 was just too "heavy" for my meagre swedish broadband and decided to run Gears 1 up the flagpole for a bit of a retro night. And it was good.
We enjoyed ourselves so much that it's become a regular thing again. Friday nights is Gears 2 fight night and we've returned Gears 1 to the top spot on Saturdays.
Friday night was fun. Jaded Diamond and A Scabby Gash joined us regulars for a bit of random "noob bashing". They considered us the noobs but I think I got in a couple of good uns. Saturday was Gears 1 and me bruv Millwall4ever was guest host this week after NWRipper owned us all last week. We "coughed" host advantage so many times he got annoyed and said he'd never host again just to prove us all wrong. :)
Offline I've been clearing up the cheevos on The Bourne Conspiracy. Mrs. Lefty bought this for me as a suprise one day because I've seen all the films and read all the books and at first I hated it... might have had something to do with me starting it on the hardest difficulty setting. See, the cheevos are stacked so if I'd finished it on the hardest one the two lesser levels would also have been mine mine mine... couldn't get past the first fight(!)... so I put the game aside for about two months... But one day when I couldn't find anything better to do I fired it up again, started on the easiest level and sailed through! Looking forward to the full thousand GPs...
Is this still here...?Actually I'm just popping back to announce a bit of a change. I use Google's excellent Google Reader to collect and go through all my fave RSS feeds. It's quick, easy and accesible from any device with an internet connection... the only danger is that if your not careful you can end up with a score of feeds and hundreds of articles to go through everyday. I haven't been careful. In fact I had so many articles to go through I didn't have time to blog about them, not even the interesting ones, because the fairly obvious function of blogging directly from Reader does not exist. "Thank God for that!" I hear you cry... Well, your not getting off that easily. The one way I can blog is to "Share" articles I read in Reader. I can even write comments on the articles I generously decide to share with you, dear readers. So that's what I'm going to be doing from now on. I'm toying with the idea of doing a weekly round up blog post here on my Live Space but on a day to day basis I'm just going to be "sharing" any interesting articles i find through my Google Reader. All my Shared Items are available here: You can even subscribe to an RSS feed of articles I share, though be aware that this feed only provides you with a direct link to the actual article and not my Shared Items page.
Daily pickings 24/11I've posted on this sort of thing before, and my unclear confused opinions still haven't changed. I get an unusual feeling when the real world military comes anywhere near my favourite entertainment... I think it's my conscience. Our hard earned, quickly wasted wages are going on games that may or may not indirectly help train soldiers to kill people. And it's not just the morally bankrupt capitalist west, by the way: Advocacy group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is finding that video game controversies are a terrific way to stir up publicity for their cause. An unnamed PETA spokesperson told gi.biz: "We use games to highlight the cruelty to animals because they appeal to people who are interested but may be turned off by more direct appeals..." The National Videogames Archive is housed at the National Media Museum in Bradford, and aims to document and preserve videogames culture and achievements. "The amazing work that SCEE and Harmonix have both done to broaden audiences for videogaming make it especially appropriate that they should kick-off the NVA," commented Iain Simons, director of GameCity. And finally... Things you missed while I was outI'm far too lazy to give you excuses about why I haven't blogged in a while. Suffice to say that my almost obsessive world spanning search for an all encompassing solution to blogging directly from Google RSS Reader to my Live Space has proved... fruitless. News: BBFC downgraded 22 adult-rated games, claims ELSPA Study Says Wasting Time Online Is Actually Good For Kids Islamist Militants Burn Videogame Shop in Pakistan CERN scientists divert Nihilanth threat GamerDNA launches community contest to raise money for Child's Play Avatars - The "Rich & Famous" Intarweb List Nickelback Wants You To Stop Playing Guitar Hero News: Traffic light ratings to go live this spring GTA IV Ads Back on Chicago Buses, But Future M-Rated Game Ads Banned Daily pickings 12/11Hot on the heels of the Chinese internet addiction thingy in my last post comes this: "The family of an Internet addict who was sentenced to death for poisoning his parents after spending money they gave him on online games has applied for a mental illness appraisal after Internet addiction was declared a mental disease in China this week."
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/article/?id=380288&type=National Next time you get gamer's thumb just remember this guy and the amount of effort he had to go to just to play. An inspirational story on destructoid.com... even if they seem a little more interested in the controller modding than the kid himself.
http://www.destructoid.com/inspiring-handicapped-hardcore-gamer-s-extreme-controller-mod-111066.phtml The ban hammar falls... from both Micro$oft and Bli££ard.
"In our continued effort to keep gameplay safe and secure for our community of more than 14 million members, Microsoft has taken action against a small percentage of Xbox 360 consoles that have been illegally modified in order to play pirated games" http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/MajorNelson/~3/450242591/xbox-360-console-banning.aspx In a statement Blizzard said "as part of our continued effort to ensure a fair and fun online experience for all Battle.net players, we have expanded our efforts to remove cheaters from StarCraft and Diablo II." http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/blizzard-bans-350-000-battle-net-accounts Speaking of the temptating of cheating:
http://www.gamepolitics.com/2008/11/11/if-white-house-was-video-game New help for ignorant parents who can't be bothered finding out what their kids are getting up to and want to rely on someone else to tell them what's right and wrong: "the Entertainment Software Rating Board has created new "rating summaries" for videogames, providing game buyers an objective look at the "context and relevant content that factored into a game's ESRB rating assignment".
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/87403-ESRB-Adds-Expanded-Videogame-Rating-Summaries and at least one ignorant parent is happy about that:
http://www.gamepolitics.com/2008/11/12/hillary-lieberman-hail-esrb039s-new-rating-summaries A "PC Gaming Alliance"? We've got something like that for the Xbox360 already...
http://www.unscripted360.com/xbox-360-laws/ Germany have one of the most restrictive censorship systems in the world. Many games released in neighbouring countries and all over Europe are illegal there. So... what the heck are they doing hosting the World Cyber Games?:
http://www.gamingangels.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=4188 Wikipedia has an informative article about the World Cyber Games, by the way. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Cyber_Games And finally...the mayor of a city in Turkey is suing Christopher Nolan, producer, and Warner Bros. for royalties from the 2008 blockbuster The Dark Knight. The name of his city is Batman. "There is only one Batman in the world," Kalkan said. "The American producers used the name of our city without informing us." Where have you been for the last fifty odd years? The last line in The Escapist's article is pure gold: "Obviously, Kalkan's efforts aren't expected to go anywhere, but nonetheless the case is reportedly being closely monitored by civic leaders in the former Soviet republic of Spidermanistan"
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/87398-Dark-Knight-Director-Sued-By-Batman Daily pickings 11/11Yes, yes, I know I'm a day behind. I have a good excuse...
"Perhaps not most of the time, and certainly not every time, but playing through the single player campaign of Gears of War 2, you're guaranteed to feel something, even if it's just the excitement of playing a juiced-up badass with a magnetic backpack full of high-powered weaponry who stomps the crap out of everything that gets in his way." That's me that is. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/5466-Review-Gears-of-War-2 "Gears of War 2 isn't just for hyper-competitive teenage Xbox Live addicts, it's for grownups who want to chill out with friends, too." That's me too that is too. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/op-ed/5471-Many-Lancers-Make-Light-Work And I'm going to cheat a bit here, travel forward in time and stick something in from 12/12 (which was actually yesterday...): "More than 1.5 million people signed into "Gears of War 2" during the weekend, racking up a total 15 million gameplay hours and helping set a new record for concurrent LIVE players. These players also collectively unlocked more than 19 million GoW2 Achievements." That was partly me too! I helped anyway. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/MajorNelson/~3/450425266/gears-of-war-sells-2-million-units-and-we-unlocked-over-19-million-achievements.aspx Good news. Layabouts, coach potatos and escapists from reality like me will hopefully soon have a legimate reason for bunking off work as China recognises internet addiction as a legitmate affliction. Lets hope this spreads round the world quickly... like a plauge.
"Tao Ran, who set up China's first internet addiction clinic at the Military General Hospital in Beijing, said his studies of more than 3000 people over four years led him to determine that the condition is legitimate, similar to compulsive gambling or alcoholism". I wonder if I can get benefits for staying at home to blog...? Hang on a minute according to Wikipedia the estimated popultaion of China in 2007 was 1,321,851,888. If this guy did a study on 3000 patients that means he's judging the condition's legitimacy on only 0.000002% of the population. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/87371-Internet-Addiction-Coming-To-China-In-2009 Forget about interent addiction I'm off down the pub every night which will probably make me an alchoholist.
http://www.gameculture.com/node/892 And finally... "Laser-bugs near the pointy gun!".. made me laugh anyway.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/GamerscoreBlog/~3/449945492/562305.aspx UPDATE to Daily Pickings 10/11In my last post I tried bringing up my confused opinions about a crossover between videogames and war. Videogames=good, war=bad... videogames about war or even aiding the war effort=???... Lo and behold almost immediatly after posting I found this in my RSS inbox. Although there's a bit of a debate about who PixelVixen707 really is (and how "she" is probably the product of an ARG viral ad campaign) that does not detract from the fact that I really wish I could write like this: http://www.pixelvixen707.com/?p=427 Daily pickings 10/11This is cooool... a bust of a Locust drone to greet you when you arrive home from work. But instead of a bust why don't they make a thing that you can mount on a wall, like a hunting trophy. Make one for every kind of Locust and people could collect them and have a line up on the wall. I would... Though probably a little high brow for the average gamer this average gamer is happy to promote a new "online center for participatory learning about video games" in America. "...the most important aspects of video games are as old as the Iliad and the Odyssey, and just as potentially beneficial to society", Homer's Odyssey benefited society by eventually producing the cartoon series Ulysses 31... so I'm grateful to him anyway. Does he have a blogg? If I can find out his email address I'll send him a thank you. I'm getting a little alarmed by the crossover of videogames and army simulators or even actual military operations being aided by skills learnt in gaming. I've posted things about this here and there. The classic sci-fi idea of future wars being fought by robots or remote control is a reality in some aspects but we don't really seem eager to give up the concept of sending real live people to war to kill other real live people... I think as a species we just enjoy conflict too much. Can't we go back to a system where every nation has a champion and if you've got a beef with someone the champs can fight it out? You could have a number of champions who excel in different disciplines... like Streetfighter or even bashing someone’s head in with a club if you want keep the crowd happy... "Sorry, Mrs.Lefty, I can't do the dishes or hoover the front room. No, I'm not wasting my time with videogames "again". I'm going to the library. Yes, you heard right: L-I-B-R-A-R-Y!" Over here a brand new freshly released Xbox360 game costs about 600 Swedish crowns which is about 48 British pounds. If you wait just a couple of weeks a gamer junkie or fanboy/grrlgamer will have finished with his and moved on to the next one which means that his copy of that brand new game will turn up on the "second-hand" shelf for anywhere between 20 GBP to 10 GBP... doesn't take an Epic Games President to figure out which one I'll be buying. And finally...5 Other Ways To Use The Gears Of War Lancer Something from the weekendFive foot women are always attacking me... now they've got a bleedin' convention: In principle I'm against ANYTHING that get's me up and moving and my answer to obesity in gamers is to keep playing and don't even stop to eat. If I'd known it was this easy to drive I would've started doing it along time ago. After all I'm a champion on Test Drive Unlimited and can drive my Koensigg at 300 kph up and down Hawai without hitting most of the other cars...: Excellent, a documentary about videogame violence. Great to see two worlds colliding like a left hook and somebodys face. Not content with paranoid ignorants vilifying violence in gaming today... somebody's gone and made a film about it. Actually joking aside it's won some awards and should be quite interesting. I'll just complete the extermination of the Locust Horde and then I'll go and watch it: There's been a lot of ups and downs with Australia's videogame rating system. Certain parties in the government DON'T want an 18 rating because without one it becomes easy to ban games with "mature" content. Gamers of course demand the 18 rating due to previous videogames being released with watered down content and the fear of future games not being released there at all. And finally... WHAAAA?!?! An actress/model who plays Lara Croft not knowing anything about archaeology? Next you'll be telling me that Timothy Olyphant doesn't know anything about being a perfect clone trained by the Organisation to become an elite Hitman, or that Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson doesn't know anything about being a Union Aerospace Corporation marine and going to Mars through an alien portal to fight mutants infected with Evil or even that Ash doesn't know anything about training Pokémons or fighting the Darkrai... Daily pickings 6/11Fighting games involving that elusive combo of both dexterity and speed are not really my thing so I haven't played Mortal Kombat and probably wont be playing this but I was slightly upset by the idea that some of my favourite superheroes could be beaten in a boxing match. C'mon!... that's just not right. Batman could whip Radons arse anyday of the week and twice on Sundays... (is Radon even a character in Mortal Kombat? You know what I mean anyway...). I was actually even more upset by the idea that the Joker could "die" from a "fatality move". But I am all for the Clowned Prince of Crime dealing out deathblows to others so it is with pride that I link to this article about his fatality move apparently NOT being censored for us sensitive europeans.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/87261-Joker-Fatality-Uncensored-In-Europe Interesting read from Jane of gamegirladvance.com about the possible futures of entertainment (although I can see alot of the trends mentioned in the various medias we have today!). Contains a link to Linda Stone's website on "continuous partial attention" which has me riveted. Apparently it's just one more thing I didn't realise I was "suffering" from until I'd heard about it... not all bad news though, apparently it means I'm evolving.
http://www.gamegirladvance.com/archives/2008/11/04/the_futures_of_entertainment.html Is this even worth looking into?
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/euroclash-to-publish-currys-in-store-magazine Over here in chilly Sweden we have a free multiplatform videogame magazine that is given out in Game stores. It's independent as far as I can tell and not a bad read... but can one trust this one from Currys to give unbiased reviews and such? And finally...I don't feel at all late with this report about the midnight launch of Gears 2... (that's last midnight for those who don't know). http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/GamerscoreBlog/~3/444727254/562261.aspx It appears that everybody on my Xbox Live friends list who pre-ordered Gears 2 through an internet shop received their copies YESTERSDAY morning in the post... that's almost a full day before the games "official" release. While I was slacking off at the office and using the company's hardware for my surfing pleasure all I could see was EVERYBODY except me playing it all during the day... it can't be all down to the guys in the next article, can it? http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/GamerscoreBlog/~3/444727254/562261.aspx Daily pickings 05/11Vending machines for games and such? Don't see these lasting long in a dodgy neighbourhood. But I DO see an increase in games being traded in to retailers in said dodgy neighbourhood..."No, I couldn't find the original receipt... yeah I've totally played it out, know what I mean. There was alot of running... and jumping.. and stuff.... if you brush the broken glass off you can sell it like new..."
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/87183-UK-PoP-Machines-To-Spit-Out-Games I've been keeping an eye on this story about how since 2005 California is in danger of passing an actual law making it illegal to sell mature games to little innocent kiddies. It makes my special-spidey-anticensorship-sense tingle. If you make access to a medium illegal you ARE causing censorship. Censorship is bad. But "allowing" little innocent kiddes to play mature games is bad. Maybe it's a good thing to legally censor mature games...?
"How do you protect the first amendment and ensure there's not going to be limitations on the free expression of individuals' desires and wants and creativity when developing these games but at the same time protect our kids and the general public?" http://www.gamespot.com/news/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=26660256&part=rss&tag=gs_news&subj=6200550 Peter Parker's Uncle Ben's take "With great power comes great responibilty" and from Edmund Burke "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." I'm going to go deeper and follow some of the links in this next article myself just for the sheer entertainment value. A "convicted wacko" in a South Carolina prison in America is suing Blizzard for something or other... can't quite make out what. In his handwritten suit Jonathon Lee Riches writes (in the third person I might add...) "World of Warcraft caused Riches mind to live in a virtual universe, where Riches explored the landscape committing identity theft and fighting cybermonster rival hacker gangs". I think it's supposed to be the basis of a defence appeal. Beautifully brilliant.
"Riches has a history of filing random lawsuits against random people and things, including President George W. Bush, Jeff Gordon, Benazir Bhutto, the 13 tribes of Israel, Plato, Jimmy Hoffa, the Eiffel Tower, Mein Kampf, the Roman Empire, Three Mile Island". The 13 tribes of Israel! Damn, those guys have got a lot to answer for... This next article isn't really about anything but it provides me with an opportunity to promote the gaming angels and gives you who don't know about the ECA an excuse to pay them a visit.
http://www.gamingangels.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=4141 And finally if one needed anymore convincing that continued exposure to videogames can make you a complete out and out nutjob just read this: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/87235-id-Founder-Building-Galactic-Fishbowls Report links game violence aggression. >:8(You know how I love reports and statistics on gamers. I'm a natural devils advocate and have a "thing" for that most basic of human instincts... pidgeonholing. This report came out a couple of days ago and responses to it are coming in thick and fast... well, mostly thick.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/122/5/e1067 To quote something entirely out of context simply to fuel the fires of sensationalism: "We now have conclusive evidence that playing violent video games has harmful effects on children and adolescents,". Well it damages my wallet and keeps me up at night. (I'm childish and adolescent so I'll assume they mean me too.) http://www.gamepolitics.com/2008/11/03/report-links-game-violence-aggression-us-and-japan But before we're even given a chance to take it all too seriously here comes a response from the following article: "The authors here simply ignore a wide body of research which conflicts with their views..." http://www.gamepolitics.com/2008/11/03/texas-aampm-researcher-disputes-new-game-violence-study Dr. Cheryl K. Olson, co-author of Grand Theft Childhood, isn't convinced. "It's not the violence per se that's the problem, it's the context and goals of the violence," http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/news/study-violent-games-increase-aggression-among-youths/?biz=1 Then I like this quote from The Escapist: "The data collected was primarily from kids rating their own aggression levels, but the information gathered from the U.S. children was also weighed against comments from peers and teachers". So you've got a load of adolescents being asked how tough they are: "Ok, subject X, next question: If somebody tries taking your lunch money do you a) run away crying to the teacher or b) slap him upside his head?" etc, etc. And, well, if the peers and teachers weren't too scared to give info to the researches about how aggresive their kids were... then the kids just can't have been that aggresive! ]:8) A Dr. Christopher Ferguson has become a bit of a figurehead for the negative response this report has received. Matt Peckham of PC World scored a two part interview with him. "...some of my own research that I've done, I've found that controlling for family violence exposure pretty much wipes out any relationship between violent games and aggression". http://www.pcworld.com/article/153278/violence_in_games_a_conversation_with_christopher_ferguson_part_one.html OK, enough of that. Just a last note to say that all that flippancy and context wrangling quoting above is of course only a reflection of my own inflated opinons and that I wholeheartedly recommend whoever reads this blog anyway to go and read up on as much as you can for yourselves if your interested in the subject. Yesterdays News Today !Just to get you warmed up for my intended comeback into the fast paced glamorous world of daily posting here's a couple of things from the past two weeks I just couldn't let slip by...
Now, I know this has been exposed as a hoax but I must say that even the idea of this..:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/87007-World-Of-PeaceCraft-Coming-In-December-UPDATED http://www.gamepolitics.com/2008/10/24/quakers-set-launch-world-peacecraft made me almost as upset as this...: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/86997-Muslim-Virtual-World-Coming-Soon Positive discrimination is still discrimination. If you don't want things to be an issue don't make them into one. Personally I can't remember that I've ever been backward about admitting to anyone that I play videogames. They are a big part of my free time so that's what comes out if people ask me what I've been up to... playing games and bleedin´ blogging. But ever since gaming became a Culture instead of just a Waste Of Time I've been seeing a lot of articles and posts about who gamers really are and why gamers game and what gaming is. The Brainy Gamer did a series of good articles that I linked to in previous posts but this one from gameculture.com is as good an example as any: http://www.gameculture.com/node/863 A new "old" rating system on the way in the UK? ELSPA are doing a "Labour Party" and changing their colours so their rating system for videogames is more like the clear favourite's BBFC's in an attempt to jump on their popularity wagon. http://www.edge-online.com/news/elspa%E2%80%99s-new-content-rating-system http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/news/uk-gaming-industry-adopting-traffic-light-system/?biz=1 http://www.gamepolitics.com/2008/10/28/elspa-green-lights-new-color-coded-ratings Some people aren't happy about it though:
http://www.edge-online.com/news/bbfc-may-sue-elspa-over-traffic-light And the following link leads to a quite good summary of the whole issue from Rob Fahey of gamesindustry.biz.
"Less significant but arguably more crucial to content classification are the wider cultural differences that spread across the region. In the southern and eastern areas of the continent, Christianity (and especially Catholicism) have a firmer grip, which deeply affects what is considered passable. Britain, by comparison, is very permissive - while some other states in northern Europe, such as the Netherlands and the Scandinavian nations, are arguably more permissive still. So by whose standards, exactly, should a pan-European rating be set?" ROCK ON SWEDEN!!! http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/rating-compromises_9 Speaking of Sweden, the current population of that unashamedly permissive society is reported by Wikipedia as 9 234 209. http://www.edge-online.com/news/wow-crosses-11m-mark Here's an article on yet another attempt at a legal restraint on that god given right to game: http://www.gamepolitics.com/2008/10/29/proposed-canadian-law-don039t-game-while-driving And finally I would like to officially credit PixelVixen707 with coining the phrase "Jesus game":
http://www.pixelvixen707.com/?p=389 Phew... that brings me almost up to date. If your still reading this post after all that then congratulations. You deserve a prize... I know! I'll do another post tomorrow. ** Warning. Personal bit **For all my loyal readers that noticed (thanks mum) I didn't post at all last week. I had a headache. A big one. Thought it might have been a brain tumor but Mrs.Lefty sympathetically reassured me that one requires a brain in order to have a brain tumor... But after intensive medical investigations using that huge repository of often accurate information Wikipedia, I have self diagnosed myself as a sufferer of Class 2 Migraines (without aura) induced by changes in barometric pressure. Naturally... anyway normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. ** End of personal bit ** Something from the weekend 18-19/10The Xbox360 is my weapon of choice and I try not to publish too much about the opposition but this story has produced too much resonance within the gaming community to ignore. Little Big Planet the PS3 “system-seller” has been recalled at the eleventh hour for featuring passages from the Quran." Being a Humanist by choice and having an inherent dislike of scripture in any form I'm not too sure what the controversy is about. If you translate this post into Greek and rearrange all the letters you'll probably be able to concoct a phrase from the Dead Sea Scrolls... but I have no intention of recalling it. After whole minutes of researching I was able to unearth the original complaint: very urgent about little big planet
And here come all the excited ambulance chasers:
And possibly simply for its novelty value we find today (20/10) that copies of the original release WITH offending lyrics are fetching high prices. A collectible item of the future?:
News: Recalled copies of LittleBigPlanet selling on eBay for up to $249 Daily Pickings 17/10At first I lost sleep over the idea that this is "the first true monthly decline the industry has experienced since March of 2006" but then I read the second article and realised where all the money was going. It's all those cheap Xbox360 packages Micro$oft is chucking out to flood the market. Yet another tragic example of why people must really learn the difference between the real world and imaginary ones... and why they probably shouldn't meet. Er, great title on this article. I should think a controller to a console would be a great help in succeeding. Cos, you know, without one just how far would you get...? Once upon a time there was a survey commissioned by Sony and conducted by Yahoo which concluded that "Videogames can contribute to a child’s education, improve hand-eye coordination and aid problem-solving skills." Er... isn't that because you need hand-eye coordination and problem solving skills to play video games? And just what is it they're being educated about? Video games? Another excellent list from Gamesradar providing me with many an excuse and argument to use on Mrs.Lefty next time she calls me a lazy git. Which should be in about.... ooo, ten minutes? And finally: talking about number five in the above article "5. We regularly mourn the passing of loved ones" Daily pickings 16/10
I think it's always good to hear about the often "background" altruistic activities of gaming organisations. By some kind of very faint osmosis effect it makes me feel better about myself. There's an awful lot of money going into virtual worlds and there's an awful lot of time by an awful lot of people being put into virtual worlds. Maybe it's saying something about how awful the real world is? "Even when the economy is taking a downturn, consumers still want to have fun." There are games conventions popping up everywhere. Did anyone go to this one and what did the booth babes look like? From a commentator to the post: "I hope it lives up to New World Computing's "Nuclear War" from 1989 in terms of "extolling the virtues of nuclear energy". I wonder what the other games were. Censorship Bar Tetris? Religious Police Persepolis 2? The Enhanced Interrogation MMO? The Mullahs, a total conversion mod for Sims? Lego Khomeini: Adventures of the Islamic Revolution?" F**CKING A!!! Which is an American expression I've picked up from somewhere and tend to use when I'm particularly excited about something. A Portal add-on is coming to Xbox Live. I loved Portal. It was different and funny and clever. And GLDOS is definitely an antagonist of the 21st century. If you haven't read Spitfire's analysis of her possibly suicidal motivations then go here: www.game-ism.com and look up Popular Posts. I believe in the cake. And finally: Micro$oft's house of the future is likened to living in the Jetson's world. But I've seen way too many sci-fi movies. Time to read Demon Seed again. Time to prepare. Daily pickings 15/10GTA at last gets a break as a game boasting "enough violence, guns and gratuitous sex to make Grand Theft Auto seem as tame as Pac-Man," is finally released. But apparently the NYPD is not amused as Saints Row 2 "encourages players to butcher cops with chain saws"... like they needed any encouragement in the first place... Oh c'mon! Pacman's been chasing those ghosts for over twenty years and you never heard them complaining. As always the boys at Gamesradar put the mmmm in mature. I suppose the idea of marketing stuff on new fangled popular sites like Youtube and Facebook is a good one both for the consumer, so they don't miss out and for the supplier, so they don't miss out on consumers. Is this really news? A politician completely reversing his opinion in order to gain the popularity of the moment. This is apparently about how Dubai is going to host some kind of game convention and there's this company that's going to develop ethnic minority heroes or something like that anyway... I'm afraid that when I got to the end and read about the paranoid poster on mccainspace.com saying, and I quote,: "a mind-games project originating in the UAE...or is it mind-control? Notice that the downloads of this project are FREE. Ask yourself why..." I thought it was so funny I forgot to take the beginning of the article seriously. And finally...I'm sure I could think of something witty and derisive to write about the kid in this next article. But I'm just not gonna. Respect, kid, respect. Lone Space Invader Reaches Planet Surface, Finds Out It Suckshttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/The-minusWorld/~3/417805507/ Mind the language... he gets a bit miffed at the end. Quick Draw MacGrawThis would explain alot... Gamers On A Hair Trigger, Claim Evil Wrong-headed Scientists [Premature Ejaculation] "The problem with play" and "No more game shame"Here come The Brainy Gamers last two posts in his mini-series about why games and why we play them. |
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